Regulated Hatred and Other Essays on Jane Austen

by D.W. Harding

D.W. Harding was a rarity amongst literary critics since his academic career was passed as Professor of Psychology. Yet this professional occupation never obtruded. As Professor Knights writes in his Foreword, as a critic 'he was one of the most sanely subtle or subtly sane) of his generation'. His title essay, 'Regulated Hatred', altered the course of Austen criticism, and this selection from the best of his writing about his favourite author (some of it previously unpublished) will be an important landmark in Austen criticism.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Jane Austen

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

About the author

Denys Clement Wyatt Harding, born July 13, 1906 at Lowestoft in Suffolk and died on April 17, 1993 in Ipswich, was a psychologist and British literary critic.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Subashini]

Turns out some of the most interesting literary criticism on Jane Austen was written by a psychologist, especially in "Regulated Hatred" and the next three or four essays that follow. Harding's primary concerns are how Austen works out moral issues through her characters and the careful descriptions of bourgeois society. The essays in the first half of the book are also about how and why Austen wrote the way she did; mainly, so as to be able to skewer and parody the society she knew and loved and likely also hated and desired to be a part of, probably because she needed society's protection and the goodwill of the people in her life as a woman of her class who was acutely aware of the tremendous cost of going against social conventions. This tension is what makes Austen's work so intriguing, and Harding is very good on these aspects of her work because of the generosity of his thinking and his keen sense of empathy.

But somewhere in the middle, in the chapter on Mansfield Park, he started to repeat himself and I began to lose interest. The ideas have already been discussed in better, more original ways during the first half of the book. Because there's always so many other things to read, I stopped, but I might get around to the rest of it at some point.

[Sinuhe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't typically read literary criticism, but this book on Austen's work is so readable. It's got the incisive commentary of a historian with the conversational tone of a fandom meta writer. Harding was not reading as an English lit scholar, but as an intelligent person who loves Austen. A must-read for all Austen fans, which will open your eyes to all sorts of interpretations you never considerd.

The title relates to what Harding sees as Austen's view of and attitude toward society. She was fundamentally not someone writing about a society she was comfortable in, and her characters are often not entirely comfortable with each other - there is a regulated hatred, negative emotions that are not allowed to be passionate or impolite. While this makes some consider the books stultifying, it's realistic, especially when the rules of politeness required significantly more social contact with people one didn't like.

My one quarrel with the book is that Harding clearly dislikes Fanny Price a great deal and can find almost no sympathy for her. I wouldn't say Mansfield Park is my favorite of the books, but I don't believe she was trying to write a straightforward moralizing novel either. (I subscribe to the view, whose author I can no longer remember, that MP represents a deliberate subversion of the ending that would be more common in fiction and more satisfying than what she wrote. She knew what she was doing.)

[DC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very readable and, apparently, a seminal work in modern critique of Austen. As the editor promised, however, it was rather repetitive. He uses the same examples to illustrate is his points over and over. Also, I do not think Harding understood Mansfield Park.

[Fnaught · Rating 4 out of 5]

*In connection with this, try Wendy Anne Lee's essay 'Resituating "Regulated Hatred": D.W. Harding's Jane Austen' -a gateway to a political realist reading of Jane Austen, via Carl Schmitt and James Burnham.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed these essays on Jane Austen's novels. This literary commentary gave me some new lenses through which to enjoy the novels. Though my favorite novel is Persuasion, followed by Pride and Prejudice, these essays have really piqued my interest in re-reading Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. I might have passed them over too quickly.