My First Jane Austen Rant

There are lots of reasons why the recent Austen frenzy must be called a most deplorable event. One of them is that now everyone feels entitled to give judgement on her novels -- especially those who have never read them, or have never given them a thought before.

"Jane Austen is all about love." Tsktsktsk, she wrote cheesy chick-lit, pure and simple.

"Jane Austen is all about money." Oh my! how mercenary, how despicable!

What next? Ah, yes: "Oh, but it's not just the poor she ignores, it's any subject of any real importance whatsoever. Even women's issues, supposedly her main interest. Compare her with Mary Wollestonecraft. It's like something an ostrich might have written." (I found this in the comment section of some tabloid blog, some weeks ago, but have not been able to rediscover the source).

1. Beware of people who try to set laws about what subjects writers should treat and how they should treat them.

2. What, pray, are "subjects of real importance"?

3. In a free society, there is only one thing you can rightfully ask writers to do -- namely, to give their readers the very best they are able to give. Which Jane Austen did.

4. Jane Austen's concept of writing is that of classic literature (Shakespeare, Molière etc). Which means that she didn't deal with futile events and phenomenons of contemporary society and politics, but with what is consistent throughout all ages, e.g. human nature.

5. The subject of real importance Jane Austen was treating, above all in her unequaled master pieces, Mansfield Park and Emma, is self-delusion and self-knowledge -- e.g. human subjectivity. This subject will rest an essential one throughout all history of mankind, and applies as much to people of today (especially those who think they know how the world should be run), as it mattered two hundred years ago.

6. Good intentions (in this case, solidarity with the working class and outrage with the defects of society) don't make a good book. Thanks a bunch, Mary Wollstonecraft, for writing about women's rights. No doubt your work was an essential and important one, and I shall never grudge you anything I don't like in your style and your subjects. However, I suppose that I'm not the only one to feel that your literary work is sentimental, melodramatic, preachy and greatly outdated by now -- as well as downright dreary stuff. That goes, BTW, for a lot of well-intentioned writers who indulge in nice black and white tableaux of noble working class sufferers on the one side, and rich capitalist villains on the other. Messages to be imposed upon the reader nearly always ruin a writer's talents of observation and imagination (if s/he ever possessed them, in the first instance).

7. A great German-Jewish journalist and literary critic of the 20th century, Kurt Tucholsky -- decidedly leftist --, once reviewed a novel that was based on the best intentions, relating a scandal of WW I, and exposing social injustice. Tucholsky greatly approved of the novel, but was outraged with its pompous beginning ("The earth, Tellus, a tiny planet, is swirling through the depths of the universe..."). "When", Tucholsky did ask impatiently, "will you finally get to understand that God with his whole universe attached can be found in the onion pattern of a coffee cup?"