The Myth of the Demure Jane Austen
Back there again, are we? According to a review of a book on modesty in modern women:
The growing interest in rigid social strictures manifested by the Jane Austen craze tells her that young women are pining for interference as their mothers once pined for liberation, even to the extent of wanting to be nagged and called on the carpet.
Oh, yes. The “Jane Austen craze” doesn’t have anything to do with just plain good stories that speak to women and men from all over the world and all walks of life. We just read them and write about them and spend an hour or more a night posting on this blog about them because we secretly want someone to tell us how to live our life. We haven’t learned anything from reading Jane Austen’s novels, mind, such as learning to trust our own judgment or not to rely on appearances or to think carefully about our actions. We’re just passive receptacles to be pushed this way and that by stronger minds; just like that sweet, demure young lady, Elizabeth Bennet, who wouldn’t dream of decidedly expressing her opinion to someone older and of a higher station, or telling a gentleman precisely what he can do with his very obliging proposal of marriage. Such a nice quiet girl that Lizzy is! And being a rather pretty girl, she’s lucky that Darcy didn’t just ravish her, because she was asking for it, you know.
Tread carefully, writers, when you attempt to co-opt Jane Austen for your own ends, and remember: she does not work for you. Now shoo, before we get out the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness and start pushing you around.
June 22nd, 2006 at 10:12 am
Yes, exactly . . . what our Editrix just said! Such a spot-on, erudite response far out-classes the reviewer’s stupid and immature remark. That is one writer who deserves the Cluebat!
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:02 am
Hi, Mags! Long time no talk. It’s good to know that you are alive and flourishing still.
It’s right about one thing, Mags- there has been a growth in interest in rigid social strictures, and it has coincided with a rise in JA awareness. There’s a dim awareness that “back then”, things were not the same as they are now, and it has to be admitted that, if you actually read JA, or even if you are hit over the head with it in JA-based movies, this fact has to be confronted. The same thing happens when you read Aphra Behn, or even the Old Testament; but because far fewer people actually bother to do such things, it’s not obvious to self-indulgent academics that it’s everywhere, and you don’t need to make a JA connection to it.
The conclusion is absolute codswallop, of course, and deserves that cluebat.
June 22nd, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Is there some rule that everybody has to work the words “Jane Austen” into their column somehow? Maybe it’s a bet or a challenge that editors have put out there. Or perhaps the marketing people keep score and pass out bonuses. I really don’t see the writer’s point in dragging Austen in to support her argument.
And that’s not even to mention the other questionable assertions. Eating disorders are a complex illness, but I don’t think there’s much evidence to suggest that young women do it to differentiate themselves from men.
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:34 pm
>pining for interference
I’ve only read one Austen novel - Pride & Prejudice - and that only in past month (see my mini-review). If Austen’s other novels are at all like P&P, that new book on “modesty and modern women” seems to have read something into them that simply isn’t there.
On a side-note, for many years I apparently had Austen confused with Alcott (Little Women), and never looked at an Austen novel for fear of finding 300 pages of moralizing sentimentality. I’m glad to have learned otherwise - I really enjoyed P&P.
June 22nd, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Is Mansfield Park about propriety and modesty? If it is, then co-opting Austen isn’t that far-fetched.
Are there Austen heroines who are ‘independent’ and yet at the same time open to good counsel from others? I can think of quite a few; Ms. King may be drawing a dichotomy where one may not exist in Austen for the sake of rhetoric–the balance is not lacking in her heroines, it is lacking in out times.
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:09 pm
I am always impatient with extremes applied to Jane Austen’s work. They are not extreme in the least, which is why they are so appealing to so many different kinds of people. It seems to me that the values being applied in the book reviewed are more Victorian, a didacticism that I don’t think Jane Austen intended.
Like Big Mike pointed out–they’re good books. They are funny. They have wonderful characters. Isn’t that enough to be crazy about?
P.S. Sorry to the posters who got caught in the spam filter–not sure what happened there!
June 22nd, 2006 at 9:48 pm
Hello!
With regard to LaBarge’s comment above:
The link appears to point toe a copy of an a review of a book that appeared in 1999. Strictly speaking, the reviewer is not exposing her own prejudices, but those belonging to the author of the book. (”The growing interest in rigid social strictures manifested by the Jane Austen craze tells HER……”) Those other bits of foolishness are evidently the work of the original author, Ms. Shalit.
I don’t pretend to be a Janeite - at least not yet. I have only read Pride and Prejudice several times (in the past few months), and Emma. I started on Persuasion …. but I keep going back to Pride and Prejudice to read my favorite parts, of which there are too many to count! You might say I am a recent convert.
That said, I can see where the author was coming from (assuming the reviewer read her correctly), even if I don’t agree completely with her. Obviously, Elizabeth Bennet doesn’t fit her stereotype. But Emma… obviously a bright, headstrong young woman, but also very conventional in her own way. What Knightley did with respect to Emma over the years could be said, without much stretching, to be nagging, even if well-meant; and she didn’t exactly tell Knightley where he could put all his unsolicited advice. She listened- or at least let the sounds go into her ears- without rebellion, even if she effectively ignored them. She didn’t “pine for interference”, nor did she “want to be nagged and called on the carpet”, but she didn’t fight it either. The power she had and showed was based upon her position in the ‘rigid social structure’, in addition to her own native abilities. For that matter, even Elizabeth accepted the ‘rigid social structure’, even if she did verbally tweak Lady Catherine’s nose when they first met at Rosings. She was feisty, but she was not a rebel.
And Anne Eliot’s initial problems were caused by her allowing a viewpoint based on a ‘rigid social structure’ to control her conduct and override what her emotions told her to do. The notion of a “rigid social structure” permeates Jane Austen’s work, based on what I’ve read and the synopses of the books I haven’t gotten to (yet!).
I have been browsing through this blog for weeks- and I love it! Especially the P & P movie reviews.
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:47 pm
> rigid social structure
Yes, that’s part of what makes P & P a “comedy of manners” - the society of P & P has a set of well-defined rules re courtship. Lydia would probably have benefitted if her parents were stricter in enforcing the rules. I have to plead ignorance whether today’s young women long for that sort of social structure or not.
…
I read a lot of science fiction when I was a boy / young adult. It was cool to read an author work within a set of rules to tell an interesting story. Imagine my excitement to learn that Jane Austen did just that in P & P, and she did a whole lot more, too. It’s been awhile since I read an SF novel — the next one has a high hurdle: P & P has raised my expectations as to what a novel can accomplish.
(Is my enthusiasm overrunning? My fiction project this Summer is to read classic novels, and I think P & P was a good start.)
June 23rd, 2006 at 12:37 am
Reading this excerpt somehow reminds me of the words of Mr. Collins (paraphrasing as my P&P is two rooms away), “Your wit and vivacity I think must be acceptable to Lady Catherine, when tempered with the silence and respect her rank will inevitably excite.”
A stubborn or ignorant person may take any evidence whatsoever and insist that it means just what they believe it should. What a shame to find anyone who has not detected Jane Austen’s remarkable feminism and refreshing connection to real human life. I agree, Mags, Austen was no extremist- she painted all sorts of characters with all sorts of strengths and follies.
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:28 am
Welcome new converts Big Mike and Curt! Oh, I just love it when guys take the trouble to give Austen a chance and discover (usually to their surprise) what a marvelous writer she is. I found Curt’s remark very apropos: “..the power she had and showed was based upon her position in the ‘rigid social structure’, in addition to her own native abilities”, - especially having just finished reading a fascinating book called ‘Jane Austen & Crime’. I won’t go clutter up this post with a description of what it’s about (you can read my review here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0976353954/sr=8-1/qid=1151053724/ref=sr_1_1/002-5324197-7903226?%5Fencoding=UTF8)
But one of the chapters goes into great detail about Georgian prisons (did you know Jane visited one once with her brother Edward, the Magistrate?), and the concept and symbolism of imprisonment/escape as Jane works them into her novels. The theme is particularly strong in Mansfield Park. The author comes to the conclusion that Jane’s attitude was that social rules and strictures of the time limited women in frustrating ways, but that they were also there for their very real protection. Maria Bertram quotes the starling “I cannot get out”, but later in A Sentimental Journey (where the quote comes from), the man who wants to free the bird becomes aware that it was put in the cage as a vulnerable fledgling to protect it from outside danger, and it had only remained safe to that day because it was in there. It is a meditation on what IS freedom, and at what cost is its purchase worth. I can highly recommend the book, by the way, to anyone who’s an Austen fan. It gives you utterly fascinating (and for me completely new) insight into what her life and times must have been like.
June 23rd, 2006 at 5:36 am
P.S. Those interested in reading an excerpt from Jane Austen & Crime can do so here: http://www.jasa.net.au/download/theft.pdf
It’s a PDF file, so you will need Adobe on your computer to open it.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:21 pm
A stubborn or ignorant person may take any evidence whatsoever and insist that it means just what they believe it should.
Right, which is why it’s dangerous to try to put words in her mouth!
I don’t like it when writers put Jane Austen fans in a box as all being a certain way. Just look at this thread–it’s proof that we are not!
June 25th, 2006 at 1:44 am
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