A recent (stupid) conversation on the hellsite previously known as Twitter has made me realise something interesting. When it comes to range of characters and experiences in writing, the extreme of range would be Shakespeare, who seems to contain everyone and everything (also able to depict a wide range of characters though not as much as Shakespeare are, I would say, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Cao Xueqin); and the polar opposite in this regard would probably be Jane Austen.
I mean, even compared to other great authors who write about domestic life, Jane Austen’s remarkably narrow: she mainly writes about the landed gentry; servants are neither heard nor seen; other races are not mentioned, except in the unfinished Sanditon; almost all the conversations between male characters take place with a woman present; her characters barely discuss politics or social issues; her novels only depict a tiny part of society; etc. She’s narrower than Henry James, Edith Wharton, George Eliot, even Charlotte Bronte (I’m thinking of Shirley and the Luddite uprisings).
Isn’t it extraordinary then, how popular she is? Her novels are read and beloved and adapted around the world. And even though the majority of her readers and fans are women (and some philistines think Jane Austen’s novels are only for women), we know that Jane Austen is admired, even loved, by quite a few male writers and lovers of literature. Clearly there’s something universal about Jane Austen’s novels, about her themes of love and courtship and people misperceiving things and misunderstanding each other and misunderstanding themselves—these things happen to everybody regardless of background, regardless of race, regardless of nationality, regardless of gender, regardless of religion. And perhaps, it’s precisely because she leaves out discussions of politics and social issues and leaves out her own opinions that her novels have such wide appeal, that readers of different views and background can all claim her as their own (I have seen conservatives call her conservative and feminists call her feminist, for example).
When I think about Shakespeare’s popularity and influence around the world and throughout history, it’s easy to understand as Shakespeare is so large and there’s a Shakespeare for everybody: those who don’t like tragedies can go for the comedies; those who don’t like comedies can go for the histories; those interested in politics have the Roman plays; those fond of fairies have A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest; those preoccupied with race have Othello and The Merchant of Venice; those interested in the subject of colonialism (and part of a national independence movement) find something in The Tempest, and so on and so forth. The wide appeal of Jane Austen’s novels, despite their narrowness, is in a sense more puzzling and thus more fascinating.
What do you think?
I think when a writer’s work obviously displays quality despite lacking what many may consider a necessary criterion of merit, then it is the criterion and not the work we should question.
ReplyDeleteSorry - I clicked in the Publish button too quickly. The above comment was from me.
ReplyDeleteI wondering it is that we all are caught up in some kind of domestic life, pairing off or just dealing with family members. Not everyone gets to live in the grand. Shakespeare gives me a chance to experience the breadth of human experience, and Austen the distillation that comes from the limits of the particular. YMMV
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting way of looking at literature. I still have yet to read Austen.
ReplyDeleteAusten is popular because the subject which dominates her work is love, perhaps the most important one. And because she writes extremely well. The fact that she doesn’t touch upon a more diverse range of subjects may actually make her more popular.
ReplyDeleteShe does not write about love, per se. For instance, there is no romantic passion in her novels. She is a moralist, who uses societal conventions involving marriage to remark on human frailties in the presence of economic motivations.
DeleteNo romantic passion? See Persuasion.
DeleteThe best counter-examples to what you say are Persuasion and Mansfield Park, but in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen also writes about love. It is true that she does remark on human frailies and the book is about the pride and prejudice of the two main characters, but it's also true that Elizabeth and Mr Darcy fall in love with each other as they come to understand each other and understand themselves.
I suppose everyone just means scope of subject, but honestly Austen does not seem especially narrow to me. Each novel is distinctly, formally different. Most novelists, even many of the best, just write variations on the same novel, much moreso than Austen.
ReplyDeleteI saw in that argument that Trollope was pushed as a "wide" contrast, and something like The Way We Live Now is certainly a wide-ranging book in these terms. But I do not think the Trollopists would be so impressed with his girth if he had died at age 41 like Austen.
Thanks to everyone for your comments, and sorry for the late response (I've been lazy).
ReplyDeleteTom, I agree, each novel is different. But when people talk about the narrowness of Jane Austen, they mean the scope of subject, the kind of world that she depicts.
(I love Austen though).
Austen is not “narrow. ‘ She wrote what she considered to be in miniature. https://blogs.bl.uk/english-and-drama/2020/07/two-inches-of-ivory-a-newish-jane-austen-acquisition.html She does not write in broad strokes on a large canvas, but with precision on a small one.
ReplyDeleteYes, she wrote in miniature, not on a large canvas like Tolstoy or Dickens. But that doesn't exactly argue against my point that she is narrow, as I have explained in my blog post. Edith Wharton also writes about a small group of characters in each novel and doesn't use a large canvas, but she is less narrow as she doesn't only write about her own class - Ethan Frome depicts a different environment, for instance.
DeleteI think there are a number of factors at play.
ReplyDeleteOne is the sheer quality of the writing, which elevates her above her peers - funny, insightful, beautiful sentences.
There is also Brand Jane Austen, which has latched onto her as 'the original writer of romantic comedy' (to which people I would say ... have you read/seen Much Ado About Nothing?), and coupled with the Regency Romance, which has led to so many movie adaptations, including those in other settings.
But I think the main thing is that even though the social setting is restricted, the books are universal. Not just the themes, but so, so many small details show us that, regardless of who or where they are, people are just people. The small, everyday moments that (AFAIK - I haven't read extensively) other authors of the time didn't give us, being caught up in moralistic tales or sweeping adventures.
Here are just a few examples of the kind of thing I am thinking of:
- Elinor in S&S seeing that there are long queues everywhere, joins the shortest one, which has just one man in it, and hopes that when he sees she is waiting he will finish his business quickly. (Which, being Robert Ferrars, he doesn't.)
- Elizabeth in P&P dying from embarrassment over her family's behaviour
- Little Fanny in MP wanting to write to William but being too scared to ask about where she can get ink and paper
- Again in S&S, when Elinor and Edward are waiting for the Parsonage to be fixed up and 'experiencing, as usual, a thousand disappointments and delays from the unaccountable dilatoriness of the workmen' (like every home renovation ever!)
- Anne in P with the small child clinging to her back, unable to make him get off because if she just tries to throw him off he will get hurt
PS One thing I meant to mention was the meme that was going around a while ago: 'Jane Austen's works are timeless classics because she knew the real horrors in life are having to listen to men who think they're better than you and receiving unannounced visitors.' Although I don't entirely agree that these exact issues feature PARTICULARLY highly in Austen's work, I do think it goes to my point that even though we may be temporally, geographically and culturally removed from her world, she still writes about things that resonate with us.
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