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CMP#58   The Dangers of Novels, part 3

7/12/2021

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And what are you reading, Miss—?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. 
                                                      --
from Jane Austen's defense of the novel in Northanger Abbey

CMP#58  The Dangers of Novels, part 3
PictureAbelard & Heloise
    In my last two blog posts (part 1 here) and (part 2 here) I've been discussing the dangers of novel-reading as Jane Austen's contemporaries viewed the problem.
     A 1799 book review in The Quarterly Review explains the biggest concern -- impressionable young people are so caught up in sentimental romance, that real life seems tame in comparison:  “those romantic visions which throw into a dead gloom the brightest scenes of real life. And yet, “real life is the very thing which novels affect to imitate; and the young and inexperienced will sometimes be too ready to conceive that the picture is true, in those respects at least in which they wish it to be so. Hence both their temper, conduct and happiness may be materially injured." 
​    Real life, even real love, and the realities of married life, are nothing like a sentimental novel. The Quarterly Review warns that 
novels teach susceptible young ladies to believe that “no sacrifice can be too great for real love; that real love such as subsists, and ever will subsist, between herself and the best of men, is adequate to fill every hour of her existence, and to supply the want of every other gratification, and every other employment.” 


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CMP#57  The Dangers of Novels, part 2

7/8/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. The opinions are mine, but I don't claim originality. Much has been written about Austen. Click here for the first in the series.
"I own I do not like calling [Camilla] a Novel: it gives so simply the notion of a mere love story, that I recoil a little from it. I mean it to be sketches of Characters & morals, put in action, not a Romance."                                                                                             --   Frances Burney (1795)

CMP#57   "It Is Only a Novel"
     In an earlier post, I looked at a dramatic, romantic, (and oh-so-French) epistolary novel which received a disapproving review from The Quarterly Review. The review began:
     “Novels are read so generally and with such avidity by the young of both sexes, that they cannot fail to have a considerable influence on the virtue and happiness of society. Yet their authors do not always appear to be sensible of the serious responsibility attached to their voluntary task.”
        The problem with the novel Amelia Mansfield was that it glorified romantic love over everything else in life. The hero and heroine bring tragedy upon themselves and everyone around them -- not something that parents would want their sons and daughters to emulate.
        As I discussed in my previous post, concerns about the consequences of reading novels were widespread in Austen's time, so much so that the morality of books was a constant theme in novels and reviews of novels. For example, an early review of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein sniffed that whatever might be the talents of the author, the book "inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality."

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CMP#56  The Dangers of Reading Novels, part 1

7/6/2021

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  • “The incidents are brought within probability; and due attention is uniformly paid to moral effect, a degree of commendation we are not always able to bestow on writings of this class.”
  • “Amusing in its story, and respectable for the propriety of moral sentiment.”
  • "This is an interesting, affecting, and instructive tale, replete with good sense and good morals . The narrative is ably written, the language is good, and the sentiments are unexceptionable."
  • "Many excellent reflections, and precepts of the best morality, occur in the work."
  • "These tales are neither showy nor brilliant, but natural, simple, and interesting... they contain a great deal of moral instruction."
  • "This work has more merit than can be ascribed to the crowd of productions of this class, and inculcates virtuous and magnanimous sentiments."
                                                                                                         --- Regency-era book reviews

CMP#56   "It has no moral tendency"
    Just imagine if almost every book review you read included a mention of whether the book had a good moral lesson. That was the case in Austen's time, when novels were viewed with suspicion and concern.
     The chief criticism of novels was that:
  • they were more thrilling than the real world, and therefore distracted people from the real world. 
  • they were so romantic that they gave young people, especially young women, unrealistic ideas about love and life.
  • they glamorized vice.
    For the next few posts, I'll look at these discussions from Austen's time, including some examples of how novels were portrayed in the novels themselves. And of course we'll visit Jane Austen's famous defense of the novel in Northanger Abbey.​  ​

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    More about me here. My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time as a teacher of ESL in China,(just click on "China" in the menu below.) more recent posts focus on my writing, as well as Jane Austen and the long 18th century. Welcome!


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