It is easy to dismiss the books of Jane Austen. After all, we are talking about early 19th century novels in which balls, courtship, and matchmaking are central to – if not are – the plot, and whose happy endings never stretch farther than marriage. Not the stuff of feminist book clubs, so to speak.
That is not to say that I do not like them myself; I really do. Over the years I read and reread Austen’s books, watched their many adaptations, and cultivated a knowledge of English that was in part informed by Austen’s mastery of it. So, it is perhaps not surprising that when a friend asked if I would host a book club with her to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, I said yes.
In the months that followed, we revisited Austen’s six novels. And Austen managed to surprise me again. It was not only her characters, so elaborately drawn, that I was happy to spend time with. Nor was it just her razor-sharp wit, commenting on the follies of her characters and the idiocies of social life, that was a pleasure to reread.
What stood out to me this time were her heroines; this group of women who – constrained as they are by a society that denies them the capacity for independent thought – are endowed with strength, character, thought, and – yes – agency.
Revisiting Austen made me realise that her main characters consistently display traits that main characters in contemporary popular culture often lack. It made me realise that two and a half centuries on, there are lessons of hers that we are still learning.
1. Never allow yourself to be mistreated. Not even by those who profess to love you.
The story of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice is undeniably iconic. So, it is worth considering what actually happens between them. A rich, educated man falls in love with a woman of lower social standing. As these feelings wound his pride, he tries to resist them but ultimately fails. He proposes but, in the process, comments on her ‘inferiority’ and what a ‘degradation’ it would be to marry her. Now, the trope of the aloof man who insults and humiliates those he cares for but is ultimately redeemed by the love of a good woman is ubiquitous in contemporary popular culture. (Just think of The Summer I Turned Pretty or My Life with the Walter Boys.)
By that logic, all Elizabeth is supposed to do is see through Darcy’s mask of arrogance and, through kindness and self-submission, will him to let go of all those ugly feelings that keep them apart. Austen, however, writes something different. Elizabeth rejects Darcy’s proposal and makes it clear that his words offended her: ‘“I might as well enquire,” replied she, “why, with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character?”’
Elizabeth refuses to be treated as inferior and tells Darcy that his arrogance makes it impossible for her to be with him. (She, of course, is partially misinformed about Darcy’s character and will herself have to go through a humiliating discovery – but that does not render her criticism of Darcy baseless.) And when, at the end of the book, they do end up together that is because Mr. Darcy has listened to her and decided to change his ways. In Austen’s world, women aren’t expected to put up with insults disguised as love. And they aren’t expected to ‘fix’ men; men are expected to do it themselves.
2. Do not be afraid of an argument.
As much as I love challenging conversations, as soon as they reach argument territory, my instinct is to change the topic. I do not think this is an experience all women share; I do not think it is only women who share it. But I do believe that for many women, the fear of disagreement is intrinsically linked to a lesson we are taught all our lives: whatever you do, be agreeable.
So, imagine my surprise when I realised that Austen’s heroines time and again engage in lengthy debates – and not seldom with men. The topic of these debates might seem limited – but they are an opportunity for the women to express their opinions, present their arguments, and, at times, to reflect on bigger truths. Take Anne Elliot’s conversation with Captain Harville in Persuasion: Anne says that women’s love lasts longer, Harville challenges her, and the two engage in an elaborate, thoughtful back-and-forth.
Finally, when he points to literature to support his argument, Anne dismisses him: ‘Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.’
Anne believes her intellect to match that of a captain and does not back off from an argument; and the conversation that unfolds allows her to discuss the constraints placed on women.
3. Saying mean things about men is not the same as being a feminist.
Rereading Austen’s books, I was struck by how closely the situations she described resembled experiences from my own life. (Did Willoughby invent ghosting?) One such instance was the character of Isabella Thorpe from Northanger Abbey. The book’s heroine, Catherine Morland, meets Isabella in Bath and the two become inseparable friends. What the trusting, naïve Catherine does not see, soon becomes clear to the reader: Isabella is selfish, unreliable, and nothing – and no one – is more important to her than being liked by men. It was interesting to see how much Isabella insists that men mean nothing to her. She regularly demeans them in order to illustrate her own indifference – a reflex, I would argue, women share to this day.
In one scene, Isabella catches the eyes of two young men; when they get up and leave, she rejoices in having gotten rid of them and promptly invites Catherine to follow them in order to look at a new hat.
‘Catherine readily agreed. “Only,” she added, “perhaps we may overtake the two young men.”
“Oh! Never mind that. If we make haste, we shall pass by them presently, and I am dying to show you my hat.”
“But if we only wait a few minutes, there will be no danger of our seeing them at all.”
“I shall not pay them any such compliment, I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.”’
Isabella loudly refuses to treat men with respect; in another scene, she declares them to be without heart. But while her words seek to demonstrate her own independence, her actions reveal that her world is in fact centred around men. In other words, she is a lot less independent than those who are able to think for themselves and might even refrain from denouncing half of humanity.
4. If you have strong enough convictions, you’ll be able to stand up to authority.
Fanny Price is not the most popular of the Austen heroines. The main character of Mansfield Park is not as witty as Elizabeth Bennett, not as passionate as Marianne Dashwood, and not as confident as Emma Woodhouse.
She is withdrawn, somewhat hapless, and maybe even a little prudish. She spends most of the book longing for her best friend and (disturbingly) cousin, Edmund Bertram, and submitting herself to the whims and abuses of her aunt, Mrs. Norris. She seems to be a passive character, ready to take whatever’s given to her without question. However, she is perhaps the only Austen heroine who truly surprises us. When the charming and rich Henry Crawford proposes to her, she rejects him; and she remains steadfast in her decision even when her authoritative uncle, Sir Thomas – on whom she is financially dependent – and her beloved Edmund try to convince her otherwise.
The time Fanny spent hiding out in her room, reading and contemplating, proves to have helped her become her own autonomous self: her decision is finally accepted and, later, vindicated. When faced with pressures to submit, and with no one on her side, the least rebellious of the Austen heroines stands her ground and prevails.
5. Your mind is your true treasure.
Austen does not mince her words when she dislikes someone; in fact, she can be quite ruthless in describing the shortcomings of her characters. When I tried to put my finger on what traits she seems to dislike the most, I found that it was a lack of thought and insincerity. In contrast to these characteristics stand her heroines who, each in their own way, grow up to be independent women who know their own minds and speak their truths. Sure, they are generally described as pretty – but their love stories centre not so much around beauty but around a meeting of the minds.
This is what the critics behind the podcast Critics at Large pointed out in their episode on Austen: ‘I think that the intellectual being erotic is the huge appeal of these books over time… That the act of thinking is sexy and thinking together but also thinking very seriously about life and about oneself and expanding your knowledge – that is beautiful and that is attractive to someone else but also to oneself. It makes one worthy of attraction.’
Austen’s heroines are rational beings with wandering, hungry minds – and it is their minds, above all, that make them heroines.
Jane Austen: a radical?
Two-hundred and fifty years on, how should we read Jane Austen? Is she truly nothing more than a romance author obsessed with balls and courtship? Or is she a secret radical who smuggled her true message under the guise of innocent-looking marriage plots?
While I do believe – and I hope to have shown – that Austen deserves more credit than she is often given, I would also caution people from seeing her in a revolutionary light. Austen was a person of her time; her books mocked and criticised society but never sought to challenge or transcend its boundaries.
As Edward Said’s 1993 text Jane Austen and Empire shows, Mansfield Park in particular reflects contemporary British society’s silence and complicity in slavery: ‘Having read Mansfield Park as part of the structure of an expanding imperialist venture, one cannot simply restore it to the canon of “great literary masterpieces” – to which it most certainly belongs – and leave it at that. Rather, I think, the novel steadily, if unobtrusively, opens up a broad expanse of domestic imperialist culture without which Britain’s subsequent acquisition of territory would not have been possible’. Or consider the question of class: in Emma, one evidence of the heroine’s character development is her realisation that ‘the intimacy between [herself and Harriet] must sink; their friendship must change into a calmer sort of goodwill’ in reaffirmation of their class difference.
For those looking for radical texts from the 19th century, there are women – novelists and theorists alike – who offer just that. Jane Austen is not one of them. But perhaps she does not need to be. Revisiting Austen this year, I found considerable delight in her sharp, witty prose and her well-formed characters; but most importantly, I found that she offers lessons which – as progressive as we all wish to see ourselves – we still need to be reminded of from time to time.
Written by Hanna Zelma Horányi.
Hanna Zelma Horányi is a writer and journalist from Budapest, Hungary. She is currently based in Vienna where she is pursuing a master’s degree in Nationalism Studies.
