"Like all regular churchgoers, he [the Jane Austenite] scarcely notices what is being said.” - E.M. Forster
“Jane Austen is weirdly capable of keeping everybody busy. The moralists, the Eros-and-Agape people, the Marxists, the Freudians, the Jungians, the semioticians, the deconstructors – all find an adventure playground in six samey novels about middle-class provincials.” -Martin Amis
It has been pointed out before that while other authors have fans, Jane Austen has devotees and disciples who seem to orient their whole lives around her. The cult of Jane Austen is so large and devoted that it may almost be called a religion. The followers of the religion have a name derived from hers – Janeites. The good Janeite reads and rereads her works, always loving them more. He or she is not content with merely the six novels, but reads Austen's juvenilia and letters with an admiration seldom given to an author's “minor” works. There's even a Janeite church - The Jane Austen Society (most notably the JA Society of North America – JASNA) which hosts regular meetings which are attended with all the respect, and more excitement, than a regular church service. At these meetings attendees sit on the edge of their seats to learn more about what Jane ate or hear yet another defense of Fanny Price.
There's also a church periodical, Persuasions, in which The Inspired Writings are poured over with greater fascination, but no less urgency and detail, than any theologian or textual critic ever gives the Bible.
Janeites read books about Jane and her characters, watch every film adaptation and spin-off, consider Jane's hypothetical approval the highest accolade and are never ashamed to confess before men that she of the finely-manicured lawns and ceaseless country dances is their favorite author.
But, like any religion, Janeism has its factions. And, as with the factions in any religion, those on one side will sometimes look at those on the other and say, “How on earth can you be a Janeite and believe that?”
It's a good thing that Janeism isn't actually an organized religion or denomination. Just imagine the headlines:
Janeites About to Split Over the Validity of Austen-Leigh's Biography!
Wollstonecraft Society Issues Invitation to Disaffected “Janeite sisters”.
Scandal rocks Janeism as famous lecturer declares she “hates” Fanny Price!
Life as a Janeite: Confessions of a Woman Raised in the Cult Founded in 1811 by English Spinster Jane Austen
Janeites to Debate Mary Worship: Should Mary Bennet and Mary Crawford be inducted into the Janeite pantheon of heroines?
More Mary Worship: Should Janeites be required to swear loyalty to Mary, Queen of Scots?
(I'd love to hear more headlines, if my readers would like to think of any!)
Well, enough silliness. On to something like sense. I've been browsing Natalie Tyler's The Friendly Jane Austen and one of the first sections is “How Do We Love Jane Austen? Let Us Count the Ways”. It contains a self-evaluation quiz, which I couldn't do properly, having never seen a Meg Ryan movie to choose as a favorite and not having a favorite Beatle either. (I.e., I thought the quiz a paragon of Silly.) And I don't entirely agree with its description of Janeite "schools", but I'll list them as in the book and then give my own thoughts.
Are You A Janeite?
“The first school, the Janeites, proposes that Jane (and if you are a Janeite, you are on a comfortable first-name standing with your favorite author) provides an alternate, romantic reality more attractive than real life with its wars and deaths. This school, alternatively, can be regarded as Jane as comfort food, Jane as a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream or a Kraft macaroni and cheese dinner on a stormy night. Your Jane is a teller of fairy tales in which Cinderella always claims the prince in a sweetly satisfying, and never syrupy, idyll.
The book then quotes E.M. Forster as “A Janeite Par Excellence”: “I am a Jane Austenite, and therefore slightly imbecile about Jane Austen... I read and re-read, the mouth open and the mind closed...”
Do You Belong To The School Of Gentle Jane?
“The second school consists of the students of Gentle Jane. These readers believe that Jane Austen depicts an ideal society in which goodness is always rewarded and a divine harmony shapes our ends. Jane Austen's novels can teach us how to become ladies and gentlemen, how to avoid vulgarity, how to conduct ourselves with civility. Jane Austen is not merely a beloved escape and consolation, but one who represents an attainable reality of a pleasantly well-ordered life. She is like a beloved aunt always providing the best and wisest counsel.”
The book then quotes C.S. Lewis' wonderful essay ("A Note on Jane Austen") in which he talks of “the great abstract nouns of the classical English moralists” as the “concepts by which Jane Austen grasps the world.”
Do You Belong to the Ironic Jane School?
“The third school of Austen lover contends that Jane's muse is neither high romance nor the ideal of civility, but rather irony. This Jane Austen is brilliantly terrifying in her acerbic, quietly vitriolic observations about the human character. She is the one person whose insights about yourself you would most fear because you realize that her perceptions are penetratingly perspicacious, and piercingly accurate. This school loves Jane Austen because she has honed their intellectual judgments and intensified their irony quotients and, most of all, because she makes them chortle. If you laugh out loud or even chuckle softly to yourself when you hear the words 'Maple Grove,' 'Mr. Suckling,' 'rears and vices,' or 'pollute the shades,' you are probably already a thoroughgoing ironist who reads Jane Austen more for delight than for inspiration or instruction, although you would not be likely to deny that inspiration and instruction are abundant.”
The book then quotes Claire Tomalin as “The Voice of the Ironic Jane School”: “Her sharpness and refusal to suffer fools makes you fearful of intruding, misinterpreting, crassly misreading the evidence.”
Do You Belong To The Subversive Jane School?
“Finally, the fourth major Austen Academy consists of those who see Jane Austen as a protofeminist whose prime interest was in ameliorating the lot of women. Her very real transgressive and subversive messages may be read between the lines of her parodic novels. Her novels are imbued with feminist commentary; she is the mother of upward mobility for women and the author of some of the first adventure stories for young ladies. Behind a veneer of civility lurks a deep anger that most women do not have the luxury of refusing to become chattel, and while England celebrates its navy and its clergymen, the wives, mothers, and sisters who are the backbone of the system are given only perfunctory public notice. Your Jane Austen exposes the injustice of this society. Furthermore, she made enormous strides in the art of the narration of the novel. She was an innovator, ahead of her time in every way. You are intrigued by articles on covert lesbianism, or masturbation fantasy, or indirect critique of the Napoleonic Wars in Austen's novels and think that they explore a major layer of meaning.”
Jan Fergus is then quoted as a Subversive Janeite, saying, “Acutely conscious of other women's writing, of women's subordinate and marginal position within society, Austen began by writing burlesques that offer comic images of female power and possibility. Her unconventional portraits of women in the juvenilia reflects her skepticism about contemporary notions of what women were like – and what they should be like... In her later novels, she managed to convey an increasing sense of women's insecure and even threatened position within their social worlds, without destroying a comic tone.”
My Thoughts Which I Trust Will Go Down With All The Eclat of a Proverb
Ooookay... First, I disagree with calling the first class merely Janeites, since I think that's a term that is now used to embrace all devotees of the great lady. Alternate names I'd give this school might be Romantic Jane, Escapist Jane or Chick-lit Jane. (Personally, this is the 'school' that gets my ire up the most. Austen's works are classics for a reason – they're ferociously intelligent, expertly crafted and endlessly deconstruct-able. If you want to drool over handsome men in cravats and magnificent houses there are plenty of cheap romance novels available. Just don't touch my Jane with a ten foot pole!)
Secondly, I find applying the term Gentle Jane to the persona of the “Jane as Great Moralist” school a reductive misrepresentation. I think that authors like C.S. Lewis or Sarah Emsley, who have argued for Jane Austen as a Christian moralist, are well aware that Jane Austen did not create a world in which “goodness is always rewarded” and that she was not proposing that doing right will always produce perfect “harmony”. They are aware of Austen's irony and C.S. Lewis wrote that “the hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible.” Certainly Jane Austen has been sometimes wrongly eulogized as “our dear, everybody's dear Jane”. But I believe an understanding of Jane Austen's moral basis does not mean we must devolve into tea-sipping reminiscers on how good is was in “dear Aunt Jane's day.” Again, as C.S. Lewis has mentioned in his wonderful essay, the emphasis on morality is actually “hard” and “the hardness, is, of course, for oneself, not for one's neighbors”. Our dear Aunt Jane is as faithful a friend as Mr. Knightley in pointing out our faults and our sins. (Nor, in my mind, does the idea of Jane Austen as moralist mean we have to ignore that she herself may have had a “war in her members” between the acerbity of her wit and her “notion of Christian forgiveness”.)
Thirdly, I question how anyone can be a Janeite of any “school” without recognizing and appreciating her pervading irony. Just as L.M. Montgomery once said, “Robert Browning hurts me worse than any poet – and so I love him most,” I might say, “Jane Austen frightens me more than any other writer, and therefore I love her most”. I agree with Claire Tomalin's conclusion that reading Jane Austen is a dangerous thing, because she may well be laughing at the conclusions she is leading us to draw. But even while reading Austen is a frightening and dangerous experience, it's ultimately a hilarious one. An online-friend of mine once said that she was convinced that if Jane Austen lived today she'd be a comedian. I'm not sure I agree, because to me the essence of Jane Austen's irony is its layers. Maybe the surface statement is true on a level, and maybe the exact opposite is what Austen was trying to get across, but every time you read the text you'll discover a new layer. And to me that's something that is best achieved through the written text.
“Sixth and lastly”, I actually think Subversive Janeism is described quite accurately! A shorter description might be in Karen Joy Fowler's words about her character Allegra in The Jane Austen Book Club, “If Allegra worked in a bookstore she would have shelved Jane Austen in the horror section.” (Quoting from memory, not verbatim.) A notable Subversive Janeite on the blogosphere is Arnie Perlstein with his theories about the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth as pervading in the novels. While I remain unconvinced by the more radical theses of proponents of this school, I respect that they bring to light Jane Austen's intelligent awareness of the events and ideas of her day.
I have many favorite authors and many of them help form my philosophy of life and cheer me in times of depression and discouragement. But it recently occurred to me that if I was allowed to read only one author for an extended period of time, it would be Jane Austen. Not because of the romance, not because of the critical and historical treasure-troves, and not even because of the acutely-developed moral sense. All these are a part of “my” Jane Austen's glory, but it is her humor that could keep me going through anything. As long as Jane Austen is around to remind me to laugh at life, my neighbors, and myself, I know things will ultimately come out okay. Probably not in a “fairy-tale” ending like in one of her novels, but at least with the sound of laughter.
I've also been thinking about Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Elizabeth and Darcy have been compared to Beatrice and Benedick since P&P was first published. But it seems to me that Jane Austen herself was as much Beatrice as anyone ever has been; “there's little of the melancholy element in her... she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing.” Perhaps in the hour Jane Austen was born her mother cried from the curse of child-birth and perhaps this Beatrice never found a Benedictus potent enough to sacrifice her writing for. But what I do positively know is that December 16, 1775 there was a star danced, and under that star was Jane Austen born.
And to conclude (with Dogberry) I'll be posting a poll in the sidebar so I can discover what kind of Janeites are visiting my blog. Please vote! (You may vote for several options.)
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