Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

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Oh, how I wanted to like this more. There are some strong moments like the explanations of gypsies and dinosaurs, but UGH. UGH UGH UGH. There are far too many outrageous one-liners that argue wild points without any solid evidence or explanation. For instance, "The word 'sadist' hasn't been coined when Jane was writing, but that's undoubtedly what Mr. Price is." Um, what? If the author had run with her over-the-top ideas like her suggestion of Edward Ferrars's sexual perversion, maybe this would have been a stronger book. Almost everything we think we know about Jane Austen is wrong. Her novels don't confine themselves to grand houses and they were not written just for readers' enjoyment. She writes about serious subjects and her books are deeply subversive. We just don't read her properly - we haven't been reading her properly for 200 years. The year 2016 belonged to Shakespeare; 2017 is Jane Austen’s, the 200th anniversary of her premature death. Her face has been chosen to appear on Britain’s 10-pound note (the same amount she was first paid by a publisher). There has been, and will be, a spate of commemorative events, festivals and, of course, books like this. We are, as the witty television series put it, “Lost in Austen.”

Sometimes, we don’t even skim as far as that, content to revel at the level of what Kelly calls “the unknown knowns – things we don’t actually know, but think we do.” The things we think we know about Austen based on countless twee tea towels and throbbing film adaptations, the things an audience member was presumably thinking of when she stood up at a Margaret Atwood event I attended recently and thanked the author for “saving me from having to read Jane Austen”. She hasn’t read Jane Austen. But she knows her, as indeed we all do. So yeah, REALLY annoyed I actually bought this book (hardcovers are expensive y’all!) with the hope I would learn something interesting about Jane’s works. UG. Kelly also talks of Edward Ferrars’ education and writes ��Why send him to Exeter?”(5) But surely it was not Exeter where Edward was educated but at Longstaple near Plymouth at the house of Lucy Steele’s uncle, Mr Pratt? Her comments about Mr Knightley are ludicrous!!!!(Dept of Disclaimers: Mr Knightley is my favorite Austen hero) And I'm not talking about those old boring trite age/closeness of family things that I've fought against repeatedly and written about.It is a shame that Kelly doesn’t leave much room for Austen’s bitingly funny letters and juvenilia, both of which can leave no reader in doubt of Austen’s disposition toward the satirical, the radical and, more often than not, the grotesque. I was also not sold on Kelly’s decision to open each chapter with a short fictional section based on Austen’s letters. Her justification (Austen’s assertion that it is in fiction that one will find “the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties”) was convincing, but I found the approach grating. Austen is one of the greatest writers ever to have lived – if we are to read fiction, I would rather have read her own words. Or perhaps this would have been the place for some letter extracts. In Jane’s time, there were deep-rooted prejudices in favour of the nobility and the clergy. Pride and Prejudice undermines both, in the persons of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr Collins. Could Lady Catherine really be a sensible person to appoint Mr Collins to the living at her disposal and then actually welcome his irksome company? When the contrast is drawn between the noble Lady Catherine’s behaviour and Elizabeth Bennet’s aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, who are in trade, the reader’s conclusion is inevitable: good breeding has nothing to do with titles.

A sublime piece of literary detective work that shows us once and for all how to be precisely the sort of reader that Austen deserves.' Caroline Criado-Perez, Guardian The Age of Brass" finds Kelly's reading of Sense and Sensibility as a book about "property and inheritance--about greed and the terrible, selfish things that families do to each other for the sake of money." Butler’s thesis, which became critical orthodoxy, rests on a wide-ranging survey of Jacobin (radical, pro-revolutionary) fiction. It concludes that Austen was not in the slightest radical and made no secret of her militant anti-Jacobinism in her novels. Austen, Butler asserted, believed wholeheartedly in an England founded on monarchy, the Anglican Church and a stable class system. The Northanger Abbey chapter was insightful about the use of the Gothic within that text, if I ever get around to actually reading the Mysteries of Udolpho, I intend to read both NA and the chapter here again. I love Jane Austen’s novels and I know something of Jane’s life and period. I certainly ought to, as one chapter in my new book ( What Regency Women Did For Us) is given over to my favourite author! However, I am not a literary critic and have never sought to pull Jane Austen’s novels to pieces in search for greater meaning. I accepted this review copy on the basis that it promised new insights into the novels through greater knowledge of the period in which Jane Austen wrote. As a Regency historian, I decided to hear what Kelly had to say.A brilliant, illuminating reassessment of the life and work of Jane Austen that makes clear how Austen has been misread for the past two centuries and that shows us how she intended her books to be read, revealing, as well, how subversive and daring—how truly radical—a writer she was. Both! I’m really torn on this question, to be honest. As I said above, the popular picture of Austen does conceal the text. But many of adaptations and the continuations and sequels and so on are really fun and they make Austen accessible; those aren’t bad things. I’ve just finished reading a book called Lydia by Natasha Farrant which I very much enjoyed and which I think would be a great ‘gateway’ book into the original novels. And then, look at something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – it’s absurd but at the same time anyone reading it has read a good three-quarters of Austen’s novel. Plus, of course, it makes explicit the sense of external menace in the book, though Austen’s characters are bothered about the French, not the zombie hordes! But, yes, I suppose I’d like to see less romance, and more of the grittier adaptations, like the 1999 Mansfield Park , directed by Patricia Rozema. The Jane Austen conjured up by the adaptions, etc. doesn’t bear all that much resemblance to the authoress of the novels! As above, Mansfield Park – it’s profoundly anti-establishment. The heroine Fanny Price, though, embraces Mansfield Park and everything it stands for. I think the most radical heroine is probably Elizabeth Bennet – she who loves to question, to debate, to laugh at power and challenge authority to justify itself. However, I found little sympathy with Kelly when she began trying to read sexual meanings into Edward Ferrars’ behaviour and implied he was no better than Willoughby. It certainly does not help me enjoy the novel better. Edward might not be a Darcy, but he is a man who has been downtrodden by his mother, and if Eleanor loves him, who are we to question her choice? Despite what Kelly suggests, I retain my right to believe that Edward and Eleanor could live happily ever after.

Furthermore, the snarkiness and disrespect to other critics and Janeites was insane. For example, one passage in the book: ”Slavery wasn’t some distant, abstract notice for Jane. Her own family has ties to the Caribbean. Her eldest brother James, has a slave owning grandfather, James Nibbs, an Oxford acquaintance of the Reverend George Austen” leads to the following footnote: “The biography Claire Tomlin includes this information in an appendix about attitudes to slavery, almost as if she thinks the issue doesn’t really have anything to do with Jane or her writing.” Jane Austen, The Secret Radical puts that right. In her first, brilliantly original book, Austen expert Helena Kelly introduces the reader to a passionate woman living in an age of revolution; to a writer who used what was regarded as the lightest of literary genres, the novel, to grapple with the weightiest of subjects – feminism, slavery, abuse, the treatment of the poor, the power of the Church, even evolution – at a time, and in a place, when to write about such things directly was seen as akin to treason. Many of the negative reviewers seem to believe they are being individually condescended to by Helena's assertion that they've read Jane wrong. Come on, no. You may perfectly well have noticed the occurrence of Stuart names in Persuasion or the hypocrisy of Edmund Bertram, but can you deny that the popular conception of Jane's books - the adaptations, what we're meant to understand by calling someone a Janeite - is simplistic in comparison to what she actually wrote? Of course, in a point-by-point rundown of misconceptions surrounding Jane's books, relating to the political climate of the time, books Jane had read, etc., obviously someone familiar with the 18th century British literary culture will be aware of some of them, but of all of them? I really feel Helena does provide plenty of information I hadn't previously considered at all, there ARE secrets that I, someone pretty darn interested in Jane, was surprised to read from Helena. And I found plenty of insight in Kelly’s surveys of the novels to intrigue me. For example, it had not occurred to me to look at Emma through the lens of the enclosure controversy, or Persuasion in the context of the kinds of doubts that arise when people start to encounter the logic of evolution. Kelly was persuasive in many of her arguments, and I admire her gift for finding the unexpected in the familiar (e.g., her discussion of Austen’s obituaries and speculations about how she came to be buried in Winchester Cathedral was fascinating). Mansfield Park is about "The Chain and the Cross," referring to Fanny's amber cross from her brother and the chain gifted her by her cousin Edmund. (Inspired by Austen's own amber cross from her sailor brother.) It also refers to British wealth from slave plantations in the Caribbean and how the Christian church profited from them.

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Despite being one of the most written about English writers, Jane Austen (1775–1817) continues to attract researchers. Kelly (classics & English literature, Univ. of Oxford) asserts that we have been misunderstanding Austen's novels for the last 200 years and that close reading will expose her economic and political views, considered radical for the early 1800s. Devoting a chapter to each novel, Kelly focuses on the dangers of military camps in Pride and Prejudice, the importance of money in Sense and Sensibility, and the effects of the Enclosure Movement in Emma. While these observations are valid, they are not new. Scholars have before mentioned these connections, such as the changing social mores in Persuasion, and the association between Mansfield Park's Mrs. Norris and Robert Norris, a slavery supporter. At times Kelly stretches believability, such as describing Edward's episode with the scissors as having an explicit sexual meaning in Sense and Sensibility. Nonetheless, through meticulous research, she succeeds in capturing the historical and literary context of Austen's output, which should enhance the reading of her work. VERDICT Austen scholars and fans, even if they do not agree with all of the conclusions, will be interested in this book.—Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo Library Journal And I found plenty of insight in Kelly’s surveys of the novels to intrigue me. For example, it had not occurred to me to look at *Emma* through the lens of the enclosure controversy, or *Persuasion* in the context of the kinds of doubts that arise when people start to encounter the logic of evolution. Kelly was persuasive in many of her arguments, and I admire her gift for finding the unexpected in the familiar (e.g., her discussion of Austen’s obituaries and speculations about how she came to be buried in Winchester Cathedral was fascinating). With regards to marriage, there’s not any real evidence for the one-night engagement to Harris Bigg-Wither; the ‘proof’ seems to have been pieced together by a niece who wasn’t even born at the time of the engagement. So it’s possible no one ever proposed to Austen at all! Would she have married if the right man had come along? Maybe. But she’d seen enough of the dangers of marriage and the demands of endless child-bearing to have made her cautious. Many of the negative reviewers seem to believe they are being individually condescended to by Helena's assertion that they've read Jane wrong. Come on, no. You may perfectly well have noticed the occurrence of Stuart names in Persuasion or the hypocrisy of Edmund Bertram, but can you deny that the popular conception of Jane's books - the adaptations, what we're meant to understand by calling someone a Janeite - is simplistic in comparison to what she actually wrote? Of course, in a point-by-point rundown of misconceptions surrounding Jane's books, relating to the political climate of the time, books Jane had read, etc., obviously someone familiar with the 18th century British literary culture will be aware of some of them, but of all of them? I really feel Helena does provide plenty of information I hadn't previously considered at all, there ARE secrets tha This is a strange book and (sorry) a ludicrous one. There's plenty of context, but the method and manner in which Kelly sets about "radicalising" Austen means ignoring all of the work on Austen that came before. Like, Emma is not "about" enclosures and Mr. Knightley is not simply a kind of Marie Antoinette. These are issues percolating through the book and these are factors that must be considered, of course: class, gender, politics. Doing so makes for fruitful reading. But this is a book of wilful misreading. Instead of seeing how class relations inform social relationships and character, Kelly wants to see Emma (or the other novels) as being specifically about Austen's radical politics as determined solely by Kelly and Kelly herself. It's a weird way to read a book.