Sex and the senses.

McMaster, Juliet

CLANDESTINE CLASSICS," we are told--the latest set of adaptations of Austen's novels and others'--intend to add the missing sex scenes from Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. "Filling in erotic detail," the publishers claim, "will bring greater depth to the works" (Siemaszkiewicz). Well, I have news for them. Those scenes, as close readers know, aren't missing at all. They're right there, if you know how to read.

Bodies aren't as prominent in Austen's novels as in those of, say, Charles Dickens, who gives us pages of detail about faces, eyes, hair, waistlines, voices, and appetites. But what Austen gives us sparingly, we remember: Elizabeth's dark eyes and light, pleasing figure; Marianne's loosened hair, Jane Fairfax's deep complexion, Anne's lost and restored "bloom"; Emma as the picture of health. And where Dickens's ample physical descriptions are largely for the reader, to make us see and hear his characters for ourselves, Jane Austen usually offers us information on her characters' bodies as it is perceived by other characters: in the case of the heroines, usually by the men--Darcy, or Mr. Knightley, or Wentworth; in the case of the men, by Elizabeth, or Emma, or Anne Elliot. The presence of the bodies thus becomes more dramatic, as they strike the eyes and stimulate the senses of other figures in their world.

By the senses, I mean those classic five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, with their associated organs of perception: eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and--typically but not exclusively--fingers. The five senses were familiar to Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, as well as to Austen's contemporaries, Wordsworth and Keats. Johnson's first definition of the noun sense isn't the "sense" that is opposed to "sensibility" (that one appears as number five); rather it is "Faculty or power by which natural objects are perceived; the sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste."

For the senses of lovers in particular, though, Shakespeare remains the authority: and Biron's famous speech in defence of love in Love's Labour's Lost would surely receive due emphasis in the "'Hartfield edition of Shakespeare'" that Emma once proposes (E 75). Love intensely sharpens the senses, Biron explains:

   It adds a precious seeing to the eye--A
   lover's eye will gaze an eagle blind.
   A lover's ear will hear the lowest sound
   When the suspicious head of theft is stopped.
   Love's feeling is more soft and sensible
   Than are the tender horns of cockled snails.
   Love's tongue proves dainty Bacchus gross in taste.
   (4.3.307-13)

And it is these heightened perceptions of the lovers, and Austen's sensitive presentation of them, that I propose to trace in her novels, one sense at a time. We may have no bedroom scenes between lovers, no lubricious stripteases or earthshaking orgasms. But the intensified sensations of lovers provide them with erotic moments that close readers can understand and to some extent share.

SIGHT: A LOVER'S EYE WILL GAZE AN EAGLE BLIND.

All the authorities start with sight. The visible is what we encounter first, and may provide either the salient perception that becomes the legitimate foundation for all the rest, or the "first impression" that subsequent information must qualify.

For better or worse, the world of Austen's novels is very much a seeing culture; the stern economics of beauty decrees that a woman's face is her fortune. In Pride and Prejudice we learn early about the Beauty Stakes: Jane, being acknowledged all round as the prettiest, is deemed likely to get the best husband, and soonest; then Lizzie, Lydia, and Kitty, in order of beauty; and last comes Mary, who has no beauty so must compete in the Accomplishment Stakes instead.

In this culture everyone pays attention to looks, and many become self-appointed connoisseurs: John Thorpe in Bath provides "a short decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met" (NA 48). Also in Bath, Sir Walter Elliot, a dedicated expert on beauty--especially his own--takes the trouble to stand in a shop and count "'eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them'" (P 141-42). (1)

More enlightened observers, however, look beyond beauty to other markers. Darcy's "critical eye" at first sees Elizabeth as only "'tolerable'" in appearance; but presently he realizes her face is "rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes" (PP 12, 23). His love, "first learned in a lady's eyes," according to Shakespearean formula (LLL 4.3.301), now reads more subtly for expression and intelligence. And presently he is as captivated as any stage lover, and can hardly keep his eyes off her; so that "Elizabeth could not help observing ... how frequently Mr. Darcy's eyes were fixed on her" (51). Initially she is indifferent, even irritated. But after her revolution in feeling, she seeks out his portrait at Pemberley, "and as she stood before the canvas, ... fixed his eyes upon herself" (251). It's an intriguing moment, as she takes the initiative in fixing his eyes: moving from passive recipient of his gaze to active seeker and promoter of it. Seeing is a strenuous activity.

We hear much of the lover's gaze. Elinor divines Colonel Brandon's love for Marianne by "watch[ing] his eyes ...; she could discover in them the quick feelings ... of a lover" (SS 305). Mr. Knightley, discussing Emma's appearance with Mrs. Weston, confesses freely, "'I love to look at her'" (E 39), without knowing how much that tells the attentive listener about the state of his heart. While he is observing her behavior and lecturing her about it, he is simultaneously feeding his love by looking. Other lovers do the same. For all Frank Churchill's efforts at disguising his love for Jane Fairfax, Emma catches him looking so "intently" at Jane across the room that he starts when Emma speaks. "'I cannot keep my eyes from her,'" he admits--but claims it's because of Miss Fairfax's outree hairstyle (E 222). Once the secret of his love is out, he is fully expressive about his delight in her beauty: "'Did you ever see such a skin?--such smoothness; such delicacy! ... It is a most uncommon complexion, with her dark eyelashes and hair ...'" (478). There is even something off-putting about his salivating over Jane's voluptuous appearance to a third person. But we can't doubt his sexual engagement.

Men's beauty matters too, of course, though it is much less of a determinant of their fortune than women's. Henry Crawford, who isn't handsome by any standard, is nevertheless much sexier than the tall and self-important Rushworth. Catherine rejoices that Henry Tilney, "if not quite handsome, was very near it" (NA 25). And Emma, who has sturdily resisted the evidence of how much she cares for Knightley, has a kind of epiphany, a sudden unexpected awakening to his physicality, when she sees him, as the song says, "across a crowded room": "[S]o young as he looked!" she exclaims to her self breathlessly. "His tall, firm, upright figure, among the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the elderly men, was such as Emma felt must draw every body's eyes" (326). She clearly experiences a frisson of desire. And when he presently performs his rescue, by leading Harriet to dance, Emma's eyes still follow him: "His dancing proved to be just what she had believed it, extremely good; and Harriet would have seemed almost too lucky ..." (328). We can catch Emma in her brief pang of sexual jealousy, but she doesn't catch herself.

When the dancing begins again, she takes her own initiative, and "her eyes invited him irresistibly to come to her and be thanked" (330). Eyes are indeed powerful instruments, and some practiced flirts can use them unscrupulously. Isabella Thorpe's "bright eyes," when she encounters James Morland in Bath, "were incessantly challenging his notice" (NA 45). Likewise we find her "earnestly fixing her eye" on Captain Tilney, her next intended prey. "Fixing" the eyes seems indeed to have some aggressive force. And talk of eyes becomes the hackneyed language of flirtation. "'If we [men] have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough,'" says Captain Tilney, quite at home with the formulas of hearts and torments and blooming cheeks (147).

In Renaissance drama the conventions surrounding lovers were well developed and fully exploited. The "love, first learned in a lady's eyes," would strike all at once; the lover, receiving that first look from the beloved, would stand as though thunderstruck, sighing and speechless. The business was so well understood by playwright and audience that Marston, for instance, could provide a stage direction, "'Isabella falls in love," and expect his actor to perform the action and the audience to catch on at once (Marston 2.1). Like most conventions, this one has a foundation in human behavior. And Austen too can provide moments when a character is struck all of a heap by the sight of the person he or she is in love with. (2)

In Persuasion eyes become not just instruments but almost agents as Anne and Wentworth, separated by the "perpetual estrangement" (64) that pertains between them, nonetheless hold intimate communion through their eyes. When they first meet, eight years after their break-up, Anne has braced herself for the occasion. "Her eye half met Captain Wentworth's; a bow, a curtsey passed; ... the room seemed full--full of persons and voices--but a few minutes ended it." As many readers have noticed, the broken syntax exactly renders Anne's nervous tension over this half-meeting. In fact she is stricken speechless, like a lover in a play. "Mary talked, but she could not attend. She had seen him. They had met. They had been once more in the same room!" (P 59-60).

The non-engagement of eyes continues to stand for their broken relationship. As she plays the piano for others to dance to, "Once she felt that he was looking at herself" (72)--it seems she has eyes in the back of her head, so sensitive is she to his eyes. She watches him in his relations with the Musgrove family and always knows more of what he is thinking than they do. She captures his "contemptuous glance, as he turned away, which Anne perfectly knew the meaning of" (86). He too observes and interprets her better than any of the others, recognizing when she is in need of a ride in his sister's carriage. So their silent and private relation of two proceeds, by means of covert mutual scrutiny, within the rowdy crowd of others. A sexual relation? Definitely! Granted it provides as much pain as pleasure. But that is the nature of their renewed courtship.

On the Cobb at Lyme there is a three-way exchange of glances that has almost a physical force. Wentworth intercepts William Elliot's look of "earnest admiration" at Anne, who is recovering her "bloom"; and he responds at once with a look of his own, "a glance of brightness, which seemed to say, 'That man is struck with you,--and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again'" (104). Eyes even have dialogue assigned to them.

The narrative of eye movements continues in Bath, where Anne and Wentworth still can't fully engage visually. She sees him first, and is all of a dither: "For a few minutes she saw nothing before her. It was all confusion. She was lost." Then he sees her, and similarly experiences "[a]ll the overpowering blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise." These are loaded moments, and sufficiently expressive. Anne feels "agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery" (175).

'Tis enough. 'Twill serve. After this, who needs an interpolated scene in which Wentworth grabs Anne and proceeds to kiss the hell out of her?

Wentworth presents his letter--written in counterpoint with her speech on constancy--"with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a moment" (236): at last a full and mutual meeting of eyes. And the love-affair of looks is appropriately completed with Wentworth's instruction, "'A word, a look will be enough to decide'" (237-38), and Anne's successful effort to deliver the right ocular message, and complete the business (239). It's a dramatization of eye contact that recalls John Donne's teasing metaphysical image in his love poem "The Ecstasy": "Our eye-beams twisted ... upon one double string" (7-8). Elinor Dashwood, the heroine of discipline and good sense, specializes in drawing, a visual exercise; Marianne, the heroine of sensibility, specializes in music, an art form that more directly expresses the emotions.

"If music be the food of love, play on!" (Twelfth Night 1.1.1). Jane Austen didn't write that line, but she certainly demonstrates it. When Willoughby leaves Barton with no promise of returning, Marianne feeds her love by "play[ing] over every favourite song that she had been used to play with Willoughby, every air in which their voices had oftenest been joined.... She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears" (SS 83). Anne Elliot too is subject to the emotive power of music, and as she plays dances for others, "her eyes would sometimes fill with tears" (P 71); but hers is the real sorrow of a lost love, whereas in Marianne's case one can trace a voluptuous indulgence in past experience, which is itself a kind of sexual fulfillment.

Singing together, it seems, can be a kind of love affair in itself, as in the case of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax. At the Coles' dinner party Emma is pleasantly surprised when Frank adds "a second, slightly but correctly taken," to her own voice. She is succeeded at the piano by Jane Fairfax, and Frank sings with her too. "They had sung together one or twice, it appeared, at Weymouth," we hear. But Emma has ceased to pay full attention; she is distracted, appropriately enough, by "the sight of Mr. Knightley" (227). If she had been more alert, she might have caught on to who really gave Jane the piano, especially as Frank agrees the gift must be "'an offering of love'" (219). And what better Valentine's gift can there be than a piano? Next day, when Emma visits Miss Bates to hear the piano, she and her companions catch Frank almost alone with Jane: he "most deedily occupied" in mending spectacles, and she "standing with her back to them, intent on her pianoforte" (240). Evidently they have just sprung guiltily apart, after she has been thanking him for his generous Valentine's gift. It's the closest we ever get to an on-stage passionate kiss between lovers.

I confess to some curiosity over how Clandestine Classics would expand on this scene. Does Frank say, "Oh, come on, Jane! Your granny's asleep, and it'll take a while for your aunt to bring Miss Woodhouse and the others. How about a quickie on the sopha?"

While Jane plays, Frank impudently jokes for Emma's benefit about Colonel Campbell as the apparent donor of the piano; but simultaneously he is making private love to Jane--reminding her of "'the day, the precise day of the instrument's coming to hand'" (241), and exclaiming,

"What felicity it is to hear a tune again which has made one happy!--If I mistake not that was danced at Weymouth."

She looked up at him for a moment, coloured deeply, and played something else. (242)

He keeps commenting on the thoughtfulness of the gift, and the music he selected particularly for her--no doubt an anthology of the music they fell in love over. "'Nothing hastily done.... True affection only could have prompted it.'" Jane registers this covert love talk with "the deep blush of consciousness, ... a smile of secret delight" (242-43). Music is certainly the food of love for this couple.

The attractive power of music is amply demonstrated. Colonel Brandon, who pays Marianne "only the compliment of attention" to her singing, is a goner from then onwards (SS 35). Darcy at Rosings is at once drawn to leave his aunt and move to where he can "command a full view of the fair performer's countenance" (PP 174). Like Ariel's victims in The Tempest, these men, under the spell of melody, "pricked their ears, / ... lifted up their noses, / As they smelt music," and follow helplessly (The Tempest 4.1.176-78).

In a passage that richly combines different sensuous responses, Edmund falls under the spell of Mary Crawford's siren strains on the harp. (3) The scene evokes a kind of sensuous languor to which Edmund becomes a victim:

   A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as
   herself; and both placed near a window ... opening on a little
   lawn, surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of summer,
   was enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the scene,
   the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment....
   [I]t was all in harmony; and as every thing will turn to account
   when love is once set going, even the sandwich tray,
   and Dr. Grant doing the honours of it, were worth looking
   at. (MP 65)

With Mary's touch eliciting the sound of the harp, the view of a garden in the flood of summer, and the tasty sandwiches to hand, Edmund is in a kind of Bower of Bliss, and lulled into complex sensual indulgence. No wonder that "at the end of a week of such intercourse," he is "beginning ... to be a good deal in love." But we're alerted that this is a kind of unhealthy passive state of languor, not the tense and alert meeting of minds and bodies that is the best foundation for sexual love in Jane Austen's world. Fanny, Edmund's better angel, tries to lead him to more celestial contemplation? "'Here's harmony!... Here's repose!'" she exclaims, drawing his attention to the stars and the music of the

spheres (113). But Edmund, like Odysseus charmed by the singing sirens, is lured away from star-gazing with Fanny to the glee sung by Mary.

Later on, Fanny too responds to Mary's harp-playing, experiencing a kind of echo of Edmund's enchantment. Edmund is away, being ordained. Mary invites Fanny to hear "'a very pretty piece--and your cousin Edmund's prime favorite.'" Fanny is hooked.

   [S]uch a memento made her particularly awake to his idea, and she
   fancied him sitting in that room again and again, perhaps in the
   very spot where she sat now, listening with constant delight to the
   favourite air. (207).

This is surely a kind of erotic reverie, as she soaks in the ghostly physical presence of Edmund, and identifies with him in sitting in his chair and losing herself in the seductive music. Afterwards she can't wait to be gone, to be alone with the sensation.

TASTE: LOVE'S TONGUE PROVES DAINTY BACCHUS GROSS IN TASTE.

Affairs of the palate don't rank highly among Jane Austen's lovers. Mr. Woodhouse talks about food a lot, but he is equally opposed to rich food and matrimony, and the comestible that he most distrusts is wedding cake. On the other hand, Mrs. Jennings is both pro-food and pro-marriage, with a touching faith in the power of Constantia wine in healing a wounded heart. The most devoted gourmet in the novels is Dr. Grant, and one can't imagine he is much fun in bed.

Mr. Elton has certainly had a skinful of "Mr. Weston's good wine" when on the way back from Randalls he grabs Emma's hand and proceeds to "mak[e] violent love to her" (129). But one suspects the wine was more useful for giving him the Dutch courage to propose to the great Miss Woodhouse than for its aphrodisiac effects. There are some mildly erotic moments connected with wine, as in the case of Catherine after the ball at which she first dances with Henry Tilney. "Whether she thought of him so much, while she drank her warm wine and water, and prepared herself for bed, as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained" (NA 29). (I leave it to Clandestine Classics to supply a wet dream for Catherine here.) Fanny too has pleasure in her wine and water of an evening, but only if it is mixed for her by Edmund (MP 66).

A food issue that's often overlooked is the important matter of the supper dance at a ball. The first two dances at a ball, as we all know, are the socially important ones. The world takes note, for instance, that Frank Churchill engages Emma for the first dances at the Crown Ball, as in duty bound by his parents' wishes and Emma's expectations.

But for lovers the dance that matters is the one before the supper, since from the clinging little Walter. Here the touch is at one remove, but the child becomes a conductor of a kind of electric thrill: "his little sturdy hands were unfastened from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne away." A fairly simple piece of helpfulness, one might suppose. But "[Anne's] sensations ... made her perfectly speechless. She could not even thank him. She could only hang over little Charles, with most disordered feelings" (P 80).

Let me remind you here of David Lodge's memorable character Professor Zapp. When he reads this scene to his students, he concludes reverently: "'How about that? ... If that isn't an orgasm, what is it?'" (195).

Besides such emergencies, crafty characters like Henry Crawford can find means for more sexual touching than society normally allows. He and Maria Bertram become "'indefatigable rehearsers'" of their scene in Lovers" Vows (MP 169). Why? So that they can hold hands legitimately--or semi-legitimately--without being engaged or married. Is it merely acting, or is it for real? Henry is skilled at balancing in between; Maria less so. When Julia's breathless announcement of Sir Thomas's return interrupts the rehearsal, she sees Henry "pressing [Maria's] hand to his heart" and keeping it there; and Julia's "wounded heart swelled again with injury." But then we switch points of view. To Maria, his "retaining her hand at such a moment, a moment of such peculiar proof and importance, was worth ages of doubt and anxiety" (175-76). For both sisters, this means it's for real. But Henry can simply extract himself by the implied argument, No, no, it's only acting! The holding of the hand is open to interpretation, and a ruthless breaker of hearts can play that doubt to advantage.

"To have and to hold" is part of the marriage vow. Literal possession of another human being isn't possible. But it is possible to possess some part of him or her. So Willoughby snips and kisses and keeps a lock of Marianne's hair; Lucy Steele presents Edward with a ring with her hair set in it--though in this case it's less a keepsake than a fetter, to keep Edward bound to her.

Keepsakes are an extension of touch, providing a means of keeping one's fingers on some residue of the beloved. The piece of court plaister among Harriet's "Most precious treasures" was intended to dress a cut that Mr. Elton got from Emma's penknife; but the fact that he "'kept playing some time with [it]'" adds value by his touch (338). Harriet also treasures the stub of his pencil. (According to that same Professor Zapp, the fact that the pencil has no lead in it implies that Elton is impotent.)

And there are other precious relics: To Fanny, pouncing on Edmund's unfinished note that begins "'My very dear Fanny,'" Edmund's "handwriting itself ... is a blessedness" (MP 265). (6) And miniature portraits too allow their owners to consider they own a piece of the beloved. Lucy keeps her portrait of Edward Ferrars on her person, and flaunts it before a rival; the portrait of Benwick, which is to be re-set for a new fiancee, provides an ironic twist, as a relic changes hands.

I will end with a brief episode from Emma, which moves from sight to touch to dawning consciousness of love. It's the day after Mr. Knightley's reproof about Emma's thoughtless words at Box Hill. When Emma returns from a penitential visit to the Bateses, her father tells Mr. Knightley, "'She is always so attentive to them!'" but Emma wants to disclaim this unearned praise:

   [W]ith a smile, and shake of the head, which spoke much, she looked
   at Mr. Knightley.--It seemed as if ... his eyes received the truth
   from her's.... He looked at her with a glow of regard.... He took
   her hand;--whether she had not herself made the first motion, she
   could not say--she might, perhaps, have rather offered it--but he
   took her hand, pressed it, and certainly was on the point of
   carrying it to his lips.... (385-86).

If you take that passage apart, you can find a history, in microcosm, of the Emma-Knightley relation. Yes, we have significant physical sensation--the exchange of looks, the expressive gesture, the mutual move towards touching, kissing; but for Austen it is never merely physical sensation: the unfolding narrative of little motions and observations here is informed by a dawning understanding of motive and principle and action and emotion. At its best, as here, Austen's rendering of sensuous experience comprehends the full communion of minds as well as bodies.

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. The Works of Jane Austen. Ed. R. W. Chapman. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1933-69.

Browning, Robert. "The Last Ride Together." The Complete Works of Robert Browning. Boston: Houghton, 1895. 267.

Donne, John. "The Ecstasy." The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. M. H. Abrams et al. 2 vols. New York: Norton, 1986. 1:1076.

Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Ed. Gordon Haight. Cambridge, MA: Riverside, 1956.

Johnson, Claudia L. "Jane Austen's Relics and the Treasures of the East Room." Persuasions 28 (2006): 217-30.

Johnson, Samuel. Dictionary of the English Language (1755). 2 vols. London, 1822.

Lane, Maggie. "Star-gazing with Fanny Price." Persuasions 28 (2006): 150-65.

Lehner, Karyn. "Pleasure Hunting in Mansfield Park." Approaches to Teaching Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. Ed. Marcia McClintock Folsom and John Wiltshire. New York: MLA, forthcoming.

Lodge, David. Changing Places. London: Secker, 1975.

Marston, John. The Insatiate Countess. The Works of John Marston. Ed. A. H. Bullen. 3 vols. London: Nimmo, 1887.

MeMaster, Juliet. "The Symptoms of Love." Jane Austen on Love. English Literary Studies Monograph Series No. 13. Victoria: U of Victoria, 1978. 9-27.

Murray, Douglas. "Gazing and Avoiding the Gaze." Jane Austen's Business. Ed. Juliet MeMaster and Bruce Stovel. London: Macmillan, 1996. 42-53.

Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: Norton, 1997.

Siemaszkiewicz, Claire. "The Classics with Hot Bits." Guardian Weekly 27 July 2012: 24.

Wells, Juliette. "A Harpist Arrives at Mansfield Park: Music and the Moral Ambiguity of Mary Crawford." Persuasions 28 (2006): 101-14.

NOTES

(1.) For Sir Walter as "panoptic centre," see Douglas Murray (47).

(2.) I outlined "The Symptoms of Love," and Jane Austen's use of the love convention, in Jane Austen on Love (7-27).

(3.) For an attentive study of this scene, see Juliette Wells (105-08).

(4.) On this scene, see Maggie Lane.

(5.) See the essay by Karyn Lehner, "Pleasure Hunting in Mansfield Park."

(6.) For an excellent study of relics (including this one) in Austen's novels, see Claudia Johnson.

Juliet McMaster of the University of Alberta is the author of .lane Austen on Love and .lane Austen the Novelist, as well as of books on Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope. She is also co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen and is founder of the Juvenilia Press.