Review: Jane Austen, The Secret Radical by Helena Kelley

Some people believe you should judge and interpret the works of a writer in isolation, without consideration at all about the life, beliefs and times of the author. Helena Kelley, to her credit, is not one such person. Jane Austen, The Secret Radical is exhaustively researched, and presents a wealth of details about how Jane discussed her life and her opinions in her correspondence, what current events were shaping popular opinion at the time Austen was writing, and what literature Austen was likely reading and could expect her readers to have read. For this reason, I think the book is a worthwhile read for fans of Austen’s work, or people who teach Austen. 

But what of the thesis, that Austen was a secret radical? 

I share the author’s frustration with those who dismiss Austen as love stories. But I think it would take a fairly undiscerning reader to not interpret Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice as critiques at the very least of inheritance laws, the lack of financial independence allowed to women, and other oppressive social institutions aimed at women. The depiction of the (moral and financial) decay of the aristocracy and the rise of the bourgeoisie is even more palpable in Persuasion. In Mansfield Park, there is an overt, critical, if brief reference to the slave trade that funds the lives of the main characters, and frequent discussion about the role of the church and the clergy in society. The satire in Emma and Northanger Abbey is aimed more towards manners and literature and the relationships between the wealthy and the less wealthy within the gentry, but both books are far from simple romances (indeed I’ve argued Emma is instead secretly a romance story about a girl named Jane).

However, the author’s assertion that Austen was secretly a far more radical than most readings of her rest either on innuendo and/or on some rather toothless definitions of radical:

We’ve seen [Austen] criticise primogeniture and suggest that change, voluntarily undertaken, may be the only safeguard against revolution.

and

[Pride and Prejudice’s Elizabeth Bennet] is, fundamentally, a radical. She knows her own mind; she reserves the right to decide questions for herself. There are plenty of kinds of authority that she doesn’t recognize, or tolerates only as far as it suits her.

This isn’t the same definition of radical that I use. However, let’s work on Kelley’s frame of reference, and take ‘radical’ to mean ‘critical of the status quo.’ 

Kelley argues that many of the sharpest, most progressive of Austen’s critiques are hidden in literature references, and that these were so dated by the time Austen’s early books were published (i.e., some 20-40 years after their being written) that they went entirely unnoticed by Austen’s contemporaries. Imagine making a Harry Potter reference or a Jaws reference in 2022; no one would get it. Other examples of hidden radicalism were naming the characters in Persuasion after members of the Stuart line of succession, supposedly a critique of the royal Georges that followed them. 

I found her argument that Mansfield Park met nothing but silence in literary circles to be more persuasive evidence of radical politics; this stony quiet could very well be related to the one impertinent question Fanny asks her uncle about his business in the slave trade. It could also be related to Fanny being a bit of a limp heroine in general. However, as Kelley notes in chapter 7, by Austen’s death and for the decades after, Mansfield Park was thought of as Austen’s second or third best novel (after Pride and Prejudice, and maybe Emma). Regardless, her argument about the transgressive narrative of Mansfield Park felt diluted and not bolstered by the tenuous lines she draws between the novel and radical contemporary poetry and by the exegesis on peach tree varietals.

What of the secrecy of it all? Why not be more overt? Kelley argues Austen wrote in direct allusion to Mary Wallencroft and her 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the anti-slavery poetry of William Cowper. These works (and many others) were published, popular, and more clearly radical than Austen’s works on the same topics. Austen was writing anonymously. Was her secret radical style from concern that her brother may not act as her publishing intermediary? Or did she simply enjoy being so cryptically critical that not even her contemporaries remarked on how radical she was?

Speaking, briefly, of radicals, Kelley dislikes Marxists. Since Marxists view class based on their relationship to production, Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, both of whom survive based on the rents of their [fathers’, husbands’] lands, are members of the same class. She views the Marxist lens of critiquing Austen (e.g., Raymond Williams) to be too blunt. To truly appreciate the secret, radical Austen, you need to use the British Aristocracy’s conception of class – the one that produces a near insurmountable difference between a Baron and a Baronet. Through this lens, Kelley is able to declare that a soldier and an unmarried woman with lawyer relatives making fun of a pompous Lady is “a revolutionary moment.”

The Marxist critique of Austen has a solid case in that Austen’s class critique is limited by the perspectives she chooses to center. As Williams writes, “where only one class is seen, no classes are seen.” Austen rarely, as Kelley concedes, shows members of the working class. Northanger Abbey has not a single named servant. The most prominent servant in Pride and Prejudice exists mostly to extol the physical and moral virtues of her master, Mr Darcy. However, I was swayed by Kelley’s argument that this changed throughout Austen’s life. She provided many compelling examples of three-dimensional and compassionately sketched servant characters in Emma (although they were all minor, uncentered characters).

For all this, I think Kelley’s close read of Austen does have value (if only she could have made her point about Persuasion being about the decline of the gentry (what a hot take) without seven pages about a fossil salesman), and changed my perspective of several books. I’m excited to reread some of them, particularly Emma. Here are some of her arguments I like the most:

1. Northanger Abbey: Jane was concerned about the lack of autonomy women had when it came to choosing when and how often to give birth. Pregnancy was particularly dangerous. The mysterious illness that took the life of Mrs Tilney could have been related to pregnancy, which would mean that in a sense, General Tilney would indeed have been (partially) responsible for the death of his wife, as Catherine fears. I also liked Kelley’s observation that the privacy of a married couple’s bedroom is a very strong western cultural practice (such that one feels trepidation at crossing the threshold of someone’s room), and that this novel alone of Austen’s featured an unusually high number of bedroom scenes. If I reread this book, I think I might skim Udolpho, the novel that so inspires Catherine, first.
2. Sense & Sensibility: Kelley points out that many sentences that seem to praise particular individuals instead equivocate. Edward “appeared to be amiable” and “gave every indication of an open and affectionate heart” (emphasis added). Kelley notes that we shouldn’t take either Edward nor Colonel Brandon – who mathematically could be the biological father of his adopted daughter – at their words. An additional stain against Brandon: even in Austen’s time, the mention of the British Navy’s exploits in India would have been seen as violent (by the radicals in society only, presumably…).
3. Pride & Prejudice: I usually forget that for so much of Austen’s life, England was at war. Kelley brings the violence and fear of soldiers and militias to the center. I liked also her description of 1890s fashion and how Ms Bingley was making fun not only of the mud on Elizabeth’s skirt but also of its dated style; her description of the contemporary meaning of the word “prejudice”: “tradition, ‘inbred sentiments’, unquestioned cultural assumptions”; and her historical content on the nuances of introductions. 
4. Mansfield Park: I now feel reasonably convinced that Fanny accepting her marriage to Edmund, as his second choice, was a bit of a selling out of her own morals. This, unfortunately, doesn’t make me like her more.
5. Emma: Kelley’s description of enclosures was fantastic background information – even for those with more of an interest in the economic trajectory of Britain in the 19th century than in Austen. Her highlighting of Austen’s portrayals of poverty (Romani people, parishioners, thieves) was also excellent.
6. Persuasion: perhaps because it was Austen’s most overtly political book, but Kelley finds nothing particular secret to point out here other than that people fall a lot, much like the gentry is tumbling down in power and wealth and social stature.
   

If you have bad politics, it comes through in your writing (see Ender’s Game, Anna Karenina). If you have good politics, it also shines through. I liked that view of Jane Austen – that of a perceptive and thoughtful critic of her times – much better than one of some smug women weaving her stories with obscure peach tree varieties and gothic novel references to make a point like a petty Dungeon Master with too much time on their hands.

Review: Lady Susan by Jane Austen

 Rating: 3/5 stars

I have a fondness for a good female villain. Yzma in particular holds a special place in my heart. But The Little Mermaid's Ursula, A Song of Ice And Fire's Melisandre and Cersei, Mean Girl's Regina George, Morgan Le Fey from the Arthurian legend, all rank as some of my favourite characters. Many of these women operate at the boundary (or just outside of it) of social acceptability, and their flaunting of roles ascribed to women, or their ability to play with these norms to meet their own needs, is often thrilling and satisfying. 

Lady Susan fits perfectly in this category of wicked women. She is charismatic, confident in her power and willing to reach out and take what she wants.

I have made him sensible of my power, and can now enjoy the pleasure of triumphing over a mind prepared to dislike me, and prejudiced against all my past actions.

It was delicious to see this sort of character portrayed by Austen, whose main characters have otherwise ranged from the churchmouse-like Fanny (Mansfield Park) to the spirited but still sensible and moral Elizabeth Bennet. 

Lady Susan aside, the plot was fairly simple and short. I had hoped that Fredrica would turn out to indeed be a wicked woman. Lady Susan holds Fredrica in so little regard, and Catherine Vernon considers her to be so poorly misjudged by Lady Susan. I think it would have been a great use of the epistolary format of the novel, and played in well with the theme of trusting someone's word versus their reputation. Fredrica turning out to indeed be a perfectly normal woman that was ill-treated by her mother was a little disappointing and boring.

The ending breaks from the epistolary format to general prose as the narrator accounts for what happens to all the characters. I found the tone shift a little jarring at first. Still, Jane Austen's prose is very enjoyable. I get the sense that, with this book, written somewhat later in her life, Austen perhaps had something to say about the idea of women's beauty or desirability fading with age.

 Miss Mainwaring; who, coming to town, and putting herself to an expense in clothes which impoverished her for two years, on purpose to secure him, was defrauded of her due by a woman ten years older than herself

Review: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 Rating: 5/5 stars

I left Pride and Prejudice as the last Jane Austen novel in my Summer/Fall 2020 Austen binge. I've read it several times: once in high school, a couple times during my undergraduate degree. I thought that it probably wouldn't hold up against Emma or Persuasion - my two favourites so far. After all, Pride and Prejudice was from Austen's "early" period. Presumably, I thought, it would be like Sense and Sensibility or Northanger Abbey, a delightful story about charming and slightly flawed heroines whose adventures portray the ridiculousness of socialites. The satire wouldn't have yet matured into the dark, sharpened censure of the gentry found at the heart of Persuasion, I assumed. The character study would probably not be as detailed as in Emma, nor would the protagonist's point of view shape the reader's interpretation of events to the same extent, resulting in an interesting reveal.

None of these assumptions that I brought with me to this reading were necessarily wrong. Austen's social critiques are pointed and varied: women's rights to property and inheritance; women's social reputation being particularly precarious versus that of men; the wealthy/landed being just as often rude and cruel as their less fortunate countrymen. However, I read optimism in her satire in Pride and Prejudice. For all the narcissism, frivolity, greed and obsequiousness in the Mr Wickhams, Lady Catherines, and Mr Collinses of the world, there is a trust that there will be kind, thoughtful, generous, empathetic Jane Bennets and Mr Bingleys and Mr Darcys to even things out. There isn't the same sense of social rot and decay of the gentry class, as explored in Persuasion.

So I wondered, as I devoured Pride and Prejudice over the course of just three days, why do I love this novel so much? In part, I think it is because Elizabeth is so relatable and so delightful. She's smart, playful, bold, thoughtful, caring, idealistic. She experiences things familiar to me and in a similar way: her bristling at being wrongly assessed by Mr Darcy, her mortification at her parents' and sisters' behaviour, her love for her family, her navigating a social scene packed with people richer or more educated than her.

In part, I think love this novel particularly because, I think alone of Austen's novels, the love interest has a significant character arc too. Mr Darcy is socially awkward and proud - another set of characteristics I can identify with! - and learns to overcome his shyness and to see the world through a different perspective. Yes, the ending is a little bit too "fairy tale." But I didn't care, I was just excited to see Lizzie and Darcy together.

Finally, the dialogues are just so memorable. The adversarial flirting between Lizzie Bennet and Mr Darcy, and their fiery argument during the proposal scene, are particularly fun. But I equally loved many other scenes: the opening dialogue where Mr and Mrs Bennet discuss going to see Mr Bingley. Mr Darcy's rant about "accomplished" women (a thread Austen picks up also in Emma and in Sense and Sensibility), Miss Bingley's failure at flirting with Mr Darcy as he writes a letter to his sister, the dinners at Lady Catherine's. Between reading the book a few times, and watching the movies and tv shows based on the novel, so much of the dialogue and the characters were surprisingly familiar to me. Maybe that is why I loved this read so much - it was returning to old friends.

Review: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

I love Sense and Sensibility for being a story of female friendship between two rather different women. Despite disagreement and disappointment in each other, Elinor and Marianne remain loving and supportive. It seems rare, even in 2020, to have such a detailed character study of two women that remain friends throughout. Elinor and Marianne feel like 'real' people to me, despite being personifications of the themes of the novel, sense and sensibility, or being guided by rationality (sometimes to the detriment of emotional happiness) versus being guided by emotion. These two sisters as foils of each other made me think a little of the Zoey versus Zelda dichotomy proposed in Bojack Horseman (itself a parody of fictional personality clustering paradigms like Hogwarts Houses or Sex and the City characters; I'm an Elinor, a Zoey, a Ravenclaw, a Miranda).

I also enjoyed Jane Austen's critique of idleness in the gentry. It's a more gentle version of the censure of the idle rich that Austen penned fifteen or twenty years later in Persuasion. Although not wealthy, Elinor and Marianne surprise their acquaintances by being always preoccupied with art or music or reading. Edmund's character arc is about him recognizing that his misplaced love for Lucy Steele is actually a product of his idleness, and then him finally choosing a profession and becoming a productive, if less wealthy, gentleman. ("Instead of having anything to do, instead of having any profession chosen for me, or being allowed to choose any myself, I returned home to be completely idle; I had therefore nothing in the world to do, but to fancy myself in love.") The Middletons are respectable, apparently happy rich folk, with nothing to do except hunt when it is nice weather (Mr. Middleton), mother their children (Mrs. Middleton), and arrange dinner parties. 

I thought the framing of motherhood as Lady Middleton's sole occupation being a form of idleness was particularly interesting. In Race, Women & Class, Angela Davis discusses in detail how during this period of history, well-off women had many of their responsibilities removed from them by increasing industrialization, and that this reduction in their contribution to their households increased sexism towards women. Upper class women were restricted to the role of doting mother, with little to do to occupy their idle days. Mrs. Jennings similarly does little except care for her daughters and attempt to marry off her single female acquaintances. Mrs. John Dashwood breaks this mold a little, manipulating her husband into carrying out her wishes by expressing everything in terms of the potential benefit or harm (however tangential!) to her child.

Austen contrasts these limited social roles allowed to wealthy women with real social and economic power held by women. Mrs. Ferrars disowns Edmund when he refuses to break his engagement to Lucy Steele. Mr. Willoughby's aunt similarly cuts him off financially when she hears of his affair with Eliza. Inheritance and wealth is arbitrary, precarious, and its victims are not just women (like the impoverished Miss Dashwoods).

I thought Sense and Sensibility was notable for being one of the earliest examples of mansplaining in literature I can think of. Mr. Dashwood is so unable to imagine Colonel Brandon's generosity towards Edmund that he insists Elinor is mistaken and that she must be mistaken, Colonel Brandon clearly bequeathed the parsonage only temporarily. Elinor has to quite firmly insist that, as the person entrusted by Colonel Brandon to convey the offer to Edmund, she is quite aware of the terms of the agreement. Her begrudgingly accepts this explanation without really apologizing.

Sense and Sensibility was a little more overtly comedic than Persuasion or Mansfield Park. For example, there was a scene of Elinor and Mrs Jennings misunderstanding each other regarding what exactly Colonel Brandon discussed with Elinor. I enjoyed the fairly broad cast of somewhat ridiculous characters: Mr. John Dashwood and his conversations with his wife and with Elinor were a highlight of these. Lucy Steele's sly meanness coated in friendly civility was also amusing.

As much as I loved Elinor and Marianne's character arcs, I found those of their gentlemen rather lacking. I thought Edmund was rather flat and unremarkable (although I might be a little prejudiced against religious characters). Colonel Brandon seemed like a kind, thoughtful man, if you can get past his whole mooning-over-women-half-his-age-from-a-distance thing (a taller order in 2020 than 1820).

Review: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

 Rating: 2/5 stars

I finished Northanger Abbey wondering if I was particularly disposed to identifying with Austen heroines, but in Mansfield Park's Fanny Price I discovered at last a protagonist that I never really "got." For the first two thirds of the novel, Fanny does little more than exist as a fly on the wall, meditating disapprovingly as her cousins and their friends flirt, rehearse a play, and discuss religion and landscaping. Fanny finds much to dislike, and takes little joy in anything in life outside of her relationship with her brother William, who sees her briefly in between sea voyages, and being cared for by her cousin Edmund Bertram. Unlike Northanger Abbey's Catherine Morland, who delighted in dancing and books and discovering the world, or Emma's Miss Woodhouse, who enjoys art and wit and society, Fanny Price just seems like a bit of a dour, passive wet blanket. Even her love for Edmund is expressed predominantly in terms of acquiescent sadness as she watches him develop feelings for Miss Crawford (rather than Catherine's consuming giddiness for Mr Tilney or Emma's playful admiration for Mr Knightly). The climax of the novel is in Fanny quietly standing firm in her resolution to not marry Mr Crawford, who she views as improper and amoral. And I highly value convictions and a sense of right and wrong - in myself, in my friends, in my fictional characters - but I don't have patience for people who lack passion.

The fallout to Fanny's heroic decision not to marry a charming and wealthy man felt a little facile. Everyone who was superficial or improper or mean to Fanny met an unpleasant end, unless they were able to recognize quickly enough how right and proper Fanny was to refuse Mr Crawford. The few people who were nice to Fanny and valued her had good fortune and enjoyable lives.

Austen asks "what makes people good?" But I don't feel she satisfactorily provides an answer. Fanny's cousins, Julia and Maria, become silly and superficial women because their father cares only that they "check the boxes" of being accomplished young ladies without ensuring that they are actually godfearing young ladies. Maria is particularly spoiled (and thus meets a particularly demeaning fate) because her Aunt Norris spoils her and views her absolutely without faults. Sir Thomas Bertram pats himself on the back for polishing Fanny into being an elegant young lady, but notes that her beauty is her own. But what makes Edmund a considerate and conscientious young man? He was raised in the same toxic household as his fatuous, ostentatious cousins. Most of Fanny's siblings are self-centered, but what makes her sister Susan immune to these endemic flaws? Are some of us simply born with strong moral character while the rest of us must hope that our parents and guardians instill in us a strong sense of ethics?

 The other themes in Mansfield Park seemed a little dated and uninteresting. One of the key concepts explored was the role and the respectability of the clergy - which has changed quite a bit! The position held by the improper, hedonistic characters is that men of the cloth are hypocritical and that their only ambition is to minimize their duties. The position held by the moral characters is that the clergy plays an essential role in the health of a community and are smart and self-sacrificing. The "bad guys" believe that no one really cares about religion, and that everyone simple attends for the sake of performing piety, and that church bells are a bit of a nuisance. The "good guys" long for regular chapel services to be held in Southerton Hall and that all the servants ought to attend. I found myself rather more sympathetic towards the arguments presented by the villains.

Another concept was that of remodelling and landscaping. Some types of landscaping are virtuous. Some are silly and superficial. I was a little amused that privileged people 200 years ago were as disposed to spending an entire dinner discussing landscaping as they are now. These are not my favourite types of dinner parties. Still, conversations like these can be delightful ways of exploring characters! 

However, the cast of Mansfield Park was not as colorful or as familiar or otherwise as interesting as the casts in some of Austen's other work. The personal flaws lampooned in Mansfield Park also just seem to present themselves differently now than they did then. There are still the checked-out parents, like Sir and Lady Bertram, miserly people like Mrs Norris, and ladder-climbing superficial women like Miss Crawford and Maria Bertram. But I didn't find these flaws as poignantly presented and explored as, for example, those of Sir Walter Elliot and Mary Musgrove of Persuasion.

If there are two themes in the books I've read in the last three or four months, it would be the novels of Jane Austen and nonfiction exploring the fallouts of Colonialism and slavery (for example: Race, Women and Class or The Autobiography of Malcolm X). I had some hopes that Mansfield Park, as the only work by Jane Austen that references slavery and the colonies, to be an interesting dovetailing of these two themes. However, it played an extremely minor background role, and I feel that discussions of portrayal of slavery in this book are really trying very hard to make mountains out of molehills. Is Fanny/Austen pro-slavery? Anti-slavery? You could read the handful of lines that reference the issue either way depending on your desired thesis.

I still enjoyed Jane Austen's prose, and her ability to design a scene and portray the thoughts and emotions of her characters. There were plot points I enjoyed - Fanny making her own little space in the East Room, and finally being allowed to have a fire in the hearth there, for example. But if I were in the mood for some Jane Austen, I think I would pick up perhaps any other book but this one.

Review: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

Am I a particularly Austen-like woman, or is Austen so astute at creating realistic, relatable characters that most people find some parts of themselves in her heroines? (See my reviews of Emma and Persuasion, for example.)

I loved Catherine's dramatic imagination, her loyalty to her friends and her innocence/naiveté regarding General Tilney and Isabella's social ladder climbing ambitions. My heart rose and fell with hers as she discovered the wide(r) world of Bath and made new friends, discovered too late the social impropriety of riding in an open carriage, learned of her acquaintance manipulatively canceling her social plans or lying to her to spend more time with him, received an invitation to Northanger Abbey and was discovered poking around her friend's deceased mother's apartments. If the specifics of my own teen years were really quite different, the general tensions and reactions Austen portrayed were so vividly familiar.

John Thorpe and Isabella Thorpe were delightful antagonists. There is a particular type of pompous self-absorbed twit from whom I've previously had to disentangle myself from conversation with and it is nice to have a literary reference for the archetype... Seeing the hints of Isabella's upcoming betrayal through Catherine's unwitting and overly generous eyes was fun. Mrs Allen and Mrs Thorpe's supposed "conversations" in which they both discussed their own interests at each other rather than with each other was memorable.

Henry Tilney left a lot to be desired as a love interest. I found him rather unbearably smug and overly pleased with his own wit, and rather condescending. Still, Catherine's being so in love with him was just so adorable that I still shipped it.

In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge, declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw; and a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste. He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances – side-screens and perspectives – lights and shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape.

Overall, the plot of Northanger Abbey was quite simple relative to her other works. The social tensions were less layered than in Emma. Social critiques were narrower in scope and the character flaws of the protagonists and antagonists were less complex than those of Emma or Persuasion. It was fun to watch Austen aim her satire at literature and pop culture. While many of the tropes she skewers (wives locked up and murdered, manuscripts hidden in surprising old chests, spooky houses) are very familiar, I got the sense that some (many?) references went a little over my head. Still, I don't feel the need to brush up on centuries-old gothic novels - Jane Austen's satire about an extraordinarily ordinary teen girl delighted nevertheless.

Review: Emma by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

"Emma" is a dramatic romance about a girl named "Jane".

There's a somewhat traditional romantic story line in Emma, in which two young people fall in love and become engaged, and yet hide their engagement out of fear of familial censure due to their different in class status and wealth. However, the strain of keeping the relationship secret makes the two lovers miserable. In a dramatic series of events involving a lost break-up letter, a frantic horse ride across the countryside and a sudden death of a parent, the two young people re-unite and come forth about their relationship.

Nearly all of this story line occurs off-screen, however, and involves Jane, not the titular heroine.

I loved this sort of bait-and-switch. It was effective at demonstrating how our perceptions of people are influenced by our own personal goals or struggles or the partial information we receive about the world. Just as Frank Churchill was quite sure Emma had sussed out his secret engagement (given his own preoccupation with his forbidden love), the reader thinks the story will be a romance arch of some sort centered around Emma and including also Mr Churchill, Mr Knightly and/or Harriet. Instead, these relationship tensions dissipate easily, with the climax of the novel really peaking instead at the discovery that Emma, all of Highbury, and the reader themselves have been much mistaken about two major characters and the meaning of dozens of social interactions.

Austen does such a good job at portraying all the little nuances and the subtext of interpersonal relationships and conversation. Through the portrayal of a few people planning a party, for example, we get vivid character portraits and critique of social structure. There are some reviews of Emma on Goodreads that bemoan how many pages are spent discuss, for example, how to cook a particular cut of pig. And I want to moan back at them "but you see it's the way they talk about the cut of pig, through which we feel Emma's exasperation at suffering the overly chatty Miss Bates, and see Mr Woodhouse's arms-length paternalism and hypochondriac anxiety, and we feel the claustrophobic, limited set of acceptable activities available to Emma as a woman of her station and...."

One of the things I loved about Persuasion was Austen's bitingly sarcastic prose. I felt like this sort of authorial voice was de-emphasized in Emma, in favor of showing Emma's reactions to events instead. In consequence, dialogue played a much larger role in demonstrating the various follies of the rich. Perhaps because of this difference, I felt like the cast of Emma was somewhat more lovingly portrayed by Austen. Although Mrs Enton was delightfully insufferable in her condescending sense of superiority!

Another possible effect of this difference was that Emma is much more a character study and less a social critique. To some extent, this is in its favour. Emma is a fantastic portrayal of the difficulties in navigating social relationships as a young woman, when you feel you know enough to play as an adult, and yet you still haven't really grasped viewing things from other people's perspectives, nor have you mastered reflecting on your own emotions. (I enjoyed Emma reacting to something, thinking first of how Mr Knightly might react, and then thinking of how Mr Churchill might react, and then thinking how silly she is thinking always of Mr Churchill first - how crazy to be in love; during this part of the book, she of course thinks she is in love with Mr Churchill and not Mr Knightly).

To some extent, however, this makes Emma a little more limited. The "moral" of the story is that one shouldn't dream of marrying too far above one's social station. The book ends with us, and Emma, learning that Harriet is just a tradesman's bastard, and there for Emma was very wrong to have impeded her happily marrying a farmer. This "moral" translates somewhat poorly to today (or, if it doesn't, it ought to...). Charitably, one could think of Emma's meddling in Harriet's life (and the mirror, of Mrs Enton meddling in Jane's affairs) as a lesson in checking your privilege and not enforcing your standards of what "a good life" should be on people with different ways of lives. That is a lesson still relevant in 2020. Still, this ending leaves a bit of a sour taste, and was really my only reason I dropped my rating from 5 to 4.

Review: Persuasion by Jane Austen

 Rating: 4/5 stars

 Although I read and loved Pride and Prejudice in high school, I hadn't read Persuasion until now, and it is an interesting book to read at the age of thirty. Where Pride and Prejudice revolves around younger people blundering their way through new relationships, the cast of Persuasion are a little more experienced. Anne Ellis, having declined a proposal due to being too young, is still single some 8 or 9 years later. Other characters are widowed, looking for the second love of their life. Some have been married for a long time - a few very happily, the rest rather miserably. Through these characters, Austen explores how people change during their twenties. What acts can be forgiven? Can old relationships be rekindled? If I've presented Persuasion as being dry and academic, that is on me entirely - the characters are colorful and the prose is dripping with snark.

Somehow, Jane Austen's work became associated with romance for women, when her writing is closer to that of Dan Carlin than of Nora Roberts. I suppose it's because her incisive, acerbic commentary is centered around interpersonal relationships and the day-to-day concerns of the over-privileged and under-employed, rather than more "serious" topics like politics, war, or media. But in Persuasion, although there is the usual "will-they-won't-they" plot, Austen comments quite extensively on political matters.

One of the key themes is the decline of the aristocracy class, or the rise of the "self-made" men wealthy men. The skincare-obsessed and spendthrift Sir Walter perhaps personifies this critique of the useless navel-gazing of the gentry most starkly. He is foiled against Admiral Croft, who earned his wealth (albeit, as an instrument of brutal imperialism...) and is an upstanding gentleman with an enviably adorable relationship, and who finally did something about the draft in Sir Walter's estate's cupboards. "Productive" members of the gentry fare a little better than their more idle counterparts; Mrs Smith atones for her profligate past by industriously selling items she knits. One imagines that Austen sees herself in this class of privileged but productive aristocrats.

Feminism, or rather, questioning the existence of native differences between men and women, was thoughtfully presented. Mary Ellis decries that no one would judge a father for going to a dinner party while his child is sick, but that a mother is expected to stay home due to some presumed inborn ability to care for children that Mary doesn't recognize in herself. The resolution of the love story is spurred by Anne discussing with Captain Harville whether men and women are equally 'constant' in their love. If men and women love differently, is it due to social expectations, or due to biology, or due to (aristocratic) women having little other occupation? Austen also slyly suggests that the nature of women cannot be understood at all from books, because overwhelmingly books are written by men. I see you, Jane, and I appreciate you.