“Conjecturing Possibilities: Reading and Misreading Texts in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice” by Felicia Bonaparte

I’ve used Hayot’s method to closely outline the introduction of Bonaparte’s article (just to give it a try), and I offer an analysis of how it deviates from Hayot’s ideal Uneven U. For the rest of article, I increase my scale in order to understand more global movements across the argument using Hayot’s 5-level schematic, treating paragraphs, and sometimes sections, as units.

Abbreviations:

P&P: Pride & Prejudice

EB: Elizabeth Bennet

FD: Fitzwilliam Darcy

Introduction Outline:

Bonaparte’s introduction, departing from Hayot’s prescription of the uneven U, opens with a series of [2] sentences, describing the point in P&P where EB receives an important letter from FD in the middle of the novel. She then moves up to [3], observing that the fact that a letter appears in the novel is no surprise (it was originally written as an epistolary novel). The next three sentences fall in line with Hayot’s [4], making more abstract claims about what the letter means and what Austen hopes to achieve through EB’s lettering-reading episode. THESIS: “What she wants to teach Elizabeth, and the reader along with her, is, in the strictest sense of the word, a philosophic understanding of the epistemological grounds that allow us to read at all” (348). She posits Jane Austen as a philosopher. After making her central claim, she moves into two what I would characterize as [2-1] sentences that first list critics and provide examples of how they have implicitly or explicitly refrained from thinking of Austen as a philosophical writer. She then contradicts these critics with a more general [4] claim: “Yet Austen is highly philosophical,” continuing, “What is deceptive is that rarely does she present these theoretically” (348). Next, on to a [3-2] movement in which she posits that Austen’s philosophical insights are embedded in characters and plot, and must be inferred. Then a [1], her most concrete move yet; she offers a scene from Mansfield Park between Mary and Edmund to demonstrate Mary as a skeptic: [2] she explicates the scene, and then offers a [1], a direct quotation from the novel. She interprets the significance of the scene by suggesting that we read situations in Austen for philosophical undertones [2]. And, lastly, moving to a [5], positing a series of questions Austen seems to be asking in her novels: “[i]s there such a thing as truth? Can it be known? And by what means? And with what degree of certainty?” (349).

Analysis:

If we follow Hayot’s levels through Bonaparte’s introduction, we’ll see that it doesn’t conform perfectly to Hayot’s ideal paragraph model, which starts with [4], descends to [1], the most concrete moment in the paragraph, and ascends again to [5], the most abstract moment, which is usually a broad, abstract claim that is made possible by evidence and previous work of the paragraph. Although Bonaparte’s introduction doesn’t perfectly fit Hayot’s mold, it does follow some similar trends. For example, for the most part, it does follow the general descending/ascending frequency, but the paragraph begins on a [2] instead of a [4]. Towards the middle of the paragraph, Bonaparte begins to unfold a series of sentences that looks more like Hayot’s ideal. But the trend is quickly interrupted as she moves from a [2] to [5] for the concluding sentence. As Hayot warns us, his model does not perfectly describe all academic writing but should be considered a tool that offers us insights into the logics of paragraph and argument structures. And once we have a better understanding of how others organize their writing, we’ll be able to more sharply critique and refine our own.

Article Outline:

[4] Introduction: provides context, situates argument in discourse, and makes a claim: Jane Austen is a philosophical writer who asks questions about truth, namely what can we know and how do we know that it’s true?

[3] Bonaparte then introduces some “broad examples” from P&P that might help us reconsider EB, and therefore Austen, in philosophical terms. Rhetorical analysis of Austen’s verbs: uses “suspect,” “presume,” “conjecture,” “guess,” “detect” “surmise” to demonstrate that Austen is interested in epistemological concerns (349). Offers a conceptual summary of essays that have laid a groundwork for her argumentation. Asserts that Austen via EB is an empiricist, not a rationalist, whom she has generally been associated with.

[2-1] “Repeatedly in P&P Austen negates the possibility of anything like genuine knowledge. The very word is considered suspect” (320). Bonaparte offers almost two full paragraphs describing situations and citing direct textual evidence for this claim (350-351)

[2] “Austen, indeed, takes visible pains to discredit other assumptions especially the faith in reason still left over from Enlightenment” (352). After the previous section, where Bonaparte offers extensive textual evidence for her claim, she moves ‘up’ (or zooms out?) to discuss what the significance of concrete examples. She wants to resituate Austen as an empiricist thinker, showing how she rejected Enlightenment’s blind allegiance to the power of reason. Her next move into the following paragraph is also a [2]. She continues her explication of the why the examples from the previous section are significant and what they mean for her argument. She begins, “Equally, Austen in this novel rejects the idea of authority, the notion that there are truths to be had from the wise or from the past, from elders, or from religion” (353). Provides examples, e.g. EB’s interactions with Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins.

[3-4] The next section moves ‘upward’ again, following Hayot’s uneven U. It revolves around this assertion: “And Austen is well aware that inference is nothing more than interpretation” (354). All the previous concrete textual examples come to bear here as Bonaparte shows the precarious nature of interpretive knowledge. Demonstrated mostly clearly in EB’s misreading of FD’s character, and her realization that her interpretation of has led her astray. EB must reorient her outlook based on new information. Bonaparte transitions to [4] with “One of the things that makes it difficult to interpret in empiricism is that there are no paradigms to guide us in ordering our data” (355), a statement “oriented towards a problem.”

[5] Resolution and conclusion: Bonaparte aligns Austen with modern and postmodern philosophies that recognize and embrace uncertainty, skepticism, and doubt. Austen as a progressive philosopher before her time, steeped in Enlightenment thought. “Indeed, what makes [Austen’s] epistemology not only modern but postmodern is the fact that, on the contrary, she seeks an answer not beyond but within skepticism and that she is prepared, in the end, to accept a hypothesis in which knowledge and understanding are partial, imperfect, and indistinct” (357).

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At a mirco-level, Bonaparte’s argument doesn’t exactly conform to Hayot’s ideal, but we see that when the scale is changed, the larger movements of her argument fit squarely into what Hayot describes as the uneven U.