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A review by artsybry
Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly
1.0
THIS FUCKING BOOK. ALL THE EYEROLLS.
Originally I gave it 2 stars, but after ruminating on it I had to knock it down to 1 star for the author’s sheer audacity because in her mind the only one person to have ever read Jane Austen correctly is herself.
*hello eye roll, my old friend*
It is as if she imagines herself to be the only person who has ever contemplated Jane’s writing before, and the few critics she does acknowledge are swiftly swept aside, sometimes only in a footnote!
Spoiler alert for some of the STUPID suggestions the author puts forward about Jane and her writing, which are new to me, and ridiculous:
• Jane Austen’s family literally killed her.
• Fanny Price’s father physically/sexually(?) assaulted his children, thus Fanny’s sister’s arguing over the little silver knife, which they used as protection against him
• Mr. Knightly doesn’t actually love Emma, he only wants control over Hartford, so that he can enforce more enclosures of the land.
• Wickham is Darcy and Georgiana’s half-brother, and he was never trying to marry her, just trying get in good with the family.
• Harriet Smith and Jane Fairfax are half-sisters.
• Catherine Moreland is masturbating, not opening a cabinet. “Let’s not mince words here. With all its folds and cavities, the key, the fingers, the fluttering and trembling, this looks a lot like a thinly veiled description of female masturbation.”
Spoiler alert for some of the OBVIOUS suggestions the author puts forward about Jane and her writing, which are not new at all, although she claims them to be:
• Mansfield Park is full of slavery!
• Sense and Sensibility is about primogeniture!
Furthermore, the snarkiness and disrespect to other critics and Janeites was insane. For example, one passage in the book: ”Slavery wasn’t some distant, abstract notice for Jane. Her own family has ties to the Caribbean. Her eldest brother James, has a slave owning grandfather, James Nibbs, an Oxford acquaintance of the Reverend George Austen” leads to the following footnote: “The biography Claire Tomlin includes this information in an appendix about attitudes to slavery, almost as if she thinks the issue doesn’t really have anything to do with Jane or her writing.”
So yeah, REALLY annoyed I actually bought this book (hardcovers are expensive y’all!) with the hope I would learn something interesting about Jane’s works. UG.
If you want to read an AMAZING book on Jane’s works, check out John Mullan’s [b:What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved|15793663|What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved|John Mullan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1350952788s/15793663.jpg|19694832]
Originally I gave it 2 stars, but after ruminating on it I had to knock it down to 1 star for the author’s sheer audacity because in her mind the only one person to have ever read Jane Austen correctly is herself.
*hello eye roll, my old friend*
It is as if she imagines herself to be the only person who has ever contemplated Jane’s writing before, and the few critics she does acknowledge are swiftly swept aside, sometimes only in a footnote!
Spoiler alert for some of the STUPID suggestions the author puts forward about Jane and her writing, which are new to me, and ridiculous:
• Jane Austen’s family literally killed her.
• Fanny Price’s father physically/sexually(?) assaulted his children, thus Fanny’s sister’s arguing over the little silver knife, which they used as protection against him
• Mr. Knightly doesn’t actually love Emma, he only wants control over Hartford, so that he can enforce more enclosures of the land.
• Wickham is Darcy and Georgiana’s half-brother, and he was never trying to marry her, just trying get in good with the family.
• Harriet Smith and Jane Fairfax are half-sisters.
• Catherine Moreland is masturbating, not opening a cabinet. “Let’s not mince words here. With all its folds and cavities, the key, the fingers, the fluttering and trembling, this looks a lot like a thinly veiled description of female masturbation.”
Spoiler alert for some of the OBVIOUS suggestions the author puts forward about Jane and her writing, which are not new at all, although she claims them to be:
• Mansfield Park is full of slavery!
• Sense and Sensibility is about primogeniture!
Furthermore, the snarkiness and disrespect to other critics and Janeites was insane. For example, one passage in the book: ”Slavery wasn’t some distant, abstract notice for Jane. Her own family has ties to the Caribbean. Her eldest brother James, has a slave owning grandfather, James Nibbs, an Oxford acquaintance of the Reverend George Austen” leads to the following footnote: “The biography Claire Tomlin includes this information in an appendix about attitudes to slavery, almost as if she thinks the issue doesn’t really have anything to do with Jane or her writing.”
So yeah, REALLY annoyed I actually bought this book (hardcovers are expensive y’all!) with the hope I would learn something interesting about Jane’s works. UG.
If you want to read an AMAZING book on Jane’s works, check out John Mullan’s [b:What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved|15793663|What Matters in Jane Austen? Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved|John Mullan|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1350952788s/15793663.jpg|19694832]