Books of a Serious Stamp

Pride and Prejudice Chapter Fourteen

Mr. Collins’s visit to the Bennets commences in earnest in chapter fourteen, and he predictably and comically makes an idiot of himself to the delight of Mr. Bennet and the slightly guiltier delight of Elizabeth. There will be plenty of time to analyze the dynamics here, of Collins and of Mr. Bennet’s reaction to him. I’m more interested for the moment in how the chapter concludes:

By tea-time, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a circulating library) he started back, and, begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and Lydia exclaimed. Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose ‘Fordyce’s Sermons.’

Books, and how people interact with them, are important in Austen. Pride and Prejudice itself can be analyzed as a response to popular novels of the time: both the gothic - in its way it’s as much a satire of the gothic form as Northanger - and romances by people like Fanny Burney. Austen’s sympathetic characters do tend to be readers, but reading on its own is never portrayed as an unambiguous virtue. It is perfectly possible - see Marianne Dashwood, or Catherine Moreland, or Captain Benwick - to read too much of the wrong kind of thing and have your brain turned by it. This was a timely concern; people worried about young women in particular having unsupervised, unmonitored time alone with the wrong books. Reading was often understood as ideally a social activity, while novels made it a solitary one. There’s a novelist’s (and possibly a clergyman’s daughter’s) ambivalence about the novel at work here; you get the feeling Austen finds them just a little bit embarrassing.

All of that ambivalence is on display in this passage, as brief as it is. The reader is already, at this point, ready to call Mr. Collins an idiot. When he protests that “he never read novels,” apparently shocked at the very idea that he might and (even more hilariously) afraid of being in the same room as one lest it corrupt him, our opinion seems confirmed for good. But Austen does something smart next, that a lot of writers wouldn’t: she puts the defense of the novel in the faces and voices of the two least mature and least informed of the Bennet girls, rather than the ones we like (Elizabeth and Jane) or at least the one who we know reads a lot (Mary).

Kitty and Lydia are novel readers, and more than that they are the mirror opposite of Collins in that they are shocked that anyone might not read novels. We can infer quite a lot from this: one, that, again, Austen does not consider novel reading a virtue in a moral sense. Very foolish people both turn their noses up at novels, and read them voraciously. We can also infer that Kitty and Lydia are not used to being around people who judge them for novel reading. When a guest is invited to read to the ladies, a novel is “produced,” but we are never told by whom. It might actually be anyone in the Bennet family, including Jane or Elizabeth. Taking out books from the circulating library and sharing them by reading aloud is a regular family affair. At the very least, novel reading is not discouraged in this house.

Mr. Collins’s preferred book is also illuminating. James Fordyce’s Sermons to Young Women were incredibly popular, and they were a popular object of both critique and satire. This was a conduct books for girls, not quite something like self-help, and not like parenting guides like we have now. The volume was specifically meant for young women, not yet married but old enough to be out and interacting with society, to learn how to behave themselves. Fordyce preached modesty in dress and manner, piety, and what he called “shamefacedness.” He wrote at a time when the first seeds of feminism (and industrialization which would bring many women outside of the home) were making themselves felt in England. His sermons should be understood as primarily reactive: girls, who were just beginning to read novels alone and pursue companionate marriages and even, some of them, travel and become educated, need this instruction because they are starting to get out of line. Wollstonecraft treated his work at length, and even called Fordyce’s ideal woman “a house slave,” someone degraded and demeaned. It is certainly notable, and not meant to reflect very well on Fordyce, that this is what Collins considers beneficial reading for young women.

It is also notable that a copy of the book is present in the Bennet house, along with the novel from the circulating library. It’s hard to know what to make of this; Fordyce’s ideal woman is nothing like Elizabeth, or Mrs. Bennet, though he would approve of Jane. Many of Mary’s moral pronouncements on female virtue seem straight out of Fordyce; it’s possible the book is hers. It’s also possible the book was a gift from some well-meaning relative. The Bennet parents are both, in their different ways, hilariously unlikely to procure such a volume for their children. Mr. Bennet would find the whole thing funny, and likely a waste of time; regardless, he does not take particular care for his children’s educations. Mrs. Bennet takes even less care. Mary is likely the only person to be interested in a reading from the book, though Jane and Elizabeth are no doubt being polite.

Again, it is important that the rejection of Collins’s reading taste is embodied in Lydia, who does not pretend to be interested and quickly interrupts. Collins stuffily remarks that

I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes me, I confess; for certainly there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction.

Lydia has the worst manners and the least amount of wisdom of any of the Bennet daughters. This makes a certain amount of sense; you definitely get an impression of Mr. Bennet’s increasing lack of interest in his children, so that by the time you get to Lydia he had entirely giving up even faking it. Jane and the favorite Elizabeth are sensible and (mostly) polite, Mary is basically well-behaved and perhaps, in her shallow and absurd attempts at intellectual seriousness, eager for her father’s approval. Kitty is silly, but is fundamentally a follower, and is capable of behaving better when guided. Lydia is her mother’s daughter in totality - shallow, selfish, desiring fun and not much else. She’s ungovernable.

What we can tell from the glimpse of how books work in the Bennet house is that all five girls were, essentially, not parented in any way that Collins especially would prefer or recognize, and that Kitty and especially Lydia bear the greatest stamp of that upbringing. Later in the novel when Elizabeth tells Lady Catherine that the girls were simply allowed to educate themselves by reading what they liked, we believe this because we’ve already seen that it’s true. Now it’s funny; nobody likes Fordyce’s Sermons. But in this passage we can still see Austen’s ambivalence, and by the novel’s end a reader can’t help but think that Lydia should have been raised with a bit more care.