Alert Janeite Julie P. sent us a link to an interview with Elizabeth Kantor, the editor of the Conservative Book Club and the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature.
FP: What motivated you to write this book?
Kantor: The fact that the great works of literature in English are vanishing from college curricula, or else being distorted beyond recognition.
[. . .]
And then, when politically correct English profs do turn their attention to the great works of English lit., they use them to forward their own political agendas–they dig through our literary classics looking for examples of the racism, colonialism, and “patriarchy,” that are supposed to be the essence of Western culture.
Naturally Dr. Kantor covered Jane Austen in her book.
FP: What are some of your favorite works of English literature and what do they mean to you?
Kantor: Jane Austen’s novels are right up there. The conventional wisdom now is that Austen was a really very “subversive” author—that her books are full of secret rage against “the patriarchy.” Nothing could be further from the truth. As I argue (with lots of examples from Austen’s side-splittingly funny novels) in The Politically Incorrect Guide, Austen is an astute observer of human nature who was well aware that most men would be immensely improved if they were a little more patriarchal than they are. Austen’s novels may be the most fun books in the English language. And they’re also a boost to your moral intelligence. They really inspire you to aim for personal integrity.
Well, it’s good to know that Dr. Kantor didn’t use her book to promote her own political agenda, because, as she took pains to point out, that would cause the downfall of Western civilization. Also, she needs to re-read Persuasion MP, P&P, and S&S and pay particular attention to the parts where some of those set to inherit the great estates under the patriarchal system were less than deserving, and then we’ll discuss whether Jane Austen wanted her society to be “more patriarchal.”
As we already blogged about tonight, the Janeite diaspora embraces a diverse set of viewpoints (to say the least). We are not being politically correct in saying that, just pointing out a fact. That being said, we would, as always, caution against taking an absolutist view of Jane Austen’s work, no matter to which extreme one wishes to cling. And do read things thoroughly! One would not wish to be condemned as Jane condemned John Thorpe, who could only say of Camilla, “It is the horridest nonsense you can imagine; there is nothing in the world in it but an old man’s playing at see-saw and learning Latin; upon my soul there is not.”
Doppelganger from 50 Books points this out quite eloquently in a post on her blog:
A more burning question than the state of my life might be this one: was Jane Austen gay? More specifically, was she gay for her sister, as this article speculates right off the top? When you continue reading, you realize that the thrust of the article isn’t about Austen’s alleged homosexuality, but instead is about the celebrity-obsessed times in which we live, which create a climate in which we care less about the import of a writer’s words and more about rampant gossip about the writer’s personal life.
She referred to this article in The Times.
Jane Austen had a lesbian affair with her older sister, Cassandra. It’s obvious, really. There was “the passionate nature of the sibling bond” so evident in the letters. There were her descriptions of women, betraying “a kind of homophilic fascination”. And, of course, there was her fascination with the “underlying eros of the sister-sister bond”. Case closed, I’d say.
Well, no. All these quotations come from a 1995 article in the London Review of Books by Terry Castle, an American academic. Castle was simply noting certain important preoccupations in her writing. An eager subeditor, however, had other ideas. “Was Jane Austen Gay?” was the headline. The LRB had barely hit the newsstands when Newsnight went on air with an earnest discussion of the sexual proclivities of one of our greatest novelists. Good grief! Was Mr Darcy really a woman, the bulge in his breeches a clumsy prosthetic? We had to know. But why? Literary biography is one of the dominant forms of our time. Almost weekly, big fat books emerge to reveal new truths about our greatest writers. [. . .] And, yes, Austen is in for another doing-over, as a film released next year, Becoming Jane, about “a little-known but true love affair with the brilliant, roguish and attractive young Irishman Tom Lefroy”. One way or another, it seems, we shall just have to accept the awful, the incredible truth: Jane Austen had sex. Gosh.
See where this sort of thing ends up? Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Put down the extremes and back away slowly! And always ask yourself: What Would Jane Do? (In this case? We are convinced she would post and snark, but that’s only because it advances our blogger agenda.)
Review by Heather L
