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#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...

CMP#97   Charity from Heroines and Heroes: "You're An Angel of Goodness!"  ​

     In an earlier post, I wrote about charity in Austen’s time and discussed some references to charity in Austen’s novels. Since then, I’ve come across a lot of examples of heroines (and some heroes) performing acts of charity in the novels of the long 18th century. It seems that showing the heroine being charitable was a sure-fire way for the author to establish her virtue and sweetness.
     Emma quietly exults within when she and Harriet encounter Mr. Elton on their way back from a mission of charity to a poor cottager in Emma. She knows from novels that the hero is always rapt with admiration when he sees the heroine under these circumstances: “To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,” thought Emma; “to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase of love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the declaration.”  It didn't work with Mr. Elton, of course, but we can find some men who are won over by the heroine's benevolence, such as the heroes in Coelebs in Search of a Wife, Madame Panache, and Coraly.
    While visiting her mother in Scotland,  Adela in Traits of Nature (1812) visits "one or two of the neighbouring cottages, enquiring... into the circumstances of their inhabitants. Adela was chief interrogator on these occasions; she loved the simple and industrious poor; and never addressed herself to any of that description, without the most manifest signs of regard, interest, and sometimes, even respect.”
    In the Mystic Cottager of Chamouny (1795) Lady Mentoria is a mentor to young Rosalie, taking her on a tour of the local cottagers, who she encourages in habits of thrift, industry and piety: "these my dear girl," she tells Rosalie, "are the real and only useful plans of relief to the indigent..."
    In the The Woman of Letters (1783), the heroine empties her meagre purse to help “a woman of the town” who turns out to be her once-haughty cousin. “Oh! (said she bursting into tears) you are an angel of goodness! Assist such a wretch as me indeed!” 
       In this post and the next, we'll look at charity in city and town, the way poor people were portrayed in novels, and the role of parish officials in doling out charity. We'll see how heroines, who otherwise led very constrained lives, were able to exert agency in their charitable deeds.
​    Finally, we'll ask: if charity is mentioned in so many novels of this period, particularly in relation to heroines, why do we read so little about charity in Austen's novels? 

   Here’s the second post in my new occasional series of books that never got a book review when they were published. For the first, click here.
    This time, I’m reviewing Stratagems Defeated (1811), a four-volume effort by Mrs. Meeke, a prolific authoress who wrote for Minerva Press, a publishing house that specialized in knock-off gothic novels and other sensational fare. It seems her works were a guilty pleasure for the British statesman Thomas Babington Macaulay; he read them avidly, but surreptitiously noted their titles in his journal in Greek.
   Mrs. Meeke may have been a stepsister to the successful authors Frances Burney and Sarah Harriet Burney, but she didn’t use the Burney name on her title pages. Instead she published under the pseudonym “Gabrielli,” a name which connotes Italian exoticism. Stratagems Defeated features a wily Sicilian priest and not one, but two people held prisoner by someone trying to force them into marriage, but it is not a gothic novel. Neither is it a tender romance-- the female love interest doesn’t even show up until the final volume, and there are no impediments to keep hero and heroine apart once they meet. In fact, by the time they meet, the hero is the most ridiculously eligible bachelor in the United Kingdom.