A photograph of the wall at Lyme from the water side (contemporary) — see my review of Lucy Worseley’s JA at Home, book & film
Dear friends and readers,
I finally unsubscribed from Janeites on this past Sunday night, and will no longer be putting any postings on Austen-l — after being on the first list for more than 20 years and the second some quarter of a century. A sad evening. I asked myself if I learn anything about Austen on Janeites, now at groups.io (after considerable trouble and work) and previously at yahoo; do I experience any pleasure in ideas about her, gain any perspective on her era, contemporaries, the books or authors or people or places she was influenced, and the sad answer was no. Often just the opposite. I faced up to the reality that the listserv space is one Arnie Perlstein’s playground for preposterous sexed-up and male-centered (he is ever finding famous white males like Milton or more modern males in Austen) theories and from others who support him semi fan-fiction postings (such as the idea that Mr Knightley wrote or dictated Mr Martin’s letter to Harriet). The latest very long thread was once again about how Jane Fairfax is pregnant in Emma (I’m not sure if Frank Churchill or John Knightley was the candidate this time) and the idea the full fantasia of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream is central to Austen’s Emma.
I felt bad about deserting the list-moderator but it seemed to me the latest series went beyond previous in a tone of triumph and enjoyment which suggested one motive was to show contempt for the purpose of the listserv (and mockery of the helpless membership), which disdain and exultation the moderator (in effect) replied to by writing (as she has so many times before) with the purpose of the list: its terrain was to read Jane Austen’s actual texts, discuss them, her era, and her real life. She has said also repeatedly how she dislikes these sexed-up “shadow texts” and how what is said about Austen, their content ruins her enjoyment of the books. A couple of people then told me (through the message mechanism on face-book) how they laugh at such threads — that reminded me of the way people enjoyed Scottie Bowman on Austen-l years ago (he had a gift for needling malice). One person had the courage to onlist explain she stayed only for sentimental reasons — remembering what was. Maybe it was the latter sentiment that determined me to face up to the demoralization and aggravation this particular kind of debasement of Austen the money- and career-making cult leads to.
Lest my last phrase be misunderstood what I am referring to is that part of the reason Jane Austen (as a name, a picture, a set of titles) has spread so widely is the pair of words makes money for many people and has been used by many to further their careers — from getting tenure, to heritage businesses, to touring oneself, to selling objects, to setting up tours for others (at a price), from business as far apart as the hotel industry (JASNA is kept expensive in order to keep the meetings smaller), to toy and knick-knack manufacturers and (at one time) séance mediums, to running sites de memoire.
It matters that while the secondary literature on Austen has grown exponentially, her oeuvre remains tiny and easy to read through in say less than two weeks. Yet I’ve met people at these JASNAs who at best have read 2 of the novels. And yes many of these participants will say they “hate” Mansfield Park; lately participants I’ve met suggest Mr Knightley is “really” in love with Jane Fairfax; they get this from some of the Emma movies. JASNA having finally “allowed” in panels on sequels is now not just flooded with them — you see it in the shop — one of the years the very topic was in effect these sequels and movies. JASNA grew to its present size after the first of the contemporary Jane Austen movies in 1995/96.
Maybe now with so many vying to publish about her, it’s not so easy to be published in journals, and fan fiction is no longer a publisher dream of an easy sell, but an essay on her, an umpteenth film adaptation of Emma will get further than than any essay on a “minor” (obscure) woman writer? Who has heard of Margaret Oliphant? Charlotte Smith? The situation may be similar for Sherlock Holmes as a name and set of titles — as well as a literal place Holmes lived in — as if the character actually existed. Readers can invest whatever they want into these post-texts (or sequels).
I find very troubling how reputable scholars have argued in print that it’s okay to tell lies, it’s okay if the printed material or what is taught is all wrong, is the product of political censorship, or if what is on display is salacious, misogynistic, just plain stupid. I objected to this supposed neutrality in Devoney Looser’s latest book. She implied it’s elitist to insist on accuracy and truth and explicitly undervalued the difference between knowledge and illusion, credible evidence and lies.
Group and social dynamics in cyberspace work differently than in real space, so one or two people can take over and ruin a listserv, silence everyone else; scapegoating is easy. So one of the things some site-owners (face-book moderators, listserve owners and moderators) whose platforms survive do is early on or soon enough establish parameters on what is somehow pernicious nonsense — Hardy Cook had a hard time at first with his Shaksper-l and now just forbids all stupidity over the idea that Wm Shakespeare did not write his books; these kinds of ideas circulate among lots of (foolish snobbish) people; or (as I have seen many times now), you say this face-book page is for this author and no other authors; discussions about contemporary politics are out; this is not the space to talk of movies or your favorite star-actor. Today Shaksper-l is a sober discussion of Shakespeare’s plays, the productions, real cruxes in the scholarship &c Athurnet years ago is another place where setting boundaries on theories of where the Arthur matter came from finally worked. I’ve seen this on face-book fan pages — more than one determined moderator is sometimes needed. Most of these kinds of posters fall silent without an audience to triumph over.
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On the Janeites list I had been trying with the list moderator to agree on a book of literary criticism or history about Jane Austen where each chapter would bring us to the text or her life again. We would try to post weekly on Austen through such a text. I had tried posting on the essays in the most recent Persuasions (as a text many members might own) starting in summer but few people were interested in serious analysis or any discussion at all, in reading such writing.
I have been having a difficult time keeping this blog going — with all the literary and film and other study (for teaching and classes I go to) I do in the other parts of my life, and had proposed to go back to series: of actresses, fore-mother poets, women artists, serial dramas based on the 18th century or film adaptations of historical fiction based on the early modern to early 19th century European cultures. But I know this excludes Austen. So now I’ll have an alternative thread if I can manage this: once a week or so, blog on a chapter on a book genuinely engaged with Austen’s texts, life, era. I’ll begin with Paula Byrne’s The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things. Long range I’d like also to try for one of the books on the relationship of Jane Austen’s texts to the plays or theater of her time.
Accordingly, I have changed my header picture to a picturesque illustration found in one of the older handbooks for Austen, F. B. Pinion’s A Jane Austen Companion. Pinion’s is a beautifully made book (sewn, heavy paper, a lot of rag content in the boards). It’s filled with various kind of pictures (plates, photos, vignettes) where the material is written as clear essays critically surveying Austen’s life, the early phases of her writing, a chapter each for the major novels, topics like influence, her reputation. Places, character studies. Dulce and utile is a phrase that is rightly applied to this book. Manydown house is now gone: it was the Bigg-Wither home where Austen bravely went back on a weak moment where she said yes to an unsuitable man for her as an individual; and it was the place where assembly-type balls were held in her time. Thus it seems to me appropriate.
Susan Herbert’s parody of Adelaide Labille-Guiard’s Self-portrait with Two Pupils (1785)
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
You are perfectly right on everything!
I left Janeites a long time ago when I could’t stand some posts anymore….they had changed the meaning and the enjoyableness of the site. Apparently, some people have a lot of free time on their hands.
I like your blog very much and will continue to read your posts.
Angela Miglioli
Thank you for this validation and endorsement. What keeps some people staying is the sense that there is such potential for real talk about the real texts or author, but the way cyberspace works, it takes but a couple of voices to intimidate and silence the sensible and intelligent.
Ellen,
I look forward to your blogs on Austen. After reading at least P & P as a teenager, within the past year or two, I have raced through all her novels for various courses which only touched the surface and left me with more questions than answers and a desire for a more informed understanding,
Linda
There’s a real problem in teaching Austen at both OLLIs and (I’ve discovered) elsewhere: there is a presumption that Austen is conservative, presents a form of refuge and escape from the realities of her time and today, and hardly questions anything serious in the established order. I think that’s wrong – that she does question many things in ordinary life even if she rarely takes this to a explicit principle. I find her fiction is not romantic and has much acid and bite; that underlying the fiction is a quiet rage and melancholy. A room filled with people come to hear comforting jokes, happy endings, and basically trivial or minor complaints are not going to be be receptive of the point of view I stand for.
One reason that most talk about Austen is surface or superficial is when you begin to dig and talk deeply, you find my point of view emerges, so people avoid going into the books in depth. The method by which Austen conveys her critique is irony, sarcasm, and (in her early works) burlesque; she uses invective more than is realized but it’s often aimed at the obviously mean and morally stupid person (say Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and Mr Collins, or Mrs Ferrars).
She was a spinster with no income of her own and she was controlled by her family and couldn’t be open nor was that in her temperament insofar as we can see it. It’s said by her relatives at the time that 3/4s of her letters were destroyed by Cassandra; 3 packets of letters between her and Francis (her admiral brother) were destroyed by one of his grand-daughters. So what I just said about her temperament may not be so since her nephew produced a highly sentimental portrait of her that on the face of it is mostly unlikely. It was not in the advantage of her family to present her otherwise than as a saintly virgin who did nothing much in life but read and write and stay within her family happily. Their first concern was their (and thus her) respectability so that they as individuals would get good positions in society.
The JASNA Persuasions journal reinforces the view that Austen was complacent and accepted much that she saw in life as just or understandable. Most of the movies reinforce the view that Austen is all about lush or comic heterosexual romance/; at most you can get dramatic romance in the TV series; the appropriate genre for Austen in movies made for movie-houses has been the screwball comedy ending in happy romance. There are Austen movies which move in another direction, but only with caution and qualifiedly. the recent Sanditon was excoriated because it took a view of Austen and her era much closer to the one I’m outlining, complete with ambiguous ending.
Hi Ellen,
Kate Macdonald makes the same point about the Virginia Woolf industry, how it has displaced any serious, deep research (plus jobs, prestige etc.) on other women writers of the time. Here´s the link:
https://katemacdonald.net/2018/02/04/the-virginia-woolf-industry-is-a-problem/
I do love to visit literary places wherever I travel and always try to seek out spots associated with (women) writers/ artists. When I spent a few days in Haworth this summer, my husband and I went three times to the Bronte Parsonage Museum, bought lots of books in the shop, listened to a talk by a volunteer who had done research on the literary work by the Reverend Bronte. We really got our money´s worth and no matter what you say about the whole heritage industry, it gives jobs to local people and I´d rather leave my money there then spend it at some life- and soulless big hotel chain. I remember when my husband and I visited the house of Grazia Deledda on Sardinia and Giovanni Verga´s house in Sicily we were quite saddened. These places felt deserted, there were very few visitors around and no infrastructure to speak off. No shop, no books except for a few dusty brochures in the Verga house. None of these writers has any prestige in Italy.
Andrea (Cologne)
Kate Macdonald’s essay should be better known. I did not know that Virginia Woolf as a subject to be written about is taking up 3/4s of the space devoted to 20th century women writers but come to think of it I can’t readily cite any woman writer of the 20th century with a similar stature. It used to be and often still is male writers writer all the books about literature and unashamedly they never mention any woman writer at all. The other day I was reading Clive James’s Poetic Notebook: I did praise it and never said he never mentions any woman even once. So now that they give a small percentage of the space to women, only a very tiny amount goes to women other than Woolf.
i easily see how this can come about from an organization dedicated to Woolf, in departments with people who have come out of the above environment. When I wanted to teach Winston Graham, people looked at me as strange and I wouldn’t have been able to do it in paid position in undergraduate English departments. It’s assumed he is at best second rate.
I tried a number of times to publish artlcles on or translations from Veronica Gambara in the 1990s; I was told repeatedly, no one has ever heard of her. I did say, how will they hear of her if you won’t publish anything. Silence is the answer I got.
I agree with you on going to the places where these writers may have lived, seeing their environment and getting books there about them. I have learned a lot that way too. And I loathe the soulless hotels where all you learn is the power of money. I was speaking in general that if an author can make scads of money for someone or a kind of industry, it’s in their interest to make her appear as widely-popular and acceptable as possible. Probably you can learn more truth about Deledda than you can about Austen if you can find books and essays, and to go to her house you can reach her reality without it having been adulterated and changed to please the general public. But it is at the same time hard to get to Deledda’s house, and as you say, no support or help when you get there.
Just to repeat I didn’t know that about the Woolf industry. Think of how long it has taken for Woolf to be properly valued, and now that she is, she is used as a band-aid to hide the patriarchy in academic studies. Books on her pour out … because that way the people can hope to gain tenure, make money (picture books on her homes for example).
Agree with you too (and adore the cat parody picture, thanks for sharing), and like the idea of covering (at a leisurely pace) some of the better critical works. I’ve never done the theater ones and that would be interesting. Wish you could still do them on Janeites, even as only occasional postings…otherwise it will be solely Arnie’s list, and I can’t read subtext theories either, which leaves very little else. There needs to be more material, but it doesn’t seem to exist. Too bad. One thing you say that I’m dubious about – that Austen’s entire ouevre can be read in a couple of weeks, well technically yes, a person could get the books across their eyes in that time, but as Calvin and Hobbes once said, “Don’t sweat comprehension!” I know you were referring to the wider audience of people who enjoy the movies and fanfic and have barely read the novels (if at all); but in my view why condemn innocent pleasures (the phrase used to describe Isabella Knightley’s!)? The important thing is that the sensible serious scholarship and rumination still exists somewhere, so that the few that are interested can seek it out and learn and delight in it. I wish it could still exist on Janeites, and hope you will be just taking a well-earned sabbatical and bring back some real Austen exploration in the future. Because no one else will.
I might have been a teeny-bit exaggerating when I said you can conquer the whole of all Jane Austen wrote in two weeks. Comprehension of the letters literally takes time: I think some of the juvenilia needs annotation, and for deeper comprehension of the 6 well-known novels and four fragments (Watsons, Lady Susan, Sanditon, Catherine or the Bower) more time is needed. But no more than say 6 months for these. Compare Shakespeare’s oeuvre; Milton’s, even Winston Graham’s (37 novels exclusive of the Poldarks). Before the 1990s you were not allowed to major in a figure like Austen because there’s not enough there. You might write your dissertation or thesis on her but you would be required to major in or study either the 18th century or romantic era (depending on where you place her works).
I don’t know that any pleasures are “innocent” in the way you infer. All art is propaganda, and what happens is the lowest common denominator takes over in a capitalist environment. Recently Scorcese published an essay complaining how moronic blockbusters are leaving no room, little money for better movies. There was a sound reason for not allowing panels in JASNA on sequels.
Janeites and other listservs are dead unless the moderator-owner is willing to spend a lot of time nurturing and is brave enough to exclude pernicious nonsense — with the recent rise in consensus that any lie will do, that false representations of Austen’s texts say in schools are not just interesting and revealing (they are), but fun to read, worthy serious literary analysis, there is less objective ground to exclude blatant groundless assertions about sources, allusions, and obvious false readings. Sensible serious scholarship exists in Persuasions (even with an agenda), some journals, and sensible serious common talk in newspapers (edited) and magazines, and can be found in conferences and classrooms and some online blogs
It’s interesting that just today I commented on a Facebook site, about how long ago on Austen-L such strong disputes arose about Fannie in Mansfield Park. The mid-nineties were an idyllic time to be discussing novels on Austen-L, Bronte-L, Trollope-L. I remember being in the hospital in the summer of 96, escaping from the painful present into the early nineteenth century of JA’s world.
I’d say it’s in retrospect the 1990s seems idyllic. We didn’t experience the time and experience that way then. Age, death, and hard consequences delivered by society to our dreams or hopes makes the earlier time seem light, with more hope. Literary speculation for us was divorced from present realities because these novels are all set in a previous era. Their authors’ lives nonetheless resemble our own much more than their invented characters. Had we or when we looked there, we would have experienced in our imaginations something very un-idyllic.
A friend: “I saw Arnie doing that elsewhere.”
Me: Yes, on Shakesper-l — he was one of those Hardy Cook had to suppress.
My friend: “There, too? … ”
Me: Yes. I suppose then he’s been doing this in several places. The thing about Austen was the initial time reading is small: all her works can be fitted easily into two not-so-fat volumes. He does not need to work for a living.
The thing about Austen was the initial time reading is small: all her works can be fitted easily into two not-so-fat volumes.
My friend: “I saw this on FB and in another venue. Idee fixe.”
Me: The Victorians thought one sign of true madness was the idee fixe, usually having to do with some sexual obsession. I don’t know what AP used to post about on Shakesper-l. What was forbidden was all talk that Shakespeare did not write his works but there were other subsidiary related threads (also preposterous but popular).
Hi Ellen,
I have long been a lurker at Janeites for a long time. Though I have posted one or two comments, my intention was always to learn from scholars who posted there. (At the time, I was planning to go to an Oxford summer session and take the Austen course!) Admittedly, that is also the reason I subscribe to this blog.
I must admit that for a while now I only cursorily read over what posted on the list-serve because much of it doesn’t help my understanding of Austen. I pay attention to your posts, and Diana Birchall’s, as well as a couple of others. I ignore Perlstein’s as I have felt that his ideas are “too far out in left field.”
I hate to see scholars like you leave the list because it means that it is left to those who are not leaders in Austen scholarship (emphasis on scholarship). Leaving it leaves a hole for those of us who are not scholars. Though, deeply interested in learning and conversing about our favourite author, we need people like you to provoke conversation for it is through conversation that we learn.
This blog has been a source of interest for a while now, having discovered it through the list-serve. I have used posts from it for my high school classes and shared them with one or two scholars who enjoy Austen, the Gothic, and other topics that you discuss. So, I must thank you for it!
James
Thank you, James (or Jim). I don’t know that the criteria of scholarly or scholarship need to be invoked. It is Nancy Mayor and Anne Woodley’s list. What they ask is sensible discussion of the texts, Austen’s life and her era. They are also okay with movies and sequels (fan fiction) and her contemporaries. When I said enough is enough, it was not that Arnie’s posts are “too far out in left field,” but that they show contempt for the purpose of the list — complete dismissal. He and his supporters (one in this last egregious one about Jane Fairfax’s pregnancy) ignore Nancy who has commented this kind of insistence on sex, on maleness, on Austen as omnisciently aware of white male classics destroys her enjoyment. She cannot get near Austen who is nothing like this.
As I just remarked to Diana, there is scholarship to be found in Persuasions (not conversations, no, gussied-up essays is what’s there in academic mode more or less), journals, conferences. There is room for scholarship on Janeites and there might be room for tongue-in-cheek fun: years ago Edith Lank put on Austen-l her sister’s theory that Harriet Smith is the daughter of Miss Bates by Mr Woodhouse: everyone know this was a joke, and also it was a joke meant to bring out some suggestive qualities in the text. Some fan fiction uses the wholly fictional idea that Jane Austen was poisoned by her brother, Henry; if fools can’t tell fiction from non-fiction and take this or other ideas about (Perlstein also once insisted in a delivered talk in the UK that Austen herself was pregnant at some point), nothing to be done. But to have that inistently take over the cyberspace is unacceptable.
It is a kind of zero-sum game in cyberspace, and if you try to correct wrong readings, you are scapegoated: I was accused of attacking Diana Birchall because I argued with her thesis Mrs Elton is a good generous woman, just a wee bit misguided or pushy. I objected briefly but strenuously because it can be transported to misunderstand Austen’s rage across her books over such women when in authority and the harm they can do. It was repeatedly strenuously denied I was writing about the thesis not the woman. It was repeatedly demanded I apologize for what I didn’t do. In cyberspace, you don’t erase what’s written. The accusations and sneers at me went on and on but just a few people, but that is all that is needed.
I am thinking I will also gather up news of the kind I’d sometimes put on lists and have casual posts pointing to interesting essays online, or correcting or qualifying: Janine Barchas had one the other day where she argued Arthur Miller wrote a radio adaptation of P&P: she omitted this has been known and presented at conferences — Sylvia Marks should have been given some credit for this finding.
http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/well-buy-harpoon-lydia-arthur-miller-adapted-jane-austens-pride-prejudice/?mc_cid=54a6465a74&mc_eid=db99df9dd8&fbclid=IwAR2d2tLmA5ZPSm_Av9mm93uGnC-HkF3RqPzikEPSI2bsMrHlsA6dMDssFVg
Ellen
Dear Ellen,
I abandoned Janeites many years ago for the same reason. Actually, I did it when I asked Arnie some questions and his answers made it clear that his shadow stories were created the same way Russian propaganda operates:
1. He cherrypicks facts and events that suit his theories while ignoring all the facts that contradict them.
2. He attempts to shame everyone into believing his theories by suggesting Austen wouldn’t admit the sceptics into “her” imaginary elitist Sharp Elves society.
That actually requires from people some moral backbone to argue against and a lot of free time I’m sure no one has.
One thing differs though: that is Putin may disseminate BS but he doesn’t believe it. Arnie, on the other hand, is so fixated he’s his own truest believer. And I might ignore him (as I intended at first) but he used to hijack every other thread and make it all about a shadow story.
Of course, people may find these kind of theories enjoyable. However, they do no credit to Austen.
Let’s just say that for many many centuries it was believed that only men could be creative. Only men, people thought, had the creative spirit in themselves required to create anything new, be it a child or a work of fiction. Women though were mere empty vessels that could but nest and reproduce whatever the men had created. That’s why it was thought that women were good to write memoirs but not fiction.
What Arnie is doing is promoting the sexist view that whatever Austen wrote was taken either from her personal life or the books by male authors she had read. He doesn’t allow room for Austen’s own creativeness, for her inventing plots, settings and characters that could stand on their own merit. And that is simply sad to see in the Janeites circles two decades into the 21st century.
I feel for Nancy though as I think she’s been a great and patient moderator.
Best,
Sylwia
[…] Last I have been developing blogs on actresses once again and first up will be Susannah Maria Arne Cibber (1714-66) and then fast forward to Barbara Flynn. I’m reading an excellent concise artistic biographical study of Adelaide Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) for my first woman painter. Foremother poets are a intimidating cornucopia, but if I include prose-poets, maybe Virginia Woolf as seen in Night and Day (a very enjoyable insighful novel) will be my first — not that Woolf needs me to blog about her. […]