Why we love Jane Austen more than ever after 250 years
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Free indirect speech
16 min read
The article discusses Austen's revolutionary narrative technique of moving 'subtly between impartial narrative and the character's perspective' - this is precisely free indirect speech, which Austen pioneered and which transformed the modern novel
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Regency era
13 min read
The article discusses the specific historical moment of Austen's world - new fashion, changing morals, women's independence, social hierarchy giving way to merit - all defining features of this distinct period that shaped her novels
Jane Reigns Supreme
December 16th marks two-hundred-and-fifty years since Jane Austen’s birth. On the semiquincentennial of her birth, Austen is the most popular of the great English writers, the one who reaches the most hearts and minds. It is rare to talk to someone unliterary who loves Milton, Shakespeare, or Wordsworth. But Jane has leagues and leagues of admirers.
It’s still easy to be dismissive of her work. Disliking Jane Austen comes naturally. It happens to plenty of the best people. Mark Twain once said, “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin bone!” More recently, Giles Coren thought it was funny to describe her as “an average chick-lit writer of her day”.
Some people have more serious objections. Charlotte Bronte found her “elegant but confined”. Emerson, likewise, thought her books were “imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world.”
In their defence, it is true that Austen is, as Virginia Woolf said, the hardest of the great writers to “catch in the act of greatness”.
But Woolf also said that she ought to be careful what she says about Jane Austen because of the elderly gentlemen “who resent any slight upon her genius as if it were an insult to the chastity of their aunts.” And among ordinary readers, those elderly gentlemen have carried the day.
Giles Coren had his little joke, but Pride and Prejudice has sold over twenty million copies.
It’s not just elderly gentlemen: young men write about being “Austen bros” in GQ. Adaptations of her books for film and television cause controversy if they don’t do justice—as the Janeites and elderly gentlemen see it—to Jane’s genius.
Mark Twain will have to hit his own skull with a shin bone if he wants a cheap laugh. Of all England’s great writers, she holds the most attention.
And why?
Why is Jane Austen quite so popular?
The reason is simple.
She invented the modern novel in order to answer fundamental questions about how to be good, happy, and flourishing in a commercial society. Her novels are about questions that are still central to our lives. How to live a good life in a commercial society? What is a moral education in the modern world? Who should we marry?
Jane reigns supreme because no ...
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