So it’s okay to be a fan of Jane Austen, just don’t be a FAN of Jane Austen
Alexandra Mullen reviews A Fine Brush on Ivory by Richard Jenkyns in the New York Sun. She likes the book, but can’t resist getting a few swipes in at Janeites.
And Austen readers can read - well, I won’t quite say obsessively, but with a ferocious personal passion unmatched even by Jane Eyre. As David Lodge’s professor Morris Zapp gripes, “Even the dumbest critic understood that Hamlet wasn’t about how the guy could kill his uncle, or the Ancient Mariner about cruelty to animals, but it was surprising how many people thought that Jane Austen’s novels were about finding Mr. Right.”
You have to be very highly educated indeed to think that Jane Austen’s novels aren’t about finding Mr. Right, at least in part. It is, after all, prudent to learn how to identify the Mr. Collinses, Mr. Eltons, Mr. Wickhams, and Willoughbys one meets before one marries them. Still, it is true that Austen fans can sometimes step over a line separating fiction from life.
It’s not that we are unable to agree with this statement in regard to some Friends of Jane; but blanket statements about any group, as we have pointed out before, are most unJanelike.
