Cecilia: “I have ever since felt ashamed of my own discernment”

1/ Look at the defence of novels in Northanger Abbey: 

““I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss——?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language…”” (ch.5) 

All that praise for Cecilia is deserved. Frances Burney’s characters are all distinct and full of life; and compared to the characters in her first novel Evelina, the ones in Cecilia are more complex—they are capable of surprise. My main complaint is that even though Burney doesn’t place a shallow, selfish, and materialistic character at the centre of the story (like Undine Spragg in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country), we still have to spend so much time with airheaded people and listen to their vapid conversations—imagine being constantly in the tedious company of Caroline Bingley or the Bertram girls—I think Austen learnt from Burney’s faults. But at the same time, Burney is more ambitious than Austen: Cecilia and Camilla are both over 900 pages; and her novels depict a larger world, different classes and different environments—these aren’t “two inches of ivory”.  

The highlight of Volume I is the masquerade scene: fascinating, full of mystery and excitement, rich in meaning. In Volume II, one of the highlights is the characterisation of Mr Belfield, one of Cecilia’s suitors—Frances Burney removes some layers and reveals more underneath—she has deep psychological insight and I think the story of Mr Belfield elevates the novel into something more than a comedy of manners. 

2/ As I wrote in the previous blog post, after the death of her uncle, Cecilia moves into the house of Mr Harrel, one of her guardians, and gradually she realises that her childhood friend Priscilla—now Mrs Harrel—has become someone different. 

She says to Mr Monckton: 

“I cannot but own that my esteem for her, even more than my affection, has lessened almost every day since I have been in her house; but this morning, when I ventured to speak to her with earnestness, I found her powers of reasoning so weak, and her infatuation to luxury and expence so strong, that I have ever since felt ashamed of my own discernment in having formerly selected her for my friend.” (B.3, ch.3) 

Cecilia is handsome, clever, and rich, but her power of discernment is dreadful—she is similar to Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse—the novel is closer to Pride and Prejudice however, as Frances Burney lets us see Mr Monckton’s calculations and Cecilia’s blindness, instead of using the free indirect discourse to make readers see things through the heroine’s biased perspective, as Jane Austen later does in Emma.  

“He quitted her, therefore, with unusual satisfaction, happy in his power over her mind, and anticipating with secret rapture the felicity he had in reserve from visiting her during the absence of the family.” (B.3, ch.8) 

Cecilia is not only a novel about a beautiful heiress being pursued by seven men (!)—Frances Burney also explores manipulation and the evil of having power over someone else’s mind—in this, she goes further than Jane Austen. 

3/ I have complained about the frivolous characters in the novel. If we compare Cecilia to Anna Karenina, which is also over 900 pages, or War and Peace, which is 1,200 – 1,400 pages, Tolstoy has a few characters who think deeply (even if we disagree with them), and writes many interesting conversations and discussions about various subjects; Frances Burney tells us but doesn’t depict the stimulating conversations between Cecilia and Mortimer Delvile or Mrs Delvile, but she meticulously depicts all the trivial and insipid talks in high society, which can be trying at times (even if one admires her ability to capture their voices and some of the characters are funny, such as Miss Larolles or Mr Meadows). 

I have other complaints. One irritating thing is that there’s a misunderstanding between Cecilia and Mortimer Delvile that gets dragged out—whenever an opportunity to clear it comes up, they get interrupted—you can see Frances Burney deliberately drag it out for nearly 170 pages. 

Another thing is that Cecilia is so naïve and gullible to the point of being stupid. I’m glad she’s not a Mary Sue, but you don’t fully realise how stupid she is and how much of a “thorough scoundrel” Mr Harrel is—to use Mr Monckton’s phrase—till you convert the amount of money she gives him to today’s money. It’s shocking! 

However, Frances Burney is undoubtedly a great writer. She depicts very well the selfishness and recklessness of Mr Harrel—you don’t doubt that people such as Mr and Mrs Harrel exist. One of the things Burney explores in Cecilia is the obsession with appearance, the obsession with appearing rich and high-class and fashionable: we see that in almost everyone in the high society of the novel, but the extremes are Mr Belfield, and Mr and Mrs Harrel—even when they’re near death, or on the verge of destruction, they remain fixated on how they appear to the world. It’s very well-done. 

“… the rest of the house was very differently employed; feasting, revelling, amusements of all sorts were pursued with more eagerness than ever, and the alarm which so lately threatened their destruction, seemed now merely to heighten the avidity with which they were sought. Yet never was the disunion of happiness and diversion more striking and obvious; Mr Harrel, in spite of his natural levity, was seized from time to time with fits of horror that embittered his gayest moments, and cast a cloud upon all his enjoyments. Always an enemy to solitude, he now found it wholly insupportable, and ran into company of any sort, less from a hope of finding entertainment, than from a dread of spending half an hour by himself.” (B.5, ch.3) 

That is especially good. 

Cecilia: “Cecilia was much concerned to find her so unmoved”

1/ Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782) have a few things in common: both are about a young country girl’s experience in London; both feature a heroine who is naïve and trusting but otherwise perfect, chased by multiple men. The two novels are however very different, mainly that Evelina is about 500 pages and Cecilia is over 900 pages; Cecilia is more mature; and at this point, Frances Burney has dropped the conceit of letters—Evelina is an epistolary novel—and writes a comedy of manners, which makes it closer to the novels of Jane Austen. 

Look at her prose: 

“But the principal figure in the circle was Mr Belfield, a tall, thin young man, whose face was all animation, and whose eyes sparkled with intelligence. He had been intended by his father for trade, but his spirit, soaring above the occupation for which he was designed, from repining led him to resist, and from resisting, to rebel. […] And now, with little business, and that little neglected, a small fortune, and that fortune daily becoming less, the admiration of the world, but that admiration ending simply in civility, he lived an unsettled and unprofitable life, generally caressed, and universally sought, yet careless of his interest and thoughtless of the future; devoting his time to company, his income to dissipation, and his heart to the Muses.” (B.1, ch.2) 

These sentences are the kind that we could find in Jane Austen. 

“Mortimer Delvile was tall and finely formed, his features, though not handsome, were full of expression, and a noble openness of manners and address spoke the elegance of his education, and the liberality of his mind.” (B.2, ch.6) 

Like Austen, Burney is not particularly interested in physical descriptions. 

Austen’s fans would like Burney as they are in many ways similar: both are not very visual writers; both write comedies of manners; both are funny and witty, with a talent for capturing characters’ voices, and so on. One can see the influence. But Burney depicts a different world—the world of the upper class, the world of fashion, the world of dissipation. Whereas Austen often depicts middle class women on the brink of poverty (except for Emma Woodhouse) and in need of marriage, Burney depicts the opposite in Cecilia: Cecilia Beverley is an heiress, and the central conflict of the novel is that she not only has to ward off bad suitors who are after the money, but, according to the will, she can only marry a man willing to change his last name to Beverley. 

2/ Having lost her uncle, Cecilia comes to stay with her old friend Priscilla—mostly called Mrs Harrel throughout the novel—as Mr Harrel is one of her three guardians. The high society Frances Burney mocks is similar to the one in Vanity Fair, or in the novels of Edith Wharton. It might get tiresome after a while to read pages and pages of partying and dissipation and callousness and gossips and hypocrisy—it’s like watching vapid people on reality TV—but I like Burney’s depiction of Cecilia’s amazement and disappointment upon realising that a friend of her childhood has become a different person. 

“She found her insensible to friendship, indifferent to her husband, and negligent of all social felicity. Dress, company, parties of pleasure, and public places, seemed not merely to occupy all her time; but to gratify all her wishes.” (B.1, ch.4) 

One of the best parts of Volume I is the masquerade chapter, partly because it’s something different, partly because Cecilia and we are to guess who’s behind the masks, partly because Frances Burney references Shakespeare and Cervantes and mythology, and most importantly, because some characters reveal their true selves whilst hiding behind disguises. 

“The author of the former disturbance was now the occasion of the present: the fiend, having vainly traversed the room in search of Cecilia, stumbled accidentally upon Harlequin, before he was freed from the relicks of his own mischief; and unable to resist the temptation of opportunity and the impulse of revenge, he gave vent to the wrath so often excited by the blunders, forwardness, and tricks of Morrice, and inflicted upon him, with his own wooden sword, which he seized for that purpose, a chastisement the most serious and severe.

[…] And then, after artfully playing sundry antics under pretence of still supporting his character, with a motion too sudden for prevention, and too rapid for pursuit, he escaped out of the room…” (B.2, ch.3)   

A character who seems like a good guy and whom Cecilia sees as a good guy dresses up as the Devil, which he—in some sense—is. This is what I mean when I say Cecilia is more mature than Evelina: in Burney’s first novel, the characters are rather straightforward and they are (generally) what they seem; in Cecilia, the characters are not always what they seem. 

I suspect that the masquerade will later turn out to be significant, in the sense of playing a symbolic role like the ha-ha scene in Mansfield Park. 

3/ I should clarify that when I wrote “tiresome” earlier, I meant that some of the characters were frivolous and empty-headed—the novel itself is not boring—Frances Burney knows how to captivate one’s interest and often introduces new characters or new environments. Like Austen, she has a strong ethical sense, but like Austen, she has wit and a light touch and a sense of humour—she’s not moralistic or heavy like George Eliot, nor harsh like Edith Wharton. 

In later blog posts, I’m hoping to have more interesting things to say and not mention Jane Austen. 

A few sonnets I like from the 16th and 17th centuries

I’ve never been much of a poetry person. I thought Shakespeare would be my gateway into poetry, but no. Or rather, I do like dramatic and epic poetry—it’s lyric poetry that I struggle with, except for Shakespeare’s sonnets and some poems here and there by Donne, Milton, Keats, Tennyson, etc. I like stories, that’s the thing, and I like characters (my love for Shakespeare’s sonnets is possibly because I read them as part of a sequence, and there are characters). 

Anyway, that’s why I picked up The Oxford Book of Sonnets, to try to get into poetry. Here are some sonnets I like from the 16th and 17th centuries that were not by Shakespeare (in the same order as in the book).  

Edmund Spenser 

Amoretti LXXV

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,

But came the waves and washed it away:

Again I wrote it with a second hand,

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay,

A mortal thing so to immortalise;

For I myself shall like to this decay,

And eke my name be wiped out likewise.”

“Not so,” (quoth I) “let baser things devise

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:

My verse your virtues rare shall eternise,

And in the heavens write your glorious name:

Where, whenas death shall all the world subdue,

Our love shall live, and later life renew.”

Amoretti LXXVII

Was it a dream, or did I see it plain,

A goodly table of pure ivory:

All spread with junkets, fit to entertain

The greatest prince with pompous royalty.

’Mongst which there in a silver dish did lie

Two golden apples of unvalued price:

Far passing those which Hercules came by,

Or those which Atalanta did entice.

Exceeding sweet, yet void of sinful vice,

That many sought yet none could ever taste,

Sweet fruit of pleasure brought from paradise

By love himself, and in his garden placed.

Her breast that table was so richly spread,

My thoughts the guests, which would thereon have fed.

Sir Philip Sidney 

Astrophil and Stella 39 

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,

The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,

The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner’s release,

Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low.

With shield of proof shield me from out the press

Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw:

O make in me those civil wars to cease;

I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.

Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,

A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,

A rosy garland and a weary head:

And if these things, as being thine by right,

Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,

Livelier than elsewhere, Stella’s image see.

Samuel Daniel 

Delia 45 

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night,

Brother to Death, in silent darkness born:

Relieve my languish, and restore the light,

With dark forgetting of my cares, return;

And let the day be time enough to mourn

The shipwreck of my ill-adventured youth:

Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn,

Without the torment of the night’s untruth.

Cease dreams, th’ imagery of our day-desires,

To model forth the passions of the morrow;

Never let rising sun approve you liars,

To add more grief to aggravate my sorrow.

Still let me sleep, embracing clouds in vain;

And never wake to feel the day’s disdain.

John Donne 

I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements and an angelic sprite,

But black sin hath betray’d to endless night

My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.

You which beyond that heaven which was most high

Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,

Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might

Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,

Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.

But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire

Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,

And made it fouler; let their flames retire,

And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal

Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

At the round earth’s imagin’d corners, blow

Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise

From death, you numberless infinities

Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;

All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,

All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,

Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes

Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,

For if above all these my sins abound,

’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace

When we are there; here on this lowly ground

Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good

As if thou’hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurped town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,

But am betrothed unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

William Habington 

To Castara. Upon Beauty

Castara, see that dust, the sportive wind

So wantons with. ’Tis happ’ly all you’ll find 

Left of some beauty: and how still it flies,

To trouble, as it did in life, our eyes.

O empty boast of flesh! Though our heirs gild

The far fetch Phrigian marble, which shall build

A burthen to our ashes, yet will death

Betray them to the sport of every breath.

Dost thou, poor relic of our frailty, still

Swell up with glory? Or is it thy skill,

To mock weak man, whom every wind of praise

Into the air, doth ’bove his centre raise.

If so, mock on. And tell him that his lust

To beauty’s madness. For it courts but dust.

John Milton 

Sonnet 19 

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Sonnet 23 

Methought I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,

Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave,

Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

Mine, as whom wash’d from spot of child-bed taint

Purification in the old Law did save,

And such as yet once more I trust to have

Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,

Came vested all in white, pure as her mind;

Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight

Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined

So clear as in no face with more delight.

But Oh! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Aphra Behn 

Epitaph on the Tombstone of a Child, the Last of Seven that Died Before

This little, silent, gloomy monument, 

Contains all that was sweet and innocent;

The softest prattler that e’er found a tongue,

His voice was music and his words a song,

Which now each listening angel smiling hears,

Such pretty harmonies compose the spheres;

Wanton as unfledged cupids, ere their charms

Has learned the little arts of doing harms,

Fair as young cherubins, as soft and kind,

And though translated could not be refined,

The seventh dear pledge the nuptial joys had given,

Toiled here on earth, retired to rest in heaven, 

Where they the shining host of angels fill,

Spread their gay wings before the throne, and smile.

In praise of Satoshi Kon

It was last year when I discovered Satoshi Kon. He’s now one of my favourite directors, and guess what, you should watch his films too, even if you’re prejudiced against anime (as I was). 

Perfect Blue (1997): First one I saw and still my favourite. The film is about a member of a Japanese idol group who leaves the music industry in order to pursue an acting career. She soon finds herself stalked and threatened by an obsessive fan unhappy with her decision to leave the group (I don’t think you would want to join the Japanese showbiz after this); as things escalate and gruesome murders take place, she slowly loses her grip on reality (like Lady Macbeth). It’s a serious film and a great film, blurring the line between reality and fantasy and fiction—three layers. Black Swan clearly got ideas stolen from Perfect Blue, but Perfect Blue is much better. 

Millennium Actress (2001): Two documentary filmmakers come to interview a famous actress decades after her retirement from the film industry and she tells them about the love of her life. On a personal level, I don’t like the film as much as the other three by Satoshi Kon (as I find her love story stupid); but on a technical level, it is an impressive film as Kon again blurs the line between reality and cinema. I also like that Millennium Actress references Kurosawa, Ozu, etc.  

Tokyo Godfathers (2003): This one is quite unusual as it’s a comedy drama and (largely) realistic. Three homeless people—a middle-aged alcoholic, a trans woman, and a teenage runaway—find an abandoned baby in the trash on Christmas’s Eve and set out to find the parents. With such a storyline and such a set of characters, it could easily become sentimental and corny, but it isn’t—it’s funny and moving and the characters are full of life. Roger Ebert calls it “a story that will never, ever, be remade by Disney” (which should appeal to some of you). Might watch it again at Christmas.

Paprika (2006): His last film. A group of scientists create a device that allows people to view someone else’s dreams. The device however gets stolen and shit happens—people lose control of their minds and dreams merge and nightmares flood into the real world. Do I understand Paprika? Not the Jungian and Freudian ideas, no. But it’s a fascinating film nevertheless, and the rich and colourful and utterly bizarre dreamworld of Paprika makes me realise how drab and boring dream sequences in most films are. I can’t decide if this one or Perfect Blue is Satoshi Kon’s greatest film. 

Online I’ve come across some people who think literature is a greater art form than cinema. I don’t agree. I think they’re different art forms with different ways of telling a story and different strengths. Cinema can do certain things that literature (or some other art forms) can’t—when a film is like a dream, or when it blurs the line between reality and fantasy and fiction—we see that in Ingmar Bergman, we see that in Federico Fellini, and we see that in Satoshi Kon. 

Pity he died so soon. 

Reading the Bible: Daniel, Jonah

1/ My summary of the second chapter of the Book of Daniel: 

The king: Interpret my dream.

People: What’s the dream?

The king: I don’t remember, interpret it.

People: Tell us the dream, we will. 

The king: Can’t remember. Fuck you! Interpret my dream. 

It’s a good story, though, about the tyranny of the king: this is Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, who besieges Jerusalem. He later orders his people to throw some Israelites into a burning furnace, for not worshipping the same god. 

“Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire.

And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.” (Daniel 3:26-27) 

It’s a story about how the God of the Israelites is more powerful than the god of Babylon. I am however more interested in the depiction of a tyrant. 

2/ Daniel is one of the Israelites raised and educated in the palace. Having insight into visions and dreams, Daniel interprets dreams and foretells the future and lives through different kings of Babylon—over and over again, the Book of Daniel depicts the God of Daniel and the Israelites (Yahweh) as stronger and more powerful than the god of Babylon. I suppose it’s meaningful to people of faith; it doesn’t mean much to me. Reading the Book of Daniel is mainly useful for me to know about the fiery furnace, the writings on the wall, Daniel in the lions’ den, the dream of the four beasts, etc.

There are some strange images, such as Daniel’s vision of the four beasts that come up from the sea: 

“The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.

And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.

After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.” (Daniel 7:4-8) 

Ten horns sounds very crowded.

If only the whole of the Bible were as good as the Book of Job, or the Books of Samuel, though. I’d like to think of myself as an Appreciationist and often see literary merit even in classics I don’t personally enjoy, but the Bible can be tough. 

3/ The Book of Jonah is important because of the iconic image of Jonah in the belly of a big fish (a whale?), but my interest is mainly because of its influence on Moby-Dick: it’s quoted in Extracts; chapter 9 “The Sermon” is about the Book of Jonah; chapter 83 is titled “Jonah Historically Regarded”; there are numerous other references throughout the novel. 

“‘With this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at God, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the Captains of this earth. […] See ye not then, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?’” (Moby-Dick, ch.9) 

Father Mapple tells the story of Jonah to preach about defiance and sin and repentance. There are some parallels between Jonah at the beginning and Captain Ahab: Ahab also defies Heaven, defies God, but does not repent—even to the last. 

“‘I turn my body from the sun. […] Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale!...’” (ch.135) 

Ahab may be seen as a kind of anti-Jonah. 

Is it not interesting though that something like Moby-Dick was written by someone not religious, someone who’s not a believer? 

4/ There are echoes of Jonah in Hamlet: Hamlet boards a ship to England and escapes death and returns a different man. 

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, 

Rough-hew them how we will.” 

(Act 5 scene 2) 

He is calmer, but more fatalistic.

I’m going to take a break from the Bible to read other stuff, then I’ll decide whether to read Psalms or go straight to the New Testament. 

Reading the Bible: Judges, Ruth

1/ Judges and Ruth precede the Books of Samuel—I’ve been reading the Bible in the wrong order, I know, but then I don’t think Christians read the Bible from cover to cover, so…

Like the Books of Kings, the Book of Judges is drearily repetitive: the clause “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD” appears over and over again. The narrative is a cycle of the children of Israel betraying God and being punished and getting saved and again betraying God, over and over again. One interesting thing I’ve noted however is the use of the phrase “went a whoring”—nothing to do with whoredom/ prostitution/ promiscuity—to mean betraying God (Yahweh) and worshipping Baal/ Baalim. 

There are some violent images. 

“Then Jael Heber’s wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died.” (Judges 4:21) 

That’s disturbing, no? 

“She put her hand to the nail, and her right hand to the workmen’s hammer; and with the hammer she smote Sisera, she smote off his head, when she had pierced and stricken through his temples.

At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down: at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead.” (Judges 5:26-27) 

Christians probably won’t like that I say this, but reading the Bible out of interest in its influence on Western culture and literature means that one has to wade through lots of tedious stuff and violent stuff. 

“And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to brake his skull.

[…] Thus God rendered the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto his father, in slaying his seventy brethren:

And all the evil of the men of Shechem did God render upon their heads: and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.” (Judges 9:53-57) 

2/ The highlight of the Book of Judges—so people say—is the story of Samson. I can see that there are striking and iconic images—Samson killing a young lion with his bare hands and eating honey from its carcass, Samson killing 1000 men with an ass’s jawbone, Samson pulling down the pillars and killing the Philistines together with himself, and so on—but the story of him and Delilah is plain silly. Look at it: three times Delilah asks about his weakness; three times she tries it and delivers him to the Philistines; and yet he not only stays with her but also tells her the truth so that he loses his superhuman strength and falls into the hands of the Philistines? It’s on him, I’m afraid. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me; etc. 

This is not a story about a woman’s treachery, but about a man who thinks with his other head. My complaint is that the Bible doesn’t depict his passion and doesn’t give us their thoughts—I don’t know what goes through Samson’s (stupid) mind when he decides to tell Delilah his weakness after all she has done.  

3/ The Book of Judges also contains the story of the Levite’s concubine, which is brutal and horrific—from the gang rape of the concubine, to the war afterwards between the children of Israel and the children of Benjamin. 

This is especially disturbing: 

“But the men would not hearken to him: so the man took his concubine, and brought her forth unto them; and they knew her, and abused her all the night until the morning: and when the day began to spring, they let her go.

[…] And when he was come into his house, he took a knife, and laid hold on his concubine, and divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.” (Judges 19:25-29) 

It’s odd though that the Levite and his concubine aren’t named; it’s also odd that the Bible doesn’t quite explain why the concubine leaves him at the beginning of the story and returns to her father.  

4/ The Book of Ruth I do like much better, as it’s about the relationship between Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth. Naomi, having lost her husband and then both her sons, decides to return home and urges the daughters-in-law to go back to their own parents, but Ruth refuses. 

“And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:

Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

It is so moving.  

This is also moving, when Naomi returns to Bethlehem: 

“And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.

I went out full, and the LORD hath brought me home again empty: why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the LORD hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath afflicted me?” (Ruth 1:20-21) 

I didn’t know the meanings of Naomi (pleasant, sweet, delightful) and Mara (bitter), but I could guess—I could feel her anguish in the lines. 

5/ I must thank Himadri (Argumentative Old Git) for reminding me of these lines in “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats: 

“Perhaps the self-same song that found a path

         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

                She stood in tears amid the alien corn…” 

I have always liked Keats. Must read more. 

Reading the Bible: Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Lamentations

1/ One of the joys of reading the Bible is going “So that’s where it came from!”. Ecclesiastes is full of phrases and lines I recognise: 

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) 

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) 

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2) 

“All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” (Ecclesiastes 3:20) 

“He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 5:10)

This image is also familiar: 

“As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.” (Ecclesiastes 5:15)

But I think this phrasing is quoted more: 

“And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) 

It’s also cool to realise that the title of Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth comes from “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” (Ecclesiastes 7:4) 

2/ Compare: 

“All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” (Ecclesiastes 3:20) 

And Hamlet: 

“We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service—two dishes but to one table. That’s the end.” (Act 4 scene 3) 

“Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust…” (Act 5 scene 1)

Hamlet also calls man “this quintessence of dust”. 

Compare: 

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) 

And Shakespeare’s Sonnet 59: 

“If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguil’d,

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

The second burthen of a former child!

O, that record could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done!...” 

The Ecclesiastes is my favourite of these three books, something I imagine I can read and reread. 

3/ I read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon so long ago that I remember nothing and have no idea how the book in the Bible relates to it. 

Can’t say much about the Song of Solomon in the Bible either. 

“Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them.

Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet, and thy speech is comely: thy temples are like a piece of a pomegranate within thy locks.

Thy neck is like the tower of David builded for an armoury, whereon there hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies.” (Song of Solomon 4:2-5) 

The similes are strange. 

“His eyes are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.

His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers: his lips like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh.

His hands are as gold rings set with the beryl: his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.

His legs are as pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold: his countenance is as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars.” (Song of Solomon 5:12-15) 

Very strange. 

The Song of Solomon is (apparently) meant to celebrate human love, narrating an intense love story between a woman and her lover, but to me, the imagery is utterly strange and alienating.  

4/ The Book of Lamentations is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem. 

This is an interesting sentence: 

“He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.” (Lamentations 3:15) 

Some of you might like these verses: 

“Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach.

Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.” (Lamentations 5:1-2)

Reading the Bible: Job

1/ Does anyone read the Book of Job without feeling disturbed by the cruelty and callousness of God? Why does God, for no reason, take everything away from “one that feared God, and eschewed evil” and make him suffer? 

But the writing—on the sentence level—is magnificent.

“Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck?

For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest,

With kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves;

Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver:

Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light.

There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.

There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.

The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master.

Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;

Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?

For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters.

For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.

I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came.” (Job 3:11-26) 

I can see how the Book of Job resonates with Christians who are going through a tough time and longing for death and finding God unjust. 

“Am I a sea, or a whale, that thou settest a watch over me?

When I say, My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint;

Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions:

So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.

I loathe it; I would not live alway: let me alone; for my days are vanity.

What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him?

And that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment?

How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?

I have sinned; what shall I do unto thee, O thou preserver of men? why hast thou set me as a mark against thee, so that I am a burden to myself?

And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.” (Job 7:12-21) 

The Book of Job is very quotable, and depicts well the bitterness of a man who suffers and can’t understand why he has to suffer. 

“The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if not, where, and who is he?” (Job 9:24)

This reminds me of The Brothers Karamazov, especially Ivan’s talk about returning the ticket and rejecting God—the rereading is going to be a very different experience when I have known the Bible.

Like some other parts of the Bible, the Book of Job could be repetitive, but it doesn’t matter because I love the prose, the rhythm of the prose: 

“I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem.

I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.

I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out.

And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.

Then I said, I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the sand.

My root was spread out by the waters, and the dew lay all night upon my branch.

My glory was fresh in me, and my bow was renewed in my hand.” (Job 29:14-20)

2/ I don’t have a lot to say, so I’m just poking at it from different angles. 

“He putteth my feet in the stocks, he marketh all my paths.” (Job 33:11)

Was that line in Shakespeare’s mind when he had Cornwall place Kent in the stocks in King Lear?

Job and Lear both lose everything. Job and Lear both experience extreme suffering. Job and Lear both question existence. 

“How much less man, that is a worm? and the son of man, which is a worm?” (Job 25:6) 

That reminds me of: 

“Is man no more than this? Consider him well.—Thou ow’st the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Ha, here’s three on’s are sophisticated. Thou art the thing itself; unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art.” (King Lear, Act 3 scene 4) 

Not only King Lear, Job also makes me think of Timon of Athens: together with the change in his fortunes is the change in others’ attitudes. Timon and Lear however are much angrier, and the gods are absent. 

“As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods;

They kill us for their sport.” 

(King Lear, Act 4 scene 1) 

Funnily enough, in the Book of Job, God does appear and restore Job’s fortunes but doesn’t answer the questions. 

3/ Ingmar Bergman, who made a few films about human suffering and the silence of God and a crisis of faith, must have loved the Book of Job. 

“But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?

Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.” (Job 28:12-13) 

The entire chapter is magnificent. For someone who reads the Bible as a literary—rather than religious—text, the Book of Job is a great read, because of the prose and because of the depiction of someone in great suffering who’s questioning God. It’s more literary than some other parts of the Bible I have read, and in the form of a dialogue between Job and his accusing friends. 

4/ Moby-Dick begins and ends with the Book of Job. 

The second quote in Extracts is “Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary,” which comes from Job 41:32. 

The Epilogue quotes “I only am escaped alone to tell thee”, which recurs 4 times in the first chapter. 

I suppose Melville wants to contrast the humility and patience of Job with the hate and anger of Ahab. 

“There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.” (Moby-Dick, ch.96) 

Can’t help wondering if Melville, when he wrote that sentence, was thinking of the poem on wisdom in the Book of Job. 

Reading Lovers’ Vows as a fan of Mansfield Park

Here I am again reading something nobody reads, but it seemed amiss, did it not, that I never read Lovers’ Vows before when Mansfield Park is my favourite Austen novel?

Let’s see what the fuss is about. 

Lovers’ Vows 

An adaptation of August von Kotzebue’s Das Kind der Liebe, the play was first performed at Covent Garden in 1798, about 2 decades after Sheridan’s most celebrated plays. Jane Austen was 23 (if she saw it onstage, though she might have just read the text).

The first thing I’m going to say is that I’m not surprised the play was a hit: it’s got premarital sex and a son born out of wedlock and star-crossed lovers, etc. The second thing is that I’m not surprised it’s rarely read or staged today and mostly known as the play featured in Jane Austen’s novel. It’s not a great play—sometimes even ridiculous (luckily it’s quite short). 

Lovers’ Vows has two plotlines that aren’t entirely separate. In one plot, a soldier named Frederick returns home to find his mother Agatha ill, penniless, and on the streets, and then he discovers himself to be the result of an affair between her and Baron Wildenhaim, who long ago left the country. 

In the other plot, Baron Wildenhaim, recently back in Germany after his wife’s death, is trying to find out if his daughter Amelia wants to accept the marriage proposal from the affected Count Cassel. She however is in love with her tutor, poor Mr Anhalt. 

At some point, the desperate Frederick, tired of begging, tries to rob two rich men and gets imprisoned, but one of the two men turns out to be the Baron. This is the stuff of romance! The play is full of coincidences and nonsense and melodrama. The idea that things are not as they seem—a favourite theme of Jane Austen and Shakespeare—is not to be found here: the characters are quite straightforward. A greater playwright may have increased the stakes or made things a bit difficult: here the knots are quickly untied. 

However, to be fair, Lovers’ Vows is not without a few things of interest. Amelia is very forward, for a young lady in the 18th century. 

“MR ANHALT […] The subject I came to you upon was marriage.

AMELIA A very proper subject from the man who has taught me love, and I accept the proposal [curtsying].

MR ANHALT Again you misconceive and confound me.

AMELIA Ay, I see how it is—You have no inclination to experience with me “the good part of matrimony:” I am not the female with whom you would like to go “hand in hand up hills, and through labyrinths”—with whom you would like to “root up thorns; and with whom you would delight to plant lilies and roses.” No, you had rather call out, “O liberty, dear liberty.”” 

(Act 3 scene 2)

Amelia alludes to—and confesses—her feelings first. None of Jane Austen’s heroines would speak in such a way. 

The class issues—both the depiction of the lower class as noble and the upper class as base, and the unequal marriages—are interesting. Elizabeth Inchbald (and perhaps von Kotzebue in the original?) had clear messages about marrying for love, treating women properly, and atoning for past mistakes, which Jane Austen must have liked. Dramatically, the confrontation scene between Baron Wildenhaim and Count Cassel is interesting: the Count acknowledges his own villainy and turns it against the Baron, forcing him to examine himself. 

Now you’re going to ask if there are parallels between Lovers’ Vows and Mansfield Park. There are a few. Mr Anhalt is a clergyman, like Edmund Bertram’s going to be. Agatha is taken from her poor family and placed with a rich family, like Fanny Price. Count Cassel is a cad, like Henry Crawford. Agatha is seduced and has sex outside marriage, like Maria Bertram. But these similarities only emphasise the startling differences between the play and Mansfield Park: Jane Austen’s novel is much deeper, subtler, and more sophisticated.  

Lovers’ Vows in Mansfield Park 

Look at the scene in Mansfield Park where the characters argue about which play to perform: 

“All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal, Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively dismissed with yet warmer objections.” (Ch.14) 

I only just read The School for Scandal—imagine if the characters picked Sheridan’s play! 

One must ask, does Jane Austen pick Lovers’ Vows because she likes it, or because she thinks it’s a stupid play that demonstrates the bad taste of Mr Yates and emphasises the impropriety of staging such a play in Sir Thomas’s absence? I don’t think there’s anything to indicate that Jane Austen personally thinks it’s a great play. Either way, many (obtuse) readers complain about Mansfield Park and call Fanny Price a priggish bore partly because they impose modern thinking on the novel (saying what’s wrong with staging a play at home?), but mainly because they don’t know Lovers’ Vows. Fanny isn’t fond of the plan to act when Sir Thomas’s away, but she becomes strongly opposed to the play only when she reads it: 

“Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance, that it could be proposed and accepted in a private theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make.” (ibid.) 

Read the play and you’ll see why. 

Apart from that, rereading the theatrical episode in Mansfield Park is now much more interesting when I know the characters they’re playing. It’s quite a joke that the dim-witted Mr Rushworth plays Count Cassel, who is a cad, though they’re both foppish. There’s also something rather funny about the way Maria and Julia Bertram fight to play Agatha, when Henry Crawford plays Frederick, her son, and the role of Agatha’s former lover, Baron Wildenhaim, goes to Mr Yates—Henry and Maria flirt with each other whilst playing mother and son (hello, Jane?). But of course the way Austen sets it up is perfect: Agatha and Baron Wildenhaim only have a couple of lines together at the end whereas she and Frederick have relatively long scenes together—scenes that involve touching. As Mary Crawford says to Fanny: 

“… I looked in upon them five minutes ago, and it happened to be exactly at one of the times when they were trying not to embrace, and Mr Rushworth was with me. I thought he began to look a little queer…” (Ch.18) 

Funnily enough: 

“As far as [Fanny] could judge, Mr Crawford was considerably the best actor of all: he had more confidence than Edmund, more judgment than Tom, more talent and taste than Mr Yates. She did not like him as a man, but she must admit him to be the best actor, and on this point there were not many who differed from her.” (ibid.)

I wonder if Jane Austen’s suspicious of actors—ironically, it’s whilst being an actor that Henry drops his act towards Julia and makes obvious his preference for her sister. 

So what about Edmund and Mary Crawford? Edmund plays Mr Anhalt and Mary plays Amelia. Now when I have read Lovers’ Vows, I can see better Fanny’s pain as she watches Edmund and Mary Crawford rehearse the love scene, especially when Fanny has grown up with Edmund the way (I think) Amelia has grown up with Mr Anhalt. 

Regardless of Jane Austen’s judgement of the literary merit of Lovers’ Vows, she uses it to great effect in Mansfield Park, moves the plot forward, and reveals a lot about every single character in her novel—knowing Elizabeth Inchbald’s play deepens my understanding and appreciation of the novel. 

Richard Brinsley Sheridan: The Critic and The School for Scandal

This is a bit of a jump: Sheridan’s the most successful playwright in English theatre in the 18th century—The Critic premiered in 1779 and The School for Scandal in 1777. For context, Frances Burney published Evelina anonymously in 1778; the other 18th century novels I read (Defoe, Fielding, Swift, Charlotte Lennox) were all decades earlier. 

The Critic 

Don’t we all love plays within plays? The Critic is a comedy about the rehearsal of a tragedy by Puff (who likes to—wait for this—write puff pieces about himself). The rehearsal is attended by theatre critics Dangle and Sneer. 

It’s very funny. 

“SNEER Pray, Mr Puff, how came Sir Christopher Hatton never to ask that question before?

PUFF What, before the play began? How the plague could he?” 

(At 2 scene 2) 

Sheridan makes fun of terrible playwrights. 

“DANGLE Mr Puff, as he knows all this, why does Sir Walter go on telling him?

PUFF But the audience are not supposed to know anything of the matter, are they?” 

(ibid.) 

Even if the kind of tragedies Sheridan satirises is no longer in vogue, his mockery of awkward exposition—as well as vanity and puffing and plagiarism—never gets outdated. 

“BEEFEATER Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee.

SNEER Haven’t I heard that line before?

PUFF No, I fancy not.—Where, pray?

DANGLE Yes, I think there is something like it in Othello.

PUFF Gad! now you put me in mind on’t, I believe there is—but that’s of no consequence—all that can be said is, that two people happened to hit upon the same thought—and Shakespeare made use of it first, that’s all.” 

(Act 3 scene 1) 

Shakespeare is everywhere! There are also two other Shakespeare references in the play. 

One of the funny things in The Critic—presumably Sheridan’s deliberate joke—is that he creates a character named Sir Fretful Plagiary but it’s Puff who’s the plagiarist. 

Entertaining play. 

The School for Scandal 

I was wondering why The School for Scandal, performed earlier, was placed after The Critic in the Penguin collection (of three plays), then I understood: The School for Scandal is longer, more substantial, more biting. 

Sheridan must have been familiar with the plays of Molière—The School for Husbands, The School for Wives—but I would say he doesn’t quite have the warmth of Molière. 

“MRS CANDOUR They’ll not allow our friend Miss Vermillion to be handsome.

LADY SNEERWELL Oh, surely she is a pretty woman…

CRABTREE I am very glad you think so, ma’am.

MRS CANDOUR She has a charming fresh colour.

CRABTREE Yes, when it is fresh put on. 

LADY TEAZLE O fie! I’ll swear her colour is natural: I have seen it come and go. 

CRABTREE I dare swear you have, ma’am: it goes of a night, and comes again in the morning.

SIR BENJAMIN True, uncle, it not only comes and goes but what’s more, egad—her maid can fetch and carry it—” 

(Act 2 scene 2)

What a malicious and vindictive world. 

The play has at its centre two contrasting brothers who are under Sir Peter Teazle’s informal guardianship: Joseph Surface (a socially respectable but calculating and duplicitous man) and Charles Surface (a profligate who nevertheless has a good and open nature). Both desire Maria (Sir Peter’s ward) but she seems to prefer Charles and Lady Sneerwell has the hots for Charles, so she and Joseph shake hands in their scandalmongering plots to separate Charles and Maria.   

Maria is the “good and intelligent heroine” type, similar to Angelica in Congreve’s Love for Love or Millamant in The Way of the World. 

“JOSEPH [rising with Maria] Maria, I see you have no satisfaction in this society.

MARIA How is it possible I should? If to raise malicious smiles at the infirmities or misfortunes of those who have never injured us be the province of wit or humour, Heaven grant me a double portion of dullness!

JOSEPH Yet they appear more ill-natured than they are—they have no malice at heart—

MARIA Then is their conduct still more contemptible, for, in my opinion, nothing could excuse the intemperance of their tongues but a natural and ungovernable bitterness of mind.” 

(ibid.) 

She’s not a priggish bore though—she is witty: 

“MRS CANDOUR Ah, Maria, child! What, is the whole affair of between you and Charles? His extravagance, I presume? The town talks of nothing else. 

MARIA Indeed! I am very sorry, ma’am, the town is not better employed.” 

(Act 1 scene 1) 

There’s also a storyline about Sir Peter Teazle and his wilful young wife—though it’s not quite detached to be a subplot.

In terms of plotting, The School for Scandal is (more or less) perfect, with all the schemes and counter-schemes and overhearing and discoveries. It’s interesting to note that the contrast between the two brothers is at the centre of the play but we don’t see Charles till Act 3, which means that Sheridan makes us put the pieces together from what other characters have said and form some preconceptions about Charles before we see him, as Sir Oliver, the uncle and benefactor of the brothers, also does. And when we meet him, we see him get tested by Sir Oliver. The contrast of the brothers is the contrast of values at the heart of the play, and Sir Oliver is the voice of the play when he says “if Charles has done nothing false or mean, I shall compound for his extravagance.” 

It’s a funny, delightful play. Sheridan doesn’t come across as cynical as William Congreve: he depicts several malicious and conniving and cruel characters, but he also gives us Charles and Maria and Sir Oliver and Rowley. And Sir Peter Teazle and his wife finally reconcile with each other.  

PS: I like that there are constant allusions to Shakespeare in both plays.