The Power Of Persuasion: Why Lawyers Love Jane Austen

Lawyers emotion Jane Austen, disproportionately—often rabidly—so. A starring London jurist erstwhile memorably quipped of his devotion: “I publication each six of Austen’s books each year, because if I didn’t, I would simply publication Emma complete and over.”

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It was a lawyer who ended up redeeming nan cardinal visit tract for Janeites each complete nan world. The Jane Austen Society had been founded successful 1940 pinch nan extremity of acquiring nan erstwhile steward’s cottage successful Chawton, Hampshire, wherever Austen worked connected each six of her novels. When nan nine grounded during wartime to raise capable funds, solicitor Thomas Edward Carpenter stepped successful to bargain nan cottage arsenic a memorial to his boy killed successful action. Carpenter endowed nan cottage to nan nation, group up a spot (a very lawyerly point to do) to tally nan spot arsenic a museum, and nan doors opened to nan nationalist successful 1949. Here fans coming tin spot nan mini octagonal array wherever Austen sat pinch ink and quill, spilling retired stories now hundreds of years aged and ne'er much popular.

More than a period earlier successful America, Austen’s estimation among lawyers reached each nan measurement to nan highest tribunal successful nan land. Apparently erstwhile nan United States Supreme Court wasn’t adjudicating issues of rule captious to nan young country, its justices were reading—and raving about—Jane Austen.

We cognize this for 2 reasons. The first is an 1826 missive from Chief Justice John Marshall himself, rebuking Associate Justice Joseph Story connected a very non-legal matter:

 “I was a small mortified to find that you had not admitted nan sanction of Miss Austen into your database of favorites….Her flights are not lofty, she does not soar connected eagle’s wings, but she is pleasing, interesting, equable…”

The 2nd point successful grounds of nan USSC’s infatuation pinch Austen is an 1852 missive of preamble from a Boston woman, connected behalf of her family, to Jane Austen’s admiral brother. Eliza Quincy, girl of a president of Harvard, opened her missive pinch words designed to impress—and persuade—Sir Francis Austen into sharing much astir his sister:

“[The] power of her brilliant is extensively recognised successful nan American Republic, moreover by nan highest judicial authorities. The precocious Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, of nan ultimate Court of nan United States, and his subordinate Mr. Justice Story, highly estimated and admired Miss Austen, and to them we beryllium our preamble to her society.”

The Quincy family’s missive of admiration to Sir Francis group disconnected a concatenation series of events that culminated (as acold arsenic we know) successful an 1856 transatlantic sojourn betwixt nan improbable pen pals. This was nan imaginative spark that inspired my forthcoming caller Austen astatine Sea. But successful fictionalizing nan Quincy sisters arsenic Henrietta and Charlotte Stevenson, incapable to be college, saturated and bothering celebrated authors and their relations, I would besides toggle shape their begetter from Harvard president to justness of nan Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. As a erstwhile lawyer myself, I americium fascinated arsenic to why truthful galore successful nan ineligible occupation are drawn to Austen’s works. Having owned and written astir a bookshop, having studied and written astir film, Austen astatine Sea would beryllium my rule novel, I told myself.

When I sat down to constitute nan first section (as a erstwhile lawyer, I americium some on-my-feet “pantser” and animal of habit, nan book increasing statement by statement successful an orderly fashion), it wasn’t nan 2 Boston sisters who popped onto nan page but a group of judicial men successful nan outpouring of 1865 engaged successful vigorous debate, waving astir leatherbound volumes from their laps. I knew correct distant (while hoping nan early scholar would not) that nan lawsuit astatine manus did not revolve astir 1 of nan galore weighty issues of that day. Instead, aft nan jubilant mostly and disgruntled dissent time off their backstage chambers, a servant returns nan books to their rightful spot connected nan rule room shelves: Northanger Abbey. Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice. Mansfield Park. Emma. Persuasion.

There were few, if any, lawyers successful nan Austen family. They were teachers and clergymen, soldiers and sailors. Readers of Austen cognize excessively good really overmuch men of trade, rule and medicine were socially looked down connected by nan British elite moreover arsenic nan nineteenth period was ushered in. This is 1 logic why location are fewer lawyer characters successful Austen’s books, group chiefly arsenic they are successful colony gentry life. It whitethorn besides beryllium a awesome logic why Austen’s astir important matter of nan heart—with nan then-penniless Irish lawyer Thomas Lefroy, early Lord Chief Justice of Ireland—ruptured. But location doesn’t request to beryllium galore lawyers successful Austen’s books, because she is already location successful their stead.

Her stories are rife pinch rhetoric, that celebrated literate and ineligible instrumentality that uses devices specified arsenic irony and repetition to persuade. My favourite segment successful each of Austen is Elizabeth Bennet’s takedown successful Pride and Prejudice of nan formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Having heard a rumor that her nephew Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth are engaged, Lady Catherine descends upon nan Bennet family location to extract a committedness that Elizabeth is not—and will ne'er consent to be—affianced to Mr. Darcy.

“Miss Bennet I americium shocked and astonished. I expected to find a much reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a belief that I will ever recede. I shall not spell distant till you person fixed maine nan assurance I require.”

“And I surely NEVER shall springiness it. I americium not to beryllium intimidated into thing truthful wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship wants Mr. Darcy to wed your daughter; but would my giving you nan wished-for committedness make their matrimony astatine each much probable? Supposing him to beryllium attached to me, would my refusing to judge his manus make him wish to bestow it connected his cousin? Allow maine to say, Lady Catherine, that nan arguments pinch which you person supported this bonzer exertion person been arsenic frivolous arsenic nan exertion was ill-judged. You person wide mistaken my character, if you deliberation I tin beryllium worked connected by specified persuasions arsenic these.”

With nan parry and thrust of a courtroom adversary, Elizabeth dismisses Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s each reproach pinch truthful overmuch rhetorical wit and repetition that she reduces nan snobbish aristocrat to—as acold arsenic Elizabeth is concerned—the slightest threatening threat of all: “I return nary time off of you, Miss Bennet…You merit nary specified attention.”

Similarly, Mr. Bennet’s celebrated reply, erstwhile Elizabeth refuses to wed nan toadish Reverend Mr. Collins, has each nan gleeful reverberatory smack of a courtroom litigator leaving nan witnesser container stunned into silence.

“Your mother insists upon your accepting [him]. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?”

 “Yes, aliases I will ne'er spot her again.”

“An unhappy replacement is earlier you, Elizabeth. From this time you must beryllium a alien to 1 of your parents. Your mother will ne'er spot you again if you do NOT wed Mr. Collins, and I will ne'er spot you again if you DO.”

Austen is filled pinch characters who usage (or abuse) reside pinch nan dexterity of a seasoned lawyer. She puts words into her characters’ mouths, and they successful move go frighteningly adept. Henry Crawford almost convinces successful his emotion for Fanny Price done nan powerfulness of his words—Willoughby almost moves nan sister of Marianne, who lies adjacent decease from a malady brought connected by his sadistic rejection, pinch an eleventh-hour speech. A reside truthful self-justifying—yet truthful unconvincing and truthful foul—that screenwriter Emma Thompson wisely omitted it altogether from nan movie adjustment for which she later won nan Academy Award. In nan end, for each their words, what keeps these “bad boys’” from winning is nan civilized nonaccomplishment of their deeds: a triumph of reality complete cognition if ever location was.

This powerfulness to persuade, erstwhile it does succeed, often forms nan cardinal cog to Jane Austen’s plots. Persuasion wouldn’t beryllium if family friend Lady Russell had not talked Anne Eliot retired of marrying her 1 existent love. Similarly, location is simply a hilarious series adjacent nan commencement of Sense and Sensibility, captured truthful good successful nan Ang Lee movie type and Emma Thompson’s script, that leads to nan homelessness of its sister heroines.

Fanny Dashwood, done verbal manipulation of nan highest benignant (what world would we now unrecorded in, 1 shudders to ask, if Fanny could person ruled much than nan roost?), easy convinces her dithering hubby that—in opposition to nan deathbed wishes of his father—it would really beryllium better for his disenfranchised mother and sisters not to person a meaningful bequest. The segment goes connected astatine length, Fanny taking and twisting each 1 of her husband’s arguments into truthful galore knots he is near tongue-tied, each guidance mute, each acquiescence complete. I deliberation of this segment a batch correct now, nan ascension of repetitive and escalating sound into meaning. I fearfulness Jane Austen would beryllium rolling complete successful her grave.

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Austen astatine Sea by Natalie Jenner is disposable from St. Martin’s Press, an imprint of Macmillan, Inc.