Jane Austen Roundup

Best book: Northanger Abbey. Why? Because it is a piss-take of Gothic novels. This is the book in which the humour come closest to being something modern readers might actually laugh at.

Worst book: Mansfield Park. Why? Because the heroine (amusingly called “Fanny”, and that's the best gag in the book) is so bloody wet.

Bluffer's guide to Jane Austen
(This guide is intended to help you sound like an intellectual in front of people you don't know very well in pubs and at parties. It will not help you write your essays for GCSE or A level English. Go steal those off The Spark.)

• Do wax lyrical about the quality of the prose.
• Don't say you liked the twist at the end. There is never a twist at the end. There is barely a plot at all.
• Do run down the author by saying, “Of course, Austin is more of a miniaturist than a novelist” (Sounds like nonsense, but loads of other pseuds will nod sagely at this point.)
• Don't run her down by saying, “There weren't even any murders! So I added some in biro.”
• Do go on about her razor sharp wit and ability to skewer the social conventions of her time.
• Don't say, “Is it just me, or is this just posh girls' Mills & Boon?”

Note that all of the above only applies to men. Ironically, if you are a woman you can feign knowledge of Jane Austen simply by going, “Ooo! Mr Darcy!” and giggling like a simpleton.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Persuasion was Austen's last book and was not published until after her death. It was also the only one her books I had not read, so now I have collected them all. I'm as happy as a small boy with a completed album full of football stickers.

Seven years before the start of the novel, Anne Elliot was persuaded by her friend Lady Russel (who has taken on the role of Anne's mother after that lady died) to reject the proposal of Frederick Wentworth, even though she loves him, because he has no money or rank and therefore, Lady Russel cannot conceive of the marriage resulting in anything other than misery. In the meantime, Anne's father the stupid, snobbish Sir Walter Elliot has been busy squandering the family fortune because he refses to do without any of his status symbols. Things become so bad that the Elliot family are forced to leave their ancestral seat, Kellynch hall, and rent it out to Admiral Croft. Admiral Croft's wife turns out to be Wentworth's sister and suddenly he is back on the scene, now a captain with wealth he's plundered from Britain's enemies, declaring that he is ready to marry. At first he seems understandably embittered by Anne's original refusal and starts a romance with her friend Louisa Musgroves, claiming to be charmed by her strength of character. Then Louisa goes and blows it all by throwing herself off the cobb at Lyme Regis, for Wentworth to catch her - only he misses and she gives herself a serious head injury. Louisa may not be the sort of wimp who'd pass up a perfectly good fiance just because someone told her to, but she does now seem deficient in common sense. Anyhow, Anne goes to join her impoverished folks for the season in Bath, and before long Mr William Elliot, her cousin, is chatting her up in all the fashionable locations. You can't marry your cousin! It's just wrong! The children will have 3 heads or something... But we don't have to worry about mutant children (shame, they'd give Austen's novels a bit of extra excitement...) because in the nick of time the cousin is revealled to be a bounder and a cad and Captain Wentworth professes his love. Let the bells ring out and so forth.

In her book lady of intellect and taste who is “past her bloom” is still able to bag a husband. Sadly this wasn't the case for Jane herself and she died unmarried at only 41. Seems as if the men of her time cared more for a pretty face with a bit of money attached than for a lady with any kind of mind.

Famously, we never get any scenes in Austin in which men are talking to one another without ladies present, because Jane never got to hear how they spoke each other in these circumstances. I have also noticed that the books finish at the point where the heroine is engaged; presuamably because Austen has no exerience of what happens after that, either.

I like Mrs Croft much better than I like the heroine. I think her a much better model for modern women: she and the Admiral have a marriage of equals and she has followed him all over the world. She helps him to run his affairs and they drive their carriage together.

“Persuasion” was writen at a time of increasing social mobility and has birth versus money as one of it's themes. The book has plenty of sailors who have made their fortune (maybe fighting Napoleon, I'm not sure of the history) and are now looking to marry a class of girlie who would have been well beyond reach otherwise. The idiot Sir Walter Elliot disapproves of the navy on the ground that it is “a means of bringing persons of low birth into undue distinction”, but the posh totty is nevertheless flockng to Naval officers! Austen's view seems to in favour of social mobility and “marrying up”, but in a qualified way: Our happy ending is that Anne finally gets her dashing officer, instead of being stuck with the family's mean-spirited heir presumptive, the author makes it pretty clear that she finds Mrs Clay's scheme to marry Sir Walter absolutely beyond the pale. I can't really see what the difference is between them. Is it OK for men to be social climbers, but not women? Is OK to work your way through manly exploits against the French, but not through marriage? Or is it that as a lawyer's daughter, Mrs Clay ranked a lot lower in Austen's world than it first seems to me?

Another theme of the book seems to be setting up a contrast between family and friends. Anne's friends value her and enjoy her company while her father and sister Elizabeth just ignore her and her sister Mary needs Anne to make her feel important and distract her from her imagined illnesses. Despite this, Anne is made to feel that she has a duty to her family. In some ways, Anne's family is dysfunctional enough to give the novel quite a modern feel; One parent is absent (due to death rather than divorce) and the rest are a couple of silly spendthrifts and a hyperchondriac drama queen.