Why has it taken so long for the press to figure this out?

Both in the film Becoming Jane and the TV movie Miss Austen Regrets, Austen was depicted as a waspish cynical tomboy, clever with words if not so clever with men: a sort of Regency Sue Perkins. In the TV movie, there was a greater stab at complexity, as the character grew bitter with age – an Elizabeth Bennett who never nabs Mr Darcy – but in both there was, I would hazard, an incipient underlying sexism, based on the notion that Austen’s work was underpinned by her own failures in love.

Because here’s the thing about Jane Austen. She was a very great genius. She is possibly the greatest genius in the history of English literature, arguably greater than Shakespeare. And her achievement is not that much to do with love, although that was her subject matter. It’s to do with technique. Before her there are three strands in English fiction: the somewhat mental, directly-reader-addressing semi-oral romps of Nashe and Sterne and Fielding; the sensationalist Gothic work of Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe; and the romances of Eliza Haywood and Fanny Burney.

However great these writers are, none could be read now and considered modern. When Austen gets into her stride, which she does very quickly with Sense and Sensibility, suddenly, you have all the key modern realist devices: ironic narration; controlled point of view; structural unity; transparency of focus; ensemble characterisation; fixed arenas of time and place; and, most importantly, the giving-up of the fantastical in favour of a notion that art should represent life as it is actually lived in all its wonderful ordinariness. She is the first person, as John Updike put it: “to give the mundane its beautiful due”, and her work leads to Updike as much as it does to George Eliot.

I have no idea how a mainly home-educated rector’s daughter came by all that, but I know that imagining her as a kind of acerbic spinster flattens out this genius. It becomes all about the subject matter and not at all about the huge creative advance her work represents.

*stands and applauds*

Go read the whole thing, it’s quite brilliant and we don’t want to violate copyright anymore outrageously than we already have by copying it all.

And hasn’t Dr. Who visited Jane Austen at some point? Not the current incarnation, but we seem to recall hearing something to that effect about one of the former Doctors.

The Austen 2008 campaign continues as Jane collects superdelegates.

Alert Janeite Patrice was in Bath recently and heard a rumor that 4 Sydney Place, the house in which Jane Austen lived the longest in Bath, was for sale. A bit of investigation showed that two flats are (or once were) available for sale.

The third-floor flat is probably where the servants slept; it’s the top floor with the dormer windows, and seems surprisingly airy for all that.

The second-floor flat is the humdinger: not only is it quite beautifully appointed (we love the kitchen), but check this out from the description:

The great novelist Jane Austen (1775 – 1817) stayed at various houses in Bath, but longest at 4 Sydney Place, to which her family moved when her father retired from his Hampshire parish.

This fine second floor apartment has some retained period features and gas fired central heating. The bedroom was believed to have been used by Jane Austen and her sister.

DOROTHY! Start checking the sofa cushions for spare change again!!! Oh, how we would love to use this for our Bath pied-a-terre!

Alert Janeite Lucy has been watching the television listings for us, and she’s spotted some upcoming titles on ABC1 in Australia: Emma (Kate Beckinsale) on June 1 and Persuasion (2007) on June 8, both at 8:30 p.m. Though the TV Guide won’t let us search any further Sundays yet, this article about Sally Hawkins says that NA will air on June 15 and MP on June 22. Will you get more than that in Oz? It remains to be seen.

Speaking of the article about Sally Hawkins:

Hawkins had just re-read Northanger Abbey, the closest thing in Austen’s repertoire to a brooding Bronte novel,

WHAT? *falls over laughing*

Don’t worry, it gets better. We mean that. No snark.

… (she) started to re-read the more conventionally romantic Persuasion with mixed feelings. Unexpectedly, she was drawn into it and embarked on a journey through Austen’s entire library, including letters and other surviving fragments of her life.

“I completely reformed my view of her,” Hawkins says. “I had been slightly dismissive and the fact that I was dismissive is shameful to me now. It’s like being dismissive of Dickens or Beckett. Her work had never really come into my world before and I’m so glad it has.”

Yay!

It is particularly poignant, she adds, when you realise Austen wrote the novel as she was dying. “That made it all the more remarkable,” Hawkins says. “I think she’s phenomenal.”

We agree. And Sanditon even more so.

We’ve been busy celebrating Memorial Day this weekend at AustenBlog World Headquarters. Dorothy grilled up some burgers and made her “special” iced tea, and next thing we knew we woke up and it was Monday night. Very special indeed. We’ve got a great lineup of articles about books featuring Jane Austen’s characters and articles about Jane Austen’s books, so let’s get started.

Jonathan Gotschall opines that a better way to study literature would be to get away from all that subjective stuff and approach the subject from a scientific standpoint.

Or consider this shibboleth of modern literary theory: the author is dead. Roughly speaking, this statement means that authors have no power over their readers. When we read stories we do not so much yield to the author’s creation as create it anew ourselves – manufacturing our own highly idiosyncratic meanings as we go along. This idea has radical implications: If it is true, there can be no shared understanding of what literary works mean. But like so much else that passes for knowledge in contemporary literary studies, this assertion has its basis only in the swaggering authority of its asserter – in this case, Roland Barthes, one of the founding giants of poststructuralist literary theory.

Is this one of those squishy, unfalsifiable literary claims? No, it is also testable. Hijacking methods from psychology, Joseph Carroll, John Johnson, Dan Kruger, and I surveyed the emotional and analytic responses of 500 literary scholars and avid readers to characters from scores of 19th-century British novels. We wanted to determine how different their reading experiences truly were. Did reactions to characters vary profoundly from reader to reader? As we write in “Graphing Jane Austen,” a book undergoing peer review, there were variations in what our readers thought and felt about literary characters, but it was expertly contained by the authors within narrow ranges. Our conclusion: rumors of the author’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Being a reader interested in the historical context of novels, we never subscribed to the dead-author thing anyway, but we can see that this approach has its good points and its bad points. Good points: interesting discussion about, for instance, the contrast of Jane Austen’s opinions of Bath while writing Northanger Abbey and while writing Persuasion some years later. Bad points: Becoming Jane and all the new genre of poor-Jane-Austen-never-found-her-Mr.-Darcy-so-let’s-give-her-one books and films. We expect our Gentle Readers to have more to say on this subject.

We found references to several new books mentioning Jane Austen and her characters. (more…)

Alert Janeite Baja Janeite found an upcoming event that sounds quite interesting for our British Gentle Readers: Jane Austen Weekend at Basildon Park in Reading on Saturday and Sunday, June 7-8.

Find out more about life in Jane Austen’s time. Themes will include flowers, food, live music and living history displays in the sumptuous surroundings of Basildon Park.

If you go, send us a report!

A lock of (allegedly) Jane Austen’s hair made into mourning jewelry will go up for auction next week in Wiltshire.

The fine brown hair has been been made into a weeping willow, an often used symbol of mourning and also resurrection, with branches shading the decorated gravestone of Jane Austen.

Her name is lettered in hair strands on the gravestone.

While the willow/gravestone motif was not unknown for mourning images in Jane Austen’s time (we’ve seen some pieces of embroidery from the late 18th and early 19th century that use that motif), we think of hair jewelry such as that described as being more of a Victorian thing. Though check out this page–scroll down for a mourning ring that has a painting of the willow/gravestone motif and a lock of hair–but it’s not hair embroidery, like these pieces. The piece up for sale seems closer to the hair embroidery pieces from the description. If it really is using Jane Austen’s hair, perhaps one of her nieces or nephews had it made up years later. I believe Cassandra said in one of her letters that she saved several pieces of Jane’s hair for various people.

ETA 10 p.m.: In comments, Alert Janeite Chris added,

The auction date is actually 18th June and the Company is Dominic Winter Book Auctions. Their website has fully illustrated catalogues available ten or more days before the auction when close-ups will be viewable. The story has also appeared in a slightly longer version with a small picture in the Western Daily Press last Wednesday.

That article is very informative and shows a photo of the piece. There’s a little more about the piece; the provenance still seems rather sketchy. We’ll keep an ear to the ground for the results of the auction.

Cub Reporter Heather L. sent us a link to a page on author Candice Hern’s website, which has a photo of a similar piece of jewelry from 1792 all the way at the bottom of the page, so it seems to be proper to the period. This is all very interesting!

We already knew that Henry Tilney was profound. It’s nice pleasant when the rest of the world notices, however.

The last 10 years have been a “nice” decade, according to Bank of England governor Mervyn King.

He was of course using the word in an acronymous and strictly economic sense, a shortening of Non-Inflationary Consistent Expansion.

Oh, dear. We suspect Mr. Tilney would not approve.

That ambivalence is reflected in the origin of the word itself. Look in the Concise Oxford Dictionary and you see “pleasant, agreeable, satisfactory” and “(of a person) kind, good natured”. Look in the concise’s big brother, the Oxford English Dictionary, and you see an avalanche of meaning.

Dr Philip Durkin, principal etymologist for the OED, describes “nice” as having “one of the most complicated semantic histories in English”.

It’s a word that has come to mean almost the exact opposite of its first usage 700 years ago. Derived from early French, it originally meant “foolish” or “silly”.

Soon, it came to mean “wanton” or “dissolute”, mutating by stages to “showy” or “ostentatious”, and thence to “finely dressed” or “elegant”, then precise (as in “a nice distinction”) to “refined” and finally “respectable” or “decent”.

Now, says Dr Durkin, the meaning of “nice” has become maddeningly woolly: “It is a catch-all word,” he says.

There’s a telling bit of humour in Jane Austen when the Northanger Abbey character Henry Tilney ruminates on the word.

“It is a very nice word indeed,” he says. “It does for everything… now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.”

No, he doesn’t approve.

A fellow’s written a book about nerds (how cute) that, we think, includes Mary Bennet. At least the article about the book included Mary Bennet.

Like Mary Bennet, the bookish, priggish younger sister in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” and Gussie Fink-Nottle, Bertie Wooster’s newt-obsessed chum in P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories, these boys fit neatly into Mr. Nugent’s machine category. Their passions don’t “revolve around emotional confrontation, physical confrontation, sex, food, or beauty”; their speech is oddly formal; they favor “logic and rational communication”; they are rule-bound, code-bound life forms.

They also are meant as comic characters with rather stunning personality flaws (at least Mary Bennet; we are rather fond of Gussie Fink-Nottle).

A production of Emma will be staged at the Bristol Old Vic in late June. It looks like there only will be four performances, so make your plans now if you wish to attend!

The Dorset Corset Theatre Company (oh my) will take a production of Northanger Abbey on the road to various theatres in the UK this autumn, fittingly starting in Basingstoke in September and running through November. It’s unclear if this is a new adaptation or one of the existing plays. It looks like auditions are in June and July, if anyone wants to try their hand.

The Pear Avenue Theatre in Mountain View, California, is presenting a stage adaptation of Northanger Abbey, which began May 16 and runs through June 8.

MetroActive has an article about the play.

The line between narration and dialogue blurs often, especially since actors narrate partly to the audience and partly to other characters. MacLeod is especially gifted in split-purposing narration to imply dialogue. At its most seamless, the device disappears, as when Catherine and Henry Tilney (Michael Barrett Austin) are riding together in a carriage and their third-personing each other comes off as intimate pet-talk. At its weakest, the narrative device gives the sense of repeated interruption that makes it difficult to fall into the world of the story. This, plus the lack of any dire drama in Austen’s story, recommends some trimming.

But Austen is meant to be sipped on a lazy afternoon, and this cast has the charm to make a pleasant sipping tea.

We hope to have a first-person report on the play eventually.

From an advice column: the querent asked about a friend whom she once wished to date, but he confided that he was in love with another woman–whom he had never dated. The advisor helpfully invokes…Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Johanna, many people nurture a fantasy because it confers a mental gain for them. It may not be a productive way to live, but they reap a psychic benefit from doing it.

In Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” there is a noblewoman named Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Lady Catherine is a laggard whose only accomplishment in life was being born to a wealthy family. In one scene in the novel, during a discussion about playing the piano, Lady Catherine remarks, “If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”

Lady Catherine’s fantasy allows her to overlook her own laziness and to pretend she owes her lofty position to intrinsic merit rather than an accident of birth.

What?

Baja Janeite found a couple of dolls that might be of interest to Jane Austen fans.

UneekDollDesigns has a, well, unique Jane Austen doll for sale at Etsy.

The auction is closed, unfortunately, for a very pretty Regency gown for an American Girl doll (at least, that’s what we think it is–we’re not up on those particular dolls.) It should be pointed out that the doll was not included–the auction was for just the gown and bonnet. Perhaps the artisans and doll enthusiasts amongst our Gentle Readers will be inspired by these two listings.

Alert Janeite Karen2L sent us an article from the New York Times with a passing mention of Jane Austen–or more properly, Janeites.

Some of their complaints sound a bit like those of Jane Austen fans who decry adaptations that miss the essence of their beloved author’s canon. Except that instead of lamenting, say, the way the filmmakers behind “Northanger Abbey” completely misunderstood the importance of the humorous references to Anne Radcliffe’s masterpiece, “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” they excoriate Mr. Boll for shifting the story of “BloodRayne” from Nazi Germany to 18th-century Romania.

Oh, wait.

Some of their complaints sound a bit like those of Jane Austen fans who decry adaptations that miss the essence of their beloved author’s canon. Except that instead of lamenting, say, the way the filmmakers behind “Northanger Abbey” completely misunderstood the importance of replaced the humorous references to Anne Radcliffe’s masterpiece, “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” with sniggering references to Matthew Lewis’ much inferior “The Monk,” they excoriate Mr. Boll for shifting the story of “BloodRayne” from Nazi Germany to 18th-century Romania.

There. Fixed that for you. You’re welcome!

We are on record that such isn’t needed, but the upcoming stage production of Pride and Prejudice at the Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, NY, sounds intriguing nonetheless.

Computer-controlled projections of vintage British dcor and landscapes will add period flavor to 49 fast-moving scenes. A cast of 24 weaves between these images and mobile props, as tightly choreographed as a Masterpiece Theatre dinner party.

“This is no 19th-century museum piece,” says Geva Artistic Director Mark Cuddy, who wrote the adaptation with Resident Dramaturg Marge Betley. “We hope the cinematic style will make it feel very new.”

We’re hoping for a report once the play opens!

Alert Janeite Loredana let us know that “The Complete Jane Austen” is being broadcast in Italy on Fox Life (Ch. 111 on SKY) on Saturday nights. Last week, the Kate Beckinsale Emma was broadcast; next Saturday, Mansfield Park (2007) starring Billie Piper will be shown, followed on subsequent weeks by Northanger Abbey 07, Persuasion 07, Sense and Sensibility 08, Pride and Prejudice (we guess 1995?) and Jane Austen Regrets. Goda di questo dolce en Italia! (hopefully we didn’t mess that up too much)

From an article about quiz night at the local school:

I came roaring out of the starting blocks and mopped up in the first round: first lines from literature. This is because I am a journalist, and all journalists start out adapting famous first lines into their own writing in what they imagine is a very clever and original way. So while my team mates heard “It is a truth universally acknowledged …” and said “Ooh, is that Jane Austen?” I knew full well it was Pride and Prejudice. I created numerous versions of that line to kick off my own articles until an editor took me aside one day and told me to stop trotting out such hackneyed rubbish.

Huzzah for that editor! Huzzah, we say!

The winners were announced at a ceremony last week in Bath. We are absolutely delighted for Patrice Hannon, whose excellent book 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Jane Austen won for “Best Know-How Book.” Congratulations also to Alexandra Potter, who won best new fiction for her book Me and Mr. Darcy.

And yes, we’re purposely ignoring everything else.

Alert Janeite Marybeth let us know that the original cast of I Love You Because will do a one-night-only concert presentation tonight at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Manhattan.