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 some rich marriages can be disasters - it is also the case that her heroines are consistently rewarded with financially good, as well as sentimentally fulfilling, matches. And to show that this is not a chance there is the wedded Hell of Fanny's sister in Mansfield Park - married hastily, for love, and to an unsuitable partner, and ended up in degrading poverty in Portsmouth. Jane may despise money hunting for its own sake, but she also has no time for people who marry imprudently and without consideration to the financial side of things. Which means that the husband, rather than the wife, must have a solid income. At the very least (Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park), he must have the settled income of an Anglican clergyman.
Incidentally, my comment was, for some reason, short. I had meant to add that the other Christian giant of twentieth-century English literature, GK Chesterton, had a wholly different view of JA: he saw her as a wholly secular spirit, in the vein of the English eighteenth century, and particularly related to Dr.Johnson. Which strikes me as quite right - much more so than Lewis - since it was Dr. Johnson who said something with which Jane would wholly have agreed, and which explains her whole attitude to the sphere of politics, economy, and public affairs in general: that the ability of government to affect the sum of individual human happiness and unhappiness is in general exceedingly small.
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...inverarityDecember 15 2010, 05:27:34 UTC
About those who believe that.
The primary proponent of this viewpoint in P&P is Mrs. Bennet, who is quite obviously a figure of ridicule. Her crass ambition to marry her daughters off to rich men is clearly meant to be seen as just that -- crass. Elizabeth and Jane are embarrassed by her.
When Charlotte Lucas marries for money, she states outright that she's doing it because she's afraid of winding up a penniless old maid. And it still permanently damages her friendship with Elizabeth.
Despite the fact that the consequences of not marrying well are pretty realistically spelled out (such that one can hardly blame Charlotte for her choice), Austen clearly doesn't think marrying for money rather than love is something to aspire to.
Yes, she "rewards" her good girls (Elizabeth and Jane) with rich husbands after all (whom they also happen to love). But only after making it clear just what a bad bargain women get when it comes to the choices they have available to them, She wrote a conventional and expected happy ending, but I think your argument that Jane Austen celebrated the notion of women being gold-digging exploiters is unsupportable. At least based on P&P and what I know of her other novels by seeing the movies.
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 malignant purpose (the General in Persuasion), doomed to fail and achieve the exact opposite of what it wished. And the worst enemies of women are other women. In Mansfield Park, the real injustice is not that Sir Thomas eventually sends Fanny away, but that he is manoeuvred, manipulated and pushed to do so by her female adversaries. In fact, he would rather do nothing of the kind and he is glad to revoke the edict. (Fanny, incidentally, is both a wimp and a prude, and is generally regarded as the least likeable Austen heroine of them all.) In a world where inequality was not only the rule but the accepted truth, it often turns out that the apparently less powerful figures are more effective than those with the most power; and that is one reason why I suspect JA might actually have been among the female opponents of female suffrage, since one of the main arguments was that female influence on society was of a wholly different kind from male. Certainly no writer has ever described better the real relationships of power and influence within a family and its circle.
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.
Re: ...continued...fpbDecember 15 2010, 07:09:07 UTC
Who ever said "horrified"? I said that I suspect that she might have supported the opposite point of view. And no more than suspect. In matters so obviously hypothetical it would be idiotic to have more than a hypothesis; I would say the odds are about six to four in favour. More to the point, I doubt she would have felt very strongly either way. In her world, a place in Parliament, like a house in "town", was merely a reflection of the real source of power and esteem, which was money. (Sir Thomas Bertram on his prospective son-in-law Mr. Rushworth: "If this man did not have £12,000 a year, he would be a very dull fellow indeed." Of course, Rushworth's candidacy is hotly pushed by the female half of his household.)
Re: ...continued...fpbDecember 15 2010, 07:27:48 UTC
P.S.: dumb mistake of the day: General Tilney, father of the love interest and all-around bear, intervenes brutally and unsuccessfully in Northanger Abbey, not in Persuasion.
Re: ...continued...fpbDecember 15 2010, 09:35:55 UTC
Anyway the point is that no amount of remarking upon skewed and unequal relationships makes a woman - or for that matter a man - a feminist. They lack the essential ingredient: "A voice cries in the desert: prepare the ways of justice, make straight her paths. Every mountain shall be knocked down, every valley raised up; the crooked shall be made straight, the rough shall be flattened." Unless these things are pointed out, not as the way things are, but as unjust in themselves, deserving to be knocked down, and able to be knocked down without consequences, you are not speaking of a feminist. And there is nowhere where JA even shows an understanding that change is possible. It was only at the end of her life that she even described an individual having an actual career, that is, rising in status; that order in society might change was beyond her.
Re: ...continued...inverarityDecember 15 2010, 18:39:47 UTC
That's why I called Austen a "proto-feminist." I think she had an awareness of inequality and a wish for things to be different. She probably never made the leap to more actively desiring change -- she'd have had very few role models at the time to suggest that it was even possible.
We've both agreed it's pure speculation as to what she would have believed had she been exposed to the women's suffrage and feminist movements that came along later. I still think she probably would have regarded them favorably.
Incidentally, my comment was, for some reason, short. I had meant to add that the other Christian giant of twentieth-century English literature, GK Chesterton, had a wholly different view of JA: he saw her as a wholly secular spirit, in the vein of the English eighteenth century, and particularly related to Dr.Johnson. Which strikes me as quite right - much more so than Lewis - since it was Dr. Johnson who said something with which Jane would wholly have agreed, and which explains her whole attitude to the sphere of politics, economy, and public affairs in general: that the ability of government to affect the sum of individual human happiness and unhappiness is in general exceedingly small.
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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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The primary proponent of this viewpoint in P&P is Mrs. Bennet, who is quite obviously a figure of ridicule. Her crass ambition to marry her daughters off to rich men is clearly meant to be seen as just that -- crass. Elizabeth and Jane are embarrassed by her.
When Charlotte Lucas marries for money, she states outright that she's doing it because she's afraid of winding up a penniless old maid. And it still permanently damages her friendship with Elizabeth.
Despite the fact that the consequences of not marrying well are pretty realistically spelled out (such that one can hardly blame Charlotte for her choice), Austen clearly doesn't think marrying for money rather than love is something to aspire to.
Yes, she "rewards" her good girls (Elizabeth and Jane) with rich husbands after all (whom they also happen to love). But only after making it clear just what a bad bargain women get when it comes to the choices they have available to them, She wrote a conventional and expected happy ending, but I think your argument that Jane Austen celebrated the notion of women being gold-digging exploiters is unsupportable. At least based on P&P and what I know of her other novels by seeing the movies.
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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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We've both agreed it's pure speculation as to what she would have believed had she been exposed to the women's suffrage and feminist movements that came along later. I still think she probably would have regarded them favorably.
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