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[Jane’s] eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had never
been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil
at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no
fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning
character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire
it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in
Highbury. *There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit."*


As Emma contemplates Jane shortly after Jane's arrival in Highbury in Ch.
20, she grudgingly acknowledges the elegance of Jane's style of beauty, and
feels she must admire it, in comparison to what she sees in other females
in Highbury.


Why does Emma then think, "not to be vulgar", that this constituted Jane's
"distinction and merit". Is it Emma's sense that Jane is no great shakes to
stand out in Highbury, because there is no real competition? If so, then,
Emma is in effect, undercutting her admiration as soon as she thinks it,
because in fact, she is jealous of Jane's elegance but hates to admit it? Or
is Emma, in her snobbery, characterizing her thoughts as "vulgar" for some
other reason I am missing?


ARNIE

I have always thought that this was about the vulgarity of presuming to
compliment a person's "merit" based strictly on their appearance.



On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 1:31?AM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io
<arnieperlstein@...> wrote:

[Jane’s] eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had never
been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil
at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no
fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning
character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire
it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in
Highbury. *There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit."*


As Emma contemplates Jane shortly after Jane's arrival in Highbury in Ch.
20, she grudgingly acknowledges the elegance of Jane's style of beauty, and
feels she must admire it, in comparison to what she sees in other females
in Highbury.


Why does Emma then think, "not to be vulgar", that this constituted Jane's
"distinction and merit". Is it Emma's sense that Jane is no great shakes to
stand out in Highbury, because there is no real competition? If so, then,
Emma is in effect, undercutting her admiration as soon as she thinks it,
because in fact, she is jealous of Jane's elegance but hates to admit it?
Or
is Emma, in her snobbery, characterizing her thoughts as "vulgar" for some
other reason I am missing?


ARNIE

--
NOTE: Effective February 1, 2022, my office hours are from 12 noon to 5 pm,
Monday through Friday, and by appointment during other hours.
<>
Stephanie Vardavas
stephanievardavas.com
<>
*Specializing
in product safety and regulatory compliance for consumer products, as well
as licensing and sports marketing, including sponsorships and endorsements.
Also supporting nonprofits and simple trademark registrations.*

*Pronouns: she/her/hers*

*This email may be confidential and privileged. If you have received it in
error, please respond to advise sender of the error and then delete the
email and any attachments. Thank you.*

Interesting, Stephanie, thanks!!

Have you made it back to Pdx yet? I’m about to take off from Sea-Tac to get back to Portland before midnight.

Wasn’t it a great AGM??

Arnie

I'm still in Cleveland. Going to the Football Hall of Fame in Canton
Monday, then back to Portland Monday evening.

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 2:10?AM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io
<arnieperlstein@...> wrote:

Interesting, Stephanie, thanks!!

Have you made it back to Pdx yet? I’m about to take off from Sea-Tac to
get back to Portland before midnight.

Wasn’t it a great AGM??

Arnie

On Oct 20, 2024, at 10:40?PM, Stephanie Vardavas via groups.io

<vardavas@...> wrote:

?I have always thought that this was about the vulgarity of presuming to
compliment a person's "merit" based strictly on their appearance.

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 1:31?AM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io
<arnieperlstein@...> wrote:

[Jane’s] eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had never
been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil
at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed

no

fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the

reigning

character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles,

admire

it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little

in

Highbury. *There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit."*


As Emma contemplates Jane shortly after Jane's arrival in Highbury in

Ch.

20, she grudgingly acknowledges the elegance of Jane's style of beauty,

and

feels she must admire it, in comparison to what she sees in other

females

in Highbury.


Why does Emma then think, "not to be vulgar", that this constituted

Jane's

"distinction and merit". Is it Emma's sense that Jane is no great

shakes to

stand out in Highbury, because there is no real competition? If so,

then,

Emma is in effect, undercutting her admiration as soon as she thinks it,
because in fact, she is jealous of Jane's elegance but hates to admit

it?

Or
is Emma, in her snobbery, characterizing her thoughts as "vulgar" for

some

other reason I am missing?


ARNIE

--
NOTE: Effective February 1, 2022, my office hours are from 12 noon to 5

pm,

Monday through Friday, and by appointment during other hours.
<

Stephanie Vardavas
stephanievardavas.com
<

*Specializing
in product safety and regulatory compliance for consumer products, as

well

as licensing and sports marketing, including sponsorships and

endorsements.

Also supporting nonprofits and simple trademark registrations.*

*Pronouns: she/her/hers*

*This email may be confidential and privileged. If you have received it

in

error, please respond to advise sender of the error and then delete the
email and any attachments. Thank you.*

Enjoy!

It was nice chatting with you and our table mates at the banquet - it was well worth the effort of assembling a good.

Arnie

Arnie, I interpreted Emma's comment, "There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit.", to mean that Emma thought that no one in Highbury had any elegance, and that few were not vulgar.
I also identified Jane's "fuller bloom" as referring to her pregnancy. It would be amusing if Austen was referring to the royal dalliances, the illegitimate children (i.e. Fitz- ) with this statement. It also ties back to the charade in Chapter 9:
"It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning?character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in Highbury."
"My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings, Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.Another view of man, my second brings, Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!But, ah! united, what reverse we have!Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown;Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave, And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone. Thy ready wit the word will soon supply, May its approval beam in that soft eye!"

Liz Anne

The word vulgar did not have any meaning of obscenity,it just meant
"common" such as the common people- laborers and such. The word still
retained the meaning it had when the Vulgate Bible was published-- the
Bible in the language of the common people which at that time was Latin. I
think, Emma means that assessing Jane's looks wasn't something a person of
the gentry and up would do-- though , of course, they did.
Nancy

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 1:31?AM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io
<arnieperlstein@...> wrote:

[Jane’s] eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had never
been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil
at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no
fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning
character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire
it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in
Highbury. *There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit."*


As Emma contemplates Jane shortly after Jane's arrival in Highbury in Ch.
20, she grudgingly acknowledges the elegance of Jane's style of beauty, and
feels she must admire it, in comparison to what she sees in other females
in Highbury.


Why does Emma then think, "not to be vulgar", that this constituted Jane's
"distinction and merit". Is it Emma's sense that Jane is no great shakes to
stand out in Highbury, because there is no real competition? If so, then,
Emma is in effect, undercutting her admiration as soon as she thinks it,
because in fact, she is jealous of Jane's elegance but hates to admit it?
Or
is Emma, in her snobbery, characterizing her thoughts as "vulgar" for some
other reason I am missing?


ARNIE

This is another example of Austen’s ambiguity.


What does “there” in *”There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit."*


“There” could refer to 1. Jane Fairfax or 2. Highbury.


Liz Anne

??Thank you very much, Liz Anne — yes, as you know well, I’m approaching
the 20th anniversary of my insight that Jane Fairfax says “It must be
born(e)” near the end of the novel, because she is then in labor, after
having confined herself to Highbury for her last 2 trimesters. That was
when I finally realized, after 2 1/2 years of finding more and more clues
scattered among the 6 novels, that there were shadow stories in every one
of them.

I find brilliant your extension of the more mainstream idea of “elegance”
as (to channel Miss Bingley) an acquired accomplishment of higher class
women, as is your connecting that idea to the courtship/Prince of Whales
charade - brava!!

NANCY: “?The word vulgar did not have any meaning of obscenity, it just
meant "common" such as the common people- laborers and such. The word still
retained the meaning it had when the Vulgate Bible was published-- the
Bible in the language of the common people which at that time was Latin.
I think Emma means that assessing Jane's looks wasn't something a person
of the gentry and up would do-- though , of course, they did.”

Nancy, I think it’s pretty clear that even in JA’s era, the meanings of
"vulgar" as (i) a reference to social class, and as (II) a reference to a
lack of manners and “air” as per Miss Bingley (and Emma, whose snobbery is
similar), already had a great deal of overlap - if a woman was busy earning
a living by hard work, it was a luxury to “learn” how to behave with
refined manners.

But I particularly like Stephanie’s and your similar focus on the
unwittingly ironically vulgar behavior of a supposedly "elegant" woman
asserting and judging others as vulgar based on nothing other than class
snobbery. But...I don’t however think that’s how Emma meant it when she
thought it - that is what I think Austen meant for us to think about Emma
thinking her self-deluding meaning. JA clear understood the difference
between superficial "vulgarity" and the deeper, and truly meaningfully
wrong vulgarity of the heart, mind and soul.

That's exactly what JA’s niece Fanny Knight Knatchbull (the primary
real-life model, I’ve long asserted, for Emma Woodhouse) did in her
infamous truly vulgar letter to her sister a half century after JA’s death,
when she called her aunts Jane and Cassandra “vulgar”. Maybe by then Fanny
had finally realized that she had been skewered satirically as “Emma”, and
she was just a little peeved about that unflattering, all-too-revealing
portrait of her.


I’m puzzled, however, by why you made reference to “obscenity”. Where did
that come from? Neither I nor Liz Anne referred to “smut”. Are you
suggesting that a complex, poignant, veiled fictional depiction by JA of a
pregnancy outside wedlock would constitute “obscenity”? Maybe I've missed
your point.

I deliberately used that Anglo-Saxon term “smut” just then, because that
word “obscenity” sorta put me in remind (as JA might have put it) of its
being used by the final plenary speaker at the just concluded JASNA. He
vulgarly, inelegantly, and seemingly homophobically, used it in responding
during the q&a to an attendee's favorable mention of “Pride and
Prometheus”, an Austen mashup of P&P and Persuasion, in which, apparently,
the famous fossil hunter Mary Anning and Mary Bennet fall in love with each
other in Lyme. A number of us in the audience were not pleased to hear such
a sentiment expressed by someone who was given the privilege of addressing
700 attendees at the farewell luncheon.

Arnie

Even more brilliant, Liz Anne - indeed!! With Austen it sometimes is just a
single word, that can, like Archimedes's proverbial lever, exert tremendous
force on the mind of a sensitive reader like yourself, and transport us to
a brave, new "world" of the novel in a whole new "orbit"! ;)

ARNIE

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 6:59?AM Liz Anne Potamianos via groups.io
<lizannepotamianos@...> wrote:

This is another example of Austen’s ambiguity.


What does “there” in *”There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and
merit."*


“There” could refer to 1. Jane Fairfax or 2. Highbury.


Liz Anne

On Oct 21, 2024, at 09:27, Nancy Mayer <regencyresearcher@...>

wrote:

?The word vulgar did not have any meaning of obscenity,it just meant
"common" such as the common people- laborers and such. The word still
retained the meaning it had when the Vulgate Bible was published-- the
Bible in the language of the common people which at that time was Latin.

I

think, Emma means that assessing Jane's looks wasn't something a person

of

the gentry and up would do-- though , of course, they did.
Nancy

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 1:31?AM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io
<arnieperlstein@...> wrote:

[Jane’s] eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had never
been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil
at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed

no

fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the

reigning

character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles,

admire

it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little

in

Highbury. *There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit."*


As Emma contemplates Jane shortly after Jane's arrival in Highbury in

Ch.

20, she grudgingly acknowledges the elegance of Jane's style of beauty,

and

feels she must admire it, in comparison to what she sees in other

females

in Highbury.


Why does Emma then think, "not to be vulgar", that this constituted

Jane's

"distinction and merit". Is it Emma's sense that Jane is no great

shakes to

stand out in Highbury, because there is no real competition? If so,

then,

Emma is in effect, undercutting her admiration as soon as she thinks it,
because in fact, she is jealous of Jane's elegance but hates to admit

it?

Or
is Emma, in her snobbery, characterizing her thoughts as "vulgar" for

some

other reason I am missing?


ARNIE

As I do not believe Jane Fairfax is pregnant,I took her increased bloom to
be because Frank Churchill is nearby. That is before she is treated badly
by hm.
Nancy

On Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 7:14?AM Liz Anne Potamianos via groups.io
<lizannepotamianos@...> wrote:

Arnie, I interpreted Emma's comment, "There, not to be vulgar, was
distinction, and merit.", to mean that Emma thought that no one in Highbury
had any elegance, and that few were not vulgar.
I also identified Jane's "fuller bloom" as referring to her pregnancy. It
would be amusing if Austen was referring to the royal dalliances, the
illegitimate children (i.e. Fitz- ) with this statement. It also ties back
to the charade in Chapter 9:
"It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning character,
and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire
it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in
Highbury."
"My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings, Lords of the earth! their
luxury and ease.Another view of man, my second brings, Behold him there,
the monarch of the seas!But, ah! united, what reverse we have!Man's boasted
power and freedom, all are flown;Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a
slave, And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone. Thy ready wit the word will
soon supply, May its approval beam in that soft eye!"

Liz Anne




On Monday, October 21, 2024 at 01:31:47 AM EDT, Arnie Perlstein <
arnieperlstein@...> wrote:

[Jane’s] eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had never
been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil
at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no
fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning
character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire
it:—*elegance*, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in
Highbury. *There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit."*


As Emma contemplates Jane shortly after Jane's arrival in Highbury in Ch.
20, she grudgingly acknowledges the elegance of Jane's style of beauty, and
feels she must admire it, in comparison to what she sees in other females
in Highbury.


Why does Emma then think, "not to be vulgar", that this constituted Jane's
"distinction and merit". Is it Emma's sense that Jane is no great shakes to
stand out in Highbury, because there is no real competition? If so, then,
Emma is in effect, undercutting her admiration as soon as she thinks it,
because in fact, she is jealous of Jane's elegance but hates to admit it?
Or
is Emma, in her snobbery, characterizing her thoughts as "vulgar" for some
other reason I am missing?


ARNIE