LADY RUSSELL’s “prejudices on the side of ancestry” | Analysis of CLASS in Jane Austen’s Persuasion

hello and welcome to close reading classic literature with me dr octavia cox for jane austen july i have been focusing on analyzing class in jane austen's novels particularly looking at pride and prejudice and persuasion and i'm going to finish this series off on class in jane austen today by analyzing the introduction of lady russell a really interesting character i think the widow of only a knight we're told in persuasion i'm going mainly with a few added extras but i'm mainly going to be close reading one passage in which i think we can see the complexity with which jane austen draws the character of lady russell but particularly how jane austen sews the seeds of some elements of lady russell's character that we might find potentially problematic and we might reflect back on later as the novel progresses to get to the analysis then pride and prejudice as i was talking about last week is a comedy of manners it's light-hearted in tone but persuasion is far more solemn and somber i want to contrast the jovial knight sir william lucas who as i said i discussed in that previous video with lady russell and suggest that jane austen was treating the same civility to class distinctions more seriously in the later novel so pride and prejudice was published in 1813 persuasion was published after jane austen died and it's dated 1818 although it was published in december 1817. lady russell in persuasion is also of the rank the social class of night she had been married to one sir henry russell we're told and like sir william lucas she is shown to be deferential to those who she considers to be above her socially in terms of class particularly the eliots the relationship between sir walter elliott a baronet which i also uh discussed in this lecture series um so the relationship between sir walter elliott the baronet and lady russell the widow of only a knight is an example i think an excellent example of the anxiety about class status uh in jane austen's period and which austin particularly interrogates in persuasion so we have the crumbling you might say of the old order symbolized in figures like self-serving sir walter elliott and the rise of a more meritocratic system of achievement and reward and social usefulness i say more meritocratic because obviously it's by no means perfect but this idea of social usefulness kind of going along with financial reward is symbolized in the figures of the navy professionals such as captain wentworth the class anxiety of the old order and those who cling to it like lady russell is dexterously examined by jane austen in a revealing quotation from early in the novel that describes lady russell's thinking as she contemplates sir walter elliott's and his daughter elizabeth elliot's plans for retrenchment which basically means economizing so walter's finances are failing he is growing we are told in chapter one dreadfully in debt and lady russell is called on to advise the elliot family on how to remove their embarrassments and reduce their expenditure without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride now you might think that sir walter's behaviour should involve the loss of all indulgence of taste and pride by its very nature indulgence is not necessary already then from the end of chapter one from lady russell's being called on by sir walter elliott in this way the reader might suspect that the indulgence of taste and pride is not the only thing that sir walter elliott is used to having indulged lady russell this precursor seems to be suggesting is going to indulge him too indulge his vanity perhaps we remember that vanity was the beginning and the end of sir walters character we're told in the opening chapter so let us see if she does this is the passage that i'm going to be interrogating and analyzing and unpicking a bit today lady russell was most anxiously zealous on the subject and gave it much serious consideration she was a woman rather of sound than of quick abilities whose difficulties in coming to any decision in this instance were great from the opposition of two leading principles she was of strict integrity herself with a delicate sense of honour but she was as desirous of saving to walter's feelings as solicitors for the credit of the family as aristocratic in her ideas of what was due to them as anybody of sense and honesty could well be she was a benevolent charitable good woman and capable of strong attachments most correct in her conduct strict in her notions of decorum and with manners that were held a standard of good breeding she had a cultivated mind and was generally speaking rational and consistent but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry she had a value for rank and consequence which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them herself the widow of only a knight she gave the dignity of a baronet all its jew and sir walter independent of the claims as an old acquaintance an attentive neighbor an obliging landlord the husband of her very dear friend the father of anne and her sisters was as being siwalter in her apprehension entitled to a great deal of compassion and consideration under his present difficulties frankly lady russell's deference enables sir walter to continue to behave badly i'm now going to unpick some of the details of this passage more closely lady russell was most anxiously zealous on the subject and gave it much serious consideration she was a woman rather of sound than of quick abilities whose difficulties in coming to any decision in this instance were great from the opposition of two leading principles and this is a key point the opposition of two leading principles these paralyze her decision making so on the one hand she is we're told of strict integrity herself with a delicate sense of honor in other words with an internal sense of right and wrong on the other there is deference to sir walter elliott's rank and which of these two do we think is going to win out in terms of giving sir walter advice she was of strict integrity herself with a delicate sense of honor but she was as desirous of savings walter's feelings as solicitors for the credit of the family as aristocratic in her ideas of what was due them due to them as anybody of sense and honesty could well be that is such an austinian sentence in its complexity in the sort of multiplicity of things that are going on first in the delicate sense of honor there is a dual meaning i think of honor so we've got the external meaning honor in terms of title and status so looking back at sir william lucas then as i quoted in a previous video he had risen to the honor of knighthood and the language there is similar i think to the way that sir walter elliott describes himself the eliots having risen to the dignity of baronet but i'll get on to that later so we have the idea of rising to the honor of knighthood that's the external meaning of honor but then we've also got the internal meaning which is i think how we read it's probably on on a first read so honor in terms of personal honor of integrity but is jane austen hinting here perhaps at the external influencing the internal or at least the blurring of the two in lady russell's mind that her sense of external honors clouds her sense of someone's internal honor because it's quite an interesting word that austin uses to introduce it there she says she says delicate a delicate sense of honor what really actually does delicate mean here it's up for it's up to the reader to decide because i don't think it's necessarily terribly clear from the text itself note the positioning to within the sentence so we've got integrity herself sense of honor sir walter's feelings how much does her sense of honor veer between the two her own integrity and sir walter elliott's feelings and we've got to note the importance of but in this sentence when you first read as anybody of sense and honesty could well be it seems as if the narrative voice is suggesting that lady russell is indeed a person of sense and honesty but consider the balance of the sentence in the way that it is structured we have desirous of sir walters feelings solicitous for the credit of the family and there i think we've got another dual meaning another play on um the meaning of the word credit because of course that means on the one hand kind of good standing so the credit of the family but also money um the credit in that sense so solicitous for the credit of the family and aristocratic in her idea so we've got those on the one hand and then balancing them we have to some extent we have sense and honesty on the other so we should note the qualifier but she was as x as anybody of sense and honesty could well be the construction of the sentence suggests that the two are in contrast with each other that being of sense and honesty will necessarily limit how much you are x simultaneously what this sentence i think is asking us to consider as readers is the opposite of that so how much are you x those first things that lazy russell is described at how much you are x will necessarily limit how much sense and honesty you have and that i think is what the sentence is kind of challenging readers to consider and then we've also got the beautiful phrase that lady russell is aristocratic in her ideas and there's a play i think by jane austen a punning put down if you like by austin on their commoner class hoisting lady russell on her own patard in describing her as aristocratic in her ideas lady russell is the widow of only a knight and therefore she is not aristocratic and so walter elliott being only a baronet is also not aristocratic either so as i have been laying out in this series on class in jane austen i've said repeatedly and i'll just outline it again very quickly one more time that nobility is at the um sort of top of the social class hierarchy so you have monarchy and aristocracy nobility and they are the titled landowners who derive their wealth from the land and then you have the gentry below them who also make their money from the land in that sense they are similar but they are not titled and as i was explaining when i was talking about um siwalta and the dignity of baronet baronets occupy a strange position where they are between the nobility and the nobility aristocracy and the gentry because they are titled sir walter elliott but they are not members of the peerage so they cannot sit in the house of lords they are not therefore actually of the noble class they cannot go into the house of lords so if they were to go into parliament they'd have to go into the house of commons hence they are commoners so there's a little joke here that lady russell is aristocratic in her ideas because she can only be aristocratic in her ideas she's not actually aristocratic in terms of her social status so is this a hint maybe at her pretensions to grandeur well potentially but i think also the idea here is that external labels or ranks govern the ideas of people like lady russell so she thinks in terms of rank the passage continues she was a benevolent charitable good woman and capable of strong attachments most correct in her conduct strict in her notions of decorum and with manners that were held a standard of good reading so socially she's very kind of proper very refined very polite she's got the polish of somebody who is used to being in polite and refined society she had a cultivated mind and again that use of the word cultivated is interesting in what way has it been cultivated now we might when we first read this if we are thinking positively of lady russell we might take cultivated mind to mean well that she's cultured that she's well read that she's sensible and rational rational and reasonable and all those things but we might revise our understanding of what cultivated is me means here as we interrogate actually the way that lady russell is depicted so she had a cultivated mind and was generally speaking generally speaking she was rational and consistent but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry she had a value for rank and consequence which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them so the text tells us she was a benevolent charitable good woman lady russell is not a bad person just like sir william lucas as i was talking about last week is not a bad person and i do not mean to suggest that she is but i do think that jane austen in the character of lady russell aims to show that even benevolent charitable good people can be blinded by their own perhaps unperceived prejudices so elizabeth bennett and mr darcy in pride and prejudice had to learn of their own prejudices and confront them that's kind of the the heart of the whole novel pride and prejudice that they are confronted with those both of them and they have to sort of see themselves afresh having been confronted by their prejudices but what if you go through life without having that experience without being confronted by your prejudices and having to kind of deal with them and overcome them this seems to be the fate of lady russell in persuasion austin seems to be challenging readers i think to think about whether lady russell should have learnt better and this will come to be particularly important when mr elliott returns on the scene in the latter stages of the novel so going back to the passage then note austin's repeated use of diction in the word strict so before we'd had her strict integrity earlier in the passage and now we have the description that she was strict in her notions of decorum and so the two are aligned those two ideas are aligned in the repetition of the word strict i think so we have external strict decorum that is learnt social etiquette as i said lady russell is clearly well trained we might say well cultivated in being polite in a polite refinement so she has this strict sense of decorum and that is aligned with her strict integrity it seems her moral compass again then we have i think a hint of the influence of external demarcations of politeness and refinement decorum being aligned in lady russell's mind with goodness and rightness as in the previous section of the passage we have a very important but and also note the qualifier generally speaking before that but lady russell was generally speaking rational but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry so the text seems to be suggesting there that this is one of the ways in which lady russell is not rational lady russell's prejudices on the side of ancestry then make her irrational she had a cultivated mind but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry which again invites readers to consider how cultivated her mind really is if it can be so easily blinded by ancestry ancestry of course has nothing at all to do with reason or rational thinking it's basically kind of completely arbitrary you know you happen to be born of a certain rank or you happen to be born of a different rank the structure of the sentence then invites readers to consider how much the first part is qualified by the second part a but b so how much then does b affect a when you have that structure that's what we're being asked to consider and i think the killer line in this whole extract is the next one she had a value for rank and consequence which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them i don't think and if you disagree if you have a counter example then do leave leave your counter example in the comments but i do not think that any very admirable character in any of jane austen's novels has this character trait i do not think any admirable character has a value for rank and consequence which blinds them to the fault of to the faults of those who possess rank and consequence we might say that this is true of emma woodhouse perhaps but she is not a holy admirable heroine it's a video for another time why i think it's really fascinating and interesting and brave of austin to write a heroine at this time who was not admirable but it might perhaps apply to emma woodhouse but as i've said she's not really presented as a wholly admirable character for whom does this statement apply in jane austen's novels and how are we guided to interpret those characters well we might think of the pharah'ses in sense and sensibility perhaps including of course fanny dashwood the daughter of mrs ferris we might think of mrs norris in mansfield park or mr collins and sir william lucas of course in pride and prejudice and in persuasion we have got perhaps the character who represents this most uh strongly in austin's novels sir walter elliott and indeed his daughters so elizabeth elliot and mary musgrove but i can't think of a character who we are supposed to like and think is admirable who has this blindness who values rank and consequence to such an extent that they can't see the faults of those who have those qualities the sense and judgment i would say of all these characters is exposed as lacking precisely because they possess this character trait their reverence for rank makes them overlook the faults of those who possess rank and i think in this line about lady russell in persuasion are asked to consider how much good sense and judgment she can actually have if her value for rank and consequence means that she overlooks the faults of those of high rank if she can overlook the faults of sir walter elliott false which as i shall get onto in a minute in a minute ann elliot his own daughter thinks are immoral and it's really interesting the way that austin uses language i think here in this what i would say was a killer sentence how much is a little she was blinded a little well how much is a little how blinded actually is she how insignificant or significant is a fault so in the language here there is some severity softening by the narrative voice but should the reader accept this without challenge what i think this sentence also hints at is the other ways in which lady russell's value for rank and consequence might blind her just as her prejudice blinds her to the faults of those who possess high rank and social consequence might it not also blind her to the virtues of those who do not possess high status ancestry this is particularly relevant of course in helping us piece together what actually happened eight years ago and the breaking up of anne elliott and captain wentworth the passage continues herself the widow of only a knight she gave the dignity of a baronet all it's due and sir walter independent of his claims as an old acquaintance an attentive neighbor an obliging landlord the husband of her very dear friend the father of anne and her sisters was as being sir walter in her apprehension entitled to a great deal of compassion and consideration under his present difficulties so in this beautifully sort of revealing line herself the widow of only a knight that is a very very important only and actually we can see perhaps that it's an echo of the she was only anne that appears in the first chapter so she's the widow of only a knight um she gave the dickenshi of baronette all it's due and here we have free and direct discourse which is the technique the literary technique that austin really honed and developed and that is so free and direct discourse is where the narrative voice kind of slips into the perspective and the thinking and the language of a character and takes on that language that perspective that thinking and takes it into what seems to be perhaps straightforward third person narrative but you have to you have to watch out for when austin does this when she uses free indirect discourse and brings in the thinking of a character um and presents it as though it were narrative fact rather than the the perspective the opinion of of a character that's exactly what's going on here in that only herself the widow of only a knight that is the thinking of lady russell so it's revealing lady russell's thinking to us here through the use of free indirect discourse the narrative voice has taken on the thinking the perspective of lady russell and adopted her language it is she who places herself her husband had been only a knight beneath the dignity of a baronet imagine how far below sir walter elliott she would place someone who is not even a knight and again we might think here particularly of captain wentworth and the passage here closes so walter was in her and sir walter in her apprehension was entitled to a great deal of compassion and consideration under his present difficulties why why is sir walter entitled to compassion and consideration he has brought all this financial hardship on himself lady russell is wrong he does not deserve compassion or consideration he deserves to be criticized and condemned for his terrible behavior for living in luxury beyond his means and not being able to pay for all the fabulous stuff that he and elizabeth desire and you know if let's say that you order a new dress from your local mantua maker your local dressmaker and you order all the fabric and you employ that person to make that outfit for you knowing that you cannot pay for it then you are essentially stealing from that person particularly if it's a local person who relies on being paid to keep themselves above water et cetera as the narrative voice tells us when sir walter's wife was alive when lady elliot was alive the elliot's finances had been kept steady so we're told in chapter one while lady elliot lived there had been method moderation and economy which had just kept them within his income but with her had died all such right-mindedness and from that period he had been constantly exceeding it so walter thinks he is entitled to luxury just as lady russell thinks he is entitled to compassion and consideration but i would suggest that the implication in the opening chapters of the novel is that lady russell should be included along with sir walter elliott and elizabeth elliot in that all all such right-mindedness had died with lady elliot the right-mindedness here of course being moderation and economy and not using rank as an excuse to behave badly lady russell shies away from telling sir walter elliott the truth now perhaps it is not her place to do so i mean it might be a tricky social situation etc but she does encourage sir walter elliott's feelings of self-importance and his belief that he is entitled to special treatment merely because of his birth and of course there's a play on the word entitled the dual meaning of entitled he behaves with entitlement because of his title in encouraging sir walters feelings of self-importance his sense of entitlement in that sense she is culpable in terms of contributing to the perpetuation of harmful ideas and i would suggest that the text is challenging readers persuasion is challenging readers to consider how culpable enablers like lady russell r furthermore to look at the whole final sentence of the extract more broadly so and so walter independent of his claims as an old acquaintance an attentive neighbor an obliging landlord the husband of her very dear friend lady elliot the father of anne and her sisters was as being sir walter in her apprehension entitled to a great deal of compassion and consideration under his present difficulties and this lays it out starkly above all else independent of all other claims all of the rest of her of the claims that you might imagine that sir walter had on lady russell's sort of personal feelings i suppose so the fact that she's the husband of her very dear friend the fact that she is the father he is the father of anne and that they have this long-standing relationship that he is an old acquaintance so all those personal considerations are independent of all of those is the very fact that he is siwalter so walter is entitled to special treatment because he is sir walter if none of the other claims existed for lady russell sir walter elliott because he is a sir would still be entitled to preferential consideration in her apprehension so we can just cut out the middle of the sentence and we can see really the um key part of the sentence so take out everything from independent to her sisters and you'll see what i mean so sir walter was as being sir walter entitled that is the key kind of nub of the sentence so walter was as being sir walter entitled entitled to live a life of luxury apparently for lady russell rank ultimately out ranks all other considerations so i'm going to close by turning to ann elliott the heroine of course of persuasion as we learn from the close and very first chapter lady russell hopes to remove their the elliot's embarrassments and reduce their expenditure without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride ann elliott unlike lady russell does not indulge sir walter's extravagance in fact the text tells us clearly that she thinks it is immoral of sir walter not to pay back his debts as quickly as possible this is from chapter two she considered it as an act of indispensable duty so that means that it is a moral necessity she considered it as an act of indispensable duty you cannot get rid of this duty it is your moral obligation to do it to clear away the claims of creditors with all the expedition which the most comprehensive retrenchments could secure and saw no dignity in anything short of it she wanted it to be prescribed that means kind of imposed she wanted it to be prescribed and felt as a duty and she and thinks that her friend's plans are too gentle so she refers to lady russell's two gentle reductions and elliott then thinks of dignity in terms of behavior and performing your moral duty that is real dignity and this contrasts explicitly with sir walter elliott and lady russell who both associate the term dignity with the rank of baronet expressly so sir walter elliott as i discussed in a previous video on the topic of sir walter elliott and the dignity of baronet he thinks explicitly of dignity as a rank so the eliots we learn rose to the dignity of baronet in the first year of charles ii and as i outlined in that video um the fact that they rose to the dignity of baroness in the first year of charles ii rather undermines the dignity of that uh honor but lady russell also uses the same diction basically in the passage that i've just outlined lady russell gave the dignity of a baronet all it's due she's almost echoing sir walter in terms of the alignment of their thinking in using the same diction here in anne's thinking that she saw no dignity in sir walter elliot's behavior and lady russell's plans jane austen explicitly contrasts the two camps of thinking the old order who base dignity on rank and the new order who base dignity on behavior and fulfilling your duties regardless of rank and having a sense of duty feeling this sense of duty that's uh so earlier in the passage saw no dignity and anything short of it she wanted it to be felt as a duty and that is what is lacking in the old order that seems to be what the text is suggesting here ultimately we're told lady russell felt obliged to oppose her dear anne's known wishes why because it that is anne's plan for comprehensive retrenchment would be too much to expect sir walter to descend into and considers it sir walter elliott's moral duty to return the money he owes as quickly as possible lady russell thinks it would be too much to expect sir walter to do what anne thinks is his moral duty so one of the faults it seems that lady russell is willing to overlook going back to the passage is sir walter elliott's moral duty we should also note i think that lady russell overlooks ann elliot's wishes here known wishes just as much as anne's father and sister do she may be her dear anne but her known wishes wishes furthermore which the text asks readers to see as sensible and moral are still overlooked and regarded as secondary secondary to sir walter elliott's feelings in pride and prejudice readers are encouraged to view sir william lucas as absurd elizabeth loved absurdities we're told but she had known sir williams too long he could tell her nothing new of the wonders of his presentation and knighthood and his civilities were worn out like his information sir william lucas is ridiculous and dull and self-important but these are really the extent of his ills pride and prejudice as i said was written several years before jane austen embarked on persuasion paraphrasing virginia woolf in jane austen at 60 in the new republic from 1924 there is an asperity in the comedy of persuasion which suggests that jane austen had ceased to be amused by vanity and snobbery as arguably she had been in pride and prejudice and as the novel's heroine lizzie bennet clearly is and as we see in the depictions of the character of sir william lucas which i was talking about last time where sir william lucas is absurd lady russell is arguably damaging particularly in relation to enabling sir walter elliott's profligacy and as we later surmise two and eliot's happiness both in lady russell's past persuasions against captain wentworth but also we see it come out again later in her plans for anne to become the future lady elliot by marrying mr elliott lady russell's class snobbery is much less brazen than siwalter elliott's but is it any less pernicious later in the novel persuasion readers are told it was now some years since anne had begun to learn that she and her excellent friend lady russell could sometimes think differently and there's beautiful understatement here and as i was talking about earlier this is a free indirect discourse we've gone into ann's thinking here she is thinking of lady russell as her own excellent friend but i think us readers are supposed to pick up on the implications still anne is unfailingly charitable towards lady russell her excellent friend but are we readers supposed to be as charitable towards her too is lady russell really so excellent something i'll leave you to ponder thank you very much indeed for watching i do hope that you've enjoyed the video if you have then do please press the like button it does help me out in youtube's algorithm and if you like what i do here on my channel where i analyze classic literature then do subscribe i'd love to know your thoughts on lady russell how do you interpret her prejudices on the side of ancestry let me know in the comments below