“I was this moment telling Jane, I thought you would begin to be impatient for tidings of us.”
Emma; Chapter 38
“Jane!”—repeated Frank Churchill, with a look of surprize and displeasure.
Mrs. Elton, like Mr. Collins (and Mrs. Norris) is a Jane Austen character type I’ve come to call “the insidious poisoner.”
But unlike Mr. Collins—who despite having many of the same character traits diverges into truly despicable—Mrs. Elton is more “mean girl” than “seeping evil,” and all-in-all is so damn funny that tearing her apart feels part silly, part sacrilege. But perhaps it is because of my love of her character that I want us to fully appreciate the sonic rainbow of her nasty vivacity, and there is something big that everyone I’ve read or listened to is leaving out. So big—so completely central to the whole narrative around Mrs. Elton —that no consideration of her sins can be credible, let alone complete, without it.
And listen, Emma is a snob who is wrong about almost everything, but don’t let either her naivety or her snobbery cause you to rush to redeem Mrs. Elton yet. Of late I have heard too many people be more willing to assume that Mr. Knightley and Mrs. Weston are wrong too, instead of backing up a moment and asking if the introduction of Mrs. Elton might not be the start of Emma getting things right.
Or at least right in the case of Mrs. Elton. But to consider whether this is just unnecessary snobbery on the part of Emma we must look at what Mrs. Elton is doing, and specifically, what she’s doing to Jane Fairfax. Is she just trying to be helpful and that’s it? Is she just too pert and familiar?
Or is she knowingly and continually insulting and humiliating Jane Fairfax?
To answer that we have to look at the purport of “Jane”
Diana Birchall, author of In Defense of Mrs. Elton argues Mrs. Elton’s case by comparing her to Emma. (Something I am certain the author also intended us to do.) So let us take it up, because without one particular contextual anchor it can indeed be difficult to truly pinpoint Mrs. Elton’s crimes and becomes easy to see her as mostly well-meaning and misjudging.
In presenting Mrs. Elton in the way she does, Jane Austen is deliberately being a “partial, prejudiced . . . Historian” (MW 138). Mrs. Elton’s misdeeds are social crimes, not actual ones, and I would argue that she does far less damage than Emma. Calling Miss Fairfax “Jane,” urging her to look for a job, and always fishing for compliments are not in the same league as trying to manipulate people’s lives, as Emma does. But Jane Austen paints Mrs. Elton darkly so that Emma might appear light… Emma is no saint, but in my view, Mrs. Elton is no sinner. So what has she done to deserve the negative authorial treatment she receives?2
Diana Birchall, “Eyeing Mrs. Elton: Learning Through Pastiche”
- Before I move on to the central issue of my post—”Calling Miss Fairfax ‘Jane'”—I simply want to acknowledge agreement with Ms. Birchall about the fact that Mrs. Elton is unquestionably set up by Austen using mirrored terms that convey to us that she’s there to act as a sort of “evil twin” of Emma’s. A slightly distorted looking glass. And so at the bottom of the page I noted three quick examples of how Austen very deliberately frames this mirror image.
Calling Miss Fairfax “Jane”
Forcing myself to stay focused, because my primary purpose is to try to make every Austen reader I can reach understand just how obscene it is that Miss Jane Fairfax is forced to live under the constant public humiliation flung on her at every opportunity by Mrs. Elton, a woman not fit to turn the pages of her sheet music.
When Mrs. Elton calls—but especially when she refers to— Miss Fairfax as Jane, she is treating her and publicly denoting her as an inferior.
It’s a slap every time she does it. And Jane has to take it. Over and over and over again.
The closest thing I can think of to compare to Mrs. Elton’s use of “Jane” in today’s world is someone constantly calling a person “Boy!” or “Girl!” In front of everyone. Everywhere. Imagine that everywhere you go you have a person you have to be civil to following you around and calling you “girl” while you’re forced to bite your tongue and endure it. (Only to know they’re calling you something equivalently demeaning to everyone you know when you’re not around.) I do not believe that it requires an inordinate degree of pridefulness for one to thrash internally at the mere thought of it.
And to address the “knowing” part of the insult: Mrs. Elton does—or should—know that addressing Jane Fairfax as an inferior is not a given. Again and again when she speaks of “Jane” or “Jane Fairfax” it is parroted back to her correctly, as “Miss Fairfax.”
“…Oh! I assure you, Jane Fairfax is a very delightful character, and interests me more than I can express.”
“You appear to feel a great deal—but I am not aware how you or any of Miss Fairfax’s acquaintance here, any of those who have known her longer than yourself, can shew her any other attention than”—
“My dear Miss Woodhouse, a vast deal may be done by those who dare to act…”
Emma; Chapter 33
*MINOR NOTE: Yes, Emma, you are aware of many other attentions you could shew!
And I suspect—I am certain—that there are a large number of Austenites more knowledgable than I am about Regency literature who know the rules of address and what they mean, and so they know this but missed it just like I did at first, because it doesn’t stand out to us now the way it would have 200 years ago. (Despite literally writing up that whole rules of address explanation below right before reading Emma for the first time, it still did not click with me, and in fact I actually realized Miss Bates was a blind before I caught this completely unmistakable “sin” that would have triggered in readers a deeply ingrained reaction in Austen’s time.) We can see that Mrs. Elton calling Jane Fairfax “Jane” feels familiar in a way that insults the higher sensibilities of the more polite characters, but we don’t instinctively internalize the import of the insult it conveys. Or even fully grasp that it is conveying an insult.
That’s what Mr. Knightley’s “she and thou” speech was about, And what he got so wrong. Mr. Knightley was of the Belief that mrs. Elton was only calling Miss Fairfax “Jane” behind her back, but THAT FACE-to-face she couldn’t do it. That the force of Miss Fairfax’s inherent superiority would overpower Mrs. Elton somehow and prevent it.
“Another thing must be taken into consideration too—Mrs. Elton does not talk to Miss Fairfax as she speaks of her. We all know the difference between the pronouns he or she and thou, the plainest spoken amongst us; we all feel the influence of a something beyond common civility in our personal intercourse with each other—a something more early implanted. We cannot give any body the disagreeable hints that we may have been very full of the hour before. We feel things differently. And besides the operation of this, as a general principle, you may be sure that Miss Fairfax awes Mrs. Elton by her superiority both of mind and manner; and that, face to face, Mrs. Elton treats her with all the respect which she has a claim to.”
Mr. Knightley, “Emma” – Chapter 33
Mr. Knightley cannot fathom that anyone—even Mrs. Elton—could address someone with the dignity and pride of Jane Fairfax like an inferior to her face. And by calling Miss Fairfax “Jane,” Mrs. Elton is indeed “continually insulting” her.
(The conversation between Mrs. Weston, Mr. Knightley and Emma about why Jane Fairfax “consents to be with the Eltons” in which Emma calls EVERY SINGLE POINT right can lead me into what I need to say about Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’)
Some of the stricter guidelines for behavior included proper ways to address others. For example, only close friends and family would use a person’s given name. It was permissible for a person of higher rank to use the given name of a lower class acquaintance, but not the reverse.
– Forms of Address and Manners in Regency England; November 5, 2014 by Regina Jeffers
Mrs. Elton fails to recognize Jane Fairfax’s worth and insults her every time she calls her Jane. And Mrs. Cole—one of the other Inescapable Women who force themselves into the Bates’ home*—also impugns Jane’s dignity by calling her Jane (or Jane Fairfax) even when speaking about her in public, and humiliates her by inviting her only to the charity-case-tea afterparty for the “less worthy” females.
“One can suppose nothing else,” added Mrs. Cole, “and I was only surprized that there could ever have been a doubt. But Jane, it seems, had a letter from them very lately, and not a word was said about it…”
…
“I was telling Mr. Cole, I really was ashamed to look at our new grand pianoforte in the drawing-room, while I do not know one note from another… and there is poor Jane Fairfax, who is mistress of music, has not any thing of the nature of an instrument… We are in great hopes that Miss Woodhouse may be prevailed with to try it this evening.”
This is in stark contrast to the dignity Emma affords Jane at Emma’s own dinner party—where everyone but Mrs. Elton calls Jane “Miss Fairfax”—and where Emma herself escorts her into the dining room, arm in arm, not only “highly becoming to the beauty and grace of each,” but also signaling an unmistakable social designation of equality of rank upon Miss Jane Fairfax. (But I am not here to defend Emma’s treatment of Jane. She never extended her hand again until after Miss Fairfax caved under the continual harassment and bombardment that Emma might have saved her from, or at least greatly lessened.)
Guests were assembled in the drawing room until the hostess announced that dinner was about to be served. Guests were advised to not rise too eagerly, and women especially were advised to wait until the gentleman of the house requested you to pass into the drawing room. He would offer the lady of most distinction his hand. The gentlemen then offered their arms to the ladies (Protocol dictated that they take the arm of the lady who was their closest social equal) and conducted them as far as the table. Gentlemen of lesser status were advised not to offer their arm to the most handsome or distinguished lady as this was considered a great impoliteness. The Procession into the dining room made guests aware of their relative social positions.
Grand Dining in the Regency Period – Jane Austen Society of North America – Puget Sound
by Ruth Haring
And of course it is at Emma’s dinner party for Mrs. Elton that we finally get Jane Fairfax alone—or more specifically without the blind of Miss Bates—and so we finally get to see her sweet personality.
And now note how Jane Austen introduces the characters in the Rainy-Walk-to-the-Post-Office scene. Although Jane Fairfax is often called “Jane” by the narrator at this point, Austen takes extra care to call her “Miss Fairfax” when she sets the scene, positioning her on a plane with characters that we already know as genteel, and highlighting that the elegant and graceful Miss Jane Fairfax is the equal of everyone there.
“…but a blush, a quivering lip, a tear in the eye showed that it was felt beyond a laugh.”
Mr. John Knightley seemed early to devote himself to the business of being agreeable. Instead of drawing his brother off to a window while they waited for dinner, he was talking to Miss Fairfax. Mrs. Elton, as elegant as lace and pearls could make her, he looked at in silence—wanting only to observe enough for Isabella’s information—but Miss Fairfax was an old acquaintance and a quiet girl…
“Emma,” Chapter 34
And of course we see that Mr. John Knightley, just like every other main character, accords Jane Fairfax with the respect of addressing her as “Miss Fairfax.” Because to do otherwise is to publicly refer to her as an underling. The only other non-servant character addressed by first name only — and also in a one way situation — is, of course, Harriet.
“I hope you did not venture far, Miss Fairfax, this morning, or I am sure you must have been wet…”
There’s two main issues on the use of names: intimacy and rank.
Intimacy is complex, but it is never a one way issue. Intimacy rule vagaries don’t apply in a one way situation.
“I not aware!” said Jane, shaking her head; “dear Mrs. Elton, who can have thought of it as I have done?”
And the rules of intimacy never apply to speaking of another person to a third person. (With familial exceptions. Family/family-close friend rules are the exception to everything, and they’re complicated and usually pretty narrow.)
That’s really the thing I most want to highlight: that the “intimacy” side of the equation is separate from the “rank” side, and no matter how much we can try to fudge the intimacy line, none of that applies to how one refers to others when talking about them.
Every character in Emma speaks of every other non-familial, non-child, and non-servant character with the honorific. Even Harriet is afforded this respect, and even by Emma. Emma doesn’t call her Harriet to anyone outside her intimates, and neither do Emma’s other friends.
Mr. Elton, my astonishment is much beyond any thing I can express. After such behaviour, as I have witnessed during the last month, to Miss Smith—
“Emma,” Chapter 15 (VOL I-CH XV)
“You and Miss Smith, and Miss Fairfax, will be three, and the two Miss Coxes five,” had been repeated many times over. “And there will be the two Gilberts, young Cox, my father, and myself, besides Mr. Knightley. Yes, that will be quite enough for pleasure. You and Miss Smith, and Miss Fairfax, will be three, and the two Miss Coxes…”
Frank Churchill wants a ball – “Emma,” Chapter 29 (VOL II-CHXI)
A QUESTION OF INTIMACY
I tried to put together some of the intricacies of intimacy in address in an email answer a few months ago about Pride and Prejudice, and I think for the most part I can just paste it here. If you don’t want to read it, it’s still here to consult if you have a question like, “Why is Emma outraged at Mrs. Elton “Jane Fairfaxing” Jane when Emma, Mr. Knightley, and Mrs. Weston just called her “Jane Fairfax” in their little huddle?
Skip the INTIMACY DEETS
Detailed examples and exceptions regarding intimacy in rules of address using Pride and Prejudice characters
Spouses called each other Mr. and Mrs. except when alone or with very intimate friends and family, and in situations where when no one else would be around. We never know either of the elder Bennets’ first names or the Gardiners’ first names. (Although we do get the Gardiners’ first initials.)
Likewise, when a daughter married, she might refer to her husband as ‘Mr Darcy’ in public but use his first name in a more private of intimate setting. And he in turn would never order a servant to attend to ‘Elizabeth’ — although the servant would be addressed by their first name. (‘Bring Mrs Darcy some fresh tea, Nancy’.)
Conduct manuals from the time say that husbands and wives should always refer to each other by Mr. and Mrs. unless it is just the two of them in a private setting, or in intimate settings with people they are very close to, like siblings/siblings-in-laws and sometimes very close friends.
So for anyone to be intimate in a particular setting, everyone has to be intimate by something like a chain of intimacy. After their dual engagements, while Darcy is still not intimate with Jane on his own, he’s intimate with both Bingley and Elizabeth, so Jane becomes “Jane.”
Therefore “in public” a husband would refer to his wife’s elder sister as Miss Lastname or the younger ones as Miss Firstname, but when speaking in private with his wife he would use her sister’s first names. For aunts and uncles it would always be more formal. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are never going to start calling Lady Catherine “Catherine” in their conversations, no matter how comfy they get, and Mrs. Gardiner would stay Mrs. Gardiner.
“Public”
Basically here “public” means any place that isn’t private, and that usually means most rooms in a house that servants are likely to be in and out of. In a drawing room in waking hours, for example, it would usually be automatic to keep the formality of the honorific when referring to adults.
A good example of this is on their walk after Lizzy tells Darcy that she loves him and they’re finally engaged, he calls her Elizabeth for the first time:
“Such I was, from eight to eight-and-twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you!”
But they’re alone, and now engaged. And at this point Mr. Darcy also calls Jane, “Jane” to Elizabeth for the first time. (That’s what I’m calling, for lack of a better term, “a chain of intimacy.”) Up until now Darcy had always referred to Jane as “Miss Bennet” or “your sister.”
“Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Jane, while she was ill at Netherfield?”
And in The Letter Darcy calls Caroline Bingley “Miss Bingley,” because he is not “intimate” with Elizabeth, nor is Elizabeth “intimate” with Caroline Bingley. Jane calls Caroline, “Caroline” when talking to Elizabeth, Caroline calls herself “Caroline” to Jane, and likewise to Jane she calls her sister “Louisa.” And in her first letter to Jane, Caroline addresses her as “My dear friend.” All these things tell us they’re “intimate.”
According to Eliza Lavin’s Good Manners (1888), the use of Christian names and pet names was restricted to people—usually female—who were very close to each other. Schoolgirls would call each other by their first names irrespective of the level of friendship between them, but once they left school they were supposed to be “Miss Lastname” unless they were close. But men almost never called each other by first names, and instead when they became close they dropped the “Mr” and just called their friend by his last name. (So Mr. Bingley becomes Bingley.)
I am going to skip the tidbit about friends “proposing” to one another and then moving to first names in private, but that is apparently what happened between Lydia and Mrs. Forster to change their friendship designation.
…[Lydia] received an invitation from Mrs. Forster, the wife of the colonel of the regiment, to accompany her to Brighton . . . A resemblance in good-humour and good spirits had recommended her and Lydia to each other, and out of their three months’ acquaintance they had been intimate two.
The other two factors: rank and situation. (Or as Mr. Knightley puts it, “the difference between the pronouns he or she and thou”)
In public you never call anyone by their first name, and Jane certainly doesn’t call Mrs. Elton “Augusta.” And other than the rare servant whose name she can remember, Mrs. Elton doesn’t call anyone else by their first name.
Like a servant.
“You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her—James is so obliged to you!”
“I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am sure she will make a very good servant: she is a civil, pretty-spoken girl…”
EMMA; VOL I, CH 1
Mrs. Elton talks to and about Jane Fairfax like she’s a servant. An inferior. Which is why she feels she has the right to make decisions about her life and future. It’s why she barges in on her at Miss Bates’ house.
There is so much more I need to say about Jane Fairfax and Mrs. Elton, but I am going to cut this off here and do that elsewhere.
The important thing is to understand that just by calling and referring to Miss Fairfax as “Jane,” mrs. Elton is demeaning her.
Actually, I should also mention the “pet names,” which Mrs. Elton absolutely drips. And they’re demeaning pet names. Even positive pet names are extra-intimate and basically rest on a sort of consent.
To call someone “my dear child” is as bad as it gets. And in public!
“But, my dear child, the time is drawing near; here is April, and June, or say even July, is very near, with such business to accomplish before us. Your inexperience really amuses me!”
It’s the loose naming that Emma is indicating in her “Jane Fairfax and Jane Fairfax” quote:
“Jane Fairfax and Jane Fairfax.’ Heavens! Let me not suppose that she dares go about Emma Woodhouse-ing me!—But upon my honour, there seems no limits to the licentiousness of that woman’s tongue!”
The hasty engagement she had entered into with that woman—Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off abruptly, to recollect and compose myself.—I have been walking over the country, and am now, I hope, rational enough to make the rest of my letter what it ought to be.—It is, in fact, a most mortifying retrospect for me… as soon as she found I was really gone from Randalls, she closed with the offer of that officious Mrs. Elton; the whole system of whose treatment of her, by the bye, has ever filled me with indignation and hatred. I must not quarrel with a spirit of forbearance which has been so richly extended towards myself; but, otherwise, I should loudly protest against the share of it which that woman has known.—‘Jane,’ indeed!—You will observe that I have not yet indulged myself in calling her by that name, even to you. Think, then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between the Eltons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the insolence of imaginary superiority.
Frank Churchill’s explanatory letter to Mrs. Weston • “Emma,” Chapter 50 (VOL III-CH 14)
*Jane’s inescapable women
We know from what Miss Bates says to Emma that Mrs. Elton just barges in, caving in the tiny corner of privacy that Jane has left, and Miss Bates also lets in Mrs. Cole and Mrs. Perry. (But from Jane’s reaction when she thinks Emma is Mrs. Cole, it kind of seems like Mrs. Cole is a much lesser evil than Mrs. Elton. And although we only know of Mrs. Perry through Frank Churchill’s dreams, I expect she would be much better than Mrs. Elton, too.)
Nonetheless, Jane has no escape. No corner of the world where she can have privacy. She cannot set any boundaries of her own. No wonder she is ready to submit to the lower friend of the Sucklings and Bragges—(those names!👩🍳💋)—at least she will have a room of her own where she can hide and just read a book in peace and quiet.
Emma wished she could have seen her, and tried her own powers; but, almost before she could hint the wish, Miss Bates made it appear that she had promised her niece on no account to let Miss Woodhouse in. “Indeed, the truth was, that poor dear Jane could not bear to see any body—any body at all—Mrs. Elton, indeed, could not be denied—and Mrs. Cole had made such a point—and Mrs. Perry had said so much—but, except them, Jane would really see nobody.”
Emma did not want to be classed with the Mrs. Eltons, the Mrs. Perrys, and the Mrs. Coles, who would force themselves anywhere…
“Emma,” Chapter 45 (VOL III, CH 9)
Also, when we’re talking about the harm of Mrs. Elton and Mr. Collins can we please recognize—as Jane Austen clearly does—that people who will not take “no” for an answer are poisonous and harmful to every human whose boundaries they trample? It’s 2023. It should not be a difficult task to recognize that truth, and it is very important that we do recognize it. I promise you, it really is. Even if it’s not something you have experienced yourself and so it doesn’t hit with you personally, for lots and lots of us Mr. Collins and Mrs. Elton bring back all kinds of feelings. I immediately empathized with Jane, even on my first read. I feel her suffocation. I love Mrs. Elton as a character, she is one of my favorite Jane Austen characters of all time — almost tied with Elizabeth Bennet — but I also know that she is poison.
(Mrs. Norris—another Insidious Poisoner also won’t take “no” for an answer, but because she rarely hears it, that’s a less pronounced trait in her character.)
Three examples of Jane Austen’s deliberate setup of Mrs. Elton and Emma as mirror-images
1.
Emma:
“If I know myself, Harriet, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty.”
Mrs. Elton:
“I honestly said that the world I could give up—parties, balls, plays—for I had no fear of retirement. Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it. To those who had no resources it was a different thing; but my resources made me quite independent.”
2.
Emma:
…she found her altogether very engaging—not inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk—and yet so far from pushing, shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement. Encouragement should be given.
Mrs. Elton:
“She is very timid and silent. One can see that she feels the want of encouragement. I like her the better for it. I must confess it is a recommendation to me. I am a great advocate for timidity—and I am sure one does not often meet with it.—But in those who are at all inferior, it is extremely prepossessing.”
3.
Emma:
She would notice her; she would improve her; she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners. It would be an interesting, and certainly a very kind undertaking; highly becoming her own situation in life, her leisure, and powers.
Mrs. Elton:
“However, my resolution is taken as to noticing Jane Fairfax… I shall introduce her, of course, very particularly to my brother and sister when they come to us. I am sure they will like her extremely; and when she gets a little acquainted with them, her fears will completely wear off, for there really is nothing in the manners of either but what is highly conciliating.”
- Diana Birchall, “Eyeing Mrs. Elton: Learning Through Pastiche” ↩
- Forms of Address and Manners in Regency England
November 5, 2014 by Regina Jeffers ↩ - Lady’s maid: I get this from the general likelihood—which is great—that a family in Col. Campbell’s relative rank in society would employ lady’s maids, and especially for girls of marrying age—as well as contextual clues, like Miss Bates at the ball:
“Must not compliment, I know (eyeing Emma most complacently)—that would be rude—but upon my word, Miss Woodhouse, you do look—how do you like Jane’s hair?—You are a judge.—She did it all herself. Quite wonderful how she does her hair!—No hairdresser from London I think could.”
-(EMMA, CH 38 – VOL II, CH II) ↩ - “I met her frequently at Weymouth. I had known the Campbells a little in town; and at Weymouth we were very much in the same set. Colonel Campbell is a very agreeable man, and Mrs. Campbell a friendly, warm-hearted woman. I like them all.” ↩
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