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CMP#139  Book Review: The Vicar of Wrexhill

4/6/2023

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Those who think we should speak of the past only to condemn it, but still want to rescue Jane Austen from the dustbin of history, have a bit of a dilemma on their hands. She wasn't a radical. Click here for the introduction to this blog. 

CMP#139:   Frances Trollope's The Vicar of Wrexhill (1837)
Picture Frances Trollope (1779-1863)
   After wrapping up my blog series about unflattering portraits of Methodist ministers in 18th century novels, I came across The Vicar of Wrexhill by Frances Trollope. This 1832 novel is a bit outside the date range of novels I study, and the titular vicar is not a Methodist, but an evangelical in the Church of England. However, like the ministers in 18th-century novels, the evangelicals in this story are ranting fanatics or hypocrites and their followers are deluded fools.
    Many people might pass over The Vicar of Wrexhill because its once-controversial subject matter--"High church" Anglicanism versus evangelism--would be of little interest in a post-Christian age. However, the story still offers snarky humour, heroines in peril, a cantankerous old married couple, and romance. The dialogue is sometimes stilted--it's hard to believe that 17-year-old girls actually speak with such complex sentences, but then I feel that way about Marianne Dashwood as well.
    I liked the way Mrs. Trollope--like Jane Austen in Mansfield Park--designed her characters to come into conflict because of their differing personalities and world views. But for me, the biggest payoff was realizing I was reading about a 19th century moral panic, with so many parallels to the debates preoccupying society in our own times, specifically in the way people behaved--intimidating one another, condemning one another, freezing people out. Buckle up for a slow-motion train wreck in which you're not sure whether the characters are heading for ultimate tragedy or a happy ending...


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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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CMP#130  Plots and Plausibility

2/7/2023

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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#130   Plots and Plausibility, or, Illegitimate Ideas
PictureSir Felix adjusting himself after dallying with Ruby in the woods.
     My book club is reading The Way We Live Now (1875) by Anthony Trollope, so I was in the mood to re-watch the 2001 BBC mini-series with Matthew Macfadyen playing the irredeemably useless and selfish Sir Felix Carbury. In the novel, Sir Felix invests a lot of time into trying to seduce working-class girl Ruby Ruggles, who deludes herself that he will marry her. Sir Felix and Ruby meet secretly in the woods. He “got his arm around her waist,” he “talked of love,” but he dared not "ask her to be his mistress.” In the mini-series, however, Sir Felix and Ruby (played by Maxime Peake) do more than chat and kiss and cuddle.
   The mini-series version seemed more probable to me. Of course Sir Felix wouldn’t waste his time travelling down to the country to see Ruby, or take her out to the music hall in London, if she didn’t put out.
​   And I wonder whether Trollope’s readers would have assumed the same. Yet I don't see Trollope hinting that they actually have sex. When push comes literally to shove in the novel, Ruby screams for help. She goes on to marry respectably. Her complacent fiancé asserts that she is a good girl. I think if she wasn't, she would have been fated to die by the end of the story.
     In Emma, Jane Austen references Goldsmith's short poem: "When lovely woman stoops to folly." I think Austen mentioned the "dying from shame" trope in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Recently, however, I’ve come across some examples of readers and critics arguing that there are some artfully hidden clues about sexual liaisons and love children in Jane Austen’s novels..


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CMP#129  The East Room

1/30/2023

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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.

She alone was sad and insignificant: she had no share in anything; she might go or stay; she might be in the midst of their noise, or retreat from it to the solitude of the East room, without being seen or missed. She could almost think anything would have been preferable to this.                                                    --  Fanny Price at her most Eeyore-ish in Mansfield Park

CMP#129   About the East Room
PictureEdmund and Fanny in the East room
   Our heroine Fanny is perplexed and distressed. She needs time alone for reflection so she goes to a quiet room at Mansfield called the East room. But before we get to those internal deliberations, Austen pauses to describe the contents of the East room in a way that she perhaps never does for any other room in her novels. She also explains how Fanny came to use it as her own private day-room, even though Aunt Norris will not allow the comfort of a fire. We learn what having this room means to Fanny. (The relevant excerpt is posted at the end of this blog for anyone wanting a refresher).
   The East room is Fanny's refuge, her “nest of comforts,” even though it’s chilly and she has only battered school-room chairs to sit in and it’s decorated with drawings and furniture “too ill done for the drawing-room.” Here she keeps objects of sentimental value, like a sketch from her seafaring brother. She has her geraniums and her books. Fanny is a collector of books and she likes reading. As she is pacing and thinking, Edmund visits her, to tell her he plans to will relent and join the others in some private theatricals. He and Fanny both know Sir Thomas would disapprove, so Fanny can't give him her whole-hearted concurrence.
​  Edmund awkwardly tries to segue out of the uncomfortable disagreement by talking about her books: “[Y]ou will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?” He babbles nervously: “And here are Crabbe’s 
Tales, and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense… and sit comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold.” And poof! he’s out the door, down the stairs and down the hill to Mary Crawford at the parsonage...


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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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