The Byronic in Jane Austen's persuasion and "Pride and Prejudice"

Modern Language Review, The, Jan, 2007 by Sarah Wootton

Although Austen and Byron are often considered to be irreconcilable opposites, in this article I argue that Austen engaged closely with Byron's poetry and drew inspiration from some of his most popular poems. The first part of the article focuses on Romantic, and specifically Byronic, undercurrents in Persuasion. I subsequently concentrate on the Byronic characteristics of the hero in both Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice. The article examines the extent to which Austen interacted with, and was influenced by, Byron's poetry, with particular emphasis on the figure of the Byronic hero.

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Austen and Byron are strange bedfellows. Had they met, it is difficult to envisage how they would have acted or what, if anything, they would have said. As Rachel Brownstein comments, 'it is hard to imagine them finding common ground in a social encounter'. (1) Perhaps their first meeting would have suffered from the same strained misunderstandings and snubs as the hero and heroine's in Pride and Prejudice, where 'he looked at her only to criticise' (P&P, p. 20). Yet despite their apparent incompatibility, many critics have commented on this unlikely couple (albeit largely to emphasize differences in literary style and disposition). (2) As Brownstein suggests,

Austen and Byron, close contemporaries, beg to be talked about together, and frequently have been. They seem to embody and invite and thus reinforce familiar binary opposites: male and female, free and constrained, celebrated and obscure, self-indulgent aristocrat and saving, respectable homebody; Romantic poet and domestic novelist, careless producer of endless versions and careful rewriter, oversexed and asexual, sinner and saint. (p. 176)

Such stark dichotomies, however, not only rely on oversimplification--casting Austen as a prudish, parochial novelist and Byron as the profligate poet--but also neglect the deep Romantic undercurrents that connect their work. (3)

After establishing a number of parallels between these two authors, this article will initially focus on Austen's Persuasion. Written during 1815-16 and published posthumously in 1817, this novel refers to a range of contemporary fiction, including a number of poems by Byron, as well as incorporating a 'remarkable constellation of Romantic ideas'. (4) I shall subsequently concentrate on Austen's treatment of the hero in both Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice, considering, in particular, the extent to which Captain Wentworth and Mr Darcy demonstrate character traits more closely associated with Byronic heroes. As to the potential pitfalls of considering Austen's earlier work in the light of a second-generation Romantic poet, Pride and Prejudice was not in fact published until 1813, almost a year after the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage appeared. It is therefore conceivable that Austen reacted to the furore surrounding Byron's overnight success and the emergence of the semi-autobiographical Byronic hero when editing this novel. Yet despite what I consider to be the striking similarities between the hero of Pride and Prejudice and a number of Byron's male protagonists, I am not arguing for a direct influence. Equally plausible is the assumption that Austen was responding to the same cultural stimuli as Byron; more specifically, Austen's familiarity with a number of the Byronic hero's literary predecessors, from Milton's Satan and Shakespeare's Hamlet to Richardson's Lovelace, suggests an indirect connection through shared sources.

Another figure that constitutes part of both Byron's and Austen's literary inheritance is the Gothic villain. The heroes of the Oriental Tales and Manfred were undoubtedly influenced by the numerous Gothic melodramas Byron would have read when serving on the committee to select plays for Drury Lane. (5) Similarly, Austen was, as David Nokes suggests, an 'avid connoisseur of Gothic Shockers' (6) and visited the theatre to see, among many other popular plays of the period, a pantomime entitled Don Juan, of which she remarked: 'I must say that I have seen nobody on the stage who has been a more interesting Character than that compound of Cruelty & Lust.' (7) Yet although Austen indulged her penchant for the Gothic, part of the pleasure she derived from this genre was its potential for parody. Northanger Abbey is perhaps best known for satirizing the overblown language of Gothic novels and exposing the folly of a heroine who, along with many other memorable misconceptions, mistakes General Tilney for a Radcliffean Montoni. However, while the hero's father may not be a stage villain, Austen herself concedes that 'in suspecting General Tilney of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she [Catherine] had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty'. (8) Moreover, his tyranny extends beyond the immediate family sphere; as Marilyn Butler has argued, General Tilney is the 'unacceptable face of contemporary capitalism', concerned only with social advancement, 'improving' his estate through landscaping, and defending national security. (9) In Austen's politicized Gothic, General Tilney is not only a 'diabolical anti-father', but a figure closely related to both the Gothic villain and Byron--the vampiric predator--who, like Manfred in The Castle of Otranto, would readily take his son's place to secure the attentions of the heroine. (10)