The Other Austen

On Feminism and Jane; Or, Why the Quiet BAMF-itude of Austen’s Heroines Actually Matters

One of my women’s studies professors told our class on multiple occasions that telling women’s stories was the first and one of the most fundamental parts of feminism. That women have been erased from the narrative for so long, the first step to equality is simply to tell women’s stories. Whether they are the stories of women speaking out, women fighting back, women rejecting convention or simply the stories of women living lives, women in domesticity, women in the quiet background of history, we need to tell their stories. I would add to this queer people, trans* people, people of color, everyone whose story is never told — the silent majority, if you will. The first step to fighting back is simply telling our story, saying out loud, “We are here.”

This same professor hates Jane Austen. Like really, really hates her and her books. And she was so disappointed by the fact that I love Austen, I actually felt a bit guilty about it. But then I thought, aha, watch me use your own argument against you, Irlene! And so now I am.

Because see, Austen was all about telling women’s stories. Yes, she was writing about a very small socioeconomic niche in society — the landed gentry somewhere between the nobility and the professional classes. So, yes, a bunch of privileged white British women. And yes, the stories are just these tedious little snapshots of the day to day, and they are all romances in the end, but don’t you see how the tedium is important? The stories are small because real women in their situation lived small lives. But that doesn’t mean they’re not important; it doesn’t mean they aren’t stories worth telling.

Lizze Bennet, who rejected two perfectly good offers of marriage, knowing full well she was expected to accept whatever was offered and consider herself lucky, knowing she could die an impoverished old maid. Elinor Dashwood, emotionally supporting her whole family and putting her own suffering to the side because she loves them and they need her to protect them from the cruelties of society. Emma Woodhouse, running this show and talking too much, and laughing at the world that seeks to silence her. Fanny Price, who steadfastly refused to give in, no matter that she was threatened with rejection, poverty, and the disapproval of the only family she’d ever known.

Read these books and tell me these women aren’t strong. Tell me they’re not fighting the society they’re trapped in. Hell, for their time in place, the idea of marrying for love rather than social politics and money was absurd and nearly revolutionary. And here was Austen, writing them the ending she never had, writing them the endings society at the time could never truly allow, writing the little lives of the women she knew, telling their stories, because they were important, because they were there.