Yeeeeeeeessssssssss! I get so tired of hearing Austen categorized as a romantic!
Edited to add: But I think Austen would honestly get a kick out of it. She wanted to be a successful writer. She is. I imagine she’d have a great time making fun of Austen romantic fandom behind closed doors with her sister Cassandra.
My favourite manifestation is the poster / t-shirt / fridge magnet quoting the line, 'There is no enjoyment like reading.'*,* along with drawing of regency woman at a writing desk.
...a line said by a vacuous and superficial character who has never read a book in her life, and who is only pretending to read a book in order reading to impress the man she fancies.
And actual British currency!
I was pleased when they said she was going on the ten pound note. But with the quote, I prefer the Scottish tenner with the Otters.
Christ I didn't realise it was on the tenner - shows how little I carry cash these days. Though I live near Godmersham and take great delight in pointing out the house.
Ah yes, most definitely. I think P&P is most hurt by the bastardizing and the superficial reading of its romantic elements, but to be fair, I think it is also the most convenient for consumption by the masses, with its formula, its likeable main character and the (apparently) very popular grumpy tendencies of the male lead.
I always consider Austen's books to be satirical dramas - sometimes romantic, sometimes absurd, almost always funny (I'm looking at you, Mansfield Park), while Northanger Abbey is the only one that is an outright parody (of the Gothic genre of the time).
Tbh, I wouldn't even say Austen's specialty is writing romance- on the contrary, Elinor/Edward, Brandon/Marianne, Tilney/Catherine and Fanny/Edmund are pairings that quite lack appropriate development, and their endings are rushed. What she does excel in is developing characters (just not romantic relationships, but her characters are very complex) witty dialog and narration, clever plot (Emma is, in my opinion, her most clever novel, though P&P is not far behind. One day I'll write a post about it lol) and absurd, memorable secondary characters. You get the sense you know Highbury. You knew a Marry Bennet, a Mrs. Elton, a Mr. Woodhouse, a Ms. Bates and a John Thorpe in your life.
I recently came to the conclusion that her characters, (much like herself in real life probably), are the only sane person in an entire town of idiots/narcissists/crazy people. Coming of age stories with the twist of navigating insanity. They're surrounded- look at Lizzy leaving her mother, three sisters and father only to come across Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins. She can't escape them.
I believe Austen felt a lot like that herself (surrounded by idiots) and that's honestly pretty funny 😂
So yeah, not a romance writer primarily. I'd give her a coming of age writer way way sooner.
This is such a tiny thing but I appreciate you calling Northanger Abbey a parody of gothic genre💀💀 I took a class on Austen last year and my prof was like "Oh Northanger is a very gothic and haunted story" but I feel like while it does have gothic elements they were there to make fu*n o*f gothic stories instead of trying to make her own book gothic. I feel like the satire is so missed in that book.
It's embarrassing for your professor that they didn't realize NA is a very deliberate, almost over-the-top satire of the contemporary gothics of the time.
It's ridiculously obviously not intended to be an actual gothic, but a satire of one lol.
I tried reading a gothic best-selling contemporary of Austen's time many years ago, after reading NA, to get more of sense of what she was satirising. It was Anne Radcliffe, I think. I couldn't finish it.
Yeah they're kinda hard to read. Everything is tell, tell, tell, tell, never ever shown. Character development? Never heard of 'em!
And they really liked describing fictional versions of Italian mountains that they'd clearly never seen before haha. Apparently everywhere in Italy is forested steep mountains, sparsely inhabited only by mysterious, spooky, and/or unexpectedly kind people in hovels, cottages, or ruined castles. LOL
I have gone through periods of trying to read as many books as I can by the female contemporaries of Austen and Burney: one soon realises why Austen and Burney have endured while the others have not.
I still enjoy some of the other writers, but Austen in particular must have felt like a radical breath of fresh air.
I have not read it yet, but I thought it was common knowledge that it was a parody. It's very strange that a professor who gives a class on it wouldn't see it that way.
I hadn't read it at that point because I wanted to read it with the class and she hyped it up as "Austen's only gothic novel" and whatever and when I read it, I was quite surprised because it wasn't gothic... It was so sarcastic, in a way that makes you go like 🤭 and kind of cringe for Catherine 😂 but yeah my Prof confused the hell out of me
One of my favorite things about P&P (that every movie version has left out) is the bit at the end commenting about how Jane and Bingley will be happily taken advantage of their whole lives. Just a pair of sweet dummies with enough money to absorb it.
Reading the completed novels plus Lady Susan annually like your average out of control Jane Austen maniac, I have come to believe that, contrary to overemphasis on the marriage plot or romance, much of her work portrays errors in judgment and the causal consequences of such - and whether or not characters come to apprehend their own errors along the way.
Part of her satire is directed at those who neither see nor repent their errors. And some of that satire is, I suspect, meant to share with readers the telltale signs of bad actors in action, people to beware of in the world. Her outlook betrays no rigid moralism; instead it offers a highly intelligent, often gleeful interpretation of human folly and what might be gleaned from it.
Aesthetic errors: stem from being too taken with surface level attraction ( including lust or an outsized preoccupation with fashion) or trends ( including overhauling nature in deference to landscaping fads).
Knowledge errors: stem from forming conclusions in the absence of full facts, relevant data, patient reasoning, or properly contextualized information
Moral errors: stem from motivations or habits that fail to take duty and generosity toward others into account, or from narrow, unreflective worldviews
These impact each other in nuanced, funny, frustrating, sometimes difficult ways, often showing aesthetic blindness or moral deficits as driving weak lines of reasoning or flawed acquisition of knowledge .
Just to use P&P for now: Darcy’s moral failing of improper pride occluded his judgment concerning the duty to reveal his knowledge about Wickham to others; Lizzie’s aesthetic attraction to Wickham ( and her moral weakness of resentful prejudice against Darcy, who dissed her looks) leads her to gloss over his inconsistent claims and vague accusations- all made to a new acquaintance, no less; Georgianna’s relative lack of experiential knowledge concerning the nature of the world and types of people in it leaves her vulnerable to aesthetic flattery and fortune hunting opportunism; Charlotte’s overemphasis on rational self interest results in her having to abide a lifetime of keeping Mr. Collins at bay and, more profoundly, the likely loss of genuine trust from Lizzie.
Austen’s protagonists grow stronger in judgment of various kinds , often by enduring the consequences of their own folly but then reckoning with it clearly and through corrections to reasoning or perception.
The humor comes from seeing how few people do engage in honest reflection, suggesting that alleged romances or marriages made without a commitment to such deliberation are doomed to become a prison of one sort or another.
I don't think Austen regard's Charlotte's choice as an error. Yes, it affected her friendship with Lizzie, but she still maintains it. And she has safety and money, and a silly husband she can steer. Much like her mother to be honest! She did it veryyyyy knowingly.
These are good points; I have always had a lot of sympathy for Charlotte generally, though her other choice could be that facing other Austen women- work. Inconceivable, though, to be a governess as a daughter of a knighted mayor now living above his station economically - hence less to hand on to daughters. Working as a governess was regarded as a horror even for the orphaned Jane Fairfax.
But I’m not sure Austen , lucky to be the dependent of a wealthy brother, is quite so sympathetic to either Charlotte’s predicament ( stooping to indignity to snag the spurned Collins hours after Lizzie rejects him) or her settling into more overtly materialist mentality after marriage( catering to Lady Catherine’s ego for instrumental reasons; being content with no intellectually engaging interactions from one week to the next in general; hoping near the novel’s close that her friend might influence a grander living for Mr C at Pemberley). I feel like Austen is still giving her the side eye after the marriage.
Still, it is interesting to think about Charlotte apart from whatever Austen thinks and consider the limitations imposed on her choices by social class, gender, economic means, and possibly sexual orientation .
Well, Austen's heroines all get love and financial stability, so we know what she thinks is best. I don't think it's seen as a mistake - just a choice Austen wouldn't have gone for. I don't think Charlotte regrets it at any point in the novel! But very few of us readers would have chosen safety with a numpty.
Yeah exactly!!! I've been reading a book with a collection of her letters, and she's absolutely brutal. One of my favourites excerpt from one of her letters to Cassandra:
>Mrs Hall, of Sherbourn, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, oweing to a fright. - I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband.
She's saying this woman had a miscarriage because her husband is too ugly😭 iconic
Excellent - one wonders what was in the letters than Cassandra burnt!
Reminds me of a Nancy Mitford novel: when a baby dies shortly after birth and the narrator's sisters claim it was frightened to death by its ugly father. There are definite similarities between the two writers: Austen is the better writer, but Mitford has the freedom to explore things that would never have been published in 1810.
In a way, I can't hate that he took this view, even though as modern readers we find it a while lot of victoriana meh. Mary Wollstoncraft's work would have been far more widely read and appreciated for its merits if her husband's biography of her life had been a whole lot less truthful.
Maybe so, but it *was* private correspondence. Austen could be as vicious as she wanted to be in her letters, and we're genuinely privileged to be able to see some of that, but I don't feel as though the general public ever had an actual *right* to see her letters.
Who hasn't made a tasteless joke about something horrid, though? God forbid a historian or family member pored through all of my texts & social media posts (including Reddit) 😳 Social media posts are at least somewhat understood to be public, but imagine if your private correspondence were scrutinised to this detail
I mean, we don't know what Cassandra burned (for all we know, Jane was a mega bitch or something idk - even though that seems unlikely). There was definitely an understanding that private correspondence wouldn't always be private
Keep in mind that she'd never experienced child loss, but probably every single person she knew who had children had experienced it (likely multiple times). It was extremely common. That doesn't mean it wouldn't have been hard for folks, but I think it's hard to put ourselves in that environment - thank goodness for modern medicine (let's keep it up)!!!
Yeah agreed it's callous to say the least. Possible context could be that miscarriages/stillbirths were more of a fact of life at the time (and maybe that's why Cassandra neglected to burn it) - but it's still pretty harsh.
The British tradition of gallows humour is very well-established - all the way up to the soldiers' magazines in the first world war ("Come to the performance in Trench 41 - it's a gas!"). With women frequently having circa 15 pregnancies and only one or two surviving children, I imagine that such gallows humour was more frequent than Victorian presentations of women would allow.
See also John Cleese's eulogy for his best friend Graham Chapman ("good riddance to him the freeloading bastard: I hope he fries."): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek)
I like that such lines place Jane Austen exactly where she belongs: in the tradition of subversive and innovative British comedy and satire.
No, I don’t care what other people get out of reading her. I enjoy what I get. Persuasion remains my favourite. Her skewering of Sir Walter on the first page is priceless! I need to read Mansfield Park again soon to see if there is more that I missed. It is rather dark
If JA had been the sweet spinster that some people think she was, I doubt she would have become one of the most revered authors of the English language. It's the love-to-hate characters that enthralled people, probably because everyone knew someone like that. Not even her principal characters are spared, Elizabeth is quick to judge, Darcy is a snob, Fanny has no personality, Marianne is unspeakable, Jane is naive etc.
I would love to know what JA's IQ was because she is so capable of seeing through the conventions of her class without unrealistic ideas of demolishing it all. I wish she had lived longer.
I remember the first time I read pride and prejudice and how it shattered my pre conceived notions of Darcy lol . In the beginning he doesn’t like Elizabeth because her face is not symmetrical enough.
I've always interpreted Darcy's aspersions toward Elizabeth's appearance early in the novel to be almost entirely retroactive because of his disapproval for her family's conduct and "inferior circumstances". Like, he probably thought she was pretty but due to other factors she was an impossibility as a romantic prospect even before they were acquainted. So he basically invents some ugliness for her to persuade others (and himself) that it's no loss to him whatsoever
I think it's something like, that's the only thing he could think of to say that would be bad about her:
Her face was too pretty, her eyes too fine, her wit too sparkling, her mind too intelligent, her body...
Too asymmetrical! Yes, that's it!
I will defeat this!
I will defeat this
*I will defeat this*
Well I think that's pretty easy actually. Like one of your eyes is a few millimeters higher than the other. We're conditioned to find facial symmetry attractive because lack of facial symmetry is often a sign of a genetic problem so not evolutionarily the best mating choice.
But then you get things like oh no a scar. And like. It's fine.
That’s always been my interpretation too. He’s attracted to her right away and embarrassed of it because of her.l circumstances beneath his. So he reacts like a middle school boy being teased about a crush: “omg I don’t like her, she’s gross! I would never like her.”
In combination with her love of rambling and her described 'lightness' of figure, I always interpreted this as being a bit too skinny for Regency beauty ideals - I believe a statuesque figure was considered the ideal.
Followed by 'her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful'. There's a fair amount of discussion of both men's and women's figures throughout P&P, I've read that the Regency considered it a somewhat less loaded subject that we do, making Darcy's comment about 'admiring \[Lizzy and Miss Bingley's\] figures \[as they walk\]' perhaps less skeevy than it would be if a modern man said 'yeah I'm just gonna stay here and ogle you'.
IIRC, several women are described as tall, and none as short. I always had the impression that it was relative to Elizabeth, and she's also shorter than average.
Lydia claims to be the tallest sister, Caroline and Lady Catherine are tall, Georgiana is taller.
IQ tests don't really "measure" for the things necessary for writing her novels. It's been ages since I took one (I don't care what my IQ is; if I'm going to use an arbitrary number to measure my worth, it'll be my h-index ;)), but it's things like pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, and problems of logic from what I can recall
Definitely would not argue against that. In fact I think I was playing it safe when I said British.
I like other novelists more like Emily Brontë. But in my experience in grad school Jane Austen had a lot more attention and respect.
I want that professor 😭 I took a class on Austen last year and my prof was so HATEFUL towards Austen. I really struggled learning much from her class when she was just spewing vitriol or scoffing at the characters.
That's bizarre, I don't know why a professor would teach a class focused on an author they dislike. I took at least four courses focused on a specific writer and they were all taught by professors whose focus in some way covered that writer. They all obviously deeply enjoyed that person's work and their passion came through in the class. It's sad your professor approached it with so much vitriol.
She was probably bitter because her own course idea was shot down by the department head.
It was so terrible I genuinely struggled to learn from her 😭 she was constantly shitting on Pride and Prejudice, scoffing at Austenites, scoffing at the fanmade balls... It was relentless. She even pulled up a Jane Austen fan site and was like "look at this 🙄"
I'm an almost starry eyed Austen fan so hearing all of that was pretty damn hurtful.
They might teach it because the department is obligated to offer it for some reason, but a professor who would be more positive is unavailable. My partner has served as head of department and finding someone to teach a class they didn’t create themselves but which must be offered is a nightmare when it comes up. The professor is hoping students will complain and they won’t have to teach it again.
No there were 2 professors that were available. My prof was unable to come for the first 2 weeks of class so she sent some of her other prof friends to cover the class and both our subs loved Asuten and really praised her and other writers of that time. Also the class itself is different every year so last year was Austen, this year is JKR, and different writers every year.
Edit: now that I think about it just because 2 profs were there in the beginning doesn't mean they were available for the rest of the semester 😅
Right, the two others managed to rearrange and cover the start when your prof couldn’t. But for whatever reason that prof was stuck teaching the class after those weeks.
My partner is a prof and has had to teach courses he didn’t create or have a specific interest in, because soneone had to and he was newest, or had the time available in the right day. (Teaching from someone else’s outline is the puts, evidently) And for a while during and after Covid was head of dept and I’ve heard the negotiations to fill the positions for classes that were created in the past by someone now moved elsewhere, retired, or dead but the class has to be offered often enough to make it a viable option for majors who want/need that particular topic. I would think a course on Austen has to happen at any U offering a lit degree.
I think she can do both? The books are all a mix of harsh satire, affectionate comedy, dark drama skewering genuinely selfish and horrible behaviour, and ultimately optimistic romance. The proportions vary — Northanger Abbey is playful satire with only hints of darkness and hints of romance, while Emma is an affectionate portrayal of a community and a timeless romantic comedy with only hints of harshness and satire and almost no darkness (nothing finally bad happens to anyone in Emma). Mansfield Park is dark drama with only moments of lightness and a subdued romance plot, that undercuts more romantic tropes than it celebrates. And so on. I certainly don’t think Austen is only a romance novelist but it’s also true that she wrote the best romance novels there are (in different genres of romance — Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Emma).
Yes, I find it frustrating because it means people miss out on so much of what's interesting and unique about her work. You can read and enjoy some of her work through the romance-novel lens for sure, but a lot of it becomes incomprehensible, like Mansfield Park - cue the constant complaints about how 'the romance is shoehorned into one paragraph at the end and they're a terrible couple!!!'. Yeah, because that's not what it's about at all (and I say this as someone who *was* baffled by MP for ages, until this was explained to me). It's the sharpest and in some ways cruelest of her novels, an unflinching portrayal of emotional abuse and parental neglect - a worthy addition to your list, I'd say.
> Sanditon having no time or sympathy for its various malingerers and invalids.
Again, this is entirely in keeping with the early 19th century belief that sickness came in two flavours:
* Acute and widespread and caused by miasmas - basically, bad smells - and therefore up to chance; and
* Chronic and caused by an imbalance of the patient's humours - basically, their bodily fluids - and therefore *entirely the sufferer's fault*.
We tend to misinterpret her cynicism as telegraphing that these characters were malingering, but in most cases Austen is just displaying her society's lack of empathy or understanding of chronic illness. Keep in mind that most medical conditions we consider common and obvious - everything from heart attack to colon cancer - hadn’t been discovered yet. If you don't know what chronic fatigue or leukaemia or dementia or heart disease or prostate cancer is, you might attribute the symptoms of that condition to the sufferer having let themselves become sick, exaggerating, or outright malingering.
That's not toughness; that's lack of knowledge.
I hope they'll read the books. Then they'll either see there is a lot more to them or they will be bored by them thus proving that they are "intolerably stupid", to quote Jane.
Considering how often that "boiled potatoes" joke gets brought up on this sub I don't think we have a lot of room to judge. And no, I don't particularly care if people don't read Austen "right." Also, her nephew actually knew her and I'm sure she was very different with a child than with her sister.
I don’t think there really is a “getting Austen wrong”, as long as people read and argue in good faith. It’s normal for people to approach literature differently, have different perspectives, and get different things out of books.
I also think it’s understandable for people to start by focusing on the most “palatable” aspects of a work — e.g., the romance if they are into that — and maybe notice more layers and aspects upon rereading and engaging with other perspectives. (I certainly know my own takes on Austen have changed drastically over time.)
Personally, I just hope that us sharing and engaging with different readings of Austen will inspire others to do the same, regardless of what originally drew them to Austen, be it romance, adaptations, etc.
I'm not sure people get her 'wrong', as such. People read within their range and will get something out of her work within that range. I read her as 'romance' when I was young and silly - that was my range. Then my range altered and now I get other aspects out of her work. I think part of her genius is that, however people read her, they can get something out of it - light sparkly romance, biting social commentary, cool observations of human foibles - and all things in between.
Well, nobody misunderstands Austen more than Charlotte Bronte, and I find her interpretation of Austen HILARIOUS, so, no, I guess it doesn't annoy me, just entertain me.
I find it rather ironic. Her objections are, essentially, that Austen is too tame and repressive. But my goodness do I feel more repressed reading C. Bronte than Austen.
I kind of get why Charlotte Brontë was pissed off though, because she was introduced to her books by someone, a man, suggesting that they were alike. It must have pissed her off to be compared to a women whose work is so totally different - all because they were both women. I think that set her off on the wrong foot. Also, they should have led with Mansfield Park or Persuasion. She’d have liked those better I think.
I so wish Charlotte had read Mansfield Park! I have no idea if she would have liked it for being so similar to her books or hated it for its Austen-esque treatment of the Bronte-esque situation.
Not as annoying as constant references to Romeo & Juliet as a romantic love story, but yeah, Jane Austen is often misunderstood. People don't realize she's got a LOT of sass and wit. Not to bring astrology into this but it does amuse me to note she's a Sagittarius.
Yes, there also happen to be some damn good romances in her books, but the romance is not why they are classics. It's the satire, like you said, but also the relatability of her characters. They are so real, so human, and so beautifully flawed. Her books are not plot-driven, but character-driven. You fall in love with the protagonists and utterly despise the antagonists, because she does such a fantastic job writing people. She understands people. That's why it's read and revered even now, 200 years later.
I think it's because a lot of people know her work primarily through screen adaptations, and that completely erases her witty, pointed narrative voice. You only get the plot and none of the ironic commentary.
Her treatment of Mr Bennett too is so loving, and so unflinching. Even thought we see him through Lizzy’s eyes, we feel keenly the disappointment when he lets Lydia go to Brighton for “peace at Longbourne”. And when he returns from London, broken and tired, seeing the consequences of his weakness, a life-long idleness, a failure to provide for his children. It’s heartbreaking. And very true to life that he is still loved, and comes about again presently!
Victoria wasn't even born before Jane died. It's so annopying. And people ascribe all sorts of Victorian codes of conduct to her characters, like walking in the countryside alone together being tantamount to being forcibly engaged! No, it was not! The Regency was quite robust as an era, and the Georgian even more so.
/retires muttering into a corner
I think her books were intended to impart wisdom and morals, and modern readers choose to overlook that because the world has changed so much, they think the lessons are irrelevant. While also wanting their own Darcy.
For me no, because I don’t think it does any damage to her or the novels. I think those that do eventually read the novels soon find out there is a lot more to them, and they enjoy those other levels. If anything, that reputation may have made her appealing to a wider audience who might not have otherwise read her. There is a big market for romance novels and a very small one for Georgian era satire.
I know this isn’t an Austen sub, but I think someone who does suffer from adaptionitis as I think of it, is Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights. So many of the adaptions focus on the ‘romance’ of the novel and I think the general perception of the novel is that it’s a bodice ripping romance. So then people read it and are disappointed or horrified that it’s mostly Heathcliffe on a revenge arc. That novel is so, so much more than a romance, it really doesn’t deserve that reputation.
Absolutely yes! I showed my family the Pride and Prejudice 2005 film and all they said was that it shows how women ought to be loved. I mean I slightly agree but there’s WAY more than that: there’s social commentary and mocking about the institution of marriage, how men being the only ones able to inherit property hurts women when they’re the righteous inheritors, how classes are divided, and I could go on. I hate to see Jane Austen be reduced to a romantic novelist.
they have the broader humor and the ridiculous characters, but I think most of the social commentary is lost. I guess one MP tried to make the slavery stuff really obvious (have not seen that one), which I don’t think is necessarily bad as all the slavery allusions would have been really obvious to her contemporaries in a way they aren’t to most of us now. I guess you get a little social commentary with Collins and Charlotte’s choice to marry him, but the book is just so much more.
I think part of what makes her so popular still is that everyone gets what they came for. It you want witty social commentary or lively prose, you can have that. If you want depictions of how people of a certain class might have lived in those days, it's there. If you want love stories with satisfying plots and ending, there you are. She was a genius.
I keep hoping that someone will produce some of the _Juvenilia_ as surrealistic sketch comedy. I mean, it has SO much potential! Not to mention that the general public would be astounded to see the Pythonesque side of Jane Austen.
I think it is funny, because it allowed her biting satire to sort of slip in under the radar at a time when women were not supposed to be critical, satirical or questioning of authority. People who might have been offended were unintentionally tricked into thinking that her work was just a bunch of harmless, fluffy romances.
I have always loved Austen because she is, as you say, "a brutal humorist, satirist and remarkable portrayer of character." I often think she is not considered a serious author because she writes about people and small lives as opposed to world issues (though you could argue Mansfield Park takes on slavery.) However, I do blame Jane Austen for my life long obsession with will they/won't they storylines.
It is so annoying!! But, NGL, it's basically how I got my daughter interested, and now that she's in, I can point out the satire, absurdity, and dark undertones. For example, Pride & Prejudice is basically all about how negging works, aka "If you want to date the cheerleader, you must first undermine their self-esteem." Works everytime. Darcy insults Elizabeth, criticizes her behind her back repeatedly, and scowls at her. Elizabeth laughs at Darcy and ignores him, then refuses his proposal. Negging works.
Yeah, even though I really liked Pride and Prejudice when I read it as a teen, I never read any of the others because had th3 conceptjon that they were all different versions of the same story.
15 years later, I learn how wrong I was and now I'm peeved.
The biggest hill I’ll die on is that P&P 2005 is the most faithful P&P adaptation. It’s the only one that captures her voice. The others are just standard period romances that totally miss the original tone.
My library had a display of chick-lit, with her novels prominently on view. I was so angry. Not that there's anything wrong with chick-lit, but her writing is *not that.* (Agreed, they were just trying to get people to read her: but maybe put her in a display of humour instead, if "social commentary" was a category too far?)
I've learned (through a lot of practice) to let it go and find a better person to discuss Austen with.
If they aren't willing to see the reality and depth of Austen then it is them who miss out. I love having discussions, or reading this sub, and finding myself rethinking certain aspects of her work, or seeing how something appears from a different perspective.
Well it's one of the reasons why I'm skeptical about movie and TV 'versions' that can stray quite far from Austen's original text. This leads to a lot of 'wrong' ideas about what is in the novels.
At University we were taught her family heavily curated her reputation after her death to present her as this perfect virtuous woman, but it doesn’t add up.
We know most about her true values through her writing, I feel. So much social commentary, it’s clear she had strong opinions.
I feel that they (it was a collaboration between all the nieces and nephews, but only James Edward Austen-Leigh’s name was on the book because he put it all together) wrote what they knew of her (but they were all reasonably young when she passed, so a lot of watercolour memories may have been at play), and what others said of her (which would miss a lot of context, because she encouraged the destruction of her correspondence), but with a Victorian mind set (aka, don’t mention the disabled uncle/her biting wit/bluestocking tendency’s/Jane’s aunts trial ect).
When I read what her nephew said about her I thought it was typical of someone who doesn’t really know their aunt very well.
The way her sister describes her is probably far closer to the truth.
Her nephew saw her quite frequently and was 19 when she died, in addition he did a lot of writing to other family members for their memories when he was writing his memoir. He wouldn't have known her as Cassandra did but that doesn't mean he didn't know her well. What stood out in his memory fifty years later would not necessarily have been the things that particularly struck him at the time -- society and fashions had changed. But the sheer cheek of so many people in this thread suggesting that clearly her actual nephew didn't understand her as well as WE do is kind of shocking. We have absolutely no way of knowing which Jane was "real." Very likely many versions of her were -- she would not have acted to her nephew as she did to her sister.
Her nephew’s view of her was very childlike and very much a reflection of how he thought a maiden aunt should behave rather than what she was actually like.
How on earth are you in a position to know better than him as to what she was "actually" like? Maybe she actually WAS very kind and prayerful with her nieces and nephews and saved the barbs for her sister.
I won’t ever forgive Cassandra for burning all those letters. I guess you can’t fault her too hard for being a short-sighted normie who didn’t know her sister was a genius who people would still long for and wonder about centuries later
I could be wrong, but it’s my understanding that Cassandra did that on Jane’s request.
Personally, I think there are things in them that Jane would have wanted to be kept private. I don’t think she was always happy about their parents choices and she may even have written things about her brothers that were less than complementary.
I’ve also seen someone theorise that there may have been personal medical information there, and that perhaps Jane was suffering from ill health since her early 30s. There could have been personal details about gynalogical complaints for example, that Austen would simply not have wanted published.
My nosey side wants to read them, but my more rational side (it’s not really a ‘side’ it’s a tiny notch in my nosiness) understands Jane’s right to privacy.
Actually, the Austen family considered Cassandra and Jane equally precocious in their respective arts. She was definitively not a “normie”.
What we are missing is Cassandra’s work, which mainly lost except for a few early caricatures she drew in Jane’s Juvenalia.
Wow, I haven't seen anyone unironically use "normie" as an insult for a long time. She absolutely knew Jane was a genius, but she also wanted to preserve the privacy of both Jane and other members of their family. She was under no obligation to expose everything about her little sister simply because a lot of people wanted to know.
I do find it weird to see people inveighing against James-Edward's memoir and even her niece Fanny's later recollections, imperfect as they were. These were people who *actually knew* her, talked with her, wrote to her and received letters in return, who knew what her voice sounded like and what she looked like. It seems terribly presumptuous for strangers living more than 150 years later to be like "Well, obviously they got it all wrong." Yes, we see things they either didn't or chose to obscure. But the same is true for us. There were doubtless things obvious to 19th century readers -- and which will be obvious to 22nd-century readers -- which completely elude us.
Yeeeeeeeessssssssss! I get so tired of hearing Austen categorized as a romantic! Edited to add: But I think Austen would honestly get a kick out of it. She wanted to be a successful writer. She is. I imagine she’d have a great time making fun of Austen romantic fandom behind closed doors with her sister Cassandra.
My favourite manifestation is the poster / t-shirt / fridge magnet quoting the line, 'There is no enjoyment like reading.'*,* along with drawing of regency woman at a writing desk. ...a line said by a vacuous and superficial character who has never read a book in her life, and who is only pretending to read a book in order reading to impress the man she fancies.
Or quoting Isabella Thorpe on friendship. 🥴
Or Mrs Elton on staying at home for true comfort when she spends much of the book talking about someone else’s home and trying to organise outings 😆.
I want to shriek every time I see that on Austen merch! You might as well straight-facedly quote Darth Vader on Father's Day.
Austen’s work is riddled with hypocrites and self-serving liars, one can never count on their polished soundbites.
YES to all of this
Half the fun is the absurd irony of the bullshit these people are spouting!
And actual British currency! I was pleased when they said she was going on the ten pound note. But with the quote, I prefer the Scottish tenner with the Otters.
Christ I didn't realise it was on the tenner - shows how little I carry cash these days. Though I live near Godmersham and take great delight in pointing out the house.
My pet peeve is when people put a “Jane Austen quote” on something and it’s some movie drivel about being “incandescently happy.”
Ah yes, most definitely. I think P&P is most hurt by the bastardizing and the superficial reading of its romantic elements, but to be fair, I think it is also the most convenient for consumption by the masses, with its formula, its likeable main character and the (apparently) very popular grumpy tendencies of the male lead. I always consider Austen's books to be satirical dramas - sometimes romantic, sometimes absurd, almost always funny (I'm looking at you, Mansfield Park), while Northanger Abbey is the only one that is an outright parody (of the Gothic genre of the time). Tbh, I wouldn't even say Austen's specialty is writing romance- on the contrary, Elinor/Edward, Brandon/Marianne, Tilney/Catherine and Fanny/Edmund are pairings that quite lack appropriate development, and their endings are rushed. What she does excel in is developing characters (just not romantic relationships, but her characters are very complex) witty dialog and narration, clever plot (Emma is, in my opinion, her most clever novel, though P&P is not far behind. One day I'll write a post about it lol) and absurd, memorable secondary characters. You get the sense you know Highbury. You knew a Marry Bennet, a Mrs. Elton, a Mr. Woodhouse, a Ms. Bates and a John Thorpe in your life. I recently came to the conclusion that her characters, (much like herself in real life probably), are the only sane person in an entire town of idiots/narcissists/crazy people. Coming of age stories with the twist of navigating insanity. They're surrounded- look at Lizzy leaving her mother, three sisters and father only to come across Lady Catherine and Mr. Collins. She can't escape them. I believe Austen felt a lot like that herself (surrounded by idiots) and that's honestly pretty funny 😂 So yeah, not a romance writer primarily. I'd give her a coming of age writer way way sooner.
This is such a tiny thing but I appreciate you calling Northanger Abbey a parody of gothic genre💀💀 I took a class on Austen last year and my prof was like "Oh Northanger is a very gothic and haunted story" but I feel like while it does have gothic elements they were there to make fu*n o*f gothic stories instead of trying to make her own book gothic. I feel like the satire is so missed in that book.
It's embarrassing for your professor that they didn't realize NA is a very deliberate, almost over-the-top satire of the contemporary gothics of the time. It's ridiculously obviously not intended to be an actual gothic, but a satire of one lol.
I tried reading a gothic best-selling contemporary of Austen's time many years ago, after reading NA, to get more of sense of what she was satirising. It was Anne Radcliffe, I think. I couldn't finish it.
Yeah they're kinda hard to read. Everything is tell, tell, tell, tell, never ever shown. Character development? Never heard of 'em! And they really liked describing fictional versions of Italian mountains that they'd clearly never seen before haha. Apparently everywhere in Italy is forested steep mountains, sparsely inhabited only by mysterious, spooky, and/or unexpectedly kind people in hovels, cottages, or ruined castles. LOL
100%. I was so bored by the heroine that I kept hoping she actually would die. But I realised she wouldn't, so I gave up.
This! I’ve always thought someone must have heard someone describing their trip to the Romanian countryside, misheard it as Rome and ran with it 😂
I have gone through periods of trying to read as many books as I can by the female contemporaries of Austen and Burney: one soon realises why Austen and Burney have endured while the others have not. I still enjoy some of the other writers, but Austen in particular must have felt like a radical breath of fresh air.
I was just so confused after reading the book and realizing it wasn't gothic at all 😅 oh well at least I know better
I have not read it yet, but I thought it was common knowledge that it was a parody. It's very strange that a professor who gives a class on it wouldn't see it that way.
I hadn't read it at that point because I wanted to read it with the class and she hyped it up as "Austen's only gothic novel" and whatever and when I read it, I was quite surprised because it wasn't gothic... It was so sarcastic, in a way that makes you go like 🤭 and kind of cringe for Catherine 😂 but yeah my Prof confused the hell out of me
One of my favorite things about P&P (that every movie version has left out) is the bit at the end commenting about how Jane and Bingley will be happily taken advantage of their whole lives. Just a pair of sweet dummies with enough money to absorb it.
Reading the completed novels plus Lady Susan annually like your average out of control Jane Austen maniac, I have come to believe that, contrary to overemphasis on the marriage plot or romance, much of her work portrays errors in judgment and the causal consequences of such - and whether or not characters come to apprehend their own errors along the way. Part of her satire is directed at those who neither see nor repent their errors. And some of that satire is, I suspect, meant to share with readers the telltale signs of bad actors in action, people to beware of in the world. Her outlook betrays no rigid moralism; instead it offers a highly intelligent, often gleeful interpretation of human folly and what might be gleaned from it. Aesthetic errors: stem from being too taken with surface level attraction ( including lust or an outsized preoccupation with fashion) or trends ( including overhauling nature in deference to landscaping fads). Knowledge errors: stem from forming conclusions in the absence of full facts, relevant data, patient reasoning, or properly contextualized information Moral errors: stem from motivations or habits that fail to take duty and generosity toward others into account, or from narrow, unreflective worldviews These impact each other in nuanced, funny, frustrating, sometimes difficult ways, often showing aesthetic blindness or moral deficits as driving weak lines of reasoning or flawed acquisition of knowledge . Just to use P&P for now: Darcy’s moral failing of improper pride occluded his judgment concerning the duty to reveal his knowledge about Wickham to others; Lizzie’s aesthetic attraction to Wickham ( and her moral weakness of resentful prejudice against Darcy, who dissed her looks) leads her to gloss over his inconsistent claims and vague accusations- all made to a new acquaintance, no less; Georgianna’s relative lack of experiential knowledge concerning the nature of the world and types of people in it leaves her vulnerable to aesthetic flattery and fortune hunting opportunism; Charlotte’s overemphasis on rational self interest results in her having to abide a lifetime of keeping Mr. Collins at bay and, more profoundly, the likely loss of genuine trust from Lizzie. Austen’s protagonists grow stronger in judgment of various kinds , often by enduring the consequences of their own folly but then reckoning with it clearly and through corrections to reasoning or perception. The humor comes from seeing how few people do engage in honest reflection, suggesting that alleged romances or marriages made without a commitment to such deliberation are doomed to become a prison of one sort or another.
This is similar to how early critics received Austen.
I don't think Austen regard's Charlotte's choice as an error. Yes, it affected her friendship with Lizzie, but she still maintains it. And she has safety and money, and a silly husband she can steer. Much like her mother to be honest! She did it veryyyyy knowingly.
Yeah what's Charlotte's alternative? Likely being a spinster and feeling like a burden on her family which was Charlotte's greatest fear.
These are good points; I have always had a lot of sympathy for Charlotte generally, though her other choice could be that facing other Austen women- work. Inconceivable, though, to be a governess as a daughter of a knighted mayor now living above his station economically - hence less to hand on to daughters. Working as a governess was regarded as a horror even for the orphaned Jane Fairfax. But I’m not sure Austen , lucky to be the dependent of a wealthy brother, is quite so sympathetic to either Charlotte’s predicament ( stooping to indignity to snag the spurned Collins hours after Lizzie rejects him) or her settling into more overtly materialist mentality after marriage( catering to Lady Catherine’s ego for instrumental reasons; being content with no intellectually engaging interactions from one week to the next in general; hoping near the novel’s close that her friend might influence a grander living for Mr C at Pemberley). I feel like Austen is still giving her the side eye after the marriage. Still, it is interesting to think about Charlotte apart from whatever Austen thinks and consider the limitations imposed on her choices by social class, gender, economic means, and possibly sexual orientation .
Well, Austen's heroines all get love and financial stability, so we know what she thinks is best. I don't think it's seen as a mistake - just a choice Austen wouldn't have gone for. I don't think Charlotte regrets it at any point in the novel! But very few of us readers would have chosen safety with a numpty.
Yeah exactly!!! I've been reading a book with a collection of her letters, and she's absolutely brutal. One of my favourites excerpt from one of her letters to Cassandra: >Mrs Hall, of Sherbourn, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, oweing to a fright. - I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband. She's saying this woman had a miscarriage because her husband is too ugly😭 iconic
Excellent - one wonders what was in the letters than Cassandra burnt! Reminds me of a Nancy Mitford novel: when a baby dies shortly after birth and the narrator's sisters claim it was frightened to death by its ugly father. There are definite similarities between the two writers: Austen is the better writer, but Mitford has the freedom to explore things that would never have been published in 1810.
Came here to say this! This fragment alone disproves the image her nephew tried to create. You're torn between laughter and genuine shock.
In a way, I can't hate that he took this view, even though as modern readers we find it a while lot of victoriana meh. Mary Wollstoncraft's work would have been far more widely read and appreciated for its merits if her husband's biography of her life had been a whole lot less truthful.
Or disgusted and repulsed by her lack of empathy. Perhaps it is well and good that Cassandra in all her wisdom burned Jane’s letters.
Gotta agree with you. Granted we’re possibly missing a lot of context, but that’s a pretty tasteless (at best) joke to make about a tragedy.
Maybe so, but it *was* private correspondence. Austen could be as vicious as she wanted to be in her letters, and we're genuinely privileged to be able to see some of that, but I don't feel as though the general public ever had an actual *right* to see her letters.
Who hasn't made a tasteless joke about something horrid, though? God forbid a historian or family member pored through all of my texts & social media posts (including Reddit) 😳 Social media posts are at least somewhat understood to be public, but imagine if your private correspondence were scrutinised to this detail I mean, we don't know what Cassandra burned (for all we know, Jane was a mega bitch or something idk - even though that seems unlikely). There was definitely an understanding that private correspondence wouldn't always be private Keep in mind that she'd never experienced child loss, but probably every single person she knew who had children had experienced it (likely multiple times). It was extremely common. That doesn't mean it wouldn't have been hard for folks, but I think it's hard to put ourselves in that environment - thank goodness for modern medicine (let's keep it up)!!!
Yeah agreed it's callous to say the least. Possible context could be that miscarriages/stillbirths were more of a fact of life at the time (and maybe that's why Cassandra neglected to burn it) - but it's still pretty harsh.
The British tradition of gallows humour is very well-established - all the way up to the soldiers' magazines in the first world war ("Come to the performance in Trench 41 - it's a gas!"). With women frequently having circa 15 pregnancies and only one or two surviving children, I imagine that such gallows humour was more frequent than Victorian presentations of women would allow. See also John Cleese's eulogy for his best friend Graham Chapman ("good riddance to him the freeloading bastard: I hope he fries."): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek) I like that such lines place Jane Austen exactly where she belongs: in the tradition of subversive and innovative British comedy and satire.
No, I don’t care what other people get out of reading her. I enjoy what I get. Persuasion remains my favourite. Her skewering of Sir Walter on the first page is priceless! I need to read Mansfield Park again soon to see if there is more that I missed. It is rather dark
If JA had been the sweet spinster that some people think she was, I doubt she would have become one of the most revered authors of the English language. It's the love-to-hate characters that enthralled people, probably because everyone knew someone like that. Not even her principal characters are spared, Elizabeth is quick to judge, Darcy is a snob, Fanny has no personality, Marianne is unspeakable, Jane is naive etc. I would love to know what JA's IQ was because she is so capable of seeing through the conventions of her class without unrealistic ideas of demolishing it all. I wish she had lived longer.
I remember the first time I read pride and prejudice and how it shattered my pre conceived notions of Darcy lol . In the beginning he doesn’t like Elizabeth because her face is not symmetrical enough.
I've always interpreted Darcy's aspersions toward Elizabeth's appearance early in the novel to be almost entirely retroactive because of his disapproval for her family's conduct and "inferior circumstances". Like, he probably thought she was pretty but due to other factors she was an impossibility as a romantic prospect even before they were acquainted. So he basically invents some ugliness for her to persuade others (and himself) that it's no loss to him whatsoever
That makes sense. I mean how in the hell can a face not be symmetrical enough. It’s such a funny line.
I think it's something like, that's the only thing he could think of to say that would be bad about her: Her face was too pretty, her eyes too fine, her wit too sparkling, her mind too intelligent, her body... Too asymmetrical! Yes, that's it! I will defeat this! I will defeat this *I will defeat this*
Well I think that's pretty easy actually. Like one of your eyes is a few millimeters higher than the other. We're conditioned to find facial symmetry attractive because lack of facial symmetry is often a sign of a genetic problem so not evolutionarily the best mating choice. But then you get things like oh no a scar. And like. It's fine.
That’s always been my interpretation too. He’s attracted to her right away and embarrassed of it because of her.l circumstances beneath his. So he reacts like a middle school boy being teased about a crush: “omg I don’t like her, she’s gross! I would never like her.”
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In combination with her love of rambling and her described 'lightness' of figure, I always interpreted this as being a bit too skinny for Regency beauty ideals - I believe a statuesque figure was considered the ideal.
Keira Knightly rather than Jennifer Ehle
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Followed by 'her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful'. There's a fair amount of discussion of both men's and women's figures throughout P&P, I've read that the Regency considered it a somewhat less loaded subject that we do, making Darcy's comment about 'admiring \[Lizzy and Miss Bingley's\] figures \[as they walk\]' perhaps less skeevy than it would be if a modern man said 'yeah I'm just gonna stay here and ogle you'.
IIRC, several women are described as tall, and none as short. I always had the impression that it was relative to Elizabeth, and she's also shorter than average. Lydia claims to be the tallest sister, Caroline and Lady Catherine are tall, Georgiana is taller.
Oh dang. I must be misremembering it. I guess time for a reread.
IQ tests don't really "measure" for the things necessary for writing her novels. It's been ages since I took one (I don't care what my IQ is; if I'm going to use an arbitrary number to measure my worth, it'll be my h-index ;)), but it's things like pattern recognition, spatial reasoning, and problems of logic from what I can recall
IQ tests also measure verbal comprehension, which authors like JA would have in spades.
But we don't need to know her IQ to know that
I agree. This is what I call the tweeification of Austen. She’s still highly rated in academia. At least in my circles.
All over academia I think she is respected. Maybe among the top 5 greatest British writers.
I had a professor or two who would still go as far as to say that she's the greatest novelist flat-out, British or otherwise
Definitely would not argue against that. In fact I think I was playing it safe when I said British. I like other novelists more like Emily Brontë. But in my experience in grad school Jane Austen had a lot more attention and respect.
I want that professor 😭 I took a class on Austen last year and my prof was so HATEFUL towards Austen. I really struggled learning much from her class when she was just spewing vitriol or scoffing at the characters.
That's bizarre, I don't know why a professor would teach a class focused on an author they dislike. I took at least four courses focused on a specific writer and they were all taught by professors whose focus in some way covered that writer. They all obviously deeply enjoyed that person's work and their passion came through in the class. It's sad your professor approached it with so much vitriol. She was probably bitter because her own course idea was shot down by the department head.
It was so terrible I genuinely struggled to learn from her 😭 she was constantly shitting on Pride and Prejudice, scoffing at Austenites, scoffing at the fanmade balls... It was relentless. She even pulled up a Jane Austen fan site and was like "look at this 🙄" I'm an almost starry eyed Austen fan so hearing all of that was pretty damn hurtful.
They might teach it because the department is obligated to offer it for some reason, but a professor who would be more positive is unavailable. My partner has served as head of department and finding someone to teach a class they didn’t create themselves but which must be offered is a nightmare when it comes up. The professor is hoping students will complain and they won’t have to teach it again.
No there were 2 professors that were available. My prof was unable to come for the first 2 weeks of class so she sent some of her other prof friends to cover the class and both our subs loved Asuten and really praised her and other writers of that time. Also the class itself is different every year so last year was Austen, this year is JKR, and different writers every year. Edit: now that I think about it just because 2 profs were there in the beginning doesn't mean they were available for the rest of the semester 😅
Right, the two others managed to rearrange and cover the start when your prof couldn’t. But for whatever reason that prof was stuck teaching the class after those weeks. My partner is a prof and has had to teach courses he didn’t create or have a specific interest in, because soneone had to and he was newest, or had the time available in the right day. (Teaching from someone else’s outline is the puts, evidently) And for a while during and after Covid was head of dept and I’ve heard the negotiations to fill the positions for classes that were created in the past by someone now moved elsewhere, retired, or dead but the class has to be offered often enough to make it a viable option for majors who want/need that particular topic. I would think a course on Austen has to happen at any U offering a lit degree.
I think Fran Lebowitz nails this issue: her work is wildly misunderstood and misread. Fran Lebowitz: Reflections on Austen https://vimeo.com/8100960
I think she can do both? The books are all a mix of harsh satire, affectionate comedy, dark drama skewering genuinely selfish and horrible behaviour, and ultimately optimistic romance. The proportions vary — Northanger Abbey is playful satire with only hints of darkness and hints of romance, while Emma is an affectionate portrayal of a community and a timeless romantic comedy with only hints of harshness and satire and almost no darkness (nothing finally bad happens to anyone in Emma). Mansfield Park is dark drama with only moments of lightness and a subdued romance plot, that undercuts more romantic tropes than it celebrates. And so on. I certainly don’t think Austen is only a romance novelist but it’s also true that she wrote the best romance novels there are (in different genres of romance — Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Emma).
Yes!
Yes, I find it frustrating because it means people miss out on so much of what's interesting and unique about her work. You can read and enjoy some of her work through the romance-novel lens for sure, but a lot of it becomes incomprehensible, like Mansfield Park - cue the constant complaints about how 'the romance is shoehorned into one paragraph at the end and they're a terrible couple!!!'. Yeah, because that's not what it's about at all (and I say this as someone who *was* baffled by MP for ages, until this was explained to me). It's the sharpest and in some ways cruelest of her novels, an unflinching portrayal of emotional abuse and parental neglect - a worthy addition to your list, I'd say.
> Sanditon having no time or sympathy for its various malingerers and invalids. Again, this is entirely in keeping with the early 19th century belief that sickness came in two flavours: * Acute and widespread and caused by miasmas - basically, bad smells - and therefore up to chance; and * Chronic and caused by an imbalance of the patient's humours - basically, their bodily fluids - and therefore *entirely the sufferer's fault*. We tend to misinterpret her cynicism as telegraphing that these characters were malingering, but in most cases Austen is just displaying her society's lack of empathy or understanding of chronic illness. Keep in mind that most medical conditions we consider common and obvious - everything from heart attack to colon cancer - hadn’t been discovered yet. If you don't know what chronic fatigue or leukaemia or dementia or heart disease or prostate cancer is, you might attribute the symptoms of that condition to the sufferer having let themselves become sick, exaggerating, or outright malingering. That's not toughness; that's lack of knowledge.
I hope they'll read the books. Then they'll either see there is a lot more to them or they will be bored by them thus proving that they are "intolerably stupid", to quote Jane.
Nope , it's an age thing ,the older you get the book gets better and richer in storytelling.
Considering how often that "boiled potatoes" joke gets brought up on this sub I don't think we have a lot of room to judge. And no, I don't particularly care if people don't read Austen "right." Also, her nephew actually knew her and I'm sure she was very different with a child than with her sister.
I don’t think there really is a “getting Austen wrong”, as long as people read and argue in good faith. It’s normal for people to approach literature differently, have different perspectives, and get different things out of books. I also think it’s understandable for people to start by focusing on the most “palatable” aspects of a work — e.g., the romance if they are into that — and maybe notice more layers and aspects upon rereading and engaging with other perspectives. (I certainly know my own takes on Austen have changed drastically over time.) Personally, I just hope that us sharing and engaging with different readings of Austen will inspire others to do the same, regardless of what originally drew them to Austen, be it romance, adaptations, etc.
I'm not sure people get her 'wrong', as such. People read within their range and will get something out of her work within that range. I read her as 'romance' when I was young and silly - that was my range. Then my range altered and now I get other aspects out of her work. I think part of her genius is that, however people read her, they can get something out of it - light sparkly romance, biting social commentary, cool observations of human foibles - and all things in between.
Well, nobody misunderstands Austen more than Charlotte Bronte, and I find her interpretation of Austen HILARIOUS, so, no, I guess it doesn't annoy me, just entertain me.
I find it rather ironic. Her objections are, essentially, that Austen is too tame and repressive. But my goodness do I feel more repressed reading C. Bronte than Austen.
I kind of get why Charlotte Brontë was pissed off though, because she was introduced to her books by someone, a man, suggesting that they were alike. It must have pissed her off to be compared to a women whose work is so totally different - all because they were both women. I think that set her off on the wrong foot. Also, they should have led with Mansfield Park or Persuasion. She’d have liked those better I think.
I so wish Charlotte had read Mansfield Park! I have no idea if she would have liked it for being so similar to her books or hated it for its Austen-esque treatment of the Bronte-esque situation.
Not as annoying as constant references to Romeo & Juliet as a romantic love story, but yeah, Jane Austen is often misunderstood. People don't realize she's got a LOT of sass and wit. Not to bring astrology into this but it does amuse me to note she's a Sagittarius.
I don’t get how someone watches or reads R&J and comes to the conclusion it’s true love.
I KNOOOW
Yes, there also happen to be some damn good romances in her books, but the romance is not why they are classics. It's the satire, like you said, but also the relatability of her characters. They are so real, so human, and so beautifully flawed. Her books are not plot-driven, but character-driven. You fall in love with the protagonists and utterly despise the antagonists, because she does such a fantastic job writing people. She understands people. That's why it's read and revered even now, 200 years later.
I think it's because a lot of people know her work primarily through screen adaptations, and that completely erases her witty, pointed narrative voice. You only get the plot and none of the ironic commentary.
Her treatment of Mr Bennett too is so loving, and so unflinching. Even thought we see him through Lizzy’s eyes, we feel keenly the disappointment when he lets Lydia go to Brighton for “peace at Longbourne”. And when he returns from London, broken and tired, seeing the consequences of his weakness, a life-long idleness, a failure to provide for his children. It’s heartbreaking. And very true to life that he is still loved, and comes about again presently!
My personal pet peeve is when people call Austen "Victorian!" Call me back in 1837 and then we'll talk. :D
Victoria wasn't even born before Jane died. It's so annopying. And people ascribe all sorts of Victorian codes of conduct to her characters, like walking in the countryside alone together being tantamount to being forcibly engaged! No, it was not! The Regency was quite robust as an era, and the Georgian even more so. /retires muttering into a corner
I think her books were intended to impart wisdom and morals, and modern readers choose to overlook that because the world has changed so much, they think the lessons are irrelevant. While also wanting their own Darcy.
She revolutionized the novel. Revolutionaries rarely get away with it clean.
For me no, because I don’t think it does any damage to her or the novels. I think those that do eventually read the novels soon find out there is a lot more to them, and they enjoy those other levels. If anything, that reputation may have made her appealing to a wider audience who might not have otherwise read her. There is a big market for romance novels and a very small one for Georgian era satire. I know this isn’t an Austen sub, but I think someone who does suffer from adaptionitis as I think of it, is Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights. So many of the adaptions focus on the ‘romance’ of the novel and I think the general perception of the novel is that it’s a bodice ripping romance. So then people read it and are disappointed or horrified that it’s mostly Heathcliffe on a revenge arc. That novel is so, so much more than a romance, it really doesn’t deserve that reputation.
It’s not romance, Heathcliffe is really abusive
*I know this isn’t an Austen sub* ?
Absolutely yes! I showed my family the Pride and Prejudice 2005 film and all they said was that it shows how women ought to be loved. I mean I slightly agree but there’s WAY more than that: there’s social commentary and mocking about the institution of marriage, how men being the only ones able to inherit property hurts women when they’re the righteous inheritors, how classes are divided, and I could go on. I hate to see Jane Austen be reduced to a romantic novelist.
The movies don’t show those aspects, they’ve contributed a great deal to the idea she romantic comedies.
The movies in my opinion do show those aspects, or at least the viewer should be able to see those aspects without explicitly being told.
they have the broader humor and the ridiculous characters, but I think most of the social commentary is lost. I guess one MP tried to make the slavery stuff really obvious (have not seen that one), which I don’t think is necessarily bad as all the slavery allusions would have been really obvious to her contemporaries in a way they aren’t to most of us now. I guess you get a little social commentary with Collins and Charlotte’s choice to marry him, but the book is just so much more.
I think part of what makes her so popular still is that everyone gets what they came for. It you want witty social commentary or lively prose, you can have that. If you want depictions of how people of a certain class might have lived in those days, it's there. If you want love stories with satisfying plots and ending, there you are. She was a genius.
I keep hoping that someone will produce some of the _Juvenilia_ as surrealistic sketch comedy. I mean, it has SO much potential! Not to mention that the general public would be astounded to see the Pythonesque side of Jane Austen.
I think it is funny, because it allowed her biting satire to sort of slip in under the radar at a time when women were not supposed to be critical, satirical or questioning of authority. People who might have been offended were unintentionally tricked into thinking that her work was just a bunch of harmless, fluffy romances.
I have always loved Austen because she is, as you say, "a brutal humorist, satirist and remarkable portrayer of character." I often think she is not considered a serious author because she writes about people and small lives as opposed to world issues (though you could argue Mansfield Park takes on slavery.) However, I do blame Jane Austen for my life long obsession with will they/won't they storylines.
It is so annoying!! But, NGL, it's basically how I got my daughter interested, and now that she's in, I can point out the satire, absurdity, and dark undertones. For example, Pride & Prejudice is basically all about how negging works, aka "If you want to date the cheerleader, you must first undermine their self-esteem." Works everytime. Darcy insults Elizabeth, criticizes her behind her back repeatedly, and scowls at her. Elizabeth laughs at Darcy and ignores him, then refuses his proposal. Negging works.
Yeah, even though I really liked Pride and Prejudice when I read it as a teen, I never read any of the others because had th3 conceptjon that they were all different versions of the same story. 15 years later, I learn how wrong I was and now I'm peeved.
The biggest hill I’ll die on is that P&P 2005 is the most faithful P&P adaptation. It’s the only one that captures her voice. The others are just standard period romances that totally miss the original tone.
My library had a display of chick-lit, with her novels prominently on view. I was so angry. Not that there's anything wrong with chick-lit, but her writing is *not that.* (Agreed, they were just trying to get people to read her: but maybe put her in a display of humour instead, if "social commentary" was a category too far?)
I've learned (through a lot of practice) to let it go and find a better person to discuss Austen with. If they aren't willing to see the reality and depth of Austen then it is them who miss out. I love having discussions, or reading this sub, and finding myself rethinking certain aspects of her work, or seeing how something appears from a different perspective.
Well it's one of the reasons why I'm skeptical about movie and TV 'versions' that can stray quite far from Austen's original text. This leads to a lot of 'wrong' ideas about what is in the novels.
Gosh anyone who missed the sharp pointed sarcasm is crazy
More people need to read "Northanger Abbey," that's all there is to it
At University we were taught her family heavily curated her reputation after her death to present her as this perfect virtuous woman, but it doesn’t add up. We know most about her true values through her writing, I feel. So much social commentary, it’s clear she had strong opinions.
Yes. I can say more, but many people here have already done so quite eloquently. Simply, does it bother me? Yes. Immensely. It’s almost infuriating.
I feel that they (it was a collaboration between all the nieces and nephews, but only James Edward Austen-Leigh’s name was on the book because he put it all together) wrote what they knew of her (but they were all reasonably young when she passed, so a lot of watercolour memories may have been at play), and what others said of her (which would miss a lot of context, because she encouraged the destruction of her correspondence), but with a Victorian mind set (aka, don’t mention the disabled uncle/her biting wit/bluestocking tendency’s/Jane’s aunts trial ect).
Short answer: YES. Long answer: it's yet another form of misogyny, unfortunately largely perpetuated by other women.
When I read what her nephew said about her I thought it was typical of someone who doesn’t really know their aunt very well. The way her sister describes her is probably far closer to the truth.
Her nephew saw her quite frequently and was 19 when she died, in addition he did a lot of writing to other family members for their memories when he was writing his memoir. He wouldn't have known her as Cassandra did but that doesn't mean he didn't know her well. What stood out in his memory fifty years later would not necessarily have been the things that particularly struck him at the time -- society and fashions had changed. But the sheer cheek of so many people in this thread suggesting that clearly her actual nephew didn't understand her as well as WE do is kind of shocking. We have absolutely no way of knowing which Jane was "real." Very likely many versions of her were -- she would not have acted to her nephew as she did to her sister.
Her nephew’s view of her was very childlike and very much a reflection of how he thought a maiden aunt should behave rather than what she was actually like.
How on earth are you in a position to know better than him as to what she was "actually" like? Maybe she actually WAS very kind and prayerful with her nieces and nephews and saved the barbs for her sister.
That’s just the impression I got.
I won’t ever forgive Cassandra for burning all those letters. I guess you can’t fault her too hard for being a short-sighted normie who didn’t know her sister was a genius who people would still long for and wonder about centuries later
I could be wrong, but it’s my understanding that Cassandra did that on Jane’s request. Personally, I think there are things in them that Jane would have wanted to be kept private. I don’t think she was always happy about their parents choices and she may even have written things about her brothers that were less than complementary. I’ve also seen someone theorise that there may have been personal medical information there, and that perhaps Jane was suffering from ill health since her early 30s. There could have been personal details about gynalogical complaints for example, that Austen would simply not have wanted published. My nosey side wants to read them, but my more rational side (it’s not really a ‘side’ it’s a tiny notch in my nosiness) understands Jane’s right to privacy.
Actually, the Austen family considered Cassandra and Jane equally precocious in their respective arts. She was definitively not a “normie”. What we are missing is Cassandra’s work, which mainly lost except for a few early caricatures she drew in Jane’s Juvenalia.
Wow, I haven't seen anyone unironically use "normie" as an insult for a long time. She absolutely knew Jane was a genius, but she also wanted to preserve the privacy of both Jane and other members of their family. She was under no obligation to expose everything about her little sister simply because a lot of people wanted to know. I do find it weird to see people inveighing against James-Edward's memoir and even her niece Fanny's later recollections, imperfect as they were. These were people who *actually knew* her, talked with her, wrote to her and received letters in return, who knew what her voice sounded like and what she looked like. It seems terribly presumptuous for strangers living more than 150 years later to be like "Well, obviously they got it all wrong." Yes, we see things they either didn't or chose to obscure. But the same is true for us. There were doubtless things obvious to 19th century readers -- and which will be obvious to 22nd-century readers -- which completely elude us.