There is an English way of writing that falls into the category of understatement, I guess. "The compliment was not unfelt" they say, meaning, of course, that it was felt. But it leaves open the possibility that it got a neutral response - neither felt nor unfelt. So here we go:

Darcy was "not unwilling" to receive Lizzy's hand and dance with her, early on.

Lizzy expects to see Wickham at Bingley's ball because she does not think of the things that "not unreasonably" might have alarmed her (reasons he would not come).

For Lizzy the prospect of leaving her family to visit Charlotte was "not unwelcome"

Charlotte "not unseldom" might have been embarassed by her husband, Mr. Collins. This is the use I will want to discuss.

Sir Lucas finds that manners like Lady de Bourg's are "not uncommon" at the court of St. James

Miss deBourgh "not unfrequently" stops by the Collins' house while riding in her phaeton.

Lizzy hears the doorbell while at the Collins' and thinks it "not unlikely" to be Lady Catherine.

Reading Mr. Darcy's letter a compliment to Lizzy and Jane is "not unfelt" by Lizzy.

Mrs. Gardener finds Mr. Darcy's air "not unbecoming" when she meets him at Pemberly

Bingley asks Lizzy about her family, and she feels his interest in Jane is "not untinctured " with tenderness (i.e. he still loves her)
Darcy's keeping the news of Jane being in London from Bingley "not unjustly" offends Bingley.

What makes "not unseldom" stand out of these 10 uses of the construction? It clearly is meant to convey the idea of "often" - i.e. Mr. Collins often says something which embarrassed his wife. But "not unseldom" when you sort it out, means "seldom" and that is not what Jane Austen meant. The phrase works in the context of the book, so long as you don't stop and think about it. The other 9 all mean what they should.

I have no idea if "not unseldom" to mean "often" is idiomatic or not. Do you?

Jane Austen, especially in Pride and Prejudice, but in all her novels to some degree, presents people who want to be judged, who ought to be judged, by the content of their characters rather than their positions in society. I do not mean she is a universalist, ready to approve the rich girl marrying the farmer's servant, on the grounds that God created us all equal. But I think she would agree with the proposition in the Mark Twain story where a prince and a pauper trade positions, that given the proper circumstances the servant of the farmer could be as good a marriage prospect as the richest man in the country.

There are two basic points of view in her novels. One is the classist view: Mr. Collins expresses it well in his praise of Mr. Darcy for having wealth, property, and extensive patronage in the church - all that mortal man can want. Jane's women want something other than social status, social connections, and wealth. They want intelligence, an amiable temper, gentle manners, and a disposition to use their power and wealth to help rather than to display.

more later.

Just back from a second viewing of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival staging of Pride and Prejudice. It's an ambitious undertaking to cut this novel down to 2.5 hours, and they did it partly by getting rid of one of Bingley's sisters & her husband, and the Phillps family. Also this is a P&P in which Wickham becomes engaged to Mary King, (thereby jilting Elizabeth creditably as her father predicted) and in which Elizabeth does not accuse Mr. Darcy of not acting like a gentleman. Also missing, Mr. Bennet's prediction that Darcy would rant about his love for Elizabeth and refuse repayment for the expense of getting WIckham to marry Lydia.In short they follow Elizabeth and Darcy, skip most of the delicacy of manners (Elizabeth tells her father that Darcy paid the Wickham expenses before her father gives his consent to her marriage with Darcy etc.)

Nevertheless a good presentation. They are proud to have had no narrator in the stage show, and some clever staging presents actions in the background which take chapters in the book. They got a hearty standing ovation from the sold-out house.

Jane Austen's novels are meant to be realistic. Her original readers were to understand that these stories take place in the time and place in which they themselves live. She famously advised her (niece?) who was also writing a novel that when the niece's characters went to Ireland the readers should not go with them because the niece was unlikely to know the manners of Ireland well enough to write about them with realistic detail. The Austen novels, consquently, embed a lot of information about the social and physical environment of the midlands of England around 1800. Modern readers may wonder at some of the concerns of the characters, or some of the things that they find reasonable. The "williing suspension of disbelief" which is necessary for all fictive reading will carry most of us on past these oddities as they are not essential to the plot, but consider this:

There is a point in Pride and Prejudice where a our heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, is visiting Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins, a rejected suitor of Elizabeth, is very much a man interested in the material aspects of life. He loves counting things, and knowing their costs - and the larger the better. He is quite proud of being patronised by the Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who has given him his job in the church, and lives next door. He shows Elizabeth the de Bourgh residence, Rosings, and as they approach he tells her how many windows there are in the house, and how much the window glass cost. We will later learn the cost of one of the chimney pieces, too, but today the cost of glass is not likely to be high on the list of any tour guide showing us a house. Glass used to be a big deal, and glass windows use to be very small. Today we install large windows and then snap on false frames that makes the window appear to be made up of small panes. Then small panes were as good as you could do.

And what about the cost of letters? English novels always involve a good deal of communication at a distance. Sherlock Holmes stories abound with people sending telegrams to each other, then comes the telephone, and now, probably, email. But in Austen's time England had an organized postal system and short of sending a person with your message, using the post was as fast a method as existed. (Stamps, by the way, do not come into being for another 40 years - letters were sent collect.) In "Emma" at a dinner party the characters get into a discussion of the postal system, which features in the plot because Jane Fairfax risked catching a cold by going to the village post office when a light rain was falling. In "Sense & Sensibility" Marianne sends her lover a letter by the two-penny post - a sure tip that he is in London as is she, since the two-penny post was a local service. But the price of the mails over longer distances can be imagined by the fact that in "Pride and Prejudice" it is considered reasonable for Lady Catherine de Bourgh to travel miles out of her way to deliver a letter by hand, thus saving the parties the postal charges.

I had this blog begun elsewhere but forgot how to access it. There are only 6 novels by Jane Austen published: Sense & Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Emma, and Mansfield Park. Various critics prefer one or another of these novels to the others. For me, Pride and Prejudice is the pick. I am listening to an audio version when I travel by car, which is often. Here's some tips for appreciating Austen:

1. I think the novels are meant to be read aloud. This makes audio versions very effective. It also makes reading silently a bit of a challenge. Go slow.

2. "Look out kid, she keeps it all hid" - that is, there are no accidents in Austen. She was not being paid by the word for her writing, so her words all count. If Lydia Bennett sits by George Wickham in an early chapter of Pride and Prejudice, pay attention. Her heroines frequently are clueless, so try to see more than they do.

3. The books are about something, and plot is not it. For sheer plot success, Pride and Prejudice takes the cake, but nevertheless it is about Mr. Collins as much as about Mr. Darcy, and what happens to Charlotte Lucas is as important as what happens to Jane Bennett. But the happy endings all have the deus ex machina about them. Why? Because they are not what the book is about.

4. Take time to enjoy the accidents of the novel. The changes in English, the changes in costs of goods like window glass and books, the distances which can be travelled in a day, the cost of postage.