“Where is my Fanny? Why do I not see my little Fanny?” asks Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield Park, and posterity snickers.
   Where I'm from, "fanny" means a derriere, as in "get your little fanny over here." But I've read that it's also a slang term for lady parts. I wanted to confirm this, then I got embarrassed when I thought about my Google search history, so I stopped. Then I found a useful book called The Lover's Tongue, which says "fanny" “emerged around 1928, and is now a familiar, albeit quaint, euphemism for the buttocks. The word fanny might have been inspired by John Cleland’s 1749 erotic novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, the protagonist of which, Fanny Hill, is frequently exposing her bottom.”
   Author Mark Morton adds: "Fanny has also been used to refer to the female genitals which might make a connection to Fanny Hill even more feasible.”  So there you go.
    Anyway, there are many slang names for lady parts, that’s for sure. And the ​derriere is undeniably an important part of female charms and is particularly in vogue today, it seems.
     The question is, when we think of Fanny Price, are we supposed to think about lady parts? And when we think about lady parts, are supposed to think about prostitutes? And when we think of prostitutes, are we supposed to reflect that, after all, marriage is pretty much like prostitution? And are we intended to go on and realize that Mansfield Park "rigorously links prostitution to courtship and courtship to corruption in the culture at large"? Because, look at how Fanny's brother William got promoted to lieutenant... 
​      In Austen's Unbecoming Conjunctions, Subversive Laughter, Embodied History, scholar Jillian Heydt-Stevenson argues Austen intended for her readers to follow this ramshackle train of thought...

    Since I started Clutching My Pearls, I’ve read a lot of Austen scholarship, some of which I've found informative and thought-provoking, but on the other hand, some of it I've found to be agenda-driven and influenced by presentism.
    Granted, I'm not an academic. My eyes glaze over at mentions of Derrida and Foucault--all that stuff is just beyond me. I'd like to know more about Austen's contributions to the development of the novel, but modern scholars have moved beyond that. Or rather, they seem to take it for granted that Austen was writing at such an advanced level of subtlety and symbolism that the merest object or reference--an apricot, a shawl, a hedge, a surname--can unlock the key to a hidden level of meaning that exists underneath and sometimes in contradiction to the narrative. I'm unconvinced: would an author of her time, even an author of genius, write novels about happy marriages that aren't really about happy marriages at all?
    I have no quarrel with individual reactions to Austen, or with what people draw out of Austen. But I do differ with those who ascribe improbable opinions to Austen, hence the following rebuttal.
   For my 100th blog post, I offer six simple questions which I think academics might profitably ask themselves when formulating their theories about who Jane Austen was, and what she believed...

CMP#99  Celia, the smiling heroine--with inverted quotes around “smiling”​

 ​What if I told you…
     there's an 1809 novel that contains 14 uses of the word “slave” and one use of the word “plantation” and features a wise and benevolent character named Mrs. Mansfield ?
      Well, if you aren't hip-deep in Mansfield Park commentary, I suppose you would say, “so?” But if you are au fait with modern scholarly analysis, you would know that Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) is generally thought to be named after Lord Mansfield, whose 1781 ruling in the Somerset case effectually ended slavery in the United Kingdom. And you’d be aware that although there is only one reference to the slave trade, in which no opinion is expressed, many scholars think Mansfield Park has a pro-abolition theme.
     So what if I told you that Celia in Search of a Husband, despite using the word “slave” 14 times, and despite having a character named Mansfield, is absolutely not about slavery at all? The writer of this novel chose the name "Mansfield" because it's a fine old English name, and even though debates raged over slavery, it was common to speak of ladies making "slaves" out of their admirers, or being a "slave to fashion." (Austen has "Miss Crawford was not the slave of opportunity" in Mansfield Park.)
       Celia in Search of a Husband has other fish to fry instead of British imperialism; it was written to take advantage of the popularity of Hannah More’s moralizing best-seller Coelebs in Search of a Wife which came out at the end of 1808. The success of More’s novel about a single man looking for a good wife led to many sequels (written by others, not More) and imitations. And yet, Celia in Search of a Husband is not really about a search for a husband, although a husband eventually shows up near the end.  It’s about the heroine, Celia Delacour, travelling to the wicked city, observing its vices and follies, and explaining her Christian principles to anyone who will listen and lots of people who won't...

CMP#98  Did Austen Care About the Poor?

 In the previous post, we looked at the grim reality of poverty in Regency England. The sufferings of the poor were reflected in the novels of the day. The heroines of sentimental novels were often portrayed as charitably ministering to the poor, a sure way of establishing their bona fides. 

   The deserving poor are portrayed with a great deal of sentimentality in novels of this era. The gratitude of the peasantry toward their benefactors involves a lot of blessing and lisping:
    In Secrets Made Public (1808), Ellen, the foundling/ward of benevolent Sir Octavius, is “the constant companion of his charitable excursions, and her sensibility was spoken by the tear that glittered in her eye, as the infant to whom she gave bread lisped its little prayer of thanks, or the white-headed old man crossed his hands on his breast, and, looking to the heavens, breathed a silent blessing on his benefactor.”
    In Geraldine, or Modes of Faith & Practice (1820), the heroine recollects the happy days when she used to visit the cottagers with her late mother: “The labourers, returning with slow and wearied step from their daily toil, had quickened their pace, at her approach, and bowed in silent gratitude to their benefactress. The little children had ceased their sports on the green, and ran to claim a smile from the kind lady. The ‘busy housewife’ had left her wheel, to drop a courtesy, and call down blessings upon her.”
     The hero of The Denial (1792) helps a destitute gentlewoman and her children. “After a silence of some seconds, she said, “This charitable donation will confer happiness and plenty, blessings to which I have long been a stranger. Accept the thanks of a grateful heart, and as soon as my little-ones can lisp your name, I will teach them to bless that hand which hath so liberally contributed to the relief of their misery.”
    The History of Lady Julia Mandeville, (1792), relates how “Lord Belmont enjoys the most unmixed and lively of all human pleasures, that of making others happy… every eye shines with transport at his sight; parents point him out to their children; the first accents of prattling infancy are taught to lisp his honoured name; and age, supported by his bounteous hand, pours out the fervent prayer to Heaven for its benefactor.”
      I think I'm seeing a pattern here...