Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

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This is followed by a chapter devoted to each of Jane’s novels and a final one looking at her death. someone has carefully followed the teaching instructions of writing to persuade GCSE English circa 2010; repetition (tick), alliteration (tick), rule of three (tick). The author reveals just how in the novels we find the real Jane Austen: a clever, clear-sighted woman "of information," fully aware of what was going on in the world and sure about what she thought of it.

Unsurprisingly, despite some great historical context concerning slavery, Mansfield Park was one of the weaker ones, as even Kelly (who studies Austen for her job) seems unable to come up with a unifying theory for that book. And I tell you what, I have read Austen for pleasure many times, and I have studied her both as an undergraduate, and in the course of my graduate work, and there was so much in here that I didn't know, that seriously changes the way I see some of what happens in her books. Understand what a serious subject marriage was then, how important it was, and all of a sudden courtship plots start to seem like a more suitable vehicle for discussing other serious things. I was just sort of expecting a fun book where the author points out passages in Austen's work that add credibility to the idea that Jane Austen was a radical thinker for her time.I learned a lot, I saw Austen with fresh eyes, and that’s a lot for me to say after a lifetime of immersion. What's more, she often makes insane theories about her books (no spoilers, but the Sense and Sensibility and Emma sections get weird), and then acts as if they are fact, but doesn't accept the same in others. She delves deep into the books but puts forth rather bizarre conclusions that it's hard not to see this book as more about herself and less about Austen and her novels.

Knightly doesn’t actually love Emma, he only wants control over Hartford, so that he can enforce more enclosures of the land. Jane’s original readers would have seen all the parallels that the modern reader misses, and these would have been even stronger if the book had been published straight after it had been written, rather than years later, after Jane’s death.

Husbands could beat their wives, rape them, imprison them, take their children away, all within the bounds of the law. What this radical re-reading … does so brilliantly is to exhort us all to chuck out the chintz, and the teacups, and all the traditional romantic notions about Austen’s work that have been fed to us for so long … However well you think you know the novels, you’ll be raring to read them again once you’ve read this.