Lona Manning's Blog, page 31
October 30, 2017
My Dad at Yonsei University
My father, J. McRee "Mac" Elrod, died last summer at age 84. I have always been in awe of the fact that he and my mother spent five years in Korea soon after the end of the Korean war , as very young teaching missionaries. They came with a red-headed baby boy, my brother Mark, and added two more kids while there -- me and my sister Cara.
When my dad reported for work at Yonsei University on the outskirts of Seoul 60 years ago, the small collection of library books was protected from theft behind a barrier of chicken-wire. The card catalogue, I recall father saying, was ravaged by soldiers taking the cards to line their shoes. In the winter, the ink froze in the inkwells.
My father pioneered the adaptation of Western cataloguing methods for Asian library materials, while still in his early twenties. In fact he was the first Western-trained professional librarian in Korea. He did away with the chicken wire and during his time, the library collection grew from 3,000 to 30,000 volumes.
My father also helped establish the first department of library science at Yonsei University, training future librarians. That department celebrated its 60th anniversary this past summer, and last week I popped over to South Korea to tour the campus and admire his legacy.The professors of the library science department were very gracious and welcoming to me. I shared some stories about my parents' time in Seoul, and they arranged for some graduate students to show me around. (Just about every person I spoke to in Korea spoke English well.) It was an absolutely gorgeous autumn day.
The original quadrangle of grey brick buildings is still there, looking beautiful in autumn colours. The library used to be housed in one of these buildings. I wish I could say that I remember toddling around those beautiful buildings, those stairs and the portico, but I left South Korea when I was two, and sadly, I don't recall it. But we grew up listening to dad's stories about life in Korea.
What a contrast to compare life in South Korea 60 years ago with the country today! Once ravaged by war (Seoul changed hands multiple times during the conflict), South Korea is now a prosperous modern nation.
Korean painted roof detail I don't want to say "Westernized" because that is not quite accurate and perhaps even patronizing. They maintain their own culture, cuisine and language and have their
own unique alphabet
. A lot of their physical past has been destroyed by war and colonial occupation.The young kids like hip hop, gangsta clothing, and many of them dye and streak their hair. South Koreans have all the modern conveniences, including screaming fast internet everywhere, modern transportation, toilet seats that will wash and dry your bottom, and their own K-pop music and Korean soap operas, which are also quite popular in China. Here's a link to my favourite historical soap opera.
Visiting the library at Yonsei, I marveled at how different it was from dad's day. They have 3D printers and virtual reality rooms. Probably the old-fashioned books are one of the lesser-used resources in the library!
I remember my dad remarking that you know you're old when you spot some item that you used every day in your youth for sale in an antique shop. For me, growing up in and around libraries, the card catalogue cabinets with their little square drawers were a familiar feature of life before the digital revolution. Now perhaps some young people would not even recognize what they are, or how they were used.
My student guides and I were walking through the lobby at the library and I spotted a section of card catalogue drawers, from dad's time at the library, being used a decorative accent. It even has some of the original library cards inside! How nice that someone thought to save this!
After my father died, we contributed his papers to his alma mater, the University of Georgia, and I contacted the faculty at Yonsei to ask if they could put up a sign or something to commemorate him. We sent them a picture of Dad as a young man, and they made a nice picture with it, which they plan to hang in the library science computer lab, because that's where all the students gather. They hung it up temporarily while I was there.I love the little bit of a cosmic joke here, because if there is one thing that would drive Dad batty (okay, there were lots of things that would drive Dad batty) it was -- pictures hung too high! So perhaps he will be hanging on the wall -- too high for his tastes, that is -- for years to come at the university where he contributed so much, many many years ago.
The caption on the portrait reads: "J. McRee Elrod (1932-2016) B.A., M.A., M.A., M.S. Methodist missionary, Librarian, Yonsei University, 1955-1960"
October 18, 2017
Don't Miss the Fanny vs Mary Debates -- coming next week
Fanny Price or Mary Crawford — who do you like best? Is Fanny the sweet heroine of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park or is she a two-faced wimp? Is Mary Crawford a charming and misunderstood socialite or is she selfish and immoral? Kyra C Kramer and I take up our pens in defense of these literary frenemies for a no-holds-barred debate, held over five days on the internet. Follow along and join the debate in the comments!
Monday, October 23rd: Just Jane 1813, Claudine Pepe, justjane1813@gmail.com
Tuesday, October 24th: Diary of an Eccentric, Anna Horner, diaryofaneccentric@hotmail.com
Wednesday, October 25th: Savvy Verse and Wit, Serena Agusto-Cox, savvyverseandwit@gmail.com
Thursday, October 26th: My Jane Austen Book Club, Maria Grazia, learnonline.mgs@gmail.com
Friday, October 27th: Austenesque Reviews, Meredith Esparza, merry816@gmail.com
September 14, 2017
Teachers, Students and Hobby Horses
I wrote my "teaching philosophy" a few years ago and stand by it today. Competence in English can only be attained by students who acquire some cultural literacy,* therefore we should not be afraid of introducing Western culture into the classroom. 
Now it's time for me to add a big caveat. I have read blog posts and articles by teachers who say, in effect, "hell yeah, I indoctrinate my students with my opinions." That really concerns me.
These same people would probably have very disparaging things to say about the Christian missionaries who went to China in days gone by, sincerely believing that they were saving heathen souls from damnation. But if you are forcing your worldview on your students, what makes you any different from a missionary? The 'fact' that your opinions are right and theirs were wrong? A recent article in the EL Gazette argues that teachers "should consider introducing social justice issues" into the classroom. It begins: "English language teaching is sometimes regarded as a neutral, value-free endeavour. We teach the medium, not the message."
Okay, so we are teaching grammar and tenses and so forth. Gotcha. But suddenly, one paragraph down, our hypothetical English teacher is denigrated as a mere "technician," "transmitting McDonaldised content (mini-chunks of easily digested junk)."
Ouch!
Suddenly we're teaching grammar.... for The Man!
But, how does the author, J.J. Wilson, deal with the objection that teachers should keep their opinions out of the classroom? He deals with it by explaining that it's impossible: "Everything the teacher does in class reflects her beliefs about education, about people and about the world.... educators cannot help revealing deeply held beliefs." Somehow, the proposition that we can't keep our beliefs out of the classroom becomes, we should bring our beliefs into the classroom. The sentence he uses to make this transition is, and I quote: "And so..... to social justice." And so.... as I read this article, I'm thinking: okay, pejorative language, check, strawman, check, false dilemma, check.
Having established (?) that it is impossible to not be biased, the author then moves on to do some serious question begging, assuming that the reader will agree with him that teachers who are "energised" by the "global malaise" will want to engage their students in "real discussions about real issues." Which means, naturally teaching social justice.
The article discusses how to "subvert the syllabus" and gives examples of how to do it.
Hmmm, 'subvert,' that's an interesting choice of word. Not "introduce" or "adapt." I like teaching word families to my students, so if "subvert" came up, I'd jot the other forms on the board.... Subvert, verb, subversion, noun, subversive, adjective..... To subvert means, the teacher is not doing what he or she was hired to do, and is instead hijacking the classroom for their own agenda. Again, Wilson assumes that we agree this would be a good thing because..... social justice. And this is how the writer describes some hypothetical ESL students: "Many believe in the middle-class aspirational values so common in textbooks. Many do see the world as a white, homogenised, consumerist candy store for grown-ups."
So how to approach this kind of student, a student who'd like to have a job, maybe own a house and have something to live on in old age? I gather that Wilson thinks it's best to not be openly contemptuous or condescending with them. Be gentle. Enlighten them -- but subversively. Do not "proselytise, but tell stories instead." Maybe with some parables, like those Christian missionaries did.
Use questions like: "why an employee in a supermarket is setting out genetically engineered fruit rather than tending her garden, why a line cook is taking orders from strangers instead of cooking for his family, why a woman is watching the children of the wealthy at a daycare centre rather than spending time with her own, why a musician is composing jingles for fizzy drinks rather than jamming with his friends."
Yes, why are people exchanging their specialized services for money to buy the things they want and need, or rather, things they probably shouldn't want, if we are to consult the tastes and opinions of Dr. Wilson?
There are indeed a number of ways to explain how this nightmare scenario came about, and many different facts could be adduced in support of the different opinions we might hold, but just note the enormous amount of question-begging going on here. My question -- and it's an obvious question, I know, but I have to ask it because it does not seem to have occurred to Wilson or his editors -- if he, a social justice warrior, thinks there are "assumptions to be questioned, or misconceptions to be challenged," how can he be certain that a confirmed radical Islamist, a misogynist, a racist, a Flat-Earther, or a fascist, don't completely agree with him about that? And of course they'd also agree that since we cannot purge ourselves of our beliefs, we might as well subvert the curriculum and introduce our beliefs in the classroom. What "misconceptions" do my students hold about abortion, the minimum wage, UFOs, universal health care, taxation, the age of the earth, 9/11, genetically modified food, and the first amendment, that I need to set them straight about?
For the record, I wouldn't be afraid of discussing any of these subjects with older students, because I take care to present, as best as I can, what people say about both sides of the issue, and then ask them how they feel about it.
But it's very obvious from the article that Dr. Wilson regards his own worldview and opinions as the correct ones, because he is against "injustice." To cite just one example, his opinions and mine about the causes of injustice in Palestine and Israel might be very different. Yet, because he uses the magic words, "social justice," he has a license to promote his views as the correct ones.
In my teaching philosophy, I referred disparagingly to the notion that kids today just need to learn "critical thinking," as opposed to learning, you know, facts and stuff like math and history. The EL Gazette article demonstrates why it is essential that students are taught the rudiments of formal logic, and learn how to recognize fallacious and poorly presented arguments. Should they have the misfortune of being trapped in a classroom with a professor who abuses his position in this fashion (which was certainly my experience in college), they will be better equipped to analyze what they are being told, better able to ask questions that test those assumptions and misconceptions.
I enjoyed teaching the rudiments of logic and rhetoric in my ESL debate class. Over at my ESL materials page, there is a "Fact vs Opinion" quiz that I wrote which available for downloading, for intermediate students.
Another exercise I do with students in oral English classes is to ask them, what services should government provide, and list down all of the things they say on the blackboard, and ask them, "should the government take care of old people who have no money?" "should the government do this, or that?" And then I ask them, what percentage of their taxes would they give to the government, to have all the things they say governments should do? The exercise reminds young people about how society is structured, and hopefully gets them thinking about how much government they want, and at what price.
And Dr. Wilson's article would be a very useful reading to bring into a logic and rhetoric class, abounding as it does in examples of logical fallacies. *cultural literacy -- when a word or phrase refers to something that the writer and reader both understand, a shared cultural reference. Terms like "Salem witch hunt" are a type of shorthand to express a bigger idea. What is a hobby horse? The term comes from Laurence Sterne's novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, and it means, someone's pet opinions. And Dr Wilson's pejorative reference to McDonaldised content is another example.
Now it's time for me to add a big caveat. I have read blog posts and articles by teachers who say, in effect, "hell yeah, I indoctrinate my students with my opinions." That really concerns me.These same people would probably have very disparaging things to say about the Christian missionaries who went to China in days gone by, sincerely believing that they were saving heathen souls from damnation. But if you are forcing your worldview on your students, what makes you any different from a missionary? The 'fact' that your opinions are right and theirs were wrong? A recent article in the EL Gazette argues that teachers "should consider introducing social justice issues" into the classroom. It begins: "English language teaching is sometimes regarded as a neutral, value-free endeavour. We teach the medium, not the message."
Okay, so we are teaching grammar and tenses and so forth. Gotcha. But suddenly, one paragraph down, our hypothetical English teacher is denigrated as a mere "technician," "transmitting McDonaldised content (mini-chunks of easily digested junk)."
Ouch!
Suddenly we're teaching grammar.... for The Man!
But, how does the author, J.J. Wilson, deal with the objection that teachers should keep their opinions out of the classroom? He deals with it by explaining that it's impossible: "Everything the teacher does in class reflects her beliefs about education, about people and about the world.... educators cannot help revealing deeply held beliefs." Somehow, the proposition that we can't keep our beliefs out of the classroom becomes, we should bring our beliefs into the classroom. The sentence he uses to make this transition is, and I quote: "And so..... to social justice." And so.... as I read this article, I'm thinking: okay, pejorative language, check, strawman, check, false dilemma, check.
Having established (?) that it is impossible to not be biased, the author then moves on to do some serious question begging, assuming that the reader will agree with him that teachers who are "energised" by the "global malaise" will want to engage their students in "real discussions about real issues." Which means, naturally teaching social justice.
The article discusses how to "subvert the syllabus" and gives examples of how to do it.
Hmmm, 'subvert,' that's an interesting choice of word. Not "introduce" or "adapt." I like teaching word families to my students, so if "subvert" came up, I'd jot the other forms on the board.... Subvert, verb, subversion, noun, subversive, adjective..... To subvert means, the teacher is not doing what he or she was hired to do, and is instead hijacking the classroom for their own agenda. Again, Wilson assumes that we agree this would be a good thing because..... social justice. And this is how the writer describes some hypothetical ESL students: "Many believe in the middle-class aspirational values so common in textbooks. Many do see the world as a white, homogenised, consumerist candy store for grown-ups."
So how to approach this kind of student, a student who'd like to have a job, maybe own a house and have something to live on in old age? I gather that Wilson thinks it's best to not be openly contemptuous or condescending with them. Be gentle. Enlighten them -- but subversively. Do not "proselytise, but tell stories instead." Maybe with some parables, like those Christian missionaries did.
Use questions like: "why an employee in a supermarket is setting out genetically engineered fruit rather than tending her garden, why a line cook is taking orders from strangers instead of cooking for his family, why a woman is watching the children of the wealthy at a daycare centre rather than spending time with her own, why a musician is composing jingles for fizzy drinks rather than jamming with his friends."
Yes, why are people exchanging their specialized services for money to buy the things they want and need, or rather, things they probably shouldn't want, if we are to consult the tastes and opinions of Dr. Wilson?
There are indeed a number of ways to explain how this nightmare scenario came about, and many different facts could be adduced in support of the different opinions we might hold, but just note the enormous amount of question-begging going on here. My question -- and it's an obvious question, I know, but I have to ask it because it does not seem to have occurred to Wilson or his editors -- if he, a social justice warrior, thinks there are "assumptions to be questioned, or misconceptions to be challenged," how can he be certain that a confirmed radical Islamist, a misogynist, a racist, a Flat-Earther, or a fascist, don't completely agree with him about that? And of course they'd also agree that since we cannot purge ourselves of our beliefs, we might as well subvert the curriculum and introduce our beliefs in the classroom. What "misconceptions" do my students hold about abortion, the minimum wage, UFOs, universal health care, taxation, the age of the earth, 9/11, genetically modified food, and the first amendment, that I need to set them straight about?
For the record, I wouldn't be afraid of discussing any of these subjects with older students, because I take care to present, as best as I can, what people say about both sides of the issue, and then ask them how they feel about it.
But it's very obvious from the article that Dr. Wilson regards his own worldview and opinions as the correct ones, because he is against "injustice." To cite just one example, his opinions and mine about the causes of injustice in Palestine and Israel might be very different. Yet, because he uses the magic words, "social justice," he has a license to promote his views as the correct ones.
In my teaching philosophy, I referred disparagingly to the notion that kids today just need to learn "critical thinking," as opposed to learning, you know, facts and stuff like math and history. The EL Gazette article demonstrates why it is essential that students are taught the rudiments of formal logic, and learn how to recognize fallacious and poorly presented arguments. Should they have the misfortune of being trapped in a classroom with a professor who abuses his position in this fashion (which was certainly my experience in college), they will be better equipped to analyze what they are being told, better able to ask questions that test those assumptions and misconceptions.
I enjoyed teaching the rudiments of logic and rhetoric in my ESL debate class. Over at my ESL materials page, there is a "Fact vs Opinion" quiz that I wrote which available for downloading, for intermediate students.
Another exercise I do with students in oral English classes is to ask them, what services should government provide, and list down all of the things they say on the blackboard, and ask them, "should the government take care of old people who have no money?" "should the government do this, or that?" And then I ask them, what percentage of their taxes would they give to the government, to have all the things they say governments should do? The exercise reminds young people about how society is structured, and hopefully gets them thinking about how much government they want, and at what price.
And Dr. Wilson's article would be a very useful reading to bring into a logic and rhetoric class, abounding as it does in examples of logical fallacies. *cultural literacy -- when a word or phrase refers to something that the writer and reader both understand, a shared cultural reference. Terms like "Salem witch hunt" are a type of shorthand to express a bigger idea. What is a hobby horse? The term comes from Laurence Sterne's novel, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, and it means, someone's pet opinions. And Dr Wilson's pejorative reference to McDonaldised content is another example.
September 5, 2017
The Secret's Out!
On the heels of the very successful The Darcy Monologues, Christina Boyd has conceived and rounded up a new anthology of short stories featuring Jane Austen's "bad boys." And yours truly was asked to contribute a story! 
It was a real pleasure and an honour to contribute to this project. And it wasn't easy keeping quiet about this news all summer! If you head over to Babblings of a Bookworm, or Austenesque Reviews, you can enter a draw for a free copy and some other great Austen-themed prizes! This November, you can read the works of eleven different devoted Janeite writers, each one exploring the personality and back story of a different Austen character, such as John Thorpe and Colonel Tilney from Northanger Abbey, Willoughby from Sense & Sensibility, and of course Mansfield Park's Henry Crawford, is represented. It will be very interesting to see what eleven different authors do with their assigned gentleman rogue!
It was a real pleasure and an honour to contribute to this project. And it wasn't easy keeping quiet about this news all summer! If you head over to Babblings of a Bookworm, or Austenesque Reviews, you can enter a draw for a free copy and some other great Austen-themed prizes! This November, you can read the works of eleven different devoted Janeite writers, each one exploring the personality and back story of a different Austen character, such as John Thorpe and Colonel Tilney from Northanger Abbey, Willoughby from Sense & Sensibility, and of course Mansfield Park's Henry Crawford, is represented. It will be very interesting to see what eleven different authors do with their assigned gentleman rogue!
August 25, 2017
Spot the spoof, or, the anguish of the apricots
While reading Jane Austen: the Secret Radical, I had the irresistible idea of trying my own hand at writing a spoof of the type of literary criticism that Helena Kelly employs. It was surprisingly easy -- I had my parodies, published below, written in under an hour. Modern literary criticism contains two basic elements: One, drawing connections between disparate things in the book which have no obvious relevance to the plot or the theme and finding symbolism where none was intended. This is an especially clever technique because it is non-falsifiable. You can pronounce that some inanimate object in the book is freighted with meaning, and nobody can dig the author up out of her grave to contradict you. 
Nothing was wanting but to be happy when they got there Secondly, investing classic literature with overtones of modern attitudes towards sex, gender identity, colonialism, imperialism, race and intersectionalism.
Consider the picnic on Box Hill in Emma. We modern readers can't help thinking about the servants preparing, carrying and setting out the meal, and then waiting respectfully at a distance while the ladies and gentlemen sat and ate it, and then cleaning up after the ladies and gentlemen when they were all finished with their nice al fresco repast. But none of that is mentioned in the novel, only a passing reference to servants and carriages at the end of the passage. To Austen, servants were a fact of life. Half of the following excerpts are from Helena Kelly's Jane Austen: the Secret Radical and half are parodies that I have written. She is quite serious, and I am just kidding. Can you tell which are which? Give your answers in the comments below!
Seriously? 1. Then, too, an astonishing proportion of the surnames in Sense and Sensibility are metallic ones. We have the Steele sisters. We have the Ferrars family (that is, ferrous, containing iron). Willoughby’s rich cousin is called Mrs. Smith—a common name, true, and one that Jane uses in three separate novels, but nevertheless a smith is a worker of metal. Willoughby marries an heiress called Miss Grey, recalling the jeweler Gray’s; the sharing of names is something we’ll return to. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), a “gray” or “grey” is also a spot of discoloration that marks the flaw in a metal, particularly in a gun, and when we first encounter Willoughby, on the rainy hillside above Barton Cottage, he’s carrying a gun. 2. Shoes are more predominate in Emma than they are in any other of Jane's novels, although the word "shoe" itself appears only four times. This should not surprise us, for shoes both display and conceal, reveal and hide. We have Mr. Knightley with his thick leather gaiters, Emma's trouble with her shoes when she is walking with Harriet and Mr. Elton. Miss Bates is obsessed with shoes and whether they have gotten damp or dirty; as a clergyman's daughter, she knew that sandals were connected in the Bible with uncleanliness. If something unpleasant is picked up in the outside world, it can be thoughtlessly discarded by the privileged class in Highbury -- Emma's bootlace is tossed into a ditch, Isabella tells her father, "I could change my shoes the moment I get home." For them, there will always be more bootlaces and shoes. The gypsies, of course, are all bare-footed. 3. One of Miss Bingley's favourite words is 'delighted'. She tells Elizabeth Bennet, "I hear you are quite delighted with Wickham." That word is chosen deliberately. De-lighted of course has a double meaning -- a light can be extinguished, can be put out. Wickham's name is a revelation; "wick" refers to the wick of a candle, which was, apart from firewood, the chief source of light in Jane's world. "Ham" would have reminded astute readers of Ham, the son of Noah. They would have known the bible passage describing how Ham saw the nakedness of his father when Noah was passed out drunk. If Wickham is the senior Mr. Darcy's illegitimate son, could this be the real reason why Wickham has been cast out of Pemberley – does he know unspeakable truths about his own father? Can Wickham shed light on the hidden sins of Pemberley?
4. Almost immediately we are reminded of slavery and the complicity of landowners like Sir Thomas; Mrs. Price offers up one of her sons to go to Sir Thomas's West Indian estates – that is, his sugar plantations where his slaves toiled -- and another to go to Woolwich. Woolrich was a military academy. Only a few years previously to the events in Mansfield Park, the British Army had invaded what is now Haiti, intending to brutally put down the slave uprising there.
5. Mansfield Park includes repeated references to “pheasants,” game birds that were difficult to buy and that (like slaves, after the Mansfield ruling) couldn’t be legally recovered if they got away and so had to be carefully kept and carefully bred to maintain an adequate population. Jane barely mentions pheasants elsewhere in her writing. 6. Perhaps we’d do better to view the abrupt shifts, the gaps that open up in the text, as thematic. Persuasion features a lot of sudden drops and breaks. The words “fall” and “fell” appear more often in this short book than they do in Jane’s longer novels. The heroine Anne’s nephew falls from a tree and breaks his collarbone. Her headstrong rival in love, Louisa Musgrove, falls and cracks her skull on the Cobb at Lyme. Her father, Sir Walter, and eldest sister, Elizabeth, scrambling to maintain their social position, take a house on a street in Bath where planned building work had been halted because of landslides.
7. Jane makes a point of telling us that Captain Harville has gathered “something curious and valuable from all the distant countries” he’s visited; he displays them in his rented house in Lyme. Are we meant to imagine that he has already added, or will add, some of the Lyme “curiosities”—fossils—to his collection? There is, too, a faintly reptilian flavor to two of the ships Captain Wentworth has sailed on—the Asp and the Laconia. “Asp” is a poetic term for a snake. Sparta, in Laconia, was associated with serpents. There were dozens of other, non-reptilian ship names Jane could have borrowed or invented, but she doesn’t.
8. But a close reading of Mansfield Park reveals how Austen really intended for us to understand Fanny – there is the public Fanny and the hidden, secret Fanny who takes refuge in the East Room. More than a hundred years before the illness was diagnosed, Jane has given us a portrait of someone with dissociative identity disorder, commonly (and inaccurately) called, having a split personality. The truth is seen -- but not fully understood -- by Mrs. Norris, who says of her: "she likes to go her own way to work…. she certainly has a little spirit of secrecy." And it is Mrs. Norris who says, "Fanny is not one of those who can talk and work at the same time." But Fanny is not merely daydreaming, she has retreated from reality entirely. The uncomfortable truths of Mansfield Park are too painful. Click here for parts one, two and three of my review of Helena Kelly's Jane Austen: the Secret Radical Click here for information about my novel, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park
Nothing was wanting but to be happy when they got there Secondly, investing classic literature with overtones of modern attitudes towards sex, gender identity, colonialism, imperialism, race and intersectionalism.Consider the picnic on Box Hill in Emma. We modern readers can't help thinking about the servants preparing, carrying and setting out the meal, and then waiting respectfully at a distance while the ladies and gentlemen sat and ate it, and then cleaning up after the ladies and gentlemen when they were all finished with their nice al fresco repast. But none of that is mentioned in the novel, only a passing reference to servants and carriages at the end of the passage. To Austen, servants were a fact of life. Half of the following excerpts are from Helena Kelly's Jane Austen: the Secret Radical and half are parodies that I have written. She is quite serious, and I am just kidding. Can you tell which are which? Give your answers in the comments below!
Seriously? 1. Then, too, an astonishing proportion of the surnames in Sense and Sensibility are metallic ones. We have the Steele sisters. We have the Ferrars family (that is, ferrous, containing iron). Willoughby’s rich cousin is called Mrs. Smith—a common name, true, and one that Jane uses in three separate novels, but nevertheless a smith is a worker of metal. Willoughby marries an heiress called Miss Grey, recalling the jeweler Gray’s; the sharing of names is something we’ll return to. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), a “gray” or “grey” is also a spot of discoloration that marks the flaw in a metal, particularly in a gun, and when we first encounter Willoughby, on the rainy hillside above Barton Cottage, he’s carrying a gun. 2. Shoes are more predominate in Emma than they are in any other of Jane's novels, although the word "shoe" itself appears only four times. This should not surprise us, for shoes both display and conceal, reveal and hide. We have Mr. Knightley with his thick leather gaiters, Emma's trouble with her shoes when she is walking with Harriet and Mr. Elton. Miss Bates is obsessed with shoes and whether they have gotten damp or dirty; as a clergyman's daughter, she knew that sandals were connected in the Bible with uncleanliness. If something unpleasant is picked up in the outside world, it can be thoughtlessly discarded by the privileged class in Highbury -- Emma's bootlace is tossed into a ditch, Isabella tells her father, "I could change my shoes the moment I get home." For them, there will always be more bootlaces and shoes. The gypsies, of course, are all bare-footed. 3. One of Miss Bingley's favourite words is 'delighted'. She tells Elizabeth Bennet, "I hear you are quite delighted with Wickham." That word is chosen deliberately. De-lighted of course has a double meaning -- a light can be extinguished, can be put out. Wickham's name is a revelation; "wick" refers to the wick of a candle, which was, apart from firewood, the chief source of light in Jane's world. "Ham" would have reminded astute readers of Ham, the son of Noah. They would have known the bible passage describing how Ham saw the nakedness of his father when Noah was passed out drunk. If Wickham is the senior Mr. Darcy's illegitimate son, could this be the real reason why Wickham has been cast out of Pemberley – does he know unspeakable truths about his own father? Can Wickham shed light on the hidden sins of Pemberley?
4. Almost immediately we are reminded of slavery and the complicity of landowners like Sir Thomas; Mrs. Price offers up one of her sons to go to Sir Thomas's West Indian estates – that is, his sugar plantations where his slaves toiled -- and another to go to Woolwich. Woolrich was a military academy. Only a few years previously to the events in Mansfield Park, the British Army had invaded what is now Haiti, intending to brutally put down the slave uprising there.5. Mansfield Park includes repeated references to “pheasants,” game birds that were difficult to buy and that (like slaves, after the Mansfield ruling) couldn’t be legally recovered if they got away and so had to be carefully kept and carefully bred to maintain an adequate population. Jane barely mentions pheasants elsewhere in her writing. 6. Perhaps we’d do better to view the abrupt shifts, the gaps that open up in the text, as thematic. Persuasion features a lot of sudden drops and breaks. The words “fall” and “fell” appear more often in this short book than they do in Jane’s longer novels. The heroine Anne’s nephew falls from a tree and breaks his collarbone. Her headstrong rival in love, Louisa Musgrove, falls and cracks her skull on the Cobb at Lyme. Her father, Sir Walter, and eldest sister, Elizabeth, scrambling to maintain their social position, take a house on a street in Bath where planned building work had been halted because of landslides.
7. Jane makes a point of telling us that Captain Harville has gathered “something curious and valuable from all the distant countries” he’s visited; he displays them in his rented house in Lyme. Are we meant to imagine that he has already added, or will add, some of the Lyme “curiosities”—fossils—to his collection? There is, too, a faintly reptilian flavor to two of the ships Captain Wentworth has sailed on—the Asp and the Laconia. “Asp” is a poetic term for a snake. Sparta, in Laconia, was associated with serpents. There were dozens of other, non-reptilian ship names Jane could have borrowed or invented, but she doesn’t.
8. But a close reading of Mansfield Park reveals how Austen really intended for us to understand Fanny – there is the public Fanny and the hidden, secret Fanny who takes refuge in the East Room. More than a hundred years before the illness was diagnosed, Jane has given us a portrait of someone with dissociative identity disorder, commonly (and inaccurately) called, having a split personality. The truth is seen -- but not fully understood -- by Mrs. Norris, who says of her: "she likes to go her own way to work…. she certainly has a little spirit of secrecy." And it is Mrs. Norris who says, "Fanny is not one of those who can talk and work at the same time." But Fanny is not merely daydreaming, she has retreated from reality entirely. The uncomfortable truths of Mansfield Park are too painful. Click here for parts one, two and three of my review of Helena Kelly's Jane Austen: the Secret Radical Click here for information about my novel, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park
August 23, 2017
Jane Austen the Secret Radical review, part three of three
Part three: It's as clear as daylight To begin with, I want to repeat some distinctions I made in part two:
Kelly is not saying [Mansfield Park] is a romantic comedy novel that I don't happen to like, because I don't happen to like Fanny and Edmund. It just didn't hit the mark for me.
Nor is she saying, Well, books that mentioned slaves or 12-year-old girls getting married or Jewish money lenders used to be okay, in the past, but those subjects are problematic in today's world. And for some people, a book in which the main characters live off of slavery is too problematic to be read with enjoyment today. I am not going to dispute that. If you don't want to read Huck Finn, or The Merchant of Venice, or Romeo and Juliet or Mansfield Park, I think you are missing out on some great literature, but it's your choice. But, as I said, Kelly is going farther than that.
Kelly is saying, Austen intended for her readers to regard the main characters who get married at the end of the novel -- you know, like people always do at the end of a romantic comedy -- as bad, horrible people. Mansfield Park and Emma may look like romantic comedies on the surface but they are actually condemnations of slavery and the practise of land enclosure.
Kelly is positively allergic to the humour in Austen. Of Knightley and Emma's happy union, Kelly writes, "the marriage itself is made possible only by criminal acts and an elderly man's terror." In case you don't recognize what she's talking about, it's a reference to this:
Mrs. Weston's poultry-house was robbed one night of all her turkeys--evidently by the ingenuity of man. Other poultry-yards in the neighbourhood also suffered.--Pilfering was housebreaking to Mr. Woodhouse's fears.--He was very uneasy; and but for the sense of his son-in-law's protection, would have been under wretched alarm every night of his life.
Austen treats the theft of the poultry with mock-drama, but of course it's deadly serious to Kelly, a comedy of terrors.
Slavery of course, is not funny. According to Kelly, Mansfield Park is "inescapably political," filled with veiled allusions to slavery which her contemporary readers would have understood. Yes, slavery is mentioned briefly and in passing in the novel and yes, Sir Thomas owns slaves. But that is not what the novel is about. And if some readers think I am making light of the subject of slavery in what follows, no. My intention is to make fun of over-exuberant literary detective work.
Did you think that when Austen began Mansfield Park with the phrase, "About thirty years ago," her readers would say to themselves, 'Okay, Miss Maria Ward met Sir Thomas Bertram thirty years ago?" No! They would think about slavery!
Her contemporary readers, upon reading the phrase, "About thirty years ago," were supposed to be instantly reminded, and mentally review, the events of the abolition campaign, the Zong case, Cowper's poem, the Haitian slave revolt, all of which transpired during the thirty years before the publication of Mansfield Park. They weren't going to think about Mozart, or how fashions had changed, or how they used to have a full head of hair back then, or how much the pound sterling was worth, or who was on the throne, they were – obviously – going to think about slavery. As you do, you know, whenever someone mentions courtships that occurred in previous decades.
To resume, when Fanny has a headache and Edmund gives her a glass of Madeira wine, what are we supposed to think of? Take a guess. That's right – slavery!
Or when Mary Crawford mentions the poet, Hawkins Browne? Well, his son once went to a dinner party with Dr. Johnson and slavery was discussed at that party! And everybody knows about Dr. Johnson. (That much is true, they did).
When young Julia mentions the Roman emperor Severus, what are we supposed to think about? Hint: Severus was an African. Yes, slavery!
No, actually, Severus is mentioned in a passage which is a comedic reference to a common topic of concern at the time -- how to educate girls and how much education girls should have. Instead of didactic passages where the novel's characters sit around and talk about female education, Austen shows, rather than tells, and is poking fun at the same time:
"But, aunt, [Fanny] is really so very ignorant!—… I am sure I should have been ashamed of myself, if I had not known better long before I was so old as she is. ... How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to repeat the chronological order of the kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of the principal events of their reigns!"
"Yes," added [Julia]; "and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus; besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals, semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers."
"Very true indeed, my dears, [says Aunt Norris], but you are blessed with wonderful memories, and your poor cousin has probably none at all…. And remember that, if you are ever so forward and clever yourselves, you should always be modest; for, much as you know already, there is a great deal more for you to learn."
"Yes, I know there is, till I am seventeen….."
This is a funny, brilliant passage. Are we also supposed to be thinking about slavery while we are chuckling quietly? Ah yes, we are not supposed to be laughing.
And did you think Mansfield Park ends with a happy couple getting married? No!
Timid little Fanny "has married a man who doesn't love her, who is a fool and a hypocrite." Austen has not written a hero and heroine who don't appeal to modern tastes, she deliberately wrote unlikeable main characters.
And did you think they will live happily ever after? No! You have forgotten about the apricots!
Here's the final, thunderously condemnatory passage in Kelly's chapter on Mansfield Park:
Thoroughly perfect, though the Moor Park apricot tree is still in the vicarage garden, a reminder of the evil that everyone knows about but no one is willing to discuss, a tree not of knowledge, but of forgetfulness. With every spoonful of apricot jam, every apricot tart that's served up on the parsonage table, Fanny will eat the fruits of slavery.
And the tree will keep on growing.
Why apricots? Because Kelly claims the word "Moor" in "Moor Park" is a subtle reference to slavery that Austen's readers would instantly understand.
"Is Jane really using this name, and this kind of apricot tree, out of all the alternatives, by accident? Is it just coincidence that it's the same word Shakespeare uses to describe the ethnicity of black Africans?"
But of course it's not the same word, it's a homonym. The Moorpark apricot is named after a landed estate called "Moor Park." "Moor" refers not to black people but wild, windswept heaths, moors, like in Wuthering Heights. Please don't tell Kelly about the word 'niggardly,' she'll have conniptions.
Of course, you can't make a good apricot tart without some sugar. Sugar was actually made by slaves, in horrible conditions. That's what they are making at Sir Thomas' plantation in Antigua. Hmm, the word "sugar" does not appear in Mansfield Park. Maybe if Austen had mentioned someone putting sugar in their tea, that would have been a more intelligible reference – to slavery! Easier to "get" than a homonym. But never mind, apricots = slaves.
So what is Mansfield Park, if not a dark, subversive, "deeply troubling," indictment of slavery?
Mansfield Park, as many critics have knowledgeably explained, is Jane Austen's response to a genre of novel called the "conduct novel." Coelebs in Search of a Wife, a best-selling novel of the day, is a prime example. It features serious discussions of religion, piety, education and choosing a good wife or husband, all issues that are featured in Mansfield Park.
Once you know about conduct novels and what they were like, the style, structure and characters of Mansfield Park makes a lot more sense. Coelebs is a highly didactic book in which the characters sit around and talk. Austen is a better writer, she shows her characters wrestling with moral dilemmas, rather than talk about them.
But I'm not going to digress about that. Here is a link to a fantastic essay on the subject written by someone who possesses more than superficial knowledge about Regency times (women were oppressed back then, did you know?).
May I also recommend David Shapard's foreword in his annotated Mansfield Park. But what about the slaves? Well, for plot purposes, Austen had to have Sir Thomas go away for a long time, and she used the fact that he was on a dangerous sea voyage as one reason why the young people of Mansfield Park should not be amusing themselves with a play while their father was in peril of life or death. At the time of writing, because of the Napoleonic Wars, Sir Thomas couldn't go to Europe, so she had to give him a different destination. Slavery, which in fact is mentioned more explicitly by Jane Fairfax and Mrs. Elton in Emma, than by anyone in Mansfield Park, is simply not at the forefront of the story.
Fanny and her brother One final oddity of Jane Austen: the Secret Radical, on which I'd like to comment, is that Kelly is elaborately cautious about making assumptions where the biographical details of Austen's life are concerned. She refuses to take the widely accepted stories at face value and in fact arrogantly accuses those who came before her of spreading "lies" about Austen. Do we know for a fact that it was First Impressions that her father offered to a publisher? Do we know for a fact that Harris Bigg-Wither proposed to Austen? No, we don't! It's just family "gossip." Did Edward Austen only give Chawton cottage to his mother and sisters because his wife had died and she could no longer object? "an intriguing coincidence, though one about which we can do no more than speculate."
But, she makes head-shakingly blithe assumptions from clues that only she can perceive in Austen's text. For example, read this passage:
[Henry Crawford] honoured the warm-hearted, blunt fondness of [Fanny's sailor brother William] which led [William] to say, with his hands stretched towards Fanny's head, 'Do you know, I begin to like that queer fashion already, though when I first heard of such things being done in England, I could not believe it; and when Mrs. Brown, and the other women at the Commissioner's at Gibraltar, appeared in the same trim, I thought they were mad; but Fanny can reconcile me to anything.'
Do you conclude, as does Kelly, that the "the intensity of William's reaction suggests that we are dealing here with cropped hair and not just short front ringlets."?
What? He's a young man saying when he first saw a new hairstyle, he thought it looked silly, but now that he sees it on his beloved sister's head, he is okay with it. What is 'intense' about that? Why does Kelly think hair has been cut, rather than styled? The expression, 'appeared in the same trim,' is a nautical expression. 'Trimming the sails,' does not mean cut the sails, right? It means adjusting them. Or is it the word 'queer'? Please tell me it's not the word 'queer' that has Kelly thinking Fanny is now wearing short hair. And in the end, Kelly does not explain what is so significant about short hair.
Or maybe Harriet Smith is Jane Fairfax's sister because "Hetty" is the name of Jane Fairfax's grandmother. "Nothing in this book remains a mystery if we read it carefully – Harriet Smith and Jane Fairfax may well be half-sisters."
Or maybe they are not. And if they were, why would Austen bury but not reveal the secret in Emma, a book that is filled with hints and clues that are all revealed in the end. What narrative purpose would that serve?
Jane Austen: the Secret Radical is not about Austen's innovations as a writer, her technique, her inimitable voice, her way with dialogue, or her characters. It's about a quest to find certain opinions and points of view embedded deeply within Austen's texts. Kelly has claimed to find these secret opinions, and no doubt she is as well-intentioned as was Emma Woodhouse, when she mistakenly thought she was successfully bringing Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton together. But her inclinations have led her astray and she has found clues that aren't there at all.
As for me, "I do not think I am particularly quick at those sort of discoveries. I do not pretend to it. What is before me, I see." Bonus: in my next post, I will reproduce four paragraphs from Helena Kelly's book, along with four parodies of my own. Will you be able to tell the real Kelly analysis from the parody? Stay tuned and see for yourself!
My recommendations for books about Austen:
What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved, by John Mullan
Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time, by Mary Waldron
Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen, by Joan Aiken Hodge
Click here to learn about my novel, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park
click here for part one and part two of this review of Jane Austen: Secret Radical
Photos of Mansfield Park are from the 1983 mini-series, the only adaption of Mansfield Park that is faithful to the book.
Kelly is not saying [Mansfield Park] is a romantic comedy novel that I don't happen to like, because I don't happen to like Fanny and Edmund. It just didn't hit the mark for me.
Nor is she saying, Well, books that mentioned slaves or 12-year-old girls getting married or Jewish money lenders used to be okay, in the past, but those subjects are problematic in today's world. And for some people, a book in which the main characters live off of slavery is too problematic to be read with enjoyment today. I am not going to dispute that. If you don't want to read Huck Finn, or The Merchant of Venice, or Romeo and Juliet or Mansfield Park, I think you are missing out on some great literature, but it's your choice. But, as I said, Kelly is going farther than that.
Kelly is saying, Austen intended for her readers to regard the main characters who get married at the end of the novel -- you know, like people always do at the end of a romantic comedy -- as bad, horrible people. Mansfield Park and Emma may look like romantic comedies on the surface but they are actually condemnations of slavery and the practise of land enclosure.
Kelly is positively allergic to the humour in Austen. Of Knightley and Emma's happy union, Kelly writes, "the marriage itself is made possible only by criminal acts and an elderly man's terror." In case you don't recognize what she's talking about, it's a reference to this:Mrs. Weston's poultry-house was robbed one night of all her turkeys--evidently by the ingenuity of man. Other poultry-yards in the neighbourhood also suffered.--Pilfering was housebreaking to Mr. Woodhouse's fears.--He was very uneasy; and but for the sense of his son-in-law's protection, would have been under wretched alarm every night of his life.
Austen treats the theft of the poultry with mock-drama, but of course it's deadly serious to Kelly, a comedy of terrors.
Slavery of course, is not funny. According to Kelly, Mansfield Park is "inescapably political," filled with veiled allusions to slavery which her contemporary readers would have understood. Yes, slavery is mentioned briefly and in passing in the novel and yes, Sir Thomas owns slaves. But that is not what the novel is about. And if some readers think I am making light of the subject of slavery in what follows, no. My intention is to make fun of over-exuberant literary detective work.Did you think that when Austen began Mansfield Park with the phrase, "About thirty years ago," her readers would say to themselves, 'Okay, Miss Maria Ward met Sir Thomas Bertram thirty years ago?" No! They would think about slavery!
Her contemporary readers, upon reading the phrase, "About thirty years ago," were supposed to be instantly reminded, and mentally review, the events of the abolition campaign, the Zong case, Cowper's poem, the Haitian slave revolt, all of which transpired during the thirty years before the publication of Mansfield Park. They weren't going to think about Mozart, or how fashions had changed, or how they used to have a full head of hair back then, or how much the pound sterling was worth, or who was on the throne, they were – obviously – going to think about slavery. As you do, you know, whenever someone mentions courtships that occurred in previous decades.
To resume, when Fanny has a headache and Edmund gives her a glass of Madeira wine, what are we supposed to think of? Take a guess. That's right – slavery!Or when Mary Crawford mentions the poet, Hawkins Browne? Well, his son once went to a dinner party with Dr. Johnson and slavery was discussed at that party! And everybody knows about Dr. Johnson. (That much is true, they did).
When young Julia mentions the Roman emperor Severus, what are we supposed to think about? Hint: Severus was an African. Yes, slavery!
No, actually, Severus is mentioned in a passage which is a comedic reference to a common topic of concern at the time -- how to educate girls and how much education girls should have. Instead of didactic passages where the novel's characters sit around and talk about female education, Austen shows, rather than tells, and is poking fun at the same time:
"But, aunt, [Fanny] is really so very ignorant!—… I am sure I should have been ashamed of myself, if I had not known better long before I was so old as she is. ... How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to repeat the chronological order of the kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of the principal events of their reigns!""Yes," added [Julia]; "and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus; besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals, semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers."
"Very true indeed, my dears, [says Aunt Norris], but you are blessed with wonderful memories, and your poor cousin has probably none at all…. And remember that, if you are ever so forward and clever yourselves, you should always be modest; for, much as you know already, there is a great deal more for you to learn."
"Yes, I know there is, till I am seventeen….."
This is a funny, brilliant passage. Are we also supposed to be thinking about slavery while we are chuckling quietly? Ah yes, we are not supposed to be laughing.
And did you think Mansfield Park ends with a happy couple getting married? No!Timid little Fanny "has married a man who doesn't love her, who is a fool and a hypocrite." Austen has not written a hero and heroine who don't appeal to modern tastes, she deliberately wrote unlikeable main characters.
And did you think they will live happily ever after? No! You have forgotten about the apricots!
Here's the final, thunderously condemnatory passage in Kelly's chapter on Mansfield Park:
Thoroughly perfect, though the Moor Park apricot tree is still in the vicarage garden, a reminder of the evil that everyone knows about but no one is willing to discuss, a tree not of knowledge, but of forgetfulness. With every spoonful of apricot jam, every apricot tart that's served up on the parsonage table, Fanny will eat the fruits of slavery.
And the tree will keep on growing.
Why apricots? Because Kelly claims the word "Moor" in "Moor Park" is a subtle reference to slavery that Austen's readers would instantly understand.
"Is Jane really using this name, and this kind of apricot tree, out of all the alternatives, by accident? Is it just coincidence that it's the same word Shakespeare uses to describe the ethnicity of black Africans?"
But of course it's not the same word, it's a homonym. The Moorpark apricot is named after a landed estate called "Moor Park." "Moor" refers not to black people but wild, windswept heaths, moors, like in Wuthering Heights. Please don't tell Kelly about the word 'niggardly,' she'll have conniptions.
Of course, you can't make a good apricot tart without some sugar. Sugar was actually made by slaves, in horrible conditions. That's what they are making at Sir Thomas' plantation in Antigua. Hmm, the word "sugar" does not appear in Mansfield Park. Maybe if Austen had mentioned someone putting sugar in their tea, that would have been a more intelligible reference – to slavery! Easier to "get" than a homonym. But never mind, apricots = slaves.
So what is Mansfield Park, if not a dark, subversive, "deeply troubling," indictment of slavery?Mansfield Park, as many critics have knowledgeably explained, is Jane Austen's response to a genre of novel called the "conduct novel." Coelebs in Search of a Wife, a best-selling novel of the day, is a prime example. It features serious discussions of religion, piety, education and choosing a good wife or husband, all issues that are featured in Mansfield Park.
Once you know about conduct novels and what they were like, the style, structure and characters of Mansfield Park makes a lot more sense. Coelebs is a highly didactic book in which the characters sit around and talk. Austen is a better writer, she shows her characters wrestling with moral dilemmas, rather than talk about them.
But I'm not going to digress about that. Here is a link to a fantastic essay on the subject written by someone who possesses more than superficial knowledge about Regency times (women were oppressed back then, did you know?).
May I also recommend David Shapard's foreword in his annotated Mansfield Park. But what about the slaves? Well, for plot purposes, Austen had to have Sir Thomas go away for a long time, and she used the fact that he was on a dangerous sea voyage as one reason why the young people of Mansfield Park should not be amusing themselves with a play while their father was in peril of life or death. At the time of writing, because of the Napoleonic Wars, Sir Thomas couldn't go to Europe, so she had to give him a different destination. Slavery, which in fact is mentioned more explicitly by Jane Fairfax and Mrs. Elton in Emma, than by anyone in Mansfield Park, is simply not at the forefront of the story.
Fanny and her brother One final oddity of Jane Austen: the Secret Radical, on which I'd like to comment, is that Kelly is elaborately cautious about making assumptions where the biographical details of Austen's life are concerned. She refuses to take the widely accepted stories at face value and in fact arrogantly accuses those who came before her of spreading "lies" about Austen. Do we know for a fact that it was First Impressions that her father offered to a publisher? Do we know for a fact that Harris Bigg-Wither proposed to Austen? No, we don't! It's just family "gossip." Did Edward Austen only give Chawton cottage to his mother and sisters because his wife had died and she could no longer object? "an intriguing coincidence, though one about which we can do no more than speculate."But, she makes head-shakingly blithe assumptions from clues that only she can perceive in Austen's text. For example, read this passage:
[Henry Crawford] honoured the warm-hearted, blunt fondness of [Fanny's sailor brother William] which led [William] to say, with his hands stretched towards Fanny's head, 'Do you know, I begin to like that queer fashion already, though when I first heard of such things being done in England, I could not believe it; and when Mrs. Brown, and the other women at the Commissioner's at Gibraltar, appeared in the same trim, I thought they were mad; but Fanny can reconcile me to anything.'
Do you conclude, as does Kelly, that the "the intensity of William's reaction suggests that we are dealing here with cropped hair and not just short front ringlets."?
What? He's a young man saying when he first saw a new hairstyle, he thought it looked silly, but now that he sees it on his beloved sister's head, he is okay with it. What is 'intense' about that? Why does Kelly think hair has been cut, rather than styled? The expression, 'appeared in the same trim,' is a nautical expression. 'Trimming the sails,' does not mean cut the sails, right? It means adjusting them. Or is it the word 'queer'? Please tell me it's not the word 'queer' that has Kelly thinking Fanny is now wearing short hair. And in the end, Kelly does not explain what is so significant about short hair.
Or maybe Harriet Smith is Jane Fairfax's sister because "Hetty" is the name of Jane Fairfax's grandmother. "Nothing in this book remains a mystery if we read it carefully – Harriet Smith and Jane Fairfax may well be half-sisters."Or maybe they are not. And if they were, why would Austen bury but not reveal the secret in Emma, a book that is filled with hints and clues that are all revealed in the end. What narrative purpose would that serve?
Jane Austen: the Secret Radical is not about Austen's innovations as a writer, her technique, her inimitable voice, her way with dialogue, or her characters. It's about a quest to find certain opinions and points of view embedded deeply within Austen's texts. Kelly has claimed to find these secret opinions, and no doubt she is as well-intentioned as was Emma Woodhouse, when she mistakenly thought she was successfully bringing Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton together. But her inclinations have led her astray and she has found clues that aren't there at all.
As for me, "I do not think I am particularly quick at those sort of discoveries. I do not pretend to it. What is before me, I see." Bonus: in my next post, I will reproduce four paragraphs from Helena Kelly's book, along with four parodies of my own. Will you be able to tell the real Kelly analysis from the parody? Stay tuned and see for yourself!
My recommendations for books about Austen:
What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved, by John Mullan
Jane Austen and the Fiction of Her Time, by Mary Waldron
Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen, by Joan Aiken Hodge
Click here to learn about my novel, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park
click here for part one and part two of this review of Jane Austen: Secret Radical
Photos of Mansfield Park are from the 1983 mini-series, the only adaption of Mansfield Park that is faithful to the book.
August 21, 2017
Jane Austen, the Secret Radical, a review, part two of three
Part Two: That's Not Funny!
I begin by reposting the seven points I outlined at the beginning of part one:
In Jane Austen: the Secret Radical:Helena Kelly posits that Jane Austen was a secret radical. In other words, Austen held radical views, and these views were not out in the open for everyone to see, but were covert or secret in some way.Because in Austen's time, writing something critical of the government or the royal family could get you in trouble with the authorities, even jailed. "[T]he Austen family lived in a country in which any criticism [my emphasis] of the status quo was seen as disloyal and dangerous." (This is overstated, and requires some qualification. We are not talking about North Korean levels of repression.)Kelly explains that what you may think are light-hearted, superficial, romantic comedies are in fact very dark and complicated and multi-layered with lots of hidden (secret) messages.And that she, Helena Kelly, has the insight to understand those messages.It is Kelly's understanding of the context and the times in which Austen wrote her novels, that enables Kelly to analyze and explain the novels.And in fact, if you think Jane Austen was a sweet, conventionally-minded spinster who wrote romantic novels, you are reading her all wrong.And Kelly says, if you don't want to be disabused of your false notions, don't read her book.
Not funny! I completely disagree with points 1, 4, and 5. I mostly disagree with points 2 and 3. I think it's okay to read Jane Austen for the romance, (6) but I love Austen's bubbling humour, her zinging satire, her irresistible comic muse, her descriptive powers and her unforgettable dialogue and first and always, her language. And 7 is up to you, gentle reader.
I discussed points 1, 2, 4 and 5 in part one. In part two, I will focus on 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Having discarded the main hypothesis of Kelly's book in part one, what remains is a book of typical modern literary criticism. In case younger readers are led astray by the word 'modern,' I should mention that I encountered literary criticism like this back in the late 1970's, when I was attending university. The gist of the approach is as follows – I am paraphrasing:
Reader, you don't really understand that book that you like because you are not educated enough, or enlightened enough, or as the kids say nowadays, "woke" enough, to understand it. Allow me to suck the joy right out of that book for you. Kelly claims that she has a unique understanding of Austen denied to Austen's most fervent fans, or even Austen's relatives. And yet, she doesn't appear to comprehend that Austen's muse is a comic one. Consider the famous opening in Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth …. this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."
Kelly: "the joke is, of course, at heart entirely unfunny in a world where women, and some men too, could be owned."
The reader who laughs at Austen has not yet had the terrible news.
For Kelly, Jane Austen's romantic comedies are neither comedic nor romantic. Which raises the question, why would Austen write something that looks like a romantic comedy, albeit with a lot of tongue-in-cheek social criticism, when she really intended to write tragedy or searing social criticism? Why present someone who appears to be the hero of the book, for example, Mr. Knightley in Emma, when he is really the villain, an evil, heartless man who oppresses the poor people of Highbury? As Professor John Mullan wrote: "Kelly’s eagerness to find a politically critical subtext leads her to ignore the narrative logic of the fiction."
It's like the cruise ship in the Poseidon Adventure – Kelly and similar critics turn Austen upside down and then insist that this is what she meant to do – construct a completely unbalanced, topsy-turvy piece of writing that makes no sense whatsoever structurally, emotionally or dramatically. Hey, she meant for the propeller to be above the waterline and the decks to be submerged, get it?
Sometimes Kelly sees a joke and pronounces it unfunny, sometimes she has difficulty even recognizing jokes and sarcasm in Austen.
For example, as John Mullan points out, Kelly thinks that when Willoughby shows up when Marianne is gravely ill, he is drunk. When in fact he is saying: “Yes, I am very drunk” with bitter sarcasm.
She thinks Catherine Morland doesn't understand that the adorable, witty Mr. Tilney is having fun with her in the passage below, when he tells her what will happen during her visit to Northanger Abbey:
Henry Tilney: "How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! -- And what will you discern? -- Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open…. [The housekeeper] Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance, gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints. To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting cordial she curtsies off -- you listen to the sound of her receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you -- and when, with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock."
Catherine Morland: "Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! -- This is just like a book! -- But it cannot really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy. -- Well, what then?"
Kelly says that the reference to Dorothy "sails over [Catherine's] head." What do you think?
"Catherine either hasn't read more than half of a Gothic novel, or if she has, has read it with such a breathtaking lack of attention that she might as well not have bothered." No, the exact opposite is the case. Catherine loves Gothic novels and it leads her to imagine that maybe General Tilney murdered his wife, like a villain in a novel.
Catherine's delusion about the General is the climax of the extended parody of Gothic novels contained within Northanger Abbey. In its first draft, Northanger Abbey must have been very similar to Austen's other juvenilia – a funny take off of contemporary novels. That's why Northanger Abbey, structurally, is like a house with a patched on bow window – the first half is a satire on the literary conventions of the novel ("No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine….") Then, after Catherine realizes she's been a fool with her gothic imaginings, it becomes a more typical love story.
And by the way, there is a novel, called The Female Quixote, which Austen admired, about a deluded heroine who thinks she's living in a land of chivalric romance. If you compare it with Northanger Abbey, you'll get a better idea of the context and intent of Austen's gothic parody. Reading an annotated edition of Northanger Abbey, like David Shapard's, would also help illuminate the text.
According to Kelly, a careful reading of Pride and Prejudice will reveal that it is a serious work because there are soldiers in it, and militia, and militia were sometimes called out in Regency times to subdue rebellions. Plus: "Jane knew that military camps were anything but 'beauteous,' knew that a town full of soldiers was not a pleasant place for women – and she knew that her readers knew that too, or could guess at it."
So never mind Lydia's and Kitty's girlish giggles over men in uniform. Austen really wants us to think of England as a land under occupation.
One wonders if Kelly would react the same way to all comedy that treats serious matters with levity -- what does Kelly think about The Mikado, or The Importance of Being Ernest, or Duck Soup, which feature the death penalty, child abduction, defrauding widows, and war. I'd say that Kelly doesn't understand black humour, but she'd only accuse me of having an unconscious hidden meaning.
In Mansfield Park, Austen paints Fanny Price, entering the ball room, with her beloved cousin Edmund's chain holding her beloved brother's topaz cross, around her neck. Supposing that we care about Fanny (another question entirely) aren't we supposed to feel her little heart flutter as she combats her shyness? Do we see the warm glow in her cheek as she takes comfort in wearing the dual talismans of the two people who mean the most to her in the world? Are you feeling the love, reader? The warmth?
Kelly: "For the reader, the associations [of the chain and the cross] are, or should be, by this point in the novel, very different."
The chain does not represent love and faithful friendship -- the chain represents slavery. (Obviously). And the cross does not represent sweet little Fanny's artless Christian faith, and the love of her brother, it represents the Church of England and we, the readers in Austen's time, are aware that the Church of England owns sugar plantations and slaves! Get it? The cross and the chain? It's dark, it's horrible, it's hanging around Fanny's neck like an albatross of guilt and complicity. Let's dance! Let me point out some distinctions here:
Kelly is not saying this is a romantic comedy novel that I don't happen to like, because I don't happen to like Fanny and Edmund. It just didn't hit the mark for me.
Nor is she saying, Well, books that featured slaves or 12-year-old girls getting married or Jewish money lenders used to be okay, in the past, but those subjects are problematic in today's world. And for some people, a book in which the main characters live off of slavery is too problematic to be read with enjoyment today. I am not going to dispute that. If you don't want to read Huck Finn, or The Merchant of Venice, or Romeo and Juliet or Mansfield Park, it's your choice. But Kelly is going even farther than that.
Kelly is saying, Austen intended for her contemporary readers to view the main characters, the ones who get married at the end of the novel -- you know, like people always do at the end of a romantic comedy -- as bad, horrible people.
And I think Kelly is quite wrong about that. She is unable to put aside her own modern points of reference - feminism, post modernism, post-colonialism and intersectionalism.
Therefore – no surprise here -- Kelly sees pedophilia and incest and sexual perversion where Austen's contemporaries would not.
Fanny Price's father is either a pedophile or a sadist or both, and both of the male leads in Sense & Sensibility are despicable: Edmund Ferrars is nervous before he proposes to Elinor, so [he] "took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke…" This is proof that Edmund is a sexual deviant, because the sheath for the scissors represents the female vagina. Colonel Brandon is the father of young Eliza, so he is both a seducer and a liar.
I think we can question whether a majority of people, then and now, would automatically associate the fumbling efforts of a girl exploring the hidden cavities of a cabinet, as being a metaphor for female masturbation.
Or even supposing that Austen had sex on her mind when she wrote that passage, how does a reference to female masturbation undergird the supposedly "real" message of Northanger Abbey, that sex with men is dangerous? Austen doesn’t write approvingly of Catherine's fumbling with the cabinet. She doesn't suggest that Catherine should be fumbling with a cabinet instead of fumbling with Mr. Tilney.
In fact, Austen is showing Catherine fumbling with a cabinet, because she is parodying gothic novels. Catherine is experiencing in real life the things that Tilney teased her about. As Freud said, sometimes a cabinet is just a cabinet.
And by golly, when Austen does write about sex in a symbolic fashion, when Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford escape through the locked gate in Sotherton into the park, when Maria quotes Laurence Sterne and says she feels like the starling in the cage that can't get out, are we supposed to think about throwing off the restraints of society, and sexual temptation? No, says Kelly – we're supposed to think about slavery! What a perverse reading of a justly famous passage.
In part three, we'll look at the evidence adduced by Kelly to demonstrate that Mansfield Park is really an anti-slavery tract and finish off with some other peculiarities of Jane Austen: the Secret Radical. Click here for part one of Jane Austen: the Secret Radical, a review Click here for more information about my book, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park.
I begin by reposting the seven points I outlined at the beginning of part one:
In Jane Austen: the Secret Radical:Helena Kelly posits that Jane Austen was a secret radical. In other words, Austen held radical views, and these views were not out in the open for everyone to see, but were covert or secret in some way.Because in Austen's time, writing something critical of the government or the royal family could get you in trouble with the authorities, even jailed. "[T]he Austen family lived in a country in which any criticism [my emphasis] of the status quo was seen as disloyal and dangerous." (This is overstated, and requires some qualification. We are not talking about North Korean levels of repression.)Kelly explains that what you may think are light-hearted, superficial, romantic comedies are in fact very dark and complicated and multi-layered with lots of hidden (secret) messages.And that she, Helena Kelly, has the insight to understand those messages.It is Kelly's understanding of the context and the times in which Austen wrote her novels, that enables Kelly to analyze and explain the novels.And in fact, if you think Jane Austen was a sweet, conventionally-minded spinster who wrote romantic novels, you are reading her all wrong.And Kelly says, if you don't want to be disabused of your false notions, don't read her book.
Not funny! I completely disagree with points 1, 4, and 5. I mostly disagree with points 2 and 3. I think it's okay to read Jane Austen for the romance, (6) but I love Austen's bubbling humour, her zinging satire, her irresistible comic muse, her descriptive powers and her unforgettable dialogue and first and always, her language. And 7 is up to you, gentle reader.I discussed points 1, 2, 4 and 5 in part one. In part two, I will focus on 3, 4, 5 and 6.
Having discarded the main hypothesis of Kelly's book in part one, what remains is a book of typical modern literary criticism. In case younger readers are led astray by the word 'modern,' I should mention that I encountered literary criticism like this back in the late 1970's, when I was attending university. The gist of the approach is as follows – I am paraphrasing:
Reader, you don't really understand that book that you like because you are not educated enough, or enlightened enough, or as the kids say nowadays, "woke" enough, to understand it. Allow me to suck the joy right out of that book for you. Kelly claims that she has a unique understanding of Austen denied to Austen's most fervent fans, or even Austen's relatives. And yet, she doesn't appear to comprehend that Austen's muse is a comic one. Consider the famous opening in Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth …. this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."
Kelly: "the joke is, of course, at heart entirely unfunny in a world where women, and some men too, could be owned."
The reader who laughs at Austen has not yet had the terrible news.
For Kelly, Jane Austen's romantic comedies are neither comedic nor romantic. Which raises the question, why would Austen write something that looks like a romantic comedy, albeit with a lot of tongue-in-cheek social criticism, when she really intended to write tragedy or searing social criticism? Why present someone who appears to be the hero of the book, for example, Mr. Knightley in Emma, when he is really the villain, an evil, heartless man who oppresses the poor people of Highbury? As Professor John Mullan wrote: "Kelly’s eagerness to find a politically critical subtext leads her to ignore the narrative logic of the fiction."
It's like the cruise ship in the Poseidon Adventure – Kelly and similar critics turn Austen upside down and then insist that this is what she meant to do – construct a completely unbalanced, topsy-turvy piece of writing that makes no sense whatsoever structurally, emotionally or dramatically. Hey, she meant for the propeller to be above the waterline and the decks to be submerged, get it?
Sometimes Kelly sees a joke and pronounces it unfunny, sometimes she has difficulty even recognizing jokes and sarcasm in Austen.For example, as John Mullan points out, Kelly thinks that when Willoughby shows up when Marianne is gravely ill, he is drunk. When in fact he is saying: “Yes, I am very drunk” with bitter sarcasm.
She thinks Catherine Morland doesn't understand that the adorable, witty Mr. Tilney is having fun with her in the passage below, when he tells her what will happen during her visit to Northanger Abbey:
Henry Tilney: "How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! -- And what will you discern? -- Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open…. [The housekeeper] Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance, gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints. To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting cordial she curtsies off -- you listen to the sound of her receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you -- and when, with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock."
Catherine Morland: "Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! -- This is just like a book! -- But it cannot really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy. -- Well, what then?"
Kelly says that the reference to Dorothy "sails over [Catherine's] head." What do you think?
"Catherine either hasn't read more than half of a Gothic novel, or if she has, has read it with such a breathtaking lack of attention that she might as well not have bothered." No, the exact opposite is the case. Catherine loves Gothic novels and it leads her to imagine that maybe General Tilney murdered his wife, like a villain in a novel.
Catherine's delusion about the General is the climax of the extended parody of Gothic novels contained within Northanger Abbey. In its first draft, Northanger Abbey must have been very similar to Austen's other juvenilia – a funny take off of contemporary novels. That's why Northanger Abbey, structurally, is like a house with a patched on bow window – the first half is a satire on the literary conventions of the novel ("No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine….") Then, after Catherine realizes she's been a fool with her gothic imaginings, it becomes a more typical love story.
And by the way, there is a novel, called The Female Quixote, which Austen admired, about a deluded heroine who thinks she's living in a land of chivalric romance. If you compare it with Northanger Abbey, you'll get a better idea of the context and intent of Austen's gothic parody. Reading an annotated edition of Northanger Abbey, like David Shapard's, would also help illuminate the text.
According to Kelly, a careful reading of Pride and Prejudice will reveal that it is a serious work because there are soldiers in it, and militia, and militia were sometimes called out in Regency times to subdue rebellions. Plus: "Jane knew that military camps were anything but 'beauteous,' knew that a town full of soldiers was not a pleasant place for women – and she knew that her readers knew that too, or could guess at it."So never mind Lydia's and Kitty's girlish giggles over men in uniform. Austen really wants us to think of England as a land under occupation.
One wonders if Kelly would react the same way to all comedy that treats serious matters with levity -- what does Kelly think about The Mikado, or The Importance of Being Ernest, or Duck Soup, which feature the death penalty, child abduction, defrauding widows, and war. I'd say that Kelly doesn't understand black humour, but she'd only accuse me of having an unconscious hidden meaning.
In Mansfield Park, Austen paints Fanny Price, entering the ball room, with her beloved cousin Edmund's chain holding her beloved brother's topaz cross, around her neck. Supposing that we care about Fanny (another question entirely) aren't we supposed to feel her little heart flutter as she combats her shyness? Do we see the warm glow in her cheek as she takes comfort in wearing the dual talismans of the two people who mean the most to her in the world? Are you feeling the love, reader? The warmth?
Kelly: "For the reader, the associations [of the chain and the cross] are, or should be, by this point in the novel, very different."
The chain does not represent love and faithful friendship -- the chain represents slavery. (Obviously). And the cross does not represent sweet little Fanny's artless Christian faith, and the love of her brother, it represents the Church of England and we, the readers in Austen's time, are aware that the Church of England owns sugar plantations and slaves! Get it? The cross and the chain? It's dark, it's horrible, it's hanging around Fanny's neck like an albatross of guilt and complicity. Let's dance! Let me point out some distinctions here:
Kelly is not saying this is a romantic comedy novel that I don't happen to like, because I don't happen to like Fanny and Edmund. It just didn't hit the mark for me.
Nor is she saying, Well, books that featured slaves or 12-year-old girls getting married or Jewish money lenders used to be okay, in the past, but those subjects are problematic in today's world. And for some people, a book in which the main characters live off of slavery is too problematic to be read with enjoyment today. I am not going to dispute that. If you don't want to read Huck Finn, or The Merchant of Venice, or Romeo and Juliet or Mansfield Park, it's your choice. But Kelly is going even farther than that.
Kelly is saying, Austen intended for her contemporary readers to view the main characters, the ones who get married at the end of the novel -- you know, like people always do at the end of a romantic comedy -- as bad, horrible people.
And I think Kelly is quite wrong about that. She is unable to put aside her own modern points of reference - feminism, post modernism, post-colonialism and intersectionalism.
Therefore – no surprise here -- Kelly sees pedophilia and incest and sexual perversion where Austen's contemporaries would not.Fanny Price's father is either a pedophile or a sadist or both, and both of the male leads in Sense & Sensibility are despicable: Edmund Ferrars is nervous before he proposes to Elinor, so [he] "took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke…" This is proof that Edmund is a sexual deviant, because the sheath for the scissors represents the female vagina. Colonel Brandon is the father of young Eliza, so he is both a seducer and a liar.
I think we can question whether a majority of people, then and now, would automatically associate the fumbling efforts of a girl exploring the hidden cavities of a cabinet, as being a metaphor for female masturbation.
Or even supposing that Austen had sex on her mind when she wrote that passage, how does a reference to female masturbation undergird the supposedly "real" message of Northanger Abbey, that sex with men is dangerous? Austen doesn’t write approvingly of Catherine's fumbling with the cabinet. She doesn't suggest that Catherine should be fumbling with a cabinet instead of fumbling with Mr. Tilney.
In fact, Austen is showing Catherine fumbling with a cabinet, because she is parodying gothic novels. Catherine is experiencing in real life the things that Tilney teased her about. As Freud said, sometimes a cabinet is just a cabinet.
And by golly, when Austen does write about sex in a symbolic fashion, when Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford escape through the locked gate in Sotherton into the park, when Maria quotes Laurence Sterne and says she feels like the starling in the cage that can't get out, are we supposed to think about throwing off the restraints of society, and sexual temptation? No, says Kelly – we're supposed to think about slavery! What a perverse reading of a justly famous passage.In part three, we'll look at the evidence adduced by Kelly to demonstrate that Mansfield Park is really an anti-slavery tract and finish off with some other peculiarities of Jane Austen: the Secret Radical. Click here for part one of Jane Austen: the Secret Radical, a review Click here for more information about my book, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park.
August 17, 2017
Jane Austen: the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly, a review in three parts
Part One: 
Helena Kelly's analysis of Austen attempts to make the case that she was a secret radical. More than one review of Kelly's book has pointed out that this is hardly a new theory. "Austen has been an icon of many political stripes, including radical and feminist, for generations." Devoney Looser wrote in the Times Literary Supplement.
Kelly is not just unoriginal, she is mistaken. I disagree with the premise of this book and I think the examples adduced by the author to make her case are unpersuasive and in some cases risible.
I want to discuss my reaction to this book as clearly as I can, so I am going to take my time and start with an outline to lay out the points I will be discussing and elaborating upon.
Let's begin:
In Jane Austen: the Secret Radical:Helena Kelly posits that Jane Austen was a secret radical. In other words, Austen held radical views, and these views were not out in the open for everyone to see, but were covert or secret in some way.Because in Austen's time, writing something critical of the government or the royal family could get you in trouble with the authorities, even jailed. "[T]he Austen family lived in a country in which any criticism [my emphasis] of the status quo was seen as disloyal and dangerous." (This is overstated, and requires some qualification. We are not talking about North Korean levels of repression.)Kelly explains that what you may think are light-hearted, superficial, romantic comedies, in fact are very dark and complicated and multi-layered with lots of hidden (secret, radical) messages.And she, Helena Kelly, has the insight to understand those messages.It is Kelly's research and understanding of the context and the times in which Austen wrote her novels, that enables Kelly to analyze and explain the novels.And in fact, if you think Jane Austen was a sweet, conventionally-minded spinster who wrote romantic novels, you are reading her all wrong.And Kelly says, if you don't want to be disabused of your false notions, don't read her book. Therefore, to test Kelly's hypothesis, we might want to ask –
Of the secret radical views that Kelly has unearthed, would any of them have been likely to get Jane Austen in trouble with the government, or with the public, or with her neighbours, or even with her family, assuming that they are all Tories and perfectly happy with the status quo? To put it in modern terms: If Jane Austen had a Facebook page, and all her friends and family were posting pro-slavery memes and messages – 'share if you think slavery is awesome!' – would Jane have hesitated to post a quote from William Wilberforce? Would the militia be kicking in her door? Would she go to prison? Or would she have couched her anti-slavery feelings in very subtle terms?
So, for example, if your Aunt Jane, the kooky radical member of your Church-of-England loving, Tory family, posted something on Facebook about "Moorpark apricots," would you think, 'oh, there's crazy Aunt Jane, banging on about slavery again, I hope she doesn't get hauled off to prison' or would you think she was talking about apricots? Before we plunge in, let's define some terms:
Secret: Some of the secret messages that Helena Kelly points out to us are, in her view, not secret or subtle at all, they are "clear as daylight" and quite blatant. Most often, she says they would have been very clear to Austen's contemporaries, even if they are not so clear to us. Of course, if Austen's readers could understand her radical views easily, I couldn't venture to say how that comports with the theory that expressing any criticism of the status quo was dangerous. After all the Prince Regent himself read her novels. In any case, if the radical views were once "clear as daylight" but are now accessible only to Helena Kelly, I think that does not mean "secret" but "obscure." And I will tip you off and add that I think the words we're looking for here are actually, "non-existent," and "imaginary." But "secret" makes for a more dramatic title, of course and I have no problem with that. I'll give lots of examples of these hidden/blatant/secret messages below.
In part one, I am not disputing whether Jane Austen's work contains subtleties and symbolism and has many layers. I am specifically addressing Kelly's hypothesis that the reason Austen's radicalism is "secret" and impenetrable to the modern reader is because her "novels were produced in a state [that is, under a government] which was, essentially, totalitarian" and so she was forced to express her radical views subtly and indirectly.
Radical: Back then, in Austen's time, there were two main political parties, the Whigs (roughly speaking, liberal) and Tories (conservative.) The term "radical" was in use at the time in political parlance and it was used disparagingly to refer to someone whose views were well outside of the mainstream, perhaps even dangerous to the social fabric, or seditious. A radical was somebody in favour of democracy, and trade unions, and freedom of religion (in those days you had to be a member of the Church of England to get your degree from Oxford, Catholics couldn't sit in Parliament, etc.) A radical could also be in favour of more rights for women, more equitable distribution of wealth, maybe even in favour of free love, like the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Think of John Lennon in knee breeches and a cravat. Okay? Radical.
Kelly appears to use the word "radical" more loosely, as meaning someone who is opposed to the restrictive social milieu of the time. For example, she describes Elizabeth Bennet thusly: "Elizabeth is, fundamentally, a radical. She knows her own mind; she reserves the right to decide questions for herself." You see, in an age when women were expected to be modest and deferential and so forth.
So, time to test Kelly's hypothesis, which, I remind you, is – Austen used covert messages in her novels to get across her radical ideas because she lived in a society, and under a government that repressed criticism, sometimes with censorship and prison sentences.
Let's start with Northanger Abbey. What is the secret hidden radical message in Northanger Abbey and how radical is it?
"This, in the end, is the mystery, the terrifying secret at the heart of Northanger Abbey… sex can kill you. All of Jane's heroines – all of the women in her novels who marry – are taking a terrifying risk."
For all women of Austen's time, there was absolutely nothing secret about the fact that sex can kill you. And for those of you who have read a lot of 18th century literature, a lot of history, and a lot of historical fiction, please patiently bear with me while I reiterate: women died in childbirth at horrific rates in Austen's time. Austen personally knew, and knew of, many women who died in childbirth, including her own sisters-in-law, but any woman going into labour back then, knew that death was a very real statistical possibility. Therefore, this inevitably meant that when a man married the woman he loved, he could end up, in a very real sense, being the cause of her death.
To have pointed this out, directly or obliquely, would be in no way controversial, in no way rebellious, in no way seditious, and in no way counter to the teachings of the Church of England, which had a ceremony called "churching," whereby women went to their local church 40 days after having given birth, to give thanks for the fact that they were not dead.
If Jane Austen wanted to warn people about the terrifying dangers of childbirth, she could have frankly and candidly written, "I recommend the simple regimen of separate [bed]rooms." Oh, wait. She did write that. In one of her letters.
So, not a secret. And not radical.
But…. where is the hidden message in Northanger Abbey that sex can kill you? Did I miss that? Yes, either because (a) you haven't read Kelly's analysis and the hidden messages flew right by you when you read Northanger Abbey or (b) there is no hidden message. I opt for (b) and in part two, I will discuss why I choose (b) over (a). But right now, I am staying with testing Kelly's hypothesis that Austen had to pull her punches, so to speak, because of the totalitarian times in which she lived.
Contemporary cartoon about censorship Next up: Mansfield Park. The secret, hidden radical message of Mansfield Park is that slavery is bad.
Mansfield Park was published in 1814. Six years prior, in 1807, the English parliament passed a law banning their countrymen from trading (selling, that is, not owning) slaves. The Navy had ships patrolling the coast of Africa to intercept slave ships and rescue the captured Africans. In 1808, Thomas Clarkson published a book about the successful campaign of the Abolitionists to end the slave trade. This is the title of Clarkson's book: The history of the rise, progress and accomplishment of the abolition of the African Slave Trade. Notice that he says, "slaves" and not "apricots."
Powerful poems had been written explicitly – I note, explicitly – condemning slavery, for example, as Kelly herself notes, William Cowper's The Task, which was published in 1785. I repeat, in 1814, the eradication of the slave trade was official government policy.
And yet, Kelly thinks that in 1814, secret radical Jane Austen could not, for fear of the consequences, speak out against slavery and had to resort to using code words like 'pheasant' and 'Moorpark apricot' and 'Hawkins Browne' and 'chain and cross.'
Oh-ho, but perhaps, it's okay for men to say these things, but in Regency times, maybe it was not okay for women to say these things!
Well, no, women played a major role in the Abolition movement in England, organizing boycotts against sugar produced by slaves. Hannah More, a leading evangelical and best-selling author, was a well-known abolitionist who also wrote anti-slavery poetry. Then there is Aphra Behn, one of the first published women authors, who wrote an anti-slavery novel called Oronooko, way back in 1688.
Okay, but maybe she was soft-pedalling the anti-slavery message because she didn't want to alienate her pro-slavery readers, just like she only talked about apricots on her Facebook page so as not to offend her relatives.
Sure, maybe she prudently decided to avoid the subject. But that is not Helena Kelly's hypothesis. We are not talking about a consciously made marketing decision here, we are talking about a secret radical who is forced, because of the times she lives in, to speak in allusions and veiled references that only her well-educated readers would understand.
But….. why are apricots an allusion to slavery? why not coconuts or some other tropical fruit from Africa? I'll explain later, in part three. We're still testing the main hypothesis of the book.
Moving on, how about everybody's favourite, Pride and Prejudice. What is the secret, hidden message that could get kooky radical Aunt Jane put in the stocks and pelted with tomatoes in the public square?
The message: Elizabeth does not treat Lady Catherine de Burgh, a member of the aristocracy, with deference. "From the corner of our eyes we can see the shadow of the guillotine."
Did Austen have to be so circumspect that the anti-nobility message eludes the modern reader?
Can we find contemporary examples of writers of prose and essays, who criticized the nobility, either individual aristocrats or the class as a whole? Yes, we can -- the immorality and decadence of the aristocracy and the heirs to the throne was a huge social concern and a hot topic in Austen's time. Openly discussed, criticized, joked about. And can we find writers and cartoonists in those times who satirized and criticized the Royal Family? Yes, we can.
As well, Kelly says: "Isn't it possible, then that Pride and Prejudice isn't quite so light and bright and sparkling as we've been led to believe? That there are darker, more serious layers to be uncovered?" Well of course, any serious critic worth her salt is going to find darker and more serious layers. But we are still testing the central hypothesis of the book, not sifting through the rest of Kelly's commentary. We'll come back to that in parts two and three.
How about Persuasion, her last published novel? What daring thoughts did Austen put out there?
"Persuasion, from the very beginning, challenges us to think about history not as a smooth, orderly progression, but as disrupted, random, chaotic, filled with death and destruction, invasion and revolution. It seeks to make us aware, in Lady Russell's words, of 'the uncertainty of all human events and calculations.'"
Secret, as in "oh, I thought the main theme of Persuasion was maybe, persuasion?" All right, Kelly's hidden theme might be a 'secret' in that it is not visible to the naked eye, but in what way is it radical? Certainly Austen's contemporaries knew that not only the past (history) was random, chaotic and violent, but their present day was random, chaotic, and filled with death and destruction, invasion and revolution. How could Jane Austen possibly have endangered herself by promoting such an idea? Did Edward Gibbon write The Smooth, Orderly Progression of the Roman Empire (1776)? No, he wrote, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in three big fat volumes. Did Thomas Hobbes (1651) write that life before governments arose among men was "a smooth orderly progression," or did he write that it was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"? Rhetorical question.
Okay, it would be radical to put "chaos, destruction, and death" as the main theme in a bittersweet romantic comedy novel. Or maybe not so much 'radical' as a 'bad marketing idea.' But again, not radical in the sense that Austen would have been in danger for suggesting this idea.
We have tested Helena Kelly's hypothesis and I submit that the hypothesis has failed. None of the opinions that she claims Austen hinted at in her novels would have gotten her into trouble. A writer as talented as Austen, moreover, was able to say what she meant to say without resort to awkward subterfuge.
Kelly also says that "Jane's novels aren't romantic. But it's increasingly difficult for readers to see this." She argues that Austen writes about sad and serious things, things that should not be funny. The men that you think are the romantic heroes in Austen are awful, awful people.
Are Jane Austen's novels, if not radical, much "darker" than we were led to believe? Stay tuned. We will examine more in Part Two. Click here for more information about my book, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park!
Helena Kelly's analysis of Austen attempts to make the case that she was a secret radical. More than one review of Kelly's book has pointed out that this is hardly a new theory. "Austen has been an icon of many political stripes, including radical and feminist, for generations." Devoney Looser wrote in the Times Literary Supplement.Kelly is not just unoriginal, she is mistaken. I disagree with the premise of this book and I think the examples adduced by the author to make her case are unpersuasive and in some cases risible.
I want to discuss my reaction to this book as clearly as I can, so I am going to take my time and start with an outline to lay out the points I will be discussing and elaborating upon.
Let's begin:
In Jane Austen: the Secret Radical:Helena Kelly posits that Jane Austen was a secret radical. In other words, Austen held radical views, and these views were not out in the open for everyone to see, but were covert or secret in some way.Because in Austen's time, writing something critical of the government or the royal family could get you in trouble with the authorities, even jailed. "[T]he Austen family lived in a country in which any criticism [my emphasis] of the status quo was seen as disloyal and dangerous." (This is overstated, and requires some qualification. We are not talking about North Korean levels of repression.)Kelly explains that what you may think are light-hearted, superficial, romantic comedies, in fact are very dark and complicated and multi-layered with lots of hidden (secret, radical) messages.And she, Helena Kelly, has the insight to understand those messages.It is Kelly's research and understanding of the context and the times in which Austen wrote her novels, that enables Kelly to analyze and explain the novels.And in fact, if you think Jane Austen was a sweet, conventionally-minded spinster who wrote romantic novels, you are reading her all wrong.And Kelly says, if you don't want to be disabused of your false notions, don't read her book. Therefore, to test Kelly's hypothesis, we might want to ask –
Of the secret radical views that Kelly has unearthed, would any of them have been likely to get Jane Austen in trouble with the government, or with the public, or with her neighbours, or even with her family, assuming that they are all Tories and perfectly happy with the status quo? To put it in modern terms: If Jane Austen had a Facebook page, and all her friends and family were posting pro-slavery memes and messages – 'share if you think slavery is awesome!' – would Jane have hesitated to post a quote from William Wilberforce? Would the militia be kicking in her door? Would she go to prison? Or would she have couched her anti-slavery feelings in very subtle terms?
So, for example, if your Aunt Jane, the kooky radical member of your Church-of-England loving, Tory family, posted something on Facebook about "Moorpark apricots," would you think, 'oh, there's crazy Aunt Jane, banging on about slavery again, I hope she doesn't get hauled off to prison' or would you think she was talking about apricots? Before we plunge in, let's define some terms:
Secret: Some of the secret messages that Helena Kelly points out to us are, in her view, not secret or subtle at all, they are "clear as daylight" and quite blatant. Most often, she says they would have been very clear to Austen's contemporaries, even if they are not so clear to us. Of course, if Austen's readers could understand her radical views easily, I couldn't venture to say how that comports with the theory that expressing any criticism of the status quo was dangerous. After all the Prince Regent himself read her novels. In any case, if the radical views were once "clear as daylight" but are now accessible only to Helena Kelly, I think that does not mean "secret" but "obscure." And I will tip you off and add that I think the words we're looking for here are actually, "non-existent," and "imaginary." But "secret" makes for a more dramatic title, of course and I have no problem with that. I'll give lots of examples of these hidden/blatant/secret messages below.
In part one, I am not disputing whether Jane Austen's work contains subtleties and symbolism and has many layers. I am specifically addressing Kelly's hypothesis that the reason Austen's radicalism is "secret" and impenetrable to the modern reader is because her "novels were produced in a state [that is, under a government] which was, essentially, totalitarian" and so she was forced to express her radical views subtly and indirectly.
Radical: Back then, in Austen's time, there were two main political parties, the Whigs (roughly speaking, liberal) and Tories (conservative.) The term "radical" was in use at the time in political parlance and it was used disparagingly to refer to someone whose views were well outside of the mainstream, perhaps even dangerous to the social fabric, or seditious. A radical was somebody in favour of democracy, and trade unions, and freedom of religion (in those days you had to be a member of the Church of England to get your degree from Oxford, Catholics couldn't sit in Parliament, etc.) A radical could also be in favour of more rights for women, more equitable distribution of wealth, maybe even in favour of free love, like the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Think of John Lennon in knee breeches and a cravat. Okay? Radical.
Kelly appears to use the word "radical" more loosely, as meaning someone who is opposed to the restrictive social milieu of the time. For example, she describes Elizabeth Bennet thusly: "Elizabeth is, fundamentally, a radical. She knows her own mind; she reserves the right to decide questions for herself." You see, in an age when women were expected to be modest and deferential and so forth.
So, time to test Kelly's hypothesis, which, I remind you, is – Austen used covert messages in her novels to get across her radical ideas because she lived in a society, and under a government that repressed criticism, sometimes with censorship and prison sentences.
Let's start with Northanger Abbey. What is the secret hidden radical message in Northanger Abbey and how radical is it?"This, in the end, is the mystery, the terrifying secret at the heart of Northanger Abbey… sex can kill you. All of Jane's heroines – all of the women in her novels who marry – are taking a terrifying risk."
For all women of Austen's time, there was absolutely nothing secret about the fact that sex can kill you. And for those of you who have read a lot of 18th century literature, a lot of history, and a lot of historical fiction, please patiently bear with me while I reiterate: women died in childbirth at horrific rates in Austen's time. Austen personally knew, and knew of, many women who died in childbirth, including her own sisters-in-law, but any woman going into labour back then, knew that death was a very real statistical possibility. Therefore, this inevitably meant that when a man married the woman he loved, he could end up, in a very real sense, being the cause of her death.
To have pointed this out, directly or obliquely, would be in no way controversial, in no way rebellious, in no way seditious, and in no way counter to the teachings of the Church of England, which had a ceremony called "churching," whereby women went to their local church 40 days after having given birth, to give thanks for the fact that they were not dead.
If Jane Austen wanted to warn people about the terrifying dangers of childbirth, she could have frankly and candidly written, "I recommend the simple regimen of separate [bed]rooms." Oh, wait. She did write that. In one of her letters.
So, not a secret. And not radical.
But…. where is the hidden message in Northanger Abbey that sex can kill you? Did I miss that? Yes, either because (a) you haven't read Kelly's analysis and the hidden messages flew right by you when you read Northanger Abbey or (b) there is no hidden message. I opt for (b) and in part two, I will discuss why I choose (b) over (a). But right now, I am staying with testing Kelly's hypothesis that Austen had to pull her punches, so to speak, because of the totalitarian times in which she lived.
Contemporary cartoon about censorship Next up: Mansfield Park. The secret, hidden radical message of Mansfield Park is that slavery is bad.Mansfield Park was published in 1814. Six years prior, in 1807, the English parliament passed a law banning their countrymen from trading (selling, that is, not owning) slaves. The Navy had ships patrolling the coast of Africa to intercept slave ships and rescue the captured Africans. In 1808, Thomas Clarkson published a book about the successful campaign of the Abolitionists to end the slave trade. This is the title of Clarkson's book: The history of the rise, progress and accomplishment of the abolition of the African Slave Trade. Notice that he says, "slaves" and not "apricots."
Powerful poems had been written explicitly – I note, explicitly – condemning slavery, for example, as Kelly herself notes, William Cowper's The Task, which was published in 1785. I repeat, in 1814, the eradication of the slave trade was official government policy.
And yet, Kelly thinks that in 1814, secret radical Jane Austen could not, for fear of the consequences, speak out against slavery and had to resort to using code words like 'pheasant' and 'Moorpark apricot' and 'Hawkins Browne' and 'chain and cross.'
Oh-ho, but perhaps, it's okay for men to say these things, but in Regency times, maybe it was not okay for women to say these things!
Well, no, women played a major role in the Abolition movement in England, organizing boycotts against sugar produced by slaves. Hannah More, a leading evangelical and best-selling author, was a well-known abolitionist who also wrote anti-slavery poetry. Then there is Aphra Behn, one of the first published women authors, who wrote an anti-slavery novel called Oronooko, way back in 1688.
Okay, but maybe she was soft-pedalling the anti-slavery message because she didn't want to alienate her pro-slavery readers, just like she only talked about apricots on her Facebook page so as not to offend her relatives.
Sure, maybe she prudently decided to avoid the subject. But that is not Helena Kelly's hypothesis. We are not talking about a consciously made marketing decision here, we are talking about a secret radical who is forced, because of the times she lives in, to speak in allusions and veiled references that only her well-educated readers would understand.
But….. why are apricots an allusion to slavery? why not coconuts or some other tropical fruit from Africa? I'll explain later, in part three. We're still testing the main hypothesis of the book.
Moving on, how about everybody's favourite, Pride and Prejudice. What is the secret, hidden message that could get kooky radical Aunt Jane put in the stocks and pelted with tomatoes in the public square?The message: Elizabeth does not treat Lady Catherine de Burgh, a member of the aristocracy, with deference. "From the corner of our eyes we can see the shadow of the guillotine."
Did Austen have to be so circumspect that the anti-nobility message eludes the modern reader?
Can we find contemporary examples of writers of prose and essays, who criticized the nobility, either individual aristocrats or the class as a whole? Yes, we can -- the immorality and decadence of the aristocracy and the heirs to the throne was a huge social concern and a hot topic in Austen's time. Openly discussed, criticized, joked about. And can we find writers and cartoonists in those times who satirized and criticized the Royal Family? Yes, we can.
As well, Kelly says: "Isn't it possible, then that Pride and Prejudice isn't quite so light and bright and sparkling as we've been led to believe? That there are darker, more serious layers to be uncovered?" Well of course, any serious critic worth her salt is going to find darker and more serious layers. But we are still testing the central hypothesis of the book, not sifting through the rest of Kelly's commentary. We'll come back to that in parts two and three.
How about Persuasion, her last published novel? What daring thoughts did Austen put out there?
"Persuasion, from the very beginning, challenges us to think about history not as a smooth, orderly progression, but as disrupted, random, chaotic, filled with death and destruction, invasion and revolution. It seeks to make us aware, in Lady Russell's words, of 'the uncertainty of all human events and calculations.'"
Secret, as in "oh, I thought the main theme of Persuasion was maybe, persuasion?" All right, Kelly's hidden theme might be a 'secret' in that it is not visible to the naked eye, but in what way is it radical? Certainly Austen's contemporaries knew that not only the past (history) was random, chaotic and violent, but their present day was random, chaotic, and filled with death and destruction, invasion and revolution. How could Jane Austen possibly have endangered herself by promoting such an idea? Did Edward Gibbon write The Smooth, Orderly Progression of the Roman Empire (1776)? No, he wrote, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, in three big fat volumes. Did Thomas Hobbes (1651) write that life before governments arose among men was "a smooth orderly progression," or did he write that it was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"? Rhetorical question.
Okay, it would be radical to put "chaos, destruction, and death" as the main theme in a bittersweet romantic comedy novel. Or maybe not so much 'radical' as a 'bad marketing idea.' But again, not radical in the sense that Austen would have been in danger for suggesting this idea.
We have tested Helena Kelly's hypothesis and I submit that the hypothesis has failed. None of the opinions that she claims Austen hinted at in her novels would have gotten her into trouble. A writer as talented as Austen, moreover, was able to say what she meant to say without resort to awkward subterfuge. Kelly also says that "Jane's novels aren't romantic. But it's increasingly difficult for readers to see this." She argues that Austen writes about sad and serious things, things that should not be funny. The men that you think are the romantic heroes in Austen are awful, awful people.
Are Jane Austen's novels, if not radical, much "darker" than we were led to believe? Stay tuned. We will examine more in Part Two. Click here for more information about my book, A Contrary Wind: a variation on Mansfield Park!
August 4, 2017
Don't make me blush!
Jane Austen's nephew Henry wrote of his aunt, that "her complexion [was] of the finest texture, it might with truth be said that her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek.” He is referencing a poem by the Elizabethan poet John Donne: .... her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
That one might almost say her body thought.
Other contemporaries of Austen have spoken of the high colour in her cheeks. In those days when no respectable woman wore makeup, she was lucky enough to have naturally rosy cheeks well into adulthood. And the reference to "eloquent blood" means that her colour rose when she was animated; in other words, she blushed easily.
On the topic of blushing I have finally found a theme in which I can combine my time in China with Jane Austen and the English literature of the past. One of the charming things about my female students in China (ages 18 to 20) is that they still blush, readily, if you raise the topic of boyfriends. It's like travelling to a bygone age.
Do any Western young ladies still blush? Oh yes, we all can blush, or flush, from embarrassment in social situations, but what about the blush of modesty?
Maidenly purity was a central pre-occupation in English literature prior to modern times. The blush on a maiden's cheek was seen as a mark of innocence and purity. Inevitably, the heroines of Georgian, Regency and Victorian novels are described as blushing frequently.
Henry Fielding describes a girl whose "face and neck overspread with one blush," Samuel Richardson's Pamela is "all covered in blushes," Fanny Burney's Evelina is praised for her "downcast eye, and blushing cheek, timid air, and beauteous face," Hannah More's heroine, Lucila, in Coelebs in Search of a Wife can't get through any conversation without blushing: "She stopped and blushed, as fearing she had said too much." In Anne Radcliffe The Mysteries of Udolpho , "A blush overspread" her heroine Emily's cheek. Mary Brunton's Laura in Self-Controul charms a rogue: "for every voluptuary can tell what allurements blushes add to beauty." Sir Walter Scott's Rowena, on removing her veil in front of Rebecca: "partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness.... blushed so intensely that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom were suffused with crimson."
It is clear that for any self-respecting heroine, frequent blushing is de rigeur. Juliet has to excuse herself to Romeo: "Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,. Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek. For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight."
Young ladies were frequently described as blushing "celestial rosy red," a phrase taken from Milton's Paradise Lost, however Milton was not referring to a maiden's cheek but to the angel Raphael's reaction when he was asked by the newly-married Adam if there is sex in Paradise.
The fluctuation of color in the face when a lady blushed was certain proof that her color was natural and not applied with rouge. In Elizabeth Gaskell's Cousin Phillis' the heroine's "colour came and went" as the artist Holdsworth gazed upon her and drew her portrait. “Paint must never hope to reproduce the faint half-flush that dies along her throat," the artist says to the Duchess in Robert Browning's poem.
The blushing beauty -- a portrait of medieval Queen Elizabeth Woodville done in the Victorian style of idealized female beauty Fanny Price is the blushingest heroine, blushing from embarrassment, fright, indignation, guilt (over her secret love for Edmund) and of course, blushing out of modesty whenever anyone says something kind to her or about her. Henry Crawford speaks approvingly of how Fanny's colour is beautifully heightened as she bends over her writing desk.
Even men blush in these novels, from chagrin, self-awareness, or anger, but seldom from modesty. "I blush for you, Tom," Sir Thomas Bertram says to his son when confronting him about his debts.
Because the purity of the maidenly heroine was so important, the dramatic tension of many of the popular novels of the past derives from the threat that the lady may lose her virtue. Think of Ivanhoe, The Last Days of Pompeii, and of course Clarissa, If the lady fell from grace, then death was sure to follow, as in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and East Lynne.
The Victorian era was the hey-day of the blushing maiden. Victorian heroines were inevitably sweet and demure and portrayed as having heart-shaped faces with high foreheads, very large eyes, sweet little rosebud mouths, tiny feet and hands and of course, naturally rosy cheeks. These heroines are guileless and always astonished if somebody notices them.
In David Copperfield, little "Em'ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head, and her face was covered with blushes."
Some writers, however, found this cliche of the blushing maiden cloying. Gilbert & Sullivan satirized the blushing maiden in their 1884 operetta The Mikado , when the bridesmaids advise Yum-Yum how to behave on her wedding day:
Sit with downcast eye --/ Let it brim with dew --/ Try if you can cry --/ We will do so, too.
When you're summoned, start/ Like a frightened roe --/ Flutter, little heart,/ Colour, come and go!
And in Vanity Fair, W.M. Thackeray makes fun of the typical Victorian blushing maiden, whom he openly derides: "But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature; ....her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with the freshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the brightest and honestest good-humour, except indeed when they filled with tears, and that was a great deal too often; for the silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird;... or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid..." And he contrasts her with the calculating Becky Sharp: "Amelia, hanging down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen know how to blush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her life—at least not since she was eight years old, and when she was caught stealing jam out of a cupboard by her godmother."
In the West, at any rate, the blushing maiden in literature has gone the way of the DoDo, and yet I feel a certain nostalgia for the idea of having something to blush about. More on blushing:
Katie Halsey, Jane Austen and her Readers 1786-1945 discusses blushing in Jane Austen's novels.
Why Do People Blush? Mental floss
Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
That one might almost say her body thought.
Other contemporaries of Austen have spoken of the high colour in her cheeks. In those days when no respectable woman wore makeup, she was lucky enough to have naturally rosy cheeks well into adulthood. And the reference to "eloquent blood" means that her colour rose when she was animated; in other words, she blushed easily.On the topic of blushing I have finally found a theme in which I can combine my time in China with Jane Austen and the English literature of the past. One of the charming things about my female students in China (ages 18 to 20) is that they still blush, readily, if you raise the topic of boyfriends. It's like travelling to a bygone age.
Do any Western young ladies still blush? Oh yes, we all can blush, or flush, from embarrassment in social situations, but what about the blush of modesty?
Maidenly purity was a central pre-occupation in English literature prior to modern times. The blush on a maiden's cheek was seen as a mark of innocence and purity. Inevitably, the heroines of Georgian, Regency and Victorian novels are described as blushing frequently.
Henry Fielding describes a girl whose "face and neck overspread with one blush," Samuel Richardson's Pamela is "all covered in blushes," Fanny Burney's Evelina is praised for her "downcast eye, and blushing cheek, timid air, and beauteous face," Hannah More's heroine, Lucila, in Coelebs in Search of a Wife can't get through any conversation without blushing: "She stopped and blushed, as fearing she had said too much." In Anne Radcliffe The Mysteries of Udolpho , "A blush overspread" her heroine Emily's cheek. Mary Brunton's Laura in Self-Controul charms a rogue: "for every voluptuary can tell what allurements blushes add to beauty." Sir Walter Scott's Rowena, on removing her veil in front of Rebecca: "partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness.... blushed so intensely that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom were suffused with crimson."
It is clear that for any self-respecting heroine, frequent blushing is de rigeur. Juliet has to excuse herself to Romeo: "Thou know'st the mask of night is on my face,. Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek. For that which thou hast heard me speak tonight."
Young ladies were frequently described as blushing "celestial rosy red," a phrase taken from Milton's Paradise Lost, however Milton was not referring to a maiden's cheek but to the angel Raphael's reaction when he was asked by the newly-married Adam if there is sex in Paradise.
The fluctuation of color in the face when a lady blushed was certain proof that her color was natural and not applied with rouge. In Elizabeth Gaskell's Cousin Phillis' the heroine's "colour came and went" as the artist Holdsworth gazed upon her and drew her portrait. “Paint must never hope to reproduce the faint half-flush that dies along her throat," the artist says to the Duchess in Robert Browning's poem.
The blushing beauty -- a portrait of medieval Queen Elizabeth Woodville done in the Victorian style of idealized female beauty Fanny Price is the blushingest heroine, blushing from embarrassment, fright, indignation, guilt (over her secret love for Edmund) and of course, blushing out of modesty whenever anyone says something kind to her or about her. Henry Crawford speaks approvingly of how Fanny's colour is beautifully heightened as she bends over her writing desk.Even men blush in these novels, from chagrin, self-awareness, or anger, but seldom from modesty. "I blush for you, Tom," Sir Thomas Bertram says to his son when confronting him about his debts.
Because the purity of the maidenly heroine was so important, the dramatic tension of many of the popular novels of the past derives from the threat that the lady may lose her virtue. Think of Ivanhoe, The Last Days of Pompeii, and of course Clarissa, If the lady fell from grace, then death was sure to follow, as in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and East Lynne.
The Victorian era was the hey-day of the blushing maiden. Victorian heroines were inevitably sweet and demure and portrayed as having heart-shaped faces with high foreheads, very large eyes, sweet little rosebud mouths, tiny feet and hands and of course, naturally rosy cheeks. These heroines are guileless and always astonished if somebody notices them.
In David Copperfield, little "Em'ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head, and her face was covered with blushes."
Some writers, however, found this cliche of the blushing maiden cloying. Gilbert & Sullivan satirized the blushing maiden in their 1884 operetta The Mikado , when the bridesmaids advise Yum-Yum how to behave on her wedding day:
Sit with downcast eye --/ Let it brim with dew --/ Try if you can cry --/ We will do so, too.
When you're summoned, start/ Like a frightened roe --/ Flutter, little heart,/ Colour, come and go!
And in Vanity Fair, W.M. Thackeray makes fun of the typical Victorian blushing maiden, whom he openly derides: "But as we are to see a great deal of Amelia, there is no harm in saying, at the outset of our acquaintance, that she was a dear little creature; ....her face blushed with rosy health, and her lips with the freshest of smiles, and she had a pair of eyes which sparkled with the brightest and honestest good-humour, except indeed when they filled with tears, and that was a great deal too often; for the silly thing would cry over a dead canary-bird;... or over the end of a novel, were it ever so stupid..." And he contrasts her with the calculating Becky Sharp: "Amelia, hanging down her head, blushed as only young ladies of seventeen know how to blush, and as Miss Rebecca Sharp never blushed in her life—at least not since she was eight years old, and when she was caught stealing jam out of a cupboard by her godmother."
In the West, at any rate, the blushing maiden in literature has gone the way of the DoDo, and yet I feel a certain nostalgia for the idea of having something to blush about. More on blushing:
Katie Halsey, Jane Austen and her Readers 1786-1945 discusses blushing in Jane Austen's novels.
Why Do People Blush? Mental floss
June 18, 2017
Guest blogging at AustenAuthors about the French Revolution
Thank you for this opportunity to guest post on your blog. Did you ever read The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy? It’s a romantic and thrilling classic about the French Revolution. I’d like to share some of my research about the real lives of the refugees from that time.
[more]
Leslie Howard as the Scarlet Pimpernel, disguised as a tricoteuse, watching the heads roll during the French Revolution. This 1934 movie is available on Youtube and costars the lovely Merle Oberon.
