It's like I said - many people who enjoy Jane Austen hate Charlotte Bronte, and vice versa. I like them both, but I find Austen the more refreshing read.
I also find it amusing how people seem to see their own sympathies in her. To CS Lewis (and Lewis, in addition to being a great writer, was a mighty scholar and one of the greatest critics ever) Jane was the bearer of an understated but strict and thoroughly Christian morality; you perceive a proto-feminist. In fact, I think that Jane would be disgusted - and bitingly satirical - at the Pankhursts and their likes, at their fanaticism, joylessness and heads-I-win-tails-you-lose reasoning. And Lewis had a point: when you read something like Mansfield Park, you will find that Jane could be not just stern but downright puritanical - a side of her that is not so much in evidence (though it could be found) in Pride And Prejudice.
Being a proto-feminist and being a Christian moralist isn't mutually exclusive.
I have no idea what Jane Austen would have thought personally about whoever your favorite feminist bogey-woman might be (and neither do you), but I have a hard time believing she'd have been opposed to women's suffrage.
I can tell you for certain that she would not be impressed by personal attacks ("favourite feminist bogey-woman") in the middle of a debate on interpretation; as I said, she was the original civilized person. But as for the rest, you seem not to realize that some people live outside politics and really and truly have no views on them. You may not be aware that a lot of women - not necessarily either stupid or ignorant - opposed women's suffrage, and it is very much my impression that she would have been among them. (Incidentally, I don't think it's even an issue: if you have any such thing as suffrage, then any being endowed with intelligence and free will ought to have it. We don't give angels and devils the vote only because we don't know how to issue electoral certificates to them. That is just to avoid any further personal suggestions
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Feminist? Not so long ago, the magazine Private Eye gave offence to every Politically Correct person in the United Kingdom (where such creatures are thick on the ground) by publishing a cartoon of an elegantly dressed young woman coming through a door, carrying a number of shopping bags and shouting: Hi, MONEY, I'm home! That is, embodied and given an infuriatingly witty shape, the opinion of all genuine woman-bashers in the world: that women are all one way or another gold-diggers, exploiters, living on the work of men. It is certainly not mine, but you have to be aware that it exists. And who gave it the most celebrated formulation, ever, anywhere? Who but Jane Austen! "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife". What does that mean? Who is it who universally acknowledges it? Who but the women whose scheming to capture the said man and his fortune are the subject of her stories! And while she condemns monetary greed for its own sake - and shows that
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Re: ...continued...inverarityDecember 14 2010, 17:55:25 UTC
And who gave it the most celebrated formulation, ever, anywhere? Who but Jane Austen! "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife". What does that mean? Who is it who universally acknowledges it? Who but the women whose scheming to capture the said man and his fortune are the subject of her stories!
Wow. Just, wow.
I was going comment on your other points, but I stopped being able to take your post seriously here.
Re: ...continued...inverarityDecember 15 2010, 04:40:06 UTC
Oh, fine, serious response:
Austen's opening line in "Pride and Prejudice" is so obviously sardonic that it truly astounds me that you take it at unironic face value. Do you really think that was her intended message?
Re: ...continued...fpbDecember 15 2010, 05:35:26 UTC
That is because I have no such notion. You simply haven't taken in my point that JA has no political or economic depth. To her, her world is simply the way it is. She is not troubled by the practices of West Indian slaveowners or Royal Navy officers because she has no real idea of an alternative; the life of the city poor is nasty because it is nasty, and women have to consider the economic aspect of their marriage because that is commonsense, not because there is something to be celebrated or otherwise about it.
Re: ...continued...inverarityDecember 15 2010, 05:47:32 UTC
On the economic points, I don't doubt that Austen probably didn't reflect much on the nastier aspects of British imperialism or life as a member of the lower classes, from her relatively sheltered station in life.
But I think it's very hard to read P&P and not see the feminist messages. It's you who seems to think "feminism" automatically equals a specific political platform associated with particular individuals, as opposed to a belief in fairness and equality.
(Before you jump on the word "equality," that's why I call Austen a "proto-feminist," because I doubt she envisioned true equality of the sexes -- that would have been a remarkably radical position in her time. But she certainly had an understanding of what the inequality of the sexes cost women, and didn't like it.)
Re: ...continued...fpbDecember 15 2010, 06:32:15 UTC
If it is a matter of power relationships, I suggest the picture is far more complicated than you imagine. One might think that power devolves first and foremost to the elderly male heads of the family, but as a matter of fact few Austen creations are more helpless than upright Sir Thomas Bertram and kindly Mr. Woodhouse (Emma's father, who has almost no part to play in the novel). And it is not, as would be with a lesser author, a matter of hen-pecked husbands (although JA certainly knows of this) but of over-tolerant older men dragged along and incapable of stopping the mechanics of a mostly female household. Sir Thomas Bertram has the appearance of stern elderly authority, but where does he actually manage to make himself felt? Of course he is out of sight for a significant part of the story, but I think he is only effective when the despised Fanny is there to back him up. Male power (or rather the power vested in individual males) is a blunt instrument, not capable of dealing with daily pressures, and even when used with
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Re: ...continued...inverarityDecember 15 2010, 06:55:44 UTC
Power dynamics in individual families will vary even in the most oppressive societies. That doesn't change the dynamics that prevail in society at large. So I don't know why you think this argues against Austen perceiving that women got a raw deal in general. She certainly experienced this personally.
since one of the main arguments was that female influence on society was of a wholly different kind from male.
It was a stupid (as well as circular) argument, though. I suppose it's possible Jane Austen might have bought into that, but I doubt she'd have been horrified at the idea of women being able to vote.
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I suppose it will depend on whether I like Jane Eyre. (Which is another book I've never read, though I've seen a couple of the movie versions.)
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I also find it amusing how people seem to see their own sympathies in her. To CS Lewis (and Lewis, in addition to being a great writer, was a mighty scholar and one of the greatest critics ever) Jane was the bearer of an understated but strict and thoroughly Christian morality; you perceive a proto-feminist. In fact, I think that Jane would be disgusted - and bitingly satirical - at the Pankhursts and their likes, at their fanaticism, joylessness and heads-I-win-tails-you-lose reasoning. And Lewis had a point: when you read something like Mansfield Park, you will find that Jane could be not just stern but downright puritanical - a side of her that is not so much in evidence (though it could be found) in Pride And Prejudice.
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I have no idea what Jane Austen would have thought personally about whoever your favorite feminist bogey-woman might be (and neither do you), but I have a hard time believing she'd have been opposed to women's suffrage.
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Wow. Just, wow.
I was going comment on your other points, but I stopped being able to take your post seriously here.
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And ridiculing what you cannot contradict is an even worse debating tactic than personal insults.
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Austen's opening line in "Pride and Prejudice" is so obviously sardonic that it truly astounds me that you take it at unironic face value. Do you really think that was her intended message?
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But I think it's very hard to read P&P and not see the feminist messages. It's you who seems to think "feminism" automatically equals a specific political platform associated with particular individuals, as opposed to a belief in fairness and equality.
(Before you jump on the word "equality," that's why I call Austen a "proto-feminist," because I doubt she envisioned true equality of the sexes -- that would have been a remarkably radical position in her time. But she certainly had an understanding of what the inequality of the sexes cost women, and didn't like it.)
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since one of the main arguments was that female influence on society was of a wholly different kind from male.
It was a stupid (as well as circular) argument, though. I suppose it's possible Jane Austen might have bought into that, but I doubt she'd have been horrified at the idea of women being able to vote.
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