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A review by catherine_t
Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly
5.0
Fellow Janites, I fear we have been reading our dear Miss Austen's books all wrong! We've been missing important themes and deeper meanings.
The problem is, we rarely have the background that Jane's "first readers" (i.e., those contemporaneous to her) would have had. I mean, how many of us have read Ann Radcliffe's work? Fanny Burney? Maria Edgeworth? I haven't, and I took a Master's degree in English Lit. My European history is a bit shaky, too... but Jane's earliest readers would have been living it.
Fortunately, we have Helena Kelly, professor of classics and English literature at Oxford, and her wonderful book, Jane Austen, the Secret Radical. I learned so much from reading this book, so much that I've missed in Austen's work. For instance, Pride and Prejudice isn't just the model for "boy-meets-girl-they-hate-each-other-then-fall-in-love" romances. It's about breaking social barriers--or rather, ignoring social barriers. It's about the fears conjured up by the militias being billeted in towns around the country: fear of invasion, fear of revolution and revolt, fear of tyranny. It is, in short, about politics.
Kelly has opened my eyes to the true genius of Austen, and I am so happy that I purchased this book for my own library.
The problem is, we rarely have the background that Jane's "first readers" (i.e., those contemporaneous to her) would have had. I mean, how many of us have read Ann Radcliffe's work? Fanny Burney? Maria Edgeworth? I haven't, and I took a Master's degree in English Lit. My European history is a bit shaky, too... but Jane's earliest readers would have been living it.
Fortunately, we have Helena Kelly, professor of classics and English literature at Oxford, and her wonderful book, Jane Austen, the Secret Radical. I learned so much from reading this book, so much that I've missed in Austen's work. For instance, Pride and Prejudice isn't just the model for "boy-meets-girl-they-hate-each-other-then-fall-in-love" romances. It's about breaking social barriers--or rather, ignoring social barriers. It's about the fears conjured up by the militias being billeted in towns around the country: fear of invasion, fear of revolution and revolt, fear of tyranny. It is, in short, about politics.
Kelly has opened my eyes to the true genius of Austen, and I am so happy that I purchased this book for my own library.