Page 93 - The Language of Humour

80 WRITTEN TEXTS—LITERATURE
HUMOUR IN JANE AUSTEN
The humour of Jane Austen is created through irony (see Unit 3) either
in the author’s voice or in one of the characters’. In the novel Emma
Knightley’s proposal of marriage to Emma is followed by this
comment:

What did she say?—Just what she ought, of course. A lady always
does.
It is humour with a target—Austen’s stance on the society of the time is
detached and mocking. This, in turn, affects the reader’s stance: ‘he
alone—reading between the lines—has become the secret friend of the
author’ (Patricia Meyer Spacks, ‘Austen’s Laughter’, in Barreca 1988).
It is not only in the author’s direct comments that interpretation of the
text is manipulated. The speech of the characters is sometimes
constructed so that we do not take it at face value. In Pride and
Prejudice Mr Bennet’s response to his daughter’s piano-playing is
paradoxical:

You have delighted us long enough.

Though a likeable character, his witty remarks are cynical:

For what do we live, but to make sport of our neighbours, and
laugh at them in our turn.

These passages are scattered throughout the text: in other words, irony
is one of many narrative devices.
Patricia Meyer Spacks comments that there is a further way in which
humour and laughter are used in Austen’s novels to construct character
and plot. The Bennet family are characterised partly by their laughter. In
Pride and Prejudice the younger Bennet daughters, Lydia and Kitty,
laugh constantly and so reveal their triviality. ‘Mary and Collins in their
self aggrandising solemnities demonstrate their unawareness of a world
outside themselves. Even Jane…is a trifle boring in her relative lack of
humour.’
Spacks points out ‘the defensive function of both Mr Bennet’s
laughter and Elizabeth’s—laughter which helps fend off real social,
psychological, and familial difficulties.’ When her father makes an
insensitive comment about Darcy, she responds with a laugh, but