Crystal’s Reviews > Jane Austen, the Secret Radical > Status Update

Helena Kelly wilfully ignores the contributions of the evangelical William Wilberforce and his friends to the abolishment of slavery in the British Empire solely because it doesn't fit her narrative

And now we're just disregarding what Jane herself wrote about Mansfield Park 🤔

Lord Mansfield.'

How is this a connection? I sincerely doubt Jane Austen had anything to do with this adaptation

'Jane met Elizabeth Murray several times. Elizabeth had married, becoming Lady Finch-Hatton and a Kentish neighbor of Jane's brother Edward. The Finch-Hattons also owned Kirby Hall in Northamptonshire, where the 1999 adaptation of Mansfield Park was filmed. Kirby Hall is entirely the wrong period to have served as a model for "spacious, modern-built" Mansfield Park, but it's another connection between the book and -

'Mansfield Park really isn't like James other books. Even the title is a departure from her normal practice: from her childhood onward she tended to pick for hertitles either names (The Beautiful Cassandra, Frederic and Elfrida, Susan) or set phrases (Love and Freindship, First Impressions, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice).'

Are we supposed to forget Northanger Abbey?

When something doesn't fit Kelly's narrative it is unsubstantiated and insubstantial but if it does fit her argument she'll ignore everything but what she feels fits. Ugh

Helena Kelly keeps insisting that we're not reading Jane Austen the way Jane Austen intended but it seems more likely that what she means is we're not reading Jane Austen the way Helena Kelly intends

The leaps in her argument that Colonel Brandon's given name is William are astonishing. I doubt Simone Biles could make those leaps

'If you want to read Jane as she wanted to be read...' that's a bold claim from someone who's admitted that there's little we actually know about Jane. Makes me wonder if this is about Jane Austen or the writer reading her own modern ideas into Jane

I think we have to be careful not to fill in ideas about people when we know little about them. They are more our ideas than those of our subjects, I think