It took me a year to read the works Jane Austen had completed. Maybe it was because they were collected in a doorstopper of a book, or maybe I needed time because at first, it wasn’t an easy journey for me.
Reading Sense and Sensibility, I thought that the style was deft and that the departure from gothic and adventure fiction was, of course, important, but I also felt that the novel was about telling instead of showing. There were entire fragments I found boring and there were connections I couldn’t make out.
But that was only the beginning. Pride and Prejudice surprised me with an acute social portrait of class relations and with such characters as Catherine DeBurgh—kind of we wouldn’t suppose to exist in the times of entail law.
Mansfield Park seemed more conservative with its message but on the other hand—I was already accustomed to the style and surprised again that the trope of childhood friends eventually (in this case, really eventually) falling for each other is as old as Austen’s times.
And then there were Emma and Northanger Abbey, the books which were utterly funny and utterly compelling to me. They showed to me that characters don’t need to be as flawed as your stock ASoIaF anti-hero to be still human and by no means ideal, least white-washed. Persuasions gave me a more bitter impression and Lady Susan was to a huge extend read against author’s intention by me. But it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t regret I have read them all. I’ve found important reflections in them. Because there are no better contemporary books to understand the upper classes of Regency society.
It’s so different, for example, from what we get in Poldark series, and from so many stories based on Cinderella scheme.
In the world of Jane Austen, misalliance isn’t common. It’s always a dire thing. Just think how difficult it was for Mr Darcy, a rich aristocrat, and for Elizabeth, a not-so-wealthy gentrywoman. Just think what a fuss was made over Mrs Bennett’s (petty)-bourgeoisie origin and how Darcy and Elizabeth had, after a way, to break their contacts off with bride’s family. Or the case of Harriet in Emma, when Emma realizes that it would be shameful to have matched an illegitimate daughter of a tradesman to well-born Mr Knightley. Or Northanger Abbey. There’s such a fuss that she is a daughter of an ordinary clergyman. Not good enough to General Tilney’s mind to wed his son, you know. And so on, and so on…
And now think of Demelza Carne, a servant girl and a miner’s daughter. Marrying Ross Poldark. A gentryman. Think also of Miss Penvenen marrying Dwight Enys, an ordinary doctor. And of Morwenna Chynoweth being commonly pitied by “good” characters in the series because she couldn’t marry Drake, Demelza’s brother and a simple carpenter.
No. It didn’t work like that. There was too much obsession on “good breed” to allow such unions in reality. Which Austen’s works show well even if brutally.
Now, I’m aware there are several problems here.
At first, we don’t remember a lot about classism, so much the trope of Cinderella has been embodied within us. We love to point out who and why couldn’t take part in an Austen-esque world but we tend to forget that, if we have to stick to every rules of the Regency society, servants, poors and farmers were as much excluded as, let’s say, people of colour. And yes, I claim that Poldark is as relative about historical accuracy as Bridgertons. And the true is that I don’t mind it. Just don’t pretend that Poldark or Downton Abbey is somewhat superior.
*sighs* The second thing is—how to approach those works? Should we condemn them as classist and racist? Should we consider Austen a “bad” girl? Or a product of her times? And that’s a complex problem because both ways can turn misleading.
“Bad” writer narration may discourage us from reading between the lines and pointing out that no matter what the artist thought, the social order she described was stiff and unjust. It may also make us unaware of all those fragments when Austen was ahead from her times: when she criticized entail law in Sense and Sensibility, when she married not-so-well-born Elizabeth to Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice and when she mocked the obsession of money and incomes in almost every of her books.
But “times were different” isn’t a good strategy, either. Because it may make us indifferent, sooner or later. Indifferent to the absence of servants and poor people in Austen’s narration. Indifferent to indifference on slavery presented in Mansfield Park. Indifferent to some classists stereotypes with which Mrs Bennett or Robert Martin are described. And indifferent to the otherness, real otherness of Regency social order.
Speaking of reading between lines, you often need to do this with Austen’s works.
Because of her minimalistic descriptions, you are usually allowed yourself to imagine characters. Because dialogues are important and revealing in her narration, you can draw characters’ traits and motivations from them.
And because some things weren’t spoken about openly, you often have to make out on your own what certain expressions and situations meant. You have to make out on your own what was actually hidden under the term of an “elopment”. Are there some implicit sensual undercurrents there? Is that meaningful, that Colonel Brandon was said to have an illegitimate daughter and yet he was by no means rejected by his social circle? Was Lady Susan engaged sexually with Sir Reginald? Anyway, do we need to interpret her in the scornful way of Austen? Or should we proclaim la mort de l’Auteur?
And those are, of course, the most down-to-the-earth questions about her writing. Because there are others, the questions which have been considered profound in our culture.
Austen’s works aren’t romantic fiction, lest harlequins. They aren’t merely about seeking a husband and getting married. They are about the society and how it works. If you don’t see it then you just don’t realize how much women’s life—and men’s too—relied on financial and customary arrangements. And those arrangements were as important as Great Things like death and war to which the most of our culture has accustomed us.
Sometimes it seems to me that there are people who enjoy, let’s say, LotR, or ASoIaF from a privileged position and reject novels in Austen’s kind on the same basis. They enjoy the former from the privileged position of people who can enjoy “epic” stuff because “daily” stuff is no longer as constrained as it was in Austen’s times. They can pretend that class and gender aren’t important themes, that they are good—depending on context—for “naïve” conservative girls or “over-reacting” SJWs.
Novels of Jane Austen show that they have been always important and have always shaped our existence.
Left Hand of Fiction 