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A review by magtferg
What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved by John Mullan
5.0
Unbelievable attention to the details of her work. Explanations for things!
"It was Austen who had taught later novelists to filter narration through the minds of their own characters. It was Austen who made dialogue the evidence of motives that were never stated. It was Austen, A Jamesian avant la lettre, who made the morality with which her characters act depend on the nice judgements of her readers." (8-9).
"Austen's stories rely on an acknowledgement of men's sexual appetites, which explain why that 'truth universally acknowledged', an affluent bachelor's desire for a wife, is in fact true. There are several men in Austen's fiction who do 'want' a wife for reasons beyond financial calculation" (107)
"Austen is always careful with her sums of money..." (197).
"For the extraordinary thing is that everyone in Austen's fiction seems to know about everyone else's money." (201) "Not only is the income of another family a discussable matter -- just -- but it is also a knowable matter." (203)
"Equally evident to the regency reader would have been the wastefulness of Mr. Bennet, a character always blamed less by us than by Austen's own heroine. His estate brings an income of $2000 a year, which should be enough for a surplus to be put aside for dowries for all his daughters." (207)
"Caring about lover rather than money is admirable" (209)...Catherine Morland's "delusion is the belief that others are above caring about money."
"...books for Austen are not just the solemn matter of improvement. They are the means by which people live out their desires or their follies." (242)
"The managing of the attraction between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, for instance, is a triumph of technique as much as of psychological subtlety. Elizabeth Bennet is an unprecedented creation not just because of her wit and 'archness', but because Austen is able to give us a sense of her self-ignorance. (307) 'Without knowing what she did'. It is the most innocent of phrases, but read one way directs us to perhaps the most important fact about Pride and Prejudice for most readers: the strong current of attraction between two characters who are superficially at odds. Elizabeth does something despite herself..."
".,,Austen's irony, as she commends the self-control that will eventually turn out to have been a self-delusion. But it is also something like Mr Darcy's self-commendation, for the sentence clearly adopts his own stiff and self-important turn of phrase: 'nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity'. (308)
"Extraordinarily, Austen not only discovered the possibilities of free indirect style, she produced in Emma an example of its use that has hardly been matched. So confident did she feel about her control of the technique that she made her plot depend upon it." (310) "Her mistakenness is dutifully followed by the narrator, who shares with her the illusion that Harriet wishes to marry Frank Churchill. "
"It was Austen who had taught later novelists to filter narration through the minds of their own characters. It was Austen who made dialogue the evidence of motives that were never stated. It was Austen, A Jamesian avant la lettre, who made the morality with which her characters act depend on the nice judgements of her readers." (8-9).
"Austen's stories rely on an acknowledgement of men's sexual appetites, which explain why that 'truth universally acknowledged', an affluent bachelor's desire for a wife, is in fact true. There are several men in Austen's fiction who do 'want' a wife for reasons beyond financial calculation" (107)
"Austen is always careful with her sums of money..." (197).
"For the extraordinary thing is that everyone in Austen's fiction seems to know about everyone else's money." (201) "Not only is the income of another family a discussable matter -- just -- but it is also a knowable matter." (203)
"Equally evident to the regency reader would have been the wastefulness of Mr. Bennet, a character always blamed less by us than by Austen's own heroine. His estate brings an income of $2000 a year, which should be enough for a surplus to be put aside for dowries for all his daughters." (207)
"Caring about lover rather than money is admirable" (209)...Catherine Morland's "delusion is the belief that others are above caring about money."
"...books for Austen are not just the solemn matter of improvement. They are the means by which people live out their desires or their follies." (242)
"The managing of the attraction between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, for instance, is a triumph of technique as much as of psychological subtlety. Elizabeth Bennet is an unprecedented creation not just because of her wit and 'archness', but because Austen is able to give us a sense of her self-ignorance. (307) 'Without knowing what she did'. It is the most innocent of phrases, but read one way directs us to perhaps the most important fact about Pride and Prejudice for most readers: the strong current of attraction between two characters who are superficially at odds. Elizabeth does something despite herself..."
".,,Austen's irony, as she commends the self-control that will eventually turn out to have been a self-delusion. But it is also something like Mr Darcy's self-commendation, for the sentence clearly adopts his own stiff and self-important turn of phrase: 'nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity'. (308)
"Extraordinarily, Austen not only discovered the possibilities of free indirect style, she produced in Emma an example of its use that has hardly been matched. So confident did she feel about her control of the technique that she made her plot depend upon it." (310) "Her mistakenness is dutifully followed by the narrator, who shares with her the illusion that Harriet wishes to marry Frank Churchill. "