The Other Austen

The big list of must reads:
-Jane Austen: Women, Politics and the Novel – Claudia L. Johnson (mentioning again to emphasize its importance) :)
-Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s – Claudia L. Johnson (anything by her basically, cuz she’s my academic crush)
-Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions: Subversive Laughter, Embodied History – Jill Heydt Stevenson
-Madwoman in the Attic – Gilbert and Gubar (some ideas are dated, but still a must read)
-Cambridge Companions to Jane Austen (there are two now, one just came out 1-2 years ago)
-Jane Austen and Feminism – by lots
-Jane Austen and the Body – John Wiltshire
-Jane Austen and Theatre – Penny Gay
-Jane Austen and Edward Said: Gender, Culture and Imperialism – by Susan Fraiman (brilliant response to Said’s original essay, which you should also read)
-Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl - Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

I would say read the chapters on Pride and Prejudice in all of the above (if they have them). Start with Claudia L. Johnson always because she will give you a great base.

JASNA.org has essays you can read for free! They’re from their literary journal, Persuasions.
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/index.html

This is an old article on the ‘picturesque’ in Pride and Prejudice, but if you look for them, there are more recent articles on it: http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number1/litz.htm

There’s a section on ‘Class’ in (I believe?) the first edition of the Cambridge Companion.

For the latest in Jane Austen criticism, I think the Persuasions lit mag is a good way to start.  Look at the most recent publications and see if anything interests you! Look at the people who edit it and google their work.

I hope this has been of some help! If you want me to be more specific or help looking for topics, let me know!

ETA: A new-ish thing is scholars classifying works as Romantic fiction. Austen falls into this category.  Some people don’t know what to do with her (is she an englightment author? is she victorian? blah blah blah no no no).  So a cool thing for you to do would be to read about Romantic fiction criticism and see if Pride and Prejudice falls into this category.

Recognizing the Romantic Novel: New Histories of British Fiction, 1780-1830 by Jillian Heydt-Stevenson and Charlotte Sussman

Yes indeed! You can read it here: 

http://independent.academia.edu/EmilySnow/Papers/1337864/_Is_she_queer_Fanny_Prices_Protest_Against_Sublime_and_Beautiful_Heteronormativity

Hope you enjoy! And that it fucks your shit up. :)

1. OMG GET A NEW BEST FRIEND or TAKE THIS BITCH TO SCHOOL

2. Tell him to at least read a Jane Austen novel. Then tell him to read Twilight. I’m pretty sure he’s read neither.

3. His observations are sexist. Period. “Just” 18th century romance novels? Whatever you have to say about Austen or Meyer, you have to acknowledge that BOTH of them have made significant contributions to literature. Lumping all female writers into the bull shit ‘chick lit’ category makes their writing seem frivolous and inexperienced compared to supposedly solid, important, canonical male writing. No but you don’t get it, when Shakespeare wrote romances and comedies, they were like, so much better. If you’re going to delegitimize Austen for her ‘silly, girly’ romances, you might as well do it to Dickens, Fielding and the Brontes as well. Basically every writer ever actually. Well done!

4. His observation is more about the contemporary reception of Austen. The average 21st century dolt who has heard of that mad, scribblin’ Jayne Eyre Austin lady thinks she wrote about young ladies sitting at their windowsill, looking forlornly out the window upon the rainy English countryside, waiting for her Prince Charming/Mr. Darcy to show up. If you merely watch an Austen adaptation made in the last 20 years without thinking deeply about it, you might get this impression. From S&S 1995 to P&P 2005, there’s plenty of rain and dashing men on horseback to be had. But…

5. I’d say it’s a universal truth that people are fucking stupid and don’t understand irony. Austen is ironic about romance. Meyer is not. I’m not going to compare or add positive/negative value to their merits, because that goes against Austen’s “it’s only a novel” rant, in which she chides her fellow novelists for degrading each other and the medium itself. Not gonna do it. But it is extremely important to understand that Austen’s bread and butter was mocking the shit out of those ‘silly’ 18^th century romance novels. As a reader, she loved them and memorized their form and content. As a writer, she satirized some of their bull shit notions about women, marriage and money. Marriage was (and to me, still can be) a business transaction and was (to proto-feminists of her day) comparable to the slave trade. There’s a lot more going on in Austen that just silly girly romance.

6. But you know what, even silly girly romance has meaning. Twilight is political as fuck. Sex can wait until straight, white, Christian heterosexual courtship. A woman’s worth is defined by her sexual activity. Not that this does not happen in Austen as well, but I think there’s a huge distinction to be made. Meyer’s novels say things SHOULD be this way. Austen’s novels say things ARE this way and ain’t it shitty. I have not read Twilight, but as far as I know, Meyer is not interested in being critical of normative societal expectations. Twilight seems like romance played straight. Pride and Prejudice is romance with a razor’s edge. Romance and marriage don’t save you. They lock you in and bind you. If you’re REALLY REALLY LUCKY you will find a equal partner to spend your life with. But how many Austen characters find that? 7 or 8 maybe? That’s including the 6 hero/heroine couples plus a couple of side character couples that depict an ideal marriage (the Crofts in Persuasion, the Gardiners in P&P). Everywhere else is difficulty and bitterness and, I hate to say it, reality.

7. So I guess tell him that he can’t have a valid opinion about the subject until he’s read novels written by both authors. Until he’s read Claudia L. Johnson. Until he compares and contrasts the form and content of Austen and Meyer novels while taking into account historical context.  Tell him to remember that Austen uses IRONY. Please please please please remember that, everyone in the world. Tell him to take a closer look at why he delegitimizes the importance of female writers and readers. And if he refuses to do at least one of the above, tell to GTFO, like really.

WHOAH BABY IS THAT A LOADED QUESTION AND I AM SO EXCITED YOU ASKED ME ABOUT IT. CAN’T YOU TELL BY ALL THESE CAPS?

1) There is no way of knowing what an author ‘meant’ to convey in their writing. Determining authorial intention hasn’t been an acceptable form of literary criticism for quite some time. Even if Austen had personal letters detailing the themes of her novels and the motivations and feelings of her characters, she might have felt something entirely different while writing the actual novel. For instance, you might not know from my response that I am currently sitting in a cubicle, in a bank, entering in data on a shitty computer, all the while distracted by people talking and printers printing. My motivations for writing this right here and right now will forever be unknown because mmwhahaha none of you can ever be me! Isn’t subjectivity grand? Not only could I not know what Jane meant if she were sitting across from me at this very moment, but her truth and the workings of her mind are further disguised by a 200 year gap in cultural understanding. We’ll never be able to see Jane’s writing as she intended, simply by NOT being her.

2) No one has access to their subconscious, not even the almighty Jane. Maybe deep down Jane DID mean to write homoerotic tension between Lizzy and Charlotte and she did so without knowing?

3) It is also possible that an author can be unaware of subtext they create. Even if the Lizzy/Charlotte tension was no where near Jane’s conscious or unconscious mind, the text might imply something entirely different to another person. Authors can only have so much control over how their words can affect others—once the words are produced and made public, it’s free game! For instance, I, a 21st century upper-middle-class, white, queer, American woman, will pick up on different things than a mid-20th century, middle class, black man in France. And neither of our perspectives should be discounted. We’ll both bring different interpretations to the table. There’s a reason readers and scholars still argue and critique works—because the works transform with the arrival of every new generation and every perspective.

4) There’s a little thing some historians like to call ‘romantic friendship.’ There is evidence found in the letters and journals of women in the 19th century that suggests women experienced this close connection with one another. Many of them ended in a ‘Boston marriage,’ in which two ‘single’ women would move in with one another and spend their lives together, their love and relationship unacknowledged by the law but accepted in society. Anne Lister, a woman who lived in 19th century England, kept a journal that was practically The Regency L-Word. What I’m saying is that two women experiencing love is not at all incompatible with 18th/19th century historical context.

In “The ‘Different Sorts of Friendship’: Desire in Mansfield Park,” Misty G. Anderson references Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s point that “homoerotic, physical expressions of desire, particularly those between women, could not constitute a lesbian ‘identity’ at the time of Austen’s writing” and Catherine R. Stimpson’s claim that a “lesbian identity is not identifiable in English language and literature until 1890” (168). These assertions let us examine how relationships between women manifested themselves before the lesbian identity came into being, when sexual desire could just as easily be called friendship. Anderson urges readers to resist “the anachronistic impulse to categorize sexuality within the modern monoliths of homosexual and heterosexual, while understanding the notion of sexual identity does not capture the substance of erotic energy” (177). We couldn’t accurately label a Lizzy/Charlotte relationship as lesbian, but we can read it as queer and Other, simply because it does not adhere to patriarchal marriage and heteronormative courtship.

You know that part in Pride and Prejudice 2005 when Mrs. Bennet and her daughters LOSE THEIR SHIT and try to ‘behave naturally’ for Darcy and Bingley? It’s a comic look at the separation of the spheres (domestic sphere=women, public sphere=men). Men and women were rarely thrown together, and when they were, their behavior towards each other was far from easy and natural. Because of this, most women felt more comfortable and less sexually threatened with other women. Friendship could very easily turn into passionate love. Just see Emily Dickinson’s letters to her sister-in-law: “my heart is full of you, none other than you is in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me. If you were here — and Oh that you were, my Susie, we need not talk at all, our eyes would whisper for us, and your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language…” Sounds similar to Captain Wentworth’s letter to Anne Elliot!

5) From Pride and Prejudice: “Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been [Charlotte’s] object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want. This preservative she had now obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been handsome, she felt all the good luck of it. The least agreeable circumstance in the business was the surprise it must occasion to Elizabeth Bennet, whose friendship she valued beyond that of any other person. Elizabeth would wonder, and probably would blame her; and though her resolution was not to be shaken, her feelings must be hurt by such disapprobation.”

So let’s recap. Charlotte doesn’t like men or the idea of marriage, but cares more for Elizabeth than for any other person. And what’s not queer about that? She tells Lizzy (who is shocked about Charlotte’s engagement to Mr. Collins), “I am not romantic, you know; I never was.” Either Charlotte is asexual or she does not experience love or desire in a normative, conventional way. QUEER QUEER QUEER

Yay I love homework help time! This is an interesting topic and one that I haven’t thought too much about before. I’m going to attempt to figure it out with you. There are TONS of widows and widowers in Austen’s novels because TONS of people died back then—fun fact/spoiler, they are all dead now! I think you actually chose two great characters to sort of compare and contrast. Bringing Mrs. Norris in might add another great dimension to your argument, whatever route you choose to take. Here’s a list of the widows/widowers in the novels. There are probably more that I can’t think of right now. Seem to be many more widows (which fits, since men tended and still do tend, to die younger than women—that and many of these female characters married older men).

Widows:

Mrs. Bates (Emma)

Mrs. Dashwood (Sense and Sensibility)

Mrs. Bennet (Pride and Prejudice, panicking about future widowhood)

Mrs. Norris (Mansfield Park)

Mrs. Smith (Persuasion)

Mrs. Morland (her NOT dying and making a widower of Mr. Morland is commented on)

Lady Catherine (Pride and Prejudice)

Widowers:

General Tilney (Northanger Abbey)

Sir Walter (Persuasion)

Mr. Woodhouse (Emma)

Okay, so here’s the deal, as far as I know. Widows and widowers are a trope in sentimental and gothic fiction (and fairy tales, for that matter), and Austen replicated these plot structures and filtered them through her own political, economic and moral commentary. If you can find it, search for the article No Bodies and Nobodaddies. It discusses tropes and stereotypes in the gothic fiction of Austen’s day. I was SHOCKED to see that Austen follows them to a T or subverts them with some pretty heavy winking.

Widows and widowers are connected to the absent mother or absent father trope. In Austen’s novels (as in gothic and sentimental fiction), the leftover parent tends to be tyrannical or obsessed with finances in some way. In Austen, I don’t think that a parent has to be literally deceased to be an absent or inadequate parent. Austen takes goes the metaphorical route with the marriage between Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet. Mr. Bennet is inadequate financially and usually escapes to the confines of his library so he can escape the pressures of parenting and being a husband. This, in turn, forces Mrs. Bennet to behave like a hysterical, grieving widow, in my opinion. Everybody hates on Mrs. Bennet, but she is actually the only parent in the household who cares about the financial security of herself or her daughters. This doesn’t mean that she isn’t as responsible as Mr. Bennet for the Bennet family’s debts, but she is the only one attempting to rectify the situation by marrying off her daughters.

Mrs. Bates is far from a fully developed character, but she has a TON of relevance in the novel.  To me she seems to be there for metaphorical purposes: she represents what Miss Bates will become as she sinks deeper and deeper into debt. She is also representative of upper-middle-class 19^th century English women who are unable to support themselves. She did everything she was told to do to be secure for the rest of her life: she got married. I am sure young women at the time were often told that marriage was enough and all they were expected to do to maintain themselves. But marriage didn’t work out for Mrs. Bates the way society told women it would. We don’t know the details of her life; her marriage was probably even a happy one! But that seems irrelevant. She is an elderly, silenced and poor woman who is made to be insignificant and metaphorically dead in Highbury. The only thing left to her is the condescension of her rich connections: the Woodhouses. I think you might benefit from delving into her interactions with Mr. Woodhouse even. They are often paired together at parties. Mr. Woodhouse is a quietly-tyrannical (there will be no cake in this house!!) patriarch with a large fortune. Compare him with the silent and passive Mrs. Bates. Compare her to Emma as well!

I haven’t read S&S in AGES, but as for Mrs. Dashwood, she is a recently-widowed woman who does not fully grasp her family’s finances. She too thought she could depend on men to take care of her. Marriage did not solve her problems for life. She is left with very little money and a stupid step-son who will not take care of her. In S&S, I think you might also want to explore the idea of promises. Misters Dashwood senior and junior both fail in their promises to provide for the matriarch of the family. Edward is hesitant to back out of his promise to Lucy Steele, whilst Willoughby leaves Marianne on a moment’s notice.

Ultimately, these two women have been made poor because patriarchy and primogeniture (the first son inherits) failed to provide for them in the way they were promised. Mrs. Dashwood is saved by Colonel Brandon’s marrying Marianne and Mrs. Bates and Miss Bates are saved by Jane Fairfax’s marrying Frank Churchill. They are entirely dependent on men and marriage and NEITHER prove to be very dependable in these novels.

Okay I gotta go back to work now FUCK. Did that help? Ask me if you need more to go off of, but I just don’t wanna get fired right now, haha

Oh and you can also talk about how widowhood makes some women (Lady Cat, Mrs. Norris) drunk and cruel with power. Apologies for any errors above, as well, wrote this in a bit of a hurry!