Royal Romances: Sex, Scandal, and Monarchy (56 page)

he had long entertained a passion” (278), apparently forgetting that

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such a marriage would arguably have bastardized her own husband

and nullified the succession of the daughter to whom she is writing.

The rumors that George III had in 1759 secretly (and bigamously,

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as she was already married) married Hannah Lightfoot first surfaced

around 1770 but gained most attention after 1820. The allegations

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have been thoroughly repudiated and are not credited by any of

George’s biographers.

37. Ashe himself doesn’t seem to have worried about the credibility of his

vehicle. In the 1812 spin-off
The Spirit of the Spirit
, he cut his text

down to 40 pages and one letter, “for the sake of room, and to give

a Concise View of the whole of its contents” (3). Although
The Spirit

of the Spirit
begins, “Letter from the Illustrious Princess Caroline to

her Daughter Charlotte” and ends, “your unfortunate though affec-

tionate mother, CAROLINE,” it effectively abandons epistolarity for

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first-person narration.

38. Marilyn Butler makes this connection in
Jane Austen and the War

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of Ideas
(209–10); Poovey suggests that the conclusion of
Sense and

Sensibility
demonstrates the reassertion of patriarchal control over

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the socially “anarchic” self-indulgence of female characters such

as Marianne Dashwood (183–94) and then implicitly extends that

argument to
Pride and Prejudice
, by outlining Elizabeth’s educa-

tion, through Darcy’s tutelage, on “the pernicious effects of Lydia’s

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passionate self-indulgence” (199). Susan Fraiman offers an explicit

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feminist critique of this dynamic in her chapter on “The Humiliation

of Elizabeth Bennet” (
Unbecoming Women
59–87).

39. In
Pride and Prejudice
, as in
Mansfield Park
, will is transformative.

In the earlier text, however, the desire of the central characters is

consistent with propriety, and both its consistency and its propri-

ety are verified by the novel’s harmonizing conclusion. In
Mansfield

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Park
, as I shall demonstrate in the following chapter, the relationship

between will and propriety is arbitrary.

40. Poovey 199–200. Galperin points out that Lydia’s “function” in vol-

ume III “is to refer us by the sheer force of her existence to a less

apparent, if still possible, alternative against which the Elizabeth-

Darcy narrative remains a bulwark” (132). The section of the novel

narrating her elopement “discloses all that is at stake in the hege-

monic negotiation by which Darcy, a distinguished avatar of the old

aristocratic order, is united with Elizabeth” (133).

41. Austen’s consolidation of bourgeois supremacy by simultaneously

condemning and appropriating aristocratic values is most evident, at

least most dramatic, in
Pride and Prejudice
. Tuite among others has

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demonstrated, however, that it is central to all the completed nov-

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els: “Austen’s fictions are clearly legible as anti-aristocratic. However,

they are also probably more accurately described as part of that con-

flicted and vicarious bourgeois or middle-class project of seeking to

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appropriate the trappings of aristocratic authority, whilst making the

aristocratic class over in the image of bourgeois virtue” (Tuite 143).

42. Galperin points out that Elizabeth’s “merit . . . is inherent rather than

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inherited” (133).

43. For an exploration of the encampment of militias in England in the

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1790s, and of contemporary perceptions about the concomitant cor-

ruption of local women, see Irvine,
Pride and Prejudice
, Appendix F

449–53.

44. My position here is in partial agreement and in partial contention

with Richard A. Kaye’s arguments in
The Flirt’s Tragedy
. Although

he suggests that “the female flirt denoted less female sexual mis-

behavior per se than the
potential
for misconduct in woman, a dis-

tinction that stymied ethical and legal categories” (53), for Kaye,

flirtation in the realist novel is fundamentally opposed to closure:

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“coquetry always threatens to stall a plot that strives to move toward

a resolution in marriage. At the same time, coquettish desire signifies

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an unmentionable female eroticism precisely because it would seem

to defy narration” (51).

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45. Angus McLaren discusses the associations between masturbation

and other forms of sex in
Reproductive Rituals: The Perception of

Fertility in England from the Sixteenth Century to the Nineteenth

Century
(77–78).

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46. The popular sex manual
Aristotle’s Master-piece
, first published in

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1690 although widely available throughout the eighteenth and into

the nineteenth century, contained a section on the trickiness of deter-

mining defloration, and a warning therefore to suspicious husbands

not to jump to conclusions about their brides: “many inq uisitive

and yet ignorant persons, finding their wives defective herein, the

first night of their marriage, have thereupon suspected their chas-

tity. Now to undeceive such I do affirm, that such fractures happen

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diverse accidental ways, as well as by copulation with men. . . . though

certain it is, that it is broke in copulation rather than by any other

means” (29).

47. In Théophile Gauthier’s 1835
Mademoiselle de Maupin
the cross-

dressing Théodore reveals at the end of the novel her plan to use male

garb to gain access to the otherwise closed off male realm and so

win a lover: “With my disguise I could go everywhere without being

remarked; there would be concealment before me, all reserve and con-

straint would be thrown aside” (234). In her study of transvestism,

Vested Interests
, Marjorie Garber suggests that cross- dressing from

the early modern period on disrupted both gender and class catego-

ries, revealing the dependence of one upon the other: “Transvestism

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was located at the juncture of ‘class’ and ‘gender’, and increasingly

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through its agency gender and class were revealed to be commutable,

if not equivalent” (32).

48. Lydia and Wickham live together in London, but Austen may have

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chosen Brighton as the setting for their elopement because of its

association with the Regent’s own irregular marriage. In 1786,

when Prince of Wales, he moved there with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and

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the following year he began construction of what would become the

Brighton Pavilion.

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49. Lisa O’Connell discusses Gretna Green and its role in the shaping of

contemporary fiction in “Dislocating Literature: The Novel and the

Gretna Green Romance, 1770–1850.”

50. Susan Fraiman points to a dialogism in Darcy’s letter, inasmuch as

it is the final word in a dialogue that has begun with his proposal

and Elizabeth’s angry response. In its authoritativeness, however,

in Elizabeth’s absolute inability to respond in kind, the letter fore-

closes all further discussion and effectively ends the debate (Fraiman

76–79).

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51. In a slippage typical of Austen’s irony, this is the same (in)conclu-

sion reached by Mr. Collins, in his smarmy consolatory letter to Mr.

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Bennet:

. . . there is reason to suppose, as my dear Charlotte informs

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me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter, has

proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence, though, at the

same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I

am inclined to think that her own disposition must be natu-

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rally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so

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early an age. (304)

52. Mr. Bennet’s disclaimer of responsibility for Lydia’s behavior lies

chiefly in maintaining that the force of her desires is beyond his abil-

ity or his inclination to withstand: “Lydia will never be easy till she

has exposed herself in some public place or other” (245). “We shall

have no peace at Longbourn if Lydia does not go to Brighton”

(246).

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53. That Colonel Fitzwilliam is a replica for Wickham is suggested not

only in similar descriptors (they both have good manners, look like

gentlemen, and know how to make themselves agreeable) but also in

their nearly identical relations to Elizabeth: both flirt with her before

indicating that their financial situations compel them to make other

marital choices (thus substantiating the claim made by Darcy and so

dear to Elizabeth herself, that she is desirable inherently and not for

what she possesses or represents, and softening the dire prognostica-

tions of spinsterhood made by her mother and Mr. Collins); both

reveal what Elizabeth takes to be Darcy’s perfidy, in spoken confi-

dences that are either countered or tempered by Darcy’s authoritative

letter.

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54. Two cases in point are
The Royal Wanderer, or the Exile of England,

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a Tale
, by “Algernon” (London, 1815; the pseudonym is more likely

an attempt to replicate the popularity than the suggested politics of

Ashe’s book), and Edward Barron’s
The Royal Wanderer, or Secret

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Memoirs of Caroline
and its continuation,
The Wrongs of Royalty
,

which included an account of the House of Lords debates on the Bill

of Pains and Penalties (London, 1820).

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4 Body Doubles in the New Monarchy

1. Laura Runge points out that “between 1780 and 1788 Robinson is

the subject of at least six satirical pamphlets, two ‘Tete-à-Tete’ col-

umns in
Town and Country Magazine
, numerous newspaper para-

graphs, and some 38 satirical prints” (569–70). The National Portrait

Gallery in London lists eighty-nine portraits of Caroline, of which

more than half are caricatures produced between 1817 and 1821.

2. Each rung of the ladder has its engraving with motto and accom-

panying doggerel verse. Both are staunchly pro-Caroline, anti-

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George, reflecting the nostalgic tory-radicalism typical of responses

to Caroline in 1820. Beginning with “QUALIFICATION,” which

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depicts a drunken and dissolute Prince of Wales before his mar-

riage, “In love, and in drink, and o’ertoppled by debt,” through

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“DECLAR ATION,” “ACCEPTATION” (describing the mar-

riage and lamenting Caroline’s “husbandless bride-bed . . . wash’d

with her tears”), “ALTER ATION,” “IMPUTATION” (on the

delicate investigation), “EXCULPATION,” “EMIGR ATION,”

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“REMIGR ATION,” “CONSTERNATION,” “ACCUSATION,”

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“PUBLICATION,” “INDIGNATION,” and “CORONATION.”

The pamphlet ends with “DEGR ADATION,” in which the King

stands on trial, facing “The curses of hate and the hisses of scorn.”

3. In “The Queen Caroline Affair: Politics as Art in the Reign of