Pride and Publicity : In...

“I am a Jane Austenite,” E. M. Forster wrote in 1924, “and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen. . . I read and re-read, the mouth open and the mind closed. Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers.”

Whether or not the 2,700 members of the Jane Austen Society of North America are amused by Forster’s idolatry, they cannot ignore two recent incursions onto sacred ground: Julia Barrett and Emma Tennant have both had the temerity to continue where “Pride and Prejudice” left off. Though the publishers have declared an oxymoronic “Jane War”--war, of course, is not within Miss Austen’s purlieu--the two novels are so unlike that a reader does not have to choose one over the other. Both, in their own peculiar ways, are eminently enjoyable.

By calling “Presumption” an “entertainment,” Julia Braun Kessler and Gabrielle Donnelly (writing under the pseudonym Julia Barrett) might disarm some of Jane Austen’s more militant admirers. Demoting “Pride and Prejudice’s” heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, now Mrs. Darcy, to a supporting role, “Presumption” elevates Mrs. Darcy’s sister-in-law, 17-year-old Georgiana, to prima donna.

“A series of governesses had taught her,” the collective Miss Barrett writes of Georgiana, “and while they had invariably found her tractable, even compliant, this circumstance was maintained largely by none of their ever presuming to make so inconvenient a suggestion as that she do one single thing genuinely against her own wishes.”

As this quotation demonstrates, “Presumption’s” style not only evokes Jane Austen’s dry wit, but also some of the grammatical knots that R. W. Chapman, a 20th-Century editor of her complete works, tried to untangle. Tag words dear to “Pride and Prejudice”-- exceedingly, complaisance, delicacy --also contribute to the Regency flavor of this sequel. Indeed, the authors are to be commended for not overusing exceedingly, which crops up far too often, for someone not slightly imbecilic, in the 1813 original.

Once the reader has adjusted to the Latinate formality of the language, “Presumption” moves briskly along, highlighted by the unwitting comic genius of Georgiana’s imperious aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (a holdover from “Pride and Prejudice”). This aristocrat knows that the world cannot possibly manage without her unceasing meddling. When she learns that in her absence a storm destroyed her apple orchard and a bell-ringer broke his right arm, “Her Ladyship was much comforted to hear of her estate’s distress.” Her supervision is without question a necessity.

But just as Lady Catherine was not able to intimidate Elizabeth Bennet in “Pride and Prejudice,” so she fails to instruct Georgiana in her supposed duties in “Presumption.” Georgiana’s education in love parallels Elizabeth’s earlier trials. As Elizabeth was offended by Mr. Darcy’s pride and charmed by the unworthy Lt. Wickham’s easy manners, so Georgiana finds herself in a similar position with the haughty architect, James Leigh-Cooper, and the dashing Capt. Thomas Heywood. But whereas Lt. Wickham was merely something of a dissolute rake in “Pride and Prejudice,” “Presumption’s” Capt. Heywood is such a heinous villain that he cannot be contained within the cozy bounds of Regency romance. The urban sprawl of Victorian melodrama begins to loom, with all its attendant social concerns and sentimentality--and Jane Austen is left behind as London comes to the forefront.

“Pemberley,” a much more compact sequel, returns us to more familiar territory, Darcy’s estate in Derbyshire. Emma Tennant’s novel focuses on Elizabeth and Darcy’s marriage, about which the young bride is beginning to have some “Rebecca”-like doubts. In fact, this Elizabeth seems to have learned few lessons from her experiences with Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice.” After a year of marriage, she begins to speculate about her husband in an irrational way that seems more suitable to the overly vivid imagination of Catherine Morland, the heroine of Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey.”

But if this aspect of Tennant’s novel causes some uneasiness, the appearance of Mrs. Bennet, Elizabeth’s now widowed mother, soon distracts us. The widow’s Christmas visit to Pemberley occasions mother-in-law irritations that not even the somewhat reformed Darcy can countenance. Mrs. Bennet’s wooden-legged suitor, Col. Kitchiner, is one of the many absurdities that can make one, somewhat indelicately for a Jane Austenite, laugh aloud. With the widow’s blithe mention of a douche as a way of assuring male offspring--an heir to Pemberley is the central concern of this novel--we are reminded that, yes, Austen was familiar with Fielding and Stern. But when a chamber pot is brought out in public to satisfy the Colonel’s pressing after-dinner needs, not only Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but also the more reverent Austenites, might declare, “I am driven to my bedchamber.”

Though neither “Pemberley” nor “Presumption” mirrors the strict confines of Jane Austen’s world, their very exuberance, inappropriate as this may seem at times, helps deepen our appreciation of the original novel’s artistic achievement. At the same time these brave sequels might suggest that not even a masterpiece can leave us fully satisfied. After all, Jane Austen herself had her doubts about “Pride and Prejudice.” “The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling,” Emma Tennant quotes Austen as an epigraph to “Pemberley,” “it wants shade.” In their own idiosyncratic, imaginative ways, these novels are part of the shade that readers have supplied over the years, adding a few green leaves to the firm, enlaced branches.

Evolution of a Fussbudget

Elizabeth Bennet’s extremely trying mother, from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”:

“ ‘Oh! my dear brother,’ replied Mrs. Bennet, ‘that is exactly what I could most wish for. And now do, when you get to town, find them out, wherever they may be; and if they are not married already, make them marry. And as for wedding clothes, do not let them wait for that, but tell Lydia she shall have as much money as she chooses to buy them after they are married. And, above all things, keep Mr. Bennet from fighting. Tell him what a dreadful state I am in--that I am frightened out of my wits; and have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me, such spasms in my side, and pains in my head, and such beatings in my heart, that I can get no rest by night nor by day. And tell my dear Lydia not to give any directions about her clothes till she has seen me, for she does not know which are the best warehouses.’ ”

From Julia Barrett’s “Presumption”:

“ ‘Oh, my dearest Jane,’ began Mrs. Bennet, the first minute she observed no one else in attendance, ‘if you but knew how sorely put upon I am! The trials I have lately been subject to! Indeed, we should have been with you sooner but I forgot my newest sprigged lawn, and we were obliged to turn back for it at Bishop’s Stortford. And Mr. Bennet was so unfeeling as to stay cross all the way! Was ever a woman so unhappy as I? I vow it has quite destroyed my complexion.’ ”

From Emma Tennant’s “Pemberley”:

“ ‘Ah yes,’ cried Mrs. Bennet, who was always happy to have any affliction, of the nerves or the body, and any remedy, however unproven, to be discussed at length: ‘I recall perfectly. To ensure a boy--I am told a douche with vinegar is just the thing!’ ”