3/21/00 Cheryl - Jenkins's biography of JA and eroticism

Dear Ashton,

I finished Elizabeth Jenkins's biography of Jane Austen last night.  I need some time to digest it before I feel up to any serious judgement.  My initial impression is that I like the way she discusses the novels, treating them as ongoing chapters of JA's life rather than separately. She shows a great deal of insight into the novels, although I don't necessarily agree with all her pronouncements.

I tend to think some of blanks she fills in have more to do with wishful thinking than otherwise, but I believe that wishful thinking is better than historical syllogism.  She seems to balance her sources well.  There's nothing worse that opening an interesting new piece of non-fiction only to discover that the author simply chooses to ignore anything that doesn't fit his pet world view.

Occasionally, Jenkins compacts an entire character into a single illuminating sentence: "Fanny possesses just those qualities which make a person an object of interest and sympathy rather than an object of desire," or "With all her intelligence, Emma was not capable of finding enough occupation for herself to keep her rational..."  

What I don't like about the book are Jenkins' constant references to how degenerate modern art has become.  True or not (less true about the 50's once one has seen the horrors of the 70's) it doesn't need to be said over and over again.  And she very nearly dismisses "Pride and Prejudice" entirely, spending parts of only 11 pages on what is arguably the finest romantic comedy of all time.

Now for some other comments: Praise be! for our ancestors who had the good sense to leave their personal lives personal. I feel positive that, living on a working gentleman's farm, JA had a certain knowledge of what may be called the mechanics of sex. But I must observe that few of us today are in a position to say what was or wasn't sexual (or at least erotic) to a thirtysomething year old spinster in 1810.  Nor have men and women ever agreed on what is "sexy."  I've attempted to convince others of the deliberate eroticism in "Persuasion" but without notable success. Maybe if I change "eroticism" to "sensuousness"????
Cheryl

From the Meister: If you look more closely, you will find that Jenkins agrees with you about Pride and Prejudice, she thought it brilliant and Jane Austen's best - and so do I. I don't think people change much over time or across cultural boundaries. I have seen a lot of jabber about that, but it seems a mountain made of a molehill. If you pursue these ideas about Persuasion, you will find me an ardent ally.

3/18/00 Ray Mitchell - [grm34#mailcity.com] With Jane Austen on a nude beach

Dear Folks,

It all started with a dream. In the dream I was walking along the street when a man walked up to me and said, "There is a book by Jane Austen in which a character by the name of Sir Walter appears. What is the name of that book and what is Sir Walter’s last name?"

Quick as a wink I identified the book as Persuasion but I could not remember Sir Walter’s last name. My inability to call his last name to mind was so distressing that I awoke with a start. Much to my horror I found that even though I was now awake, I still could not call Sir Walter’s name to mind.

I got out of bed, turned on the light and began to look for my copy of Persuasion. The light and the racket I was making woke up my wife who said. "What are you doing?" (Well, that’s not exactly what she said, but leaving out a few very colorful adjectives and a few very strong adverbs, that was the gist of what she said.)

In response to her question I said. "I can not think of Sir Walter Elliot’s last name." Now I felt really stupid, having just spoken the very name I could not recall seconds before. I was somewhat relieved that the name had come to me, but now was placed in a situation where I had to mutter something that sounded like I had good sense as I got back in the bed.

Anyway, and to get back to the subject of this posting, I decided to take Persuasion along on a vacation trip to Mexico so that I could read it again.

Now for the shocking part of this tale: The resort where we stayed had a "clothing optional" beach and pool. Exactly when the term "clothing optional" replaced "nude", I do not know. So, there I was trying to read Jane Austen on a nude beach. For some reason, I was unable to keep my eyes on the page for more than about 2.5 seconds. I ditched the book, went back to our room and got an unabridged audio version of S&S. That went much better. There I was listening to the words of Jane Austen, all the while seeing something that would have put our Lady in an earlier grave. If she had seen that volleyball game - well, I shudder to think.

It was somewhere along there that I came to the realization that no matter how many people point out that "Jane Austen is full of sex and sexual tensions", the fact is that what passes for sex in Jane Austen: Lydia runs off with Wickham; Maria runs off with William; Ann Elliott MIGHT have kissed the good Captain on the street; there were subtle scenes between Darcy and Elizabeth, etc) are all just grasping at sexual straws.

Hey, lets face it: Jane Austen’s writings are as sexless as you can get. I do not fault her for this. Quite to the contrary, much the same as I praise her for sparing her readers from the horrors of the wars and social injustices of the time, I also praise her for leaving sex out of her books. After all, what could a virgin (we hope) spinster know about sex?

I do think that there is such a thing as subtlety and it is fine in its place. It’s just that subtlety and the appreciation of subtlety does not seem to fit very well on a nude beach.

I hope to accomplish three things with this posting:
1. Produce lots of screaming and yelling.
2. Inclusion of this posting in the "Year’s Most Controversial" list.
3. Try and please Ash, who, in a recent posting, said "We don’t spend enough time talking about sex,"

So, how did I do?

3/22/00 Cheryl - More thoughts on eroticism

Dear Voices,

My point is that abstinence, (we're presuming here) even voluntary abstinence, has a sensitizing effect both physically and emotionally.  Anyone who hasn't thrilled to the merest brush of another's hand has missed something great in life.  Even that slug Edmund Bertram could be moved:

'"You scarcely touch me," said he.  "You do not make me of any use.  What a difference in the weight of a woman's arm from that of a man!  At Oxford I have been a good deal used to have a man lean on me for the length of a street, and you are only a fly in comparison."'

Okay, so the fly analogy leaves a lot to be desired, but I'm sure you get my drift.

Jane Austen leaves the reader in no doubt that her heroines are as attracted and distracted by the beauty of their lovers as her heroes are by theirs.  Anne Elliot's love may have been reawakened by Captain Wentworth, still, she satisfies herself with suffering in silence while he chooses his new wife. But her passion is reawakened by the admiration of Mr. Elliot, and her conversations with him are filled with a spirit entirely missing in the first part of the novel.

I have much more to say, but duty calls and I must gird my loins to go forth and tell all comers that we're sold out of the NSYNC CD.

Meister: I will rephrase my comment about P&P to say 11 pages does not satisfy me as to what's due the novel. I agree that folks are pretty much the same the world over.
Cheryl

3/18/00 Laurie - [l_mease@hotmail.com] RE: nude beaches

Dear Voices,

I agree with Ray, Austen's writings are fairly sexless, at least on the surface.  But wasn't that typical of the time in which Austen lived?  Talk of sex was not generally accepted in "polite" society, was it?  If it was, it was probably pretty masked.  Having recently completed the biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (thanks, Julie, for recommending it!), it seems to me that while the people of Georgiana's set at least were pretty sexually free, they didn't openly talk about their exploits.  Jane Austen's society, then, which was probably much more laid-back than the Devonshires', would probably not have discussed it either.

There are some sexual undertones in the novels, however, such as the various and sundry elopements. The elopements themselves are a theme which I feel merits discussion.  Austen's use of elopements as plot devices was pretty widespread.  A while back I had a post in which I discussed the similarities and differences between Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice.  Both of those novels had elopements which ended up substantially changing the course of the main characters' lives. Why do you think that elopements were so common in Austen's novels?

P.S.  Ray, I'm sorry if I'm way off base from what you meant with your post, but I'm pretty foggy from the cold medicine, not to mention trying to deal with all of the extra work assigned by my sadistic, tweed-wearing calculus teacher.

3/18/00 Julie Grassi - [banya@bigpond.com] ... sex rearing its ugly head - it's about to rear them off the ground permanently (The Devil's Playground, a film about an Australian Catholic boys' school)

Dear Ray,

You have just given me a flashback to a scene I remember from a visit to an Australian nude beach, many years ago (I used to swim there daily) - a young man at the water's edge, vigorously performing star jumps in front of some very startled seagulls.  I laughed so hard I nearly drowned......

I don't think a nudist, or 'clothing optional', beach, is the place to go to look for sex - quite the reverse.  Of course, I must be saying this from a different perspective than you, unless we share a common profession.  I routinely see squads of people, naked, on a daily basis (shocked my husband to the core one night by pointing out that I'd seen far, far more dicks in my life than he had, and was therefore in a position to draw accurate comparisons......)

But to return to Jane Austen.  I think that there is a great deal of sexual tension in her novels:  how else to describe the situation between Edmund Bertram and Mary Crawford, or Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford, or Emma Woodhouse and Mr Knightley, or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, or.......etc.

The difference between Jane Austen's creations and those on your Mexican beach (which I prefer not to contemplate) is in Jane Austen's sophisticated character development.  Sexual tension is not created by the flappings and bouncings created by naked volleyball (it MUST be painful, surely?)   that to me is rather akin to being confronted by so much badly cooked food that, hungry, one still loses one's appetite.  It is sexual attraction - not on its own, of course - that drives the prime movers of Jane Austen's novels back to one another, time and again, as they work through the pitfalls and misunderstandings of their developing relationships. I don't include Lydia Bennet in this, by the way, because her adventure was rather sexless by comparison:  Wickham took her with him on a 'why not?' kind of basis, and she was too damned silly to be responsible for her actions.

I think Jane Austen draws developing sexual relationships a great deal better than many of the authors who came after her   I greatly admire George Eliot, for instance, but don't find the emotional intensity of, say, Elizabeth and Darcy, in any of her works.  Emily Bronte was very obviously writing about something of which she knew nothing (now there's a sexless sexuality for you!) Charlotte came much closer.

How did you exercise your options, by the way?
Julie

3/18/00 Heather Swallow - [hms@blakes.com] Jane Austen's Laptop

Dear Voices,

While engaging in corr-e-spondence with Hollis, in which she told me about a letter she once received after writing to a favoured author, it occurred to me that I would never have the guts to write to Austen, or even e-mail her, probably, if we lived in the same time period, and it was mine.  And suddenly I got this image of JA sitting at that little desk with a laptop (but she's dressed in Regency fashions). I thought again - given her love of the simple life, she probably would have been a technophobe.  What do you think?

Now Dave, that's the kind of thinking that just runs rampant at university.  I could probably write a whole paper on that, and get published, too.  Oh no, if I ever decide to pursue a PhD, that's my thesis:  "If Mansfield Park had been written on a laptop."

Publish?  Heck, they'll probably make it into a movie.

Okay, okay, I'm getting back to work.

From the Meister: The Male-Voices Bulletin Board
is now accepting e-mail messages to Jane Austen.

3/18/00 Ashton Dennis - Mary Shelley's The Last Man

Dear Folks,

I am not going to recommend this novel to you even though I like it very much. I am not going to recommend it because, as my wife recently demonstrated, it is not for everyone. Still, I am going to set down my impressions because I sense the novel says something about Jane Austen's time and so an interesting discussion might arise over it.

Mary Shelley was twenty years old when Jane Austen died in 1817. A year later, Austen's last two novels were published as was Shelley's first, Frankenstein. It is important to what I want to say to mention a few biographical facts. Mary Shelley's mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, who died shortly after the daughter's birth and as a result of that childbirth, and her father was William Godwin. Both parents were well known radical writers.

The word "feminist" is, I think, a twentieth century invention, but all of the basic ideas and beliefs of that discipline are much older. Feminist ideas are found expressed in all the writings of the French revolutionists for example. Mary Wollstonecraft was a "feminist" in the full modern meaning of the word. She was also what is today called "liberated", both politically and sexually. I think Wollstonecraft must have been bisexual and she was that without any shame or remorse. I would have thought it clear that her relationship with Miss Fanny Blood was sexual - the circumstances suggest it and her first biographer, her husband, seems to broadly hint at it. Also, it seems clear, to me at least, that in her travelogue of her trip through Scandinavia, she describes an assignation with a Norwegian woman. However, Claire Tomalin, a biographer I respect, is clear in saying that the case is not clear. Later, Wollstonecraft had an affair with the painter Henri Fuseli whose bisexuality not even Tomalin tries to explain away. Wollstonecraft went to Fuseli's wife to suggest that the three of them bunk together but the woman was unreasonable - threw Mary out of the house - go figure! Wollstonecraft's publisher and benefactor, Joseph Johnson, was an unadulterated homosexual. I mention all this because I suspect - do not know - that a homosexual relation was not treated with the same kind of prejudice as it would be later. I suspect that the attitudes in Jane Austen's time on this subject might be a bit like those we see re-evolving in our own time. I would very much be interested in reading a more knowledgeable opinion on this matter.

The papa, William Godwin, was the kind of political radical who seemed to advocate the immediate and violent overthrow of aristocratic rule - provided, of course, that no one actually got hurt. He was a kind of kinder, gentler violent revolutionary. He was the political philosopher who invented the expression, "to each according to his needs, and from each according to his ability." (I bet you thought the communists invented that, didn't you?) He was also a futurist and it is that aspect of his writing that is most relevant to this discussion of The Last Man. Basically, Godwin was a supreme optimist who believed in the perfectibility of mankind, that all future problems would be overwhelmed by the creative and cooperative capabilities of man. He imagined a waning in the sexual drive as mankind improved, and that would be the mechanism for limiting human population growth. That strikes me as kind of funny, but maybe your idea of perfection allows you to be more generous about Godwin's theory. Well, a clergyman, by the name of Thomas Malthus, took issue with Godwin and published some essays in which he took the opposite view and suggested that the limits to growth would manifest in some rather grim ways, the ways of poverty and disease. (Incidentally, Reverend Malthus lived in a county neighboring that of the family of the Reverend George Austen.) Well, I admire Malthus's calm logic and clear common sense and I laugh at Godwin's pie-in-the-sky optimism - perfectibility of man, indeed! I mean I would laugh if not for one le-eetle difficulty; it has been two hundred years since that debate and it now looks as if Godwin may have made the better guess. Boy! that makes me mad. However, my fellow Malthusians and I are convinced that the world will soon go into the toilet, and when that happens, don't say we didn't warn tell you.

Oh, and one other thing - Godwin was a proud atheist who proclaimed his religion in print and tried very hard to convert others. There is a sad story about the death of Mary Wollstonecraft when she was dying of an infection a few days after the birth of their daughter. Some say she asked for last rites but Godwin encouraged her to confess that she didn't really mean it. He never did bring in a clergyman. Whoa, those atheists weren't always very Christian were they?

Now I can turn to Mary Shelley and her novel, The Last Man. Mary was close to her dad and shared her mother's attitudes of sexual freedom (except, I don't think she slept with women). Anyway, an interesting thing is that her thinking seemed to run counter to that of either parent. It wasn't an open rebellion rife with rancor, not at all; rather, it just seems that when Mary Shelley came to express herself in writing, she simply expressed a vision contrary to that of either parent. By the bye, I can't resist this - I have to point out that Mary Shelley ran away and eloped with an aristocrat. C'mon, admit it, that's funny - the Godwin kid ran off with a Baronet's son and heir. (Gads - I don't sound like Mr. Bennet do I?)

The Last Man was published in 1826 and went out of print rather soon. it was not back in print until the second half of this century. I don't know why it was not popular. I love music but can't read a note, and it is impossible for me to understand how music is created or performed. Similarly, discussion of literary style is a language beyond my ken. However, there are some things that even I notice. The sentence structure in The Last Man is pretty much a comma or two and a period. I'm not saying there are no semicolons in the novel because there are, but no more than one or two per page. That gives the novel a modern feel. Also, Mary Shelley had learned "to write with her ears", so the novel reads well from beginning to end. But, you know how it is with Mary Shelley - you have to suspend disbelief - so, do it! Read Jane Austen for nature and probability, but don't sell Mary Shelley short on the matter of vision.

The Last Man is set in the last third of the twenty-first century and is about the death of mankind. I mean, it is literally about the person who will become the last man on earth - an Englishman - of course. The cause of the death is a plague, a great pandemic. What is the nature of disease? How is it vectored? Well - who cares? Mary Shelley didn't care, the author was only interested in the feelings of a man becoming and then being the last man alive. It's a good novel. I guess there is only one point to be made here; in 1826, it had already been several decades since Mary's countrymen had first invented the medical vaccination (against smallpox), but not one of Mary's twenty-first century characters even wonders about such a possibility. - Curious.

Mary Shelley was no H. G. Wells; her guess of the technology of the year 2100 is well off the mark - don't expect to read the novel with that in mind. So, in one hundred years beyond our own time, Shelley imagined that the principle mode of transportation would be -- the horse. She mentions steam-powered ships and steam/sailing ships but not the railroad. OK, the steam-driven river-boat had been invented in Jane Austen's time and, even as late as 1826, was driven by a paddle wheel. Now, this was fine for river traffic because the boat could stop periodically to take on coal, but an ocean voyage was infeasible because the boat would have to have been loaded with coal for the voyage - sorry, no room for cargo. Also, the paddle wheel doesn't work well in rough seas. It would be nearly 70 years, after 1826, before the screw propeller and other inventions made the steam-powered ocean voyage a common occurrence. On the other hand, a steam-powered locomotive was fully operational in Liverpool in 1830! So, the locomotive became popular and dominant in Shelley's lifetime but is not even suggested in her novel. Oh, there is one other technical detail: the hero of the novel must get to Scotland from London in 48 hours, so he hires a "sailing balloon". That is the total sum of Mary's speculation about the technical advances of the future.

Actually, there was one other thing: someone blows up all of Constantinople in a matters of seconds. That is a speculation for an author who died before even the invention of nitroglycerine or dynamite.

You have to read the novel for the humanity of the hero's experience - in that you will be rewarded. For example, if you are to become the last man, you must, at some point, be one of the last five and then watch those precious companions disappear. What would that be like? After you become the last man, how will you act? Suicide? Will you search for other possible survivors? Read the novel.

Now to my main point, it is very difficult to understand how it is that the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin (and the wife of Percy Shelley) wrote this novel. First of all, it is Malthusian! Also, society is headed by men, completely dominated by men. Now, I am all for that, but why did Wollstonecraft's daughter paint such a future and then seem quite comfortable with her invention? It is true that the English monarchy had abdicated (willingly, without any external violence or pressure) in favor of a "republic", but the greater power was still in the hands of the would-have-been Prince of Wales and his aristocrats. That is made to seem a good thing because the one political figure who is backed by the "popular" faction is a villain. - Very curious, this Godwin daughter.

I have much more to say but I will shut up after this one last bit. If Mary Shelley's father had not been the most famous atheist in the England of her time, then that honor would surely have fallen to her husband. OK, given that, then what do you say about this passage from the novel? The hero is about to bury his last surviving child, a very young boy:

"I have heard that the sight of the dead has confirmed the materialists in their belief. I ever felt otherwise. Was that my child--that moveless decaying inanimation? My child was enraptured by my caresses; his dear voice cloathed with meaning articulations his thoughts, otherwise inaccessible; his smile was a ray of the soul, and the same soul sat upon its throne in his eyes. I turn from this mockery of what he was. Take, O earth, thy debt! freely and forever I consign to thee the garb thou didst afford. But thou, sweet child, amiable and beloved boy, either thy spirit has sought a fitter dwelling, or, enshrined in my heart, thou livest while it lives."

Mary Shelley knew what it was to bury a child.

3/18/00 Heather Swallow - [hms@blakes.com] Maybe I'm right?

Dear Dave,

I think understood your point perfectly, and took it.  If you read my posting again, you will see that you and I agree: academia is full of bizarre ideas.  I would only add to your comments that after the PhD has been obtained it is necessary to "publish or perish" if a professor wishes to keep professing.  After centuries of writing about centuries-old books, all the good ideas are very, very done.  I quite agree that someone is toiling away at the ridiculous theses you suggest. Indeed, I wrote a ridiculous thesis myself (lucky for you, I'd rather not discuss it.) Like any fraternity, Academia is entered only after undergoing the humiliation the present members suffered and insist upon administering.  Poor things, what they go through to get those four months off every year and the occasional year-long sabbatical on a sailboat in Greece, studying the relationships between sailor's knots and 18c country dances.

Where we don't agree, Dave, is the part about how English profs shouldn't talk about film. Next you will tell me that mathematicians have no business discussing Wordsworth.

3/19/00 Dave Payton - [hitz53@aol.com] You may be right, but...

Dear Heather,

Should a mathmatics professor discuss Wordsworth? That is the question.

Anybody should feel free to discuss anything. Everybody has a right to make a complete boob of themselves, as I have so many times here. BUT, when a person is employed at an educational institution teaching a subject such as mathmatics, the dicussion and lectures should be limited to those topics. For a math prof to spend the class time discussing poetry is a waste of the students' time, unless the prof is discussing a mathmatical scheme of poetry construction, i.e. Lewis Carroll's works.