DOROTHY! Dust off the Cluebat!
The baseball season is well under way, but here at AustenBlog World Headquarters we’re really just getting started on spring training. Just taking out the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness, swinging it around, warming up a little. It’s been a while, but the ignorant are still out there, and need a gentle (and, we remind our more squeamish readers, completely virtual) introduction to a clue, with extreme prejudice.
First we have an Austen scholar from the Daily Record spouting off about Becoming Jane.
Such is the level of devotion shown by Jane Austen’s aficionados, that anybody planning to tell the story of the “real” Jane runs the risk of being beaten to death.
VIRTUALLY, bunky. Virtually. 
Besides, we would love to see the story of the “real” Jane. Too bad we haven’t yet.
It could all be poppycock
Wait a minute…
It
could all beis all poppycock
There, fixed that for you. And, oh yeah…
*beats smug superciliousness into smithereens with Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness*
We don’t know if this is really Cluebat-worthy–maybe just a love tap or two. We are, after all, still in training.
I’ve been enjoying the opportunity to escape into a simpler world through reading some of Jane Austen’s novels, a world where women occupy their time with music, needlework and walks about the grounds; where a single woman going for a ride in an open carriage with a man to whom she is not related is cause for raising eyebrows.
It’s so nice to hear no reference to global warming, the economy or the presidential campaign.
What? You get THAT from Jane Austen’s novels? For crying out loud.
For all the simplicity, the relationships remain true. Love starts with a glance and words exchanged on the dance floor, meets with obstacles and prevails in the end after being tried and tested. Nary a kiss is exchanged until the engagement. What a nice change from today, where people jump into bed with hardly a thought about the consequences.
Oh, yes. Nobody does that in Jane Austen’s novels. *coughWilloughbyElizaCrawfordMariaWickhamLydiacough*
Curiously, the authoress herself even acknowledges that in the previous paragraph. We don’t really have a problem with the article itself, we just find it curious that Jane Austen’s novels are used to illustrate it.
*love tap*
There.
(And this reminds us–we haven’t forgotten about the Golden Cluebats, we’ve just been a trifle busy lately.)
April 14th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
“This is a proper bodice ripper that shouldn’t offend Austen fans too badly.”
UMMMM…yeah right
April 14th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I think she meant good girls.
Eliza-Maria-Lydia were losers!!!
April 15th, 2008 at 8:19 am
I am a long-time Janeite (I mean, really long; longer than I want to admit to as that would show my age). I observed several decades ago–in the years P.M. (pre-movies; specifically pre-Colin Firth) that Austen was used as a sort of class-based Judgment Day divider, like that between sheep and goats. If you knew who JA was and liked her works, you were an acceptable and accepted upper-middle class sheep; if you had no clue, you were a wretched, beer-guzzling goat.
Now, after even journalists have seen the movies, JA is invoked as a test not of class but of “sensibility”–if you like her works as depicted in movies, you are a True Romantick. If you don’t, you are a wretched, beer-guzzling goat. What the journalists, goats and Andrew Davies and his sycophants and imitators don’t recognize is that JA’s works are 1) funny 2) clear-sighted and 3) ironic. JA didn’t write “bodice rippers”–she mocked them.
Mags, you’re out of shape. Drop and give me ten and then come out swinging that Cluebat!
April 15th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Allison:
Your comment “Austen was used as a sort of class-based Judgment Day divider” reminded me of something I read in high school back in the 70’s. I had to search the internet a bit but here it is. In “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” by J.D. Salinger:
“Oh,” said Eloise, “what’s the use of talking? Let’s drop it. I’ll just depress you. Shut me up.”
“Well, wudga marry him for, then?” Mary Jane said.
“Oh, God! I don’t know. He told me he loved Jane Austen. He told me her books meant a great deal to him. That’s exactly what he said. I found out after we were married that he hadn’t even read one of her books. You know who his favorite author is?”
Mary Jane shook her head.
“L. Manning Vines. Ever hear of him?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Neither did I. Neither did anybody else. He wrote a book about four men that starved to death in Alaska. Lew doesn’t remember the name of it, but it’s the most beautifully written book he’s ever read. Christ! He isn’t even honest enough to come right out and say he liked it because it was about four guys that starved to death in an igloo or something. He has to say it was beautifully written.”
April 16th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Snort! Thanks, Ana–that’s great!
When my soon-to-be-ex was courting me, he tried to read P&P in order to please me–got to p. 112 and claimed he had only laughed once. I let him quit, and thought him commendable at the time for trying.
Had I but known, this was indeed a litmus test!
April 16th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
heh. You’re not wrong about it being litmus test Allison…my recent ex, when he found out I love Jane Austen, pretended he knew all about her and loved her books…about 2 minutes into the conversation I just had to stop him….in 2 minutes he’d claimed she’d only written one book (P&P), which had been a tremendous flop, so she became a recluse, lived to a ripe old age and left behind her 3 daughters!!! God knows where the idiot got that from…