The 'Art of Losing' in English Literature

Hi all, this afternoon's session will comprise of a pre-recorded lecture followed by a Q&A with the lecturer, Dr Ushashi Dasgupta. You can find the lecture here: https://ox.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=79c60bb1-06fa-4701-b982-ac0d00acc76f

The talk is just over 40 minutes long, so please make sure you have joined the zoom call by 3:40pm in order to ask any questions and join in the discussion. Thanks!

Hi everyone. Very kindly, Ushashi has sent through some responses to questions asked in the chat that she didn't have time to get to.

what do you think the purpose is of the wife actually writing the letter? I thought it was another example of Willoughby showing no moral responsibility? a means of distance again and using women as the evil scapegoat

Great point. I 100% agree with your reading—we only have Willoughby’s word for it, and he has a long history of belittling women in the novel, re-writing their narratives, and ventriloquising them (i.e. speaking for them). All of this -- the letter, and his conversation with Elinor -- shows that he is good at talking the talk. He uses language (literally) to seduce, and then to wriggle out of trouble. Speaking of Austen’s language, again—she has such an ear for speech, and it would be interesting to read the dialogue between Elinor and Willoughby with close attention to detail. Note how ‘Madam’ comes up again, for example. And in other parts of the conversation Willoughby is very florid and melodramatic--again, these are linguistic and stylistic choices on Austen's part. I wonder whether this might also be something to do with Austen's experiments with literary tradition and character tropes. She's trying to see whether Willoughby can be a "reformed rake".

I thought the idea that we never actually hear from the wife is super interesting: sort of meta textual? Austen commenting on men writing about women’s perspectives in this complex construction when it is just willoughby escaping responsibility
 

Another fantastic point. I agree. I would actually recommend that you think about all instances of women’s inscription in Austen (by that I mean, say, writing letters, etc.) as a meta-textual comment on female authorship and women’s voices. Austen’s most explicit about it in her last complete novel, Persuasion – “Men have every advantage of us [i.e. women] in telling their own story… the pen has been in their hands… I will not allow books to prove anything.” In the context of S&S, I think it’s intriguing that Marianne and Elinor are each very good at a creative form of expression: Marianne, music, and Elinor, art. Do these forms allow them to express themselves more freely than language, what with all of the etiquette of 'polite' conversation? It becomes a way for Austen to say something about writing, too. 

That is a gorgeous way of putting it, language adding structure to emtions that we cannot comprehend

I really liked your point about Austen’s elaboration contrasting with Bishop’s tightness and brevity! it’s a nice comparison of how the complex can be expressed in both the brevity of poetry and the formal diction of elaborate letter writing both exploring heart break

Thank you! This is beautifully articulated-—and, to bring Smith into the conversation about length vs. brevity, think about the generous verbosity and digressions of her novel and the pithiness of Jerome’s final email (in Forster’s original, a telegram—which doesn’t even allow for complete sentences. By definition, it is clipped. You can only get so much into a telegram.)