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Jane Austen and celebrity culture: Shakespeare, Dorothy Jordan and Elizabeth Bennet

2010; Routledge; Volume: 6; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17450918.2010.527364

1745-0926

Jocelyn Harris,

Irish and British Studies

Abstract Jane Austen imitated Shakespeare throughout her entire career, from Sense and Sensibility to Sanditon. To make up her characters, she mapped material from Shakespeare and other authors on to family members and celebrities. For Elizabeth Bennet, I argue that she remembered Dorothy Jordan, the most famous comic actress of her day. Jordan was particularly renowned for her roles in Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Measure for Measure, and Twelfth Night, the plays alluded to in Pride and Prejudice. The distinctive set of attributes that marked Jordan's celebrity status reappears in Elizabeth. Austen knew about Jordan, and may have seen her before she starting revising "First Impressions" into Pride and Prejudice. Jordan was considered best at "low" parts, and her unconventional femininity, her energy, her way of exhibiting her legs, and her signature "wild" hair inform Elizabeth's challenge to Miss Bingley about the definition of a truly accomplished woman. Neither musical nor beautiful, Jordan was particularly admired, like Elizabeth, for her brilliant, dark, expressive eyes. She was often painted, and when Austen hunted for a portrait of Mrs Darcy in yellow, as though she were a real person, she may have known that Jordan wore a yellow breeches suit as Rosalind. Dramatic events in the actress's life 1811 to 1812 could have sparked the revision of "First Impressions" into Pride and Prejudice. Thus, Austen "read" Shakespeare through the performances of Dorothy Jordan. Keywords: All's Well That Ends WellAs You Like ItMuch Ado About NothingTwelfth Night Acknowledgements I am grateful to Stuart Sherman, Janine Barchas, Patricia Brückmann, Felicity Nussbaum, Janet Aikins Yount, Lance Bertelsen and the reviewers for their helpful comments. I rely throughout on Claire Tomalin's fine biography of Dorothy Jordan. Notes 1. References, unless otherwise stated, are to Chapman's edition of Jane Austen. 2. Harris, Memory ch. 6 and Conclusion; "Shakespeare", in index to Memory; Appendix to Harris, Revolution. 3. For a comprehensive and finely nuanced discussion of criticism about Austen as the "Prose Shakespeare", see CitationWiltshire, "Redirectimg" ch. 3 and nn. To my knowledge, however, no-one has linked Elizabeth with Hellen and Phebe. 4. See Harris, Revolution ch. 6. 5. See Harris, "Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park". Both Gay (Theatre) and Byrne demonstrate Austen's extensive knowledge and use of the theatre. 6. Gay, As You Like It 85. 7. See Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 6, 77–78, 324–25; Highfill 250–51. In a revival of Garrick's Jubilee in 1785, Siddons appeared as the Tragic Muse and Jordan as a cross-dressed Rosalind. A week before, Jordan had played Viola; five days afterwards, she played Olivia, with Jubilee as an afterpiece (CitationBate 821–82). 8. Joseph Roach remarks that "the celebrity of eighteenth-century actors and actresses was at least anticipatory and perhaps generative of modern celebrity because their images began to circulate widely in the absence of their persons, a privilege once reserved to duly annointed sovereigns and saints" (196). The online Burney newspaper collection contains thousands of references to Jordan, and Google lists many more in other print media. See also CitationNussbaum on the celebrity and power of women players. 9. For Austen's borrowings from Roxalana for Pride and Prejudice, see Gay, Theatre 73–74. 10. Cassandra Austen tried to see Jordan as Lady Teazle from Sheridan's School for Scandal, played in the same year (Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 178). She planned to go with Henry and his friend Mrs Smithson (CitationNokes 233). 11. Gay writes that Austen "undoubtedly" went to the theatre in London and Bath as well as Southampton (Theatre 6–13, 17–22), and Byrne notes that Austen's residence in Bath 1801–6 coincided with an unprecedented time of prosperity, brilliancy and progress in the theatre (see ch. 2). In Southampton, Austen spent some of her meagre income on plays (Le Faye "Journeys"; CitationViveash). For Jordan's roles, see Highfill 250–51; Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 333–39. 12. CitationBellamy, for instance, notes Jordan's attributes as sportive, sprightly, native ease, arch glance, bewitching, and hair wildly floating (2.10). 13. For the ritual humiliation of celebrities, see CitationTuite. 14. "Arch" meant flirtatious and seductive, while constantly deferring desire. See Perry, Spectacular passim. 15. Hazlitt may recall Austen's phrase "high animal spirits" for the laughing, romping, "wild" Lydia Bennet (45). Yount suggests to me in a private communication that Lydia represents the "low" aspects of Jordan's public persona. Although Lydia herself does not cross-dress, she makes Chamberlayne "pass for a lady" in women's clothes (Pride and Prejudice 221). 16. See also CitationMcMaster 156. 17. For what Austen might have taken from Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison for the proposals of Mr Collins and Mr Darcy, see Harris, Memory 112–20. 18. Genest would declare that Jordan's throwing herself into genteel comedy "betrayed a lamentable want of judgment", for her "natural manner" was "any thing but elegant" (8.431). See CitationStraub for the threat posed to eighteenth-century gender ideology by sexual ambiguity (133–35). The acting profession as a whole, she says, "is denigrated in class terms because of its commodified specularization" (157), a problem clearly worsened by cross-dressing such as Jordan's. 19. Roach shows how celebrities communicate a message combining semi-divinity with semi-nudity, accessibility with transcendence (4, 16). 20. Perry remarks that exhibitions of women's portraits were fraught with contradictions about desirable femininity (Spectacular 184). 21. See Bate 97–98; Perry, Spectacular ch. 3, altered and expanded from her "Staging"; Harris, "Richardson". 22. See Harris, "Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park". 23. Tomalin, Mrs Jordan 87. When Priscilla Tomboy plans to run away with Captain Sightly, she sings: "Dear me, how I long to be married,/And in my own coach to be carried;/Beside me to see,/How charming 'twill be!/My husband, and may be,/A sweet little baby" (25). Cf. the "untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy and fearless" Lydia Bennet showing off her wedding ring as she bows and smiles beside her husband in the carriage, claims precedence over her unmarried sisters, and demands congratulations for marrying a "charming man" (Pride and Prejudice 315–17). Like Priscilla, Lydia laughs continually. 24. See Harris, "Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park". 25. Roach comments that the "It" factor requires physical attraction, but not beauty (4). 26. For what Austen might have taken from Richardson's Harriet Byron for Elizabeth, see Harris, Memory 105–6. 27. For the complex sexual innuendo in Hoppner's portrait, see Perry, Spectacular 45–48, 55, 81–82. 28. Rainbolt identifies the sitter as Mrs Harriet Quentin, who became the Regent's mistress in 1813 (Eglantine 5.442). 29. Tomalin and Dejardin 36; Tomalin, Mrs Jordan between 320 and 321, 340 n10. Highfill does not list Beechey's portrait, which is in private hands. 30. The Gallery was founded by John Boydell, who commissioned paintings illustrating Shakespeare from which to make prints. It opened in May 1789 (CitationClayton), moving to Pall Mall on 18 January 1806. 31. Cf. Hannah CitationMore: "if a man select a picture for himself from among all its exhibited competitors, and bring it to his own house, the picture being passive, he is able to fix it there; while the wife, picked up at a public place, and accustomed to incessant display, will not, it is probable, when brought home, stick so quietly to the spot where he fixes her, but will escape to the exhibition-room again, and continue to be displayed in every subsequent exhibition, just as if she were not become private property, and had never been definitely disposed of" (6.201). 32. Chapman argues that "so intricate a chronological scheme cannot have been patched on to an existing work without extensive revision", although Austen's phrase "lop't and crop't" suggests a "process of condensation". If his conclusions are accepted, he says, we must modify the assumption that Pride and Prejudice is substantially the same book as the lost manuscript"First Impressions". In spite of two references to the closing decade of the eighteenth century, he feels "a certain difficulty in supposing that, in publishing Pride and Prejudice in 1813, Miss Austen definitely conceived its action as taking place some ten years (or more) earlier" (Pride and Prejudice xiii; Appendix on Chronology 400–8). 33. The Duke's greed, gluttony, gambling, promiscuity, ambition and pro-slavery stance had been caricatured for years, but in 1811–13, his dismissal of Jordan enlarged the list. See, for instance, "The r—l lover, or, the admiral on a lee shore" (January 1812), where the Duke in admiral's uniform proposes to Catherine Tylney-Long before a portrait of Jordan and her children. The accompanying verses from Peter Pindar's contemptuous satire, "The R—l Brood; or, an Illustrious Hen and her Pretty Chickens", appeared in at least 12 editions in 1812 (BM notes). After much nagging, the Duke gained titular promotions to Admiral in 1798 and Admiral of the Fleet in 1811 (CitationZiegler 95; CitationParissien 27). One can only imagine the response of the Austen family.