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CMP#147  An Excursion from London to Dover

8/10/2023

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This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here.

CMP#147  Book Review: An Excursion from London to Dover
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    By her own account, Jane Gardiner (1758–1840) was fortunate in her employers when she went to work in her mid-teens as governess for a genteel family with six daughters. Ten years later, she started her own school so she could offer a home to her parents and her invalid sister. By the time she retired at age 78, she had taught over 600 girls and worked for more than sixty years.
     Gardiner also published some children’s books. Her 1806 book, An Excursion from London to Dover, is explained by its subtitle: “Containing some account of the Manufactures, Natural and Artificial Curiosities, History and Antiquities of the Towns and Villages. Interspersed with Historical and Biographical Anecdotes, Natural History, Poetical Extracts, and Tales. Particularly Intended for the Amusement and Instruction of Youth.”
     The book is narrated by Jeanette, who is travelling with her friend Adelina and Adelina's father Mr. A____. It’s like an 1806 version of The Magic Schoolbus but without the magic.
  All of this improving information is roughly tied to something approaching a plot, in which Mr. A_____ encounters several old school-mates or acquaintances on the journey. These additional adults give  impromptu lectures to the children, speaking off-the-cuff about everything from the development of paper to to the anatomy of the snail. Adelina and Jeanette also recite poems from memory, whether the topic under discussion is the ocean, hedgehogs, spiders, war, clouds, cuckoos, etc, and Jeanette has perfect recall of the biographies of eminent rulers, scientists, and statesmen. Gardiner also works in some short moral tales and a backstory or two.
      Writing after her mother’s death, Jane Gardiner’s daughter said of An Excursion: “Though this work does not possess much originality of thought, the reviewers allowed it to evince sound judgment, great taste, and an earnest desire to promote the improvement of the rising generation.”
     “Originality of thought,” is a euphemism for the fact that most of the book was what we today would call plagiarized.


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CMP#146   More Chimney-sweeps

8/3/2023

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This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. ​The introductory post is here.  My "six simple questions for academics" post is here.

CMP#146 Chimneysweeps and Cupids, again
     Last December, my research into Kitty, a Fair but Frozen Maid (the riddle which Mr. Woodhouse tries to recall in Emma) was published in Persuasions online, the journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America. I also published some pages and blog posts with more background information about Georgian love poetry and riddles.
     
My research is intended to refute the theory that the Kitty riddle about a chimney-sweep is actually a very dark and scurrilous poem about venereal disease and deflowering young virgins. So I won't recap all of that here, but I have come across some more riddles about chimney-sweeps, which I want to share because it gives us more context into what people of the long 18th century said about chimney sweeps.
​   As we 
know, the job of sweeping chimneys was miserable and sometimes fatal. Poorly fed, unwashed, overworked, dressed in rags, they were a daily sight on city streets. Many sympathetic poems and ballads were written about them. 
​   But Georgians, being Georgians, could joke about anything. The blackness of chimney-sweeps was a frequent topic for humor, of course, and the same terms--"sooty," "dusky," even "negro"--were used interchangeably for them.
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Jolly, light-hearted Christmas card

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CMP#144   Advice from Mrs. Elton

5/16/2023

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. 
​
Click here for the first in the series.

CMP#144: Mrs. Elton's Advice, or, Chat GPT writes my blog post for me
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    Some of you might know more about Chat GPT than I do, and some might know less. I hadn't paid much attention to the whole AI and Chat GPT thing, but recently, I had the idea of writing an advice column on how to be a good conversationalist, as though written by Mrs. Elton from Emma.
​    I thought about the various points I could put in there, such as "the more you talk about yourself, the sooner people will get to know you, and the better they will like you,"  And, "If you have relatives who live in a very grand way, be sure to work them into the conversation as often as you can."
    Then I thought, I wonder if Chat GPT can do this? So I asked it to "write an advice column as if you were Mrs. Elton in Jane Austen's novel Emma, on the topic of being a good conversationalist." Almost immediately, the writing started scrolling across the screen. Here is the result...


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CMP#138 Guest Post: Jane Austen, Anti-Capitalist

4/1/2023

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It's always a pleasure to encourage young scholars, so I'm pleased to welcome Lura Amandan to "Clutching My Pearls" this week. Ms. Amandan is a postgraduate student at the University of Reinlegen in Germany. Her doctoral thesis is focused on early critiques of capitalism in European literature, and with the kind permission of her faculty advisors, I am sharing an excerpt from her truly groundbreaking work-in-progress concerning Jane Austen and capitalism. My six questions for Austen scholars post is here.

Jane Austen, "A Marxist Before Marx"
PictureKarl Marx and his daughter Eleanor: was her name inspired by Austen? (Source: British Library)
    ​As many scholars of Austen have long pointed out, Jane Austen intended to use Sanditon to explore the social and moral consequences of capitalism. Sadly, Austen laid the manuscript aside during her final illness. Interrogating Austen through a critical lens reveals that she was a committed anti-capitalist who was determined to fight back in the only way she could--through her pen.
    I am not referring to Austen's well-known portrayals of the landed gentry and the lesser nobility, but rather, her subtle attacks on the pernicious influence of consumerism. To a startling extent, the buying and selling of things and the rise of the
 urban bourgeoisie forms a backdrop to her so-called marriage plot novels. Scholar David Daiches called Austen "a Marxist before Marx." 
   
   It is no exaggeration to say that Austen shows us whether a character is good or bad by their reaction to consumerism. Two of Austen’s heroines never step inside a store--Elizabeth Bennet and Fanny Price. And, significantly, the heroines who do go shopping always live to regret the experience. It is only the fops and fools who like to shop, as we will see. Austen’s message could not be clearer: Capitalism is the root of all evil. Let’s critically take the novels one by one...


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    About the author:

    I blog about my research into Jane Austen and her world, plus a few other interests. Welcome! 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 about me here. 


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