The Voices of Men in Praise of Jane Austen
Messages on the
Bulletin Board - c. Feb. 9, 2000
Heather, dear lady,
Austen is classed with the Romantics because she was part of the Romantic Movement in English Literature, which arguably began with Robert Burns and Blake. At the graveside of Burns, Wordsworth acknowledged the debt that he owed to this poet of the people. Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, Byron were also Romantic Poets. What these men did in poetry, Jane Austen did in the form of the novel.
It had taken nearly two hundred years for the critics and literary historians to place Burns and Blake within the Romantic Movement outpourings of the stream of English Literature. There may still be debate about whether Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is Gothic or Romantic, but her monster is so clearly an argument that the Industrial Revolution had created so large a working class that, unless the workers were treated with love and kindness, they would rise up and destroy their creators, the middle class industrialists that Frankenstein must be ranked with the Romantics. What Jane Austen had done in Northanger Abbey in ridiculing the Gothic novel, Mary Shelley did in warning that the industrial workers must be treated with humanity, not solely for the workers' good necessarily, but for the good also of the mill, factory and mine owners. You will recall that at the end of this frame story the monster takes his leave of the ship captain's hospitality, and goes on to the Arctic ice to follow and take revenge upon Frankenstein for creating the monster but abandoning him without either education or love so that the monster commits horrors only in ignorance, not quite like the simpleton in Of Mice and Men.
Similarly, Heathcliff is now being seen as a figure also representing the unloved and abused working class who exacts terrible revenge on the land-owning class. His son, educated, is a hopeful sign for the future of England. I have never understood the figure at the window, but the rest of the novel seems to me to be in the mainstream of the English Romantic Movement, turning the pen to ordinary people and the common man.
The Harlequin romances may be "romantic", but they are not part of the Romantic Movement. Some of them are Gothic in more than fantastic silliness, and all the best selling ones have a night scene with a terrified young beauty fleeing from a large house, perhaps a castle, that is in darkness except for one lighted window, two lighted windows reducing sales. Northanger Abbey also received this cover treatment in a number of countries. But Northanger Abbey is anti-Gothical.
Poetry and novels in the Romantic golden vein are not what are called
romantics: the upper case is quite different from the lower case. And Jane
Austen is a Romantic, not a romantic.
John
---
Noah's Ark was built
by amateurs, the Titanic by professionals.
To All,
"Mansfield Park" opened in Spokane last weekend. I would have been
there, but we already had plans to attend the Northwest Flower and Garden Show
in Seattle. Assuming everything goes as planned, I'll see it today. My
watchwords are "open mind, open mind, open mind." Actually, it may not be
so hard -- I've been watching a large number of "screeners" which are preview
movies sent out to video store owners partly as an incentive, partly because
they might buy some movie no one's ever heard of if they see it and like
it. After the last couple of weeks, I suspect any movie that doesn't use
"fuck" every three seconds, doesn't have any ghosts, crocodiles, or drug addicts
is going to be a welcome relief.
Cheryl
To All,
Having mellowed overnight, I give "Mansfield Park, the movie" a conditional
recommendation, although it is neither great Austen nor great film. Which is too
bad because it had the potential to be both. What seems clear is that Jane
Austen is beyond the abilities of the novice writer/director. Ms. Rozema
took a brave flying leap but fell short, for which Miramax films must be held at
least partly responsible. See it and tell me what you think.
Cheryl
From the Meister: John saw it and he liked it.
Dear Humanity,
Our world is dieing. It is we, the human race, who are killing it. For our convenience, to travel faster, live longer, feast, and enjoy ourselves, we condemn our children, our specie, the very hope for our survival, to a barren planet. It is not only our future destruction that we determine, but that of all the beings that still exist. There are the means to still enjoy the majority of our comforts, without this excess. Though these methods will require work, patience, and maturity, these are a small exchange for the possibility of a long living Earth.
If we slow the growing population, stop using the fuels that pollute our air, research better ways of managing our waste, and clean up that which we have so carelessly thrown away, then there may still be time to save what we will soon lose. There is hope, there is possibility, but it will take more than a few people, it will require us all.
Love to everyone,
Kenzie
Dear Kenzie,
This is a Bulletin Board devoted to the life or times of Jane Austen and I do not post any message that is not directly related to that subject. If you are not interested in making that effort, then I will assume that you no longer expect your messages to be posted.
However, there is one very important way that you may continue your message and still take your place in our community. Jane Austen read your message a little over two hundred years ago. The message was written by a man in a neighboring county, a man who was a clergyman like her father, and a man whose ideas were published about a decade before her novels. His name was Thomas Malthus and he was reacting against that philosophy of optimism that was published by another man who is often mentioned here - William Godwin. Godwin was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and the father of Mary Shelley. Godwin's message is the antithesis of your own.
If you want to continue here, and I very much hope you do, then I suggest you review Malthus and present his views and, in that way, help the rest of us to more completely understand Jane Austen's intellectual environment. Malthus is very easy to read and his essays are short. His first were the best and published in the last year or two of the 1790s. I am a Malthusian, much as yourself, but it will be more fun if I adopt Godwin's view and debate you from that perspective. Oh, and I should tell you that Karl Marx despised Malthus and had a great deal to say about him.
Remember, the topic must always relate to the life or times of Jane Austen. Incidentally, you seem a little depressed - read a Jane Austen novel (not Persuasion) - that should pep you up. And, come and join us.
Dear Sir,
Go on, persuade the depressed person to read Persuasion. It has
SUCH a fun ending!
Julie
Dear All,
... a biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (1757 - 1806). Apart from being fascinating in its own right (Georgiana was a Spencer by birth, and married the Duke of Devonshire when she was very young - the similarities between her life and that of her great-great-great - something - granddaughter, Lady Diana Spencer, are striking), the book is a wonderful insight into the political and fashionable life of the era. Georgiana was one of the great Whig hostesses, and also a leader of fashionable society. No wonder Jane Austen disapproved! When they weren't bonking like bunnies, they were chucking away thousands at gambling tables (this alone explains the significance that Jane Austen attaches to gaming in her books), mostly at faro.
Anyway, I'll let you know how I get on.
Julie
Dear Ashton,
I have read Matilda (although some time ago, so your summary was useful in reminding me of the text) but I do not recall ever once thinking of Byron. I am curious as to why you bring him into the picture when the story clearly reaches toward Shelley's own father, if it reaches to any one of her acquaintance at all. I am not challenging your reading, merely seeking further clarification.
Byron wrote a similarly biographical tale in poetic form - "Manfred" - apparently about, among other things, his incestuous relationship with his sister. Do we read a reaching out to Mary in there? (Well, I can answer for myself that I haven't so far.)
Certainly incest was not only a popular literary theme of the time, complete with all its taboos and repercussions of shame and regret, but was also apparently practiced by literary types (much speculation now regarding Henry and Dorothy Fielding, blah blah blah). But why would Shelley reach out to Byron, especially since she knew him fairly well and must have understood his character? Indeed, why would anyone reach out to him? He must be simply the most selfish and unsympathetic rogue in history, although quite a magnetic personality for some - Percy certainly, Mary perhaps. I just need some further enlightenment.
Dear Heather,
You know better than to look to me for enlightenment. I don't even have a good case - I don't even have as much as an interesting suggestion. What I do have is a hunch (you know how men are) and I will try to share that with you.
My sense of things is based upon a fragment, the character of Woodville in Matilda. Woodville is very young, and very beautiful (Mary Shelley is quite explicit about that), and an excellent poet. OK, to that point, it might be Percy Shelley just as well as Byron. The tie-breaker is that Woodville is also a published celebrity. My understanding - and I will certainly defer to you and your background on this - my understanding is that Shelley was not recognized in his own lifetime while Byron was famous at a young age. Is that right? One of the chief functions of Woodville in the story is that he saves Matilda from the despair of suicide, brings her solace and comfort. Of course, it is fair - no, it is important to say that we respect Mary Shelley more if we decide that Woodville is neither of the men in her own life, only a character that she invented. I always make that kind of argument myself when discussing Jane Austen's novels; however, I think the point is less easily made in Mary Shelley's case because she seems the lesser artist. What do you think?
The way I think about Byron and the Shelleys is that they are a group of very young people, kids really. Very talented and privileged, upper-middle class kids. Mary Shelley was only twenty-two in 1819 when Matilda was likely written. She had already been with Shelley for six years and think about all the damage that had been done. Her half sister had committed suicide as had Shelley's wife. Both suicides, especially the latter, were directly linked to Mary's elopement with the Shelley when she was only sixteen years old. Elopement with a married man alone must leave a sixteen-year old with some pangs of conscious and then to have the added weight of the suicides piled on top - what must that have been like? Then she had just lost two small children in Rome; it is said that the infant daughter died of convulsions in her arms. I can only guess that she must have hated Shelley by then. I mean she must have been looking somewhere for some solace and support, and Byron seems a good choice to me. As you know, it is rumored that Shelley would sometimes offer his wife Mary's bed to visitors without the precaution of first extracting his wife. That could hardly have been remarkable to Mary since leading advocates of free love in the previous generation had been her own mother and father. Perhaps these are the rumors that lead some to speculate that Mary had already established a sexual relation with Byron by that time. It is true that Mary did reach out to her father-in-law, but wasn't that only after Shelley's death in 1822?
This is all speculation, but there it is. I think these are important discussions because it must be true that we can best understand Jane Austen by more completely understanding the entire social context. You are probably tired of hearing me suggest that these were not Victorian times, but I do think that. In fact, I think that Jane Austen's time was very, very much like our own. If I am right, then should not more credit and interest accrue to her work? I think that Jane Austen's novels need to be re-examined in this light. But, as you know, I am no academic or scholar.
Dear Ashton,
Duh. I dunno. I studied it all and then forgot it. You continue to read and study. But you say you are not a scholar. Now I must ask for your definition of that word. Ah, but it's all academic, anyway.
I agree that Austen was no Victorian. That's a start, anyway. As for the rest, I am left only with impressions. I believe Shelley was published in his own time. Perhaps not famous, at least, not as successful as Byron, but certainly published. I think his ode to Keats was quite popular, as a matter of fact. A lot of these fellows began to achieve some notariety while still at college. Certainly, Shelley's penchant for promulgating atheism made quite a name for him while still young. I think that particular tract must have been published, because from somewhere I've picked up the idea that he was suspended or expelled over that one.
And I do not believe that Byron was ever considered beautiful. Attractive? Of course. He certainly attracted. Handsome? Most likely. A man can be extremely ugly and a woman will find him handsome as long as he pretends to love her, or better yet, actually does love her. Indeed, he doesn't even need to know her, he can be handsome as long as he behaves in a way that makes her love him. Writing poetry that makes your knees turn to butter can make a man so handsome you just want to faint in his arms. But, I believe Byron was somewhat gimped. A limp, I believe. Not beautiful, though. No, I don't think so. His friend's beauty is often talked of, his own, never. You are making me think about this, but I still hold my first impression: the beauteous poet is Percy. If Shelley wrote about Byron it was in the person of Frankenstein's monster.
Have you heard the Voice of the Shuttle? Our lady is placed among the Romantics. Hopefully they class her in there because . . . oh, well, I'm not even going to speculate on that one. Mr. Godwin and Ms. Wolly, their daughter, her husband, his mate, and all the rest, complete with links to their works (some of which still link to somewhere) are all in there. Among the Austen links is one (pemberly.com) that will take you directly to a list of literary works to which JA alludes in her own writings. Great link for a gentleman and a scholar, wot?
Dear Heather,
To me "scholarship" connotes an element of research. It just so happens that I can give an excellent example of what I mean.
Firstly, let me say that one of the nicer developments in America, in the last decade, has been the institution of a large number of absolutely superb television channels. In particular, I am thinking this moment about the C-SPAN networks which are directly and totally subsidized by the U.S. Government. One channel is dedicated to the House of Representatives and one to the Senate. (There is not, as yet, a channel at the Supreme Court - what did you expect from a bunch of lawyers? - it is a scandal!) However, when one of those branches of government is not in session, the channels are devoted to other things: committee meetings or foreign events such as the question session for the British Prime Minister at Commons, etc. At other times, the channels are devoted to intellectual matters; for example, there are interviews of authors by Brian Lamb, who, incidentally, must rank as the best television interviewer of all time (all others should stop what they are doing and observe this man). At other times, the C-SPAN channels will show entire presentations of politicians or, more likely, those of scholars.
Now I am getting to the point. It just so happens that C-SPAN was recently dedicated to the presentation by a biographer of Lord Byron. The woman had the gaunt appearance and that half-grazed expression that we demand from a scholar that we might trust. She bubbled and nervously fused and that further increased my confidence. She had an American accent - now I am totally sold. Anyway, she began by explaining why she wrote her biography. It turns out that no new biography had been written since the middle decades of this century, and she had noticed that the most recent of those confessed that no access had been obtained to the unpublished memoirs of Byron's wife, Anne Milbanke, because of intra-family litigation at the time. Well, our C-SPAN scholar made some inquiries and sure enough, those sources were now available - at a price. Not only that, the data also included some original notations of Bryon's sister (actually, his half-sister). Apparently, this half sister joined the couple on the honeymoon and moved into their first home with them. I think that the couple - I mean the menage was together for only a single year. The wife kept copious notes, apparently for future legal testimony and the incidences of incest were carefully noted for that purpose. The notes of the half-sister confirm the crimes. O.K., so, a number of other people had put together a lot of good educated guesses and concluded the hanky-panky, but here was documentary evidence. That is what I mean by "research" and that is what I mean by "scholarship".
I, on the other hand, merely offered the speculation that Matilda might have been Mary Shelley's veiled plea to Byron. That guess is based on my reading - I explained that - but that is hardly scholarship. I admire the concept of scholarship, but I recognize that many scholars are fools or charlatans - I mean humans. Would I ever want to be a scholar? Not really, my first object is intelligent conversation and I would never want the cloistered life demanded of a true scholar - it is too great a sacrifice. I prefer to be sitting here and discussing things with you and all the other Male Voices. I try to be rigorous with what I have, but that is another thing. And I demand rigor of others - I can't be shot over the internet - not yet.
Dear Ashton,
Oh, how you make me yearn for those days when I was a scholar. That wan appearance, gained from spending more time in the library rare books collections poring over artistic (read: unreadable) handwriting than in restaurants, outdoor cafes and the local nude beach. The nervous public speaking tics, gained from being totally unused to placing oneself in the forefront, not to mention those bright lights when one is acclimatized to a 60-watt dangling from a thin wire in a dusty archive. Oh yes, by your fine definition, I can see that I certainly was a scholar once.
Oh, I must get me a copy of that bio. When I was at University, it was still all speculation, as you say. Very educated speculation - somebody somewhere had read those papers - but speculation all the same. I'll get that bio, and I'll, I'll, I'll put it on my reading list, that's what I'll do. (Sigh.) Somewhere, over the rainbow (guess which book is our current favourite) I believe I will be able to retain the titles of both mother and scholar simultaneously. Meanwhile, here in Munchkinland, I can only tap into this thread back to reality and read these lines my fellow Voices write about the various scholarly works they are reading. Byron and Shelley and Mary Queen of Scots...and I'll put them on my list.
On the bright side, I intend to see Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer in the coming weeks, as it opens here in Vancouver on the 14th, and, it being my birthday today, I received, YES! A&E's Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer and Colin and Elizabeth and Darcy! My man be shoppin'!
Dear Sir,
That bubbling scholar of yours must have been sniffing the photocopier fluid,
or something: Lady Caroline Lamb was not Byron's wife. She was the wife of
William Lamb, later second Viscount Melbourne. She's just turned up in my
Duchess of Devonshire biography, as she was the daughter of the Duchess' sister,
Harriet, who married the Earl of Bessborough. Lady Caroline (who did have
an affair with Byron, before going bonkers) was therefore a Spencer, (as was the
late Princess of Wales) which is more and more looking like a family mad, bad
and dangerous to know.
Julie
P.S.: to tangle the web a little further, the present Duchess of Devonshire (unless she's popped off recently), Deborah, is/was a Mitford, and great-niece to the Mitford lady who made disparaging comments about Jane Austen ('prettiest, silliest, most husband-hunting little butterfly.....)
P.P.S: Is this scholarship, or a sign that I have WAY too much time on my hands?
From the Meister: I don't know, do you wear a half-grazed expression? By way of explanation of Julie's message, I mis-identified Byron's wife in the original of my post as Lady Caroline Lamb - that error is now corrected. It was my blunder and not that of the C-SPAN scholar.
Dear Julie,
The book by Amanda Foreman? It may be of vague interest to you to know that Jane Austen was tangentially and tenuously related by marriage to the Spencers through the Cravens. Thomas Leigh (her 6th cousin) married Maria Rebecca Craven. Mary Lloyd (Jane's sister-in-law through James Austen) was a Craven on her mother's side. Thomas Fowles, the man Cassandra Austen was engaged to marry was also a Craven in the maternal line. (Georgiana's gggg-aunt married the 1st Baron Craven). Note that the Spencers were also related to the Carterets and the Lambs - two names Our Lady chose to use herself. (I would give any money to know what character Jane had decided for the tender Miss Lamb.) Of course Georgiana was a name Jane Austen also used and a name that appeared in her own family. I will have to work out if, like the name "Cassandra", Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and Jane's Leigh-family Georgianas were related. (Not that anyone except me cares tuppence.)
Dear Ashton,
I haven't read Matilda, but I would like to observe that the need to
be cool, to stand out, to do something totally outrageous is common to all
generations. As is the inability of your average 14-25 year old to
grasp the truly dangerous nature of one's actions. You and I can easily
see that a man who abandons his wife for a sixteen-year old girl is unlikely to
make the perfect lifelong companion, but could anyone successfully convince his
daughter? I haven't much sympathy for the players in this melodrama
because I suspect their actions have more to do with a childish need for
attention along with a deliberate contempt for society. Not that there wasn't
plenty wrong with that society, it's just that as far as I can see, fucking
around indiscriminately didn't fix poverty, war, or inequality in the 18th
century anymore than it fixed it in the 20th.
Cheryl
Dave: I love the quills, but the links within that link were interesting in their own right. Took a "Trip" into a whole new world, I did! What a small and yet varied and interesting planet we live on, and what a great invention is the internet.
On the subject of quills, though. In the movie Shakespeare in Love the Bard stores his quill by stabbing it into what appears to be a very ripe tomato. Perhaps it was something else. But if a tomato, I wonder how common that was? Perhaps keeping it upright lets the ink drain, and perhaps the acid cleans the tip, but wouldn't that stabbing action injure the nib?
I sometimes wonder (this time "aloud," sorry) at all the information we have already lost. That's what I like about movies. The images our favoured novelists took for granted, coming back, if the filmmaker has done the required research, to stir a world of questions with the flick of an actor's wrist.
John: I read a posting some days ago about carriages, and now I'm second-guessing that it wasn't you who posted it, but I'm not going back to check, so if it wasn't you, just nod sagely as if it was.
I also have noticed the references to carriages abounding in JA's works, and have passed it off as being akin to a modern girl's interest in her (potential) boyfriend's car. But there really is more to it than that, isn't there? It's sort of like the dancing scenes. JA has a deep interest in carriages, who drives what and how, and what that says about them. I bet we miss a lot of her point by not "getting" the stuff about carriages. I'm looking forward to a "scholarly" (see the Meister's definition) posting on this from you (nod sagely) in the future.
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