Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

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Much as I loved – and still love – the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice , I was soon introduced to a very different side of Austen. We studied Mansfield Park for A-Level; a novel which has a very un-dashing hero, only one ball, and a heroine who doesn’t end up in the big house. I really struggled with Mansfield Park and I suppose I’ve been trying to bring those two very different sides of Austen into some kind of balance ever since! Furthermore, the snarkiness and disrespect to other critics and Janeites was insane. For example, one passage in the book: ”Slavery wasn’t some distant, abstract notice for Jane. Her own family has ties to the Caribbean. Her eldest brother James, has a slave owning grandfather, James Nibbs, an Oxford acquaintance of the Reverend George Austen” leads to the following footnote: “The biography Claire Tomlin includes this information in an appendix about attitudes to slavery, almost as if she thinks the issue doesn’t really have anything to do with Jane or her writing.”

There are many more comments I could make on this book which, in my opinion, was a mixed bag of fascinating insights and unhelpful suggestions that I could have done without. You may discover some real gems that take you closer to Jane’s world, but if you love Jane’s novels as the love stories they are, then you might not want to take the risk!

He co-teaches and co-founded a year-long freshman Humanities course at Harvard, with author and professor Stephen Greenblatt - the course is called “Humanities 10: An Introductory Humanities Colloquium.”

Enclosure was the turning of common lands into privately held lands for use by the rich only. "Gruel" is Kelly's chapter on Emma, in which Jane references how wealth was concentrated into the hands of a few while workers starved, unable to afford British wheat. The Corn Laws kept the price artificially kept high; good for farmers and disastrous for the working poor. Through a combination of beautifully precise close readings alongside Austen’s biographical, literary and historical context, Kelly shows us that the novels were about nothing more or less than the burning political questions of the day. Contrary to Churchill’s infamous assertion that her characters led “calm lives” free from worry “about the French Revolution or the crashing struggle of the Napoleonic Wars”, Kelly reveals an oeuvre steeped in the anxiety and fear of war. She shows us that despite those who “stubbornly insist that despite using the word enclosure, Jane doesn’t really mean it”, at least two of Austen’s novels ( Mansfield Park and Emma) were engaged with the effects of the Enclosure Acts and their attendant dangers of poverty and misery. Though I am ready to accept that Jane was highly influenced by the times in which she wrote, I remain unconvinced that she wrote just to be radical, dressed up in a story. To challenge and instruct as well as entertain maybe, but I personally still believe she was first and foremost a storyteller.This is more a request for confirmation, then a real question. Something I want to discuss with you. I find that Jane Austen’s stubborn wish to write and publish novels is her first political statement and her most revolutionary act as a woman living in that time and that place. Then came her refusal to marry. Weren’t those truly revolutionary acts? When Kelly is discussing Willoughby’s visit to the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility when he believes Marianne to be dying, Kelly states that Willoughby “turns up at what he thinks is Marianne’s death-bed intoxicated (‘yes, I am very drunk’)”(3), quoting Willoughby’s own words. However, she totally disregards his next words – ‘A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me’(4) – indicating that he was being sarcastic and most definitely in his right mind and not drunk. Of the two books, Kelly’s is more literary and Looser’s more scholarly. There are pluses and minuses in both directions. Kelly’s breathless vehemence means her argument is always throbbing with righteous indignation, but it’s also not always a particularly rigorous or convincing argument. Looser’s early chapters have a tendency to feel dutiful and plodding, but her argument is nuanced and subtle. Kelly’s book is a lot more fun to read, if occasionally infuriating, but Looser’s is much more convincing. Jane Austen, the Secret Radical is entertaining, but also deeply frustrating

We have, really, very little reason to believe that Jane was in love with Tom Lefroy. But each image colors our understanding in some way or another, from Henry Austen’s careful portrait of his sister as an accidental author to Curtis Sittenfeld’s updated Pride and Prejudice, set in suburban Cincinnati. Almost everything we think we know about Jane Austen is wrong. Her novels don't confine themselves to grand houses and they were not written just for readers' enjoyment. She writes about serious subjects and her books are deeply subversive. We just don't read her properly - we haven't been reading her properly for 200 years. Kelly shakes our view of Jane up...a lot! Jane's younger family members grew up in the Victorian Age and tweaked Jane's image to fit the ideal of a pious, quiet, unassuming, Christian woman. Kelly shows us that Austen was fully aware of what was going on in the world during the turbulent times she lived in, and sure of what she thought of it. The speeches that are put into the heroes’ mouths, their thoughts and designs—the chief of all this must be invention.” The older and more intelligent Eleanor Tilney, who reads history chiefly for pleasure, expresses herself “very well contented to take the false with the true.”

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Oh, how I wanted to like this more. There are some strong moments like the explanations of gypsies and dinosaurs, but UGH. UGH UGH Then you get to the part where she explains that the reason we never learn Colonel Brandon’s first name in Sense and Sensibility is that it is undoubtedly William, and that if Austen were to reveal this to us, we would realize that his ward Eliza William is in fact his illegitimate daughter. You know what, sure. The Making of Jane Austen is more academic. It can be dry, but its argument is also more compelling. If we want to be the best readers of Jane’s novels that we can be, the readers that she hoped for, then we have to take her seriously. We can’t make the mistake that the publisher Crosby made and let our eyes slide over what doesn’t seem to be important.