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Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

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The chapter about Emma was all right, but the subject of enclosure just isn't as interesting to me as it seems to have been to Kelly.

Kelly felt strongly that she had hit on the "right" way and other people's ways were "wrong," which struck me as slightly absurd. The “idealised picture” chosen by the bank looks “far less grumpy” than the “unfinished sketch it’s based on”. She is good on how the grim facts of a small-town economy are intimated in Emma, signalling the relative deprivation of many, from the poor cottagers to whom Emma dispenses charity, to the Gypsies who menace Harriet Smith, to the Bateses, just clinging to gentility. She says that Willoughby is drunk when he turns up at what he fears is Marianne’s deathbed in Sense and Sensibility, but in fact his “Yes, I am very drunk” is entirely sarcastic.There are far too many outrageous one-liners that argue wild points without any solid evidence or explanation. To challenge and instruct as well as entertain maybe, but I personally still believe she was first and foremost a storyteller. The great chapters contained a unifying theory that brought together the historical context and the actual plot and actions of the characters: Northanger Abbey (where the childbirth stuff is contained, as well as some fascinating stuff about gothic novels), Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice were the standouts, followed pretty closely by the chapter on Persuasion. 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? She wrote against the conventions and mocked the bourgeoisie with their fixations on money, status and position.

She sets out to show us how Austen’s novels have been “so thoroughly, so almost universally, misunderstood”. Fortunately, Kelly does not try to undermine the characters of Darcy and Elizabeth, but rather draws attention to the underlying prejudices of the novel which are far more revolutionary than a modern audience appreciates. I enjoyed this but agree with those reviewers who feel that it is (1) overly assertive about what Austen thought and felt - something which it criticises fairly fiercely in other authors -, that (2) it draws some fairly tenuous connections (just one example; Edward Ferrars and the scissors is far too heavily relied upon for what is ultimately a fairly weak Freudian interpretation) and (3) it could have done without the fictitious/imaginary sections. Having warned the reader about how little is known about Jane and her intentions, she then spends the remainder of the book second-guessing authorial intent and inserting fictionalised scenes of Jane's life that might have prompted her novels.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”.

The author reveals just how in the novels we find the real Jane Austen: a clever, clear-sighted woman “of information,” fully aware of what was going on in the world and sure about what she thought of it. 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.With all her reasonings, she found that, to retentive feelings, eight years may be little more than nothing. For instance, "The word 'sadist' hasn't been coined when Jane was writing, but that's undoubtedly what Mr. There is nothing exceptional here and nothing you wouldn't expect from a Key Stage 4 class discussion, and with suitable evidence and development, salient points could be made. But I definitely think most of what was in this book was extremely relevant, as it completely changes the way some things are viewed.

Of course, all the professors I studied under were mostly followers of New Criticism, where historical context and the life and intentions of the author are either ignored or barely acknowledged in favor of a close reading of the text as an enclosed object.

When you strip out the speculation and occasionally rather forced arguments this book actually adds very little hard evidence to what we already know. She delves deep into the books but puts forth rather bizarre conclusions that it's hard not to see this book as more about herself and less about Austen and her novels. It is as if she imagines herself to be the only person who has ever contemplated Jane’s writing before, and the few critics she does acknowledge are swiftly swept aside, sometimes only in a footnote!

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