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A review by letsgolesbians
Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly
4.0
3.5, rounding up.
I found this to be an interesting read; the examination of Jane Austen's work felt like something from a college class, which is something I've missed over the past few years--an in-depth examination and discussion of themes over the course of an author's repertoire. Each Austen novel has a chapter dedicated to it, discussing overall themes and symbols and pointing out language that likely goes over the heads of contemporary readers.
Admittedly, I don't know a lot about Austen-era Britain, so I learned a lot while reading this and found it pretty eye-opening. People have an idea of who Austen was and the works that she wrote, but this book shows how intelligent and careful she was with her writing. There were a few times I found arguments to be a bit of a stretch, but almost everything else seemed pretty accurate.
One thing I would have appreciated was an acknowledgment that a lot of what Kelly was describing regarding class and gender only applied to white people; obviously an in-depth look at POC in Austen-era England would have been out of place, as Jane and her characters were all white, but any indication that the customs and rules being described were different for men and women of color. The Mansfield Park chapter discusses slavery, because that's what Jane was condemning with that book, but other than that, there's nothing about POC. Even that chapter says things like this:
It's laughable, or would be if we had no idea of the horrors that lie beneath it--the clinking of chains, the stench of bodies pressed together in their own urine and feces and vomit, the ceaseless movement of the sea, what waited at the journey's end.
...and, you know, the fact that they were fucking SLAVES. The conditions on the slave ships shouldn't be the big horror. Slavery itself was the big horror, and treating slavery like it's a historical thing to be studied (the same way the revolutions and issues with the church are treated in the examinations of Austen's works) rather than a horrible and disgusting part of the world's history is doing a disservice to people of color.
Anyway, I recommend this if you're an Austen fan. I learned a lot, and now I'm really disappointed that Austen died before she finished her book about a mixed-race character.
I found this to be an interesting read; the examination of Jane Austen's work felt like something from a college class, which is something I've missed over the past few years--an in-depth examination and discussion of themes over the course of an author's repertoire. Each Austen novel has a chapter dedicated to it, discussing overall themes and symbols and pointing out language that likely goes over the heads of contemporary readers.
Admittedly, I don't know a lot about Austen-era Britain, so I learned a lot while reading this and found it pretty eye-opening. People have an idea of who Austen was and the works that she wrote, but this book shows how intelligent and careful she was with her writing. There were a few times I found arguments to be a bit of a stretch, but almost everything else seemed pretty accurate.
One thing I would have appreciated was an acknowledgment that a lot of what Kelly was describing regarding class and gender only applied to white people; obviously an in-depth look at POC in Austen-era England would have been out of place, as Jane and her characters were all white, but any indication that the customs and rules being described were different for men and women of color. The Mansfield Park chapter discusses slavery, because that's what Jane was condemning with that book, but other than that, there's nothing about POC. Even that chapter says things like this:
It's laughable, or would be if we had no idea of the horrors that lie beneath it--the clinking of chains, the stench of bodies pressed together in their own urine and feces and vomit, the ceaseless movement of the sea, what waited at the journey's end.
...and, you know, the fact that they were fucking SLAVES. The conditions on the slave ships shouldn't be the big horror. Slavery itself was the big horror, and treating slavery like it's a historical thing to be studied (the same way the revolutions and issues with the church are treated in the examinations of Austen's works) rather than a horrible and disgusting part of the world's history is doing a disservice to people of color.
Anyway, I recommend this if you're an Austen fan. I learned a lot, and now I'm really disappointed that Austen died before she finished her book about a mixed-race character.