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CMP#137  Melinda, the Prim and Proper Heroine

3/27/2023

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If you want superb writing and amazing delineations of character, you can't top Jane Austen. If you want a female author of the long 18th century who discusses imperialism, the status of women, race and class, there are plenty of writers who were more explicit on these issues. I've been featuring some on this blog. Today, meet "M.E."

CMP#137   Book review: The History of Melinda Harley
PictureDrifting off with a book
    “Miss Melinda Harley, of Yorkshire, may pass well enough for a country body; but really her history was not worth bringing up to town.”
    So goes one of several dismissive contemporary reviews for The History of Melinda Harley, Yorkshire (1777). The Westminster Review gave it only one sentence: “the history of an ephemera, that is born and dies on the same day.”
    Another reviewer joked: “It is the general character of many romances, that they are good for nothing; but we must except the History of Melinda Harley from this censure, for we can affirm, from our own experience, that it is admirably calculated—to procure sleep.”
    Ouch, ouch, and ouch, anonymous authoress! I feel for you. Yes, the plot is slight, the characters are wooden, and the detail is sparse, but I became quite interested in the wide variety of moralizing comments that Melinda Harley trades with her BFF Amanda Beaufort while Melinda is away visiting with family friends. The girls share their thoughts on the folly of dueling, the pending loss of the American colonies, and the consolations of religion.
   Some of their exchanges are the sort Mary Bennet would approve of:​
​ “Most of our wants are artificial, and his happiness is much better assured who has learned to contract his desires.” “It is a great inducement to the exercise of benevolence, to view human nature in a fair light, and to put the best construction on one anothers’ actions.” Some remarks are explicitly political or feminist in tone.
  Some of these epistolary sermonettes touch on situations with similarities to Austen novels. I am not saying Austen drew from this novel, rather, that both writers drew from topics and situations prevalent at the time. I will share a few examples but I won’t point out which passage in which Austen novel they remind me of. If you’re not a Janeite, it won’t be relevant to you, and if you are a Janeite, you don’t need me to tell you...


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CMP#128  Methodists in the Long 18th Century

1/23/2023

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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#128 Portrayals of Methodists in the long 18th Century, part two (with some additional comments about a now-suggestive word)
PicturePoor minister using a barrel for a pulpit
      In my previous post, I gave some examples of novels and plays of the long 18th century that depict Methodist ministers as grifters and con artists. According to these writers, Methodism appealed to the simple, the ignorant, and the credulous. Here are some examples of novels which featured poor working people who were attracted to Methodism. (We capitalize "Methodism" and "Methodists" but the early novels often didn't).
   In Secrets Made Public (1808), “a poor shoemaker, of weak intellects, but inoffensive manners” is “seduced to methodism by the eloquence of an itinerant orator.” At the end of the day, by the light of a dim rushlight, the shoemaker pores over William Huntington's books about predestination and "antinomianism." [Let's not bother with explaining what all that means, but if you want to know... I don't think Huntington was literally a Methodist but, like many other nonconformist ministers, he had no formal education. He became a popular fire-and-brimstone preacher].
​     At any rate, some young men, members of the idle rich, decide to play a prank on the cobbler. They dress up as “demons and… various poetical monsters” and one springs into his house one night as the cobbler sits reading his religious tracts. "“He entered the apartment of the cobbling enthusiast, who was devoutly lifting up his eyes and hands, and exclaiming with fervour, ‘We are all d[amne]d!” when the horrible spectre encountered his vision." The cobbler is terrified out of his wits. "With a last exertion of strength, he fell on his knees and ejaculated, or attempted to ejaculate, ‘Lord have mercy on us!’ "  (cont'd after break)


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CMP#127    Methodism and Some Memories

1/15/2023

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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. ​

​CMP#127 Portrayals of Methodism in the long 18th century, part one
    Growing up as I did in the Methodist church, I took it for granted that we Methodists were the soul of rectitude and respectability. I had no reason to question it. See that row of men at the back of the photo below, taken at the old Cummins homestead in Southern Illinois?  Many of my ancestors were Methodist ministers, including many of the men in that photo. The extended clan--everyone dressed up in their best attire--would have enjoyed chicken and dumplings and some hand-churned ice cream, but there would have been no drinking and no smoking. My own family bent the rules in a few instances--my parents (who met at a Methodist youth conference) were good ballroom dancers. My maternal grandmother played the pump organ for her husband's congregations. During the week she enjoyed a game of gin rummy or pinochle but of course no wagering on the outcome. 
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       Growing up, I absorbed a little of the history of Methodism and again, I only heard what was good. I learned how Methodists urged working families to stop drinking gin and switch to tea instead. I pictured Methodists as a civilizing force in the 19th century. And I had respect for the passion and sincerity of Methodism’s founders, the Wesley brothers.
     That’s why, when I started my project of reading novels of the long 19th century, I was both amused and surprised to learn that Methodist preachers were portrayed as grifters who took advantage of the credulity of the poor and ignorant.

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CMP#126   Now You've Gone and Made Me Defend Mr. Woodhouse

1/1/2023

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“I marvel, though, at Heydt-Stevenson’s boldness in speaking of Austen’s ‘meanings.’ If we are forbidden [in this post-modern age] to say that an author ‘means,’ even if she [the author] protests that she really means it, can we use dictionaries [of bawdy Georgian slang] and theoretical apparatus to infer a meaning, and then impute it back to the author as a conscious insertion? Just asking.”           
                                     -- Peter Knox-Shaw, book review of Unbecoming Conjunctions

CMP#126    Radicalized views of Mr. Woodhouse
PictureMr. Woodhouse and Isabella
    Hi there! In previous posts some months ago, I took issue with Jillian Heydt Stevenson's post-modern interpretations of Mansfield Park and Emma. She contends that Austen portrays women as nothing more than commodities for sexual barter. Or perhaps "post-modern" is not the correct term. Postmodern literature is a "literary movement that eschews absolute meaning," therefore you cannot expound on what an author really "means." But I'm not a post-modernist. I can agree that everyone is entitled to their own opinion about Austen's meaning--but that includes me as well. If Heydt-Stevenson can give us a new decoding of Austen, then this pearl-clutcher can rebut. In this post I want to ask about the textual evidence for her theories.
   Heydt-Stevenson's upside-down interpretation of Austen means, for example, that Mr. Woodhouse is not a gently selfish invalid, but a pervert who wants to remember the words to a disgusting riddle so he can recite it to his virginal daughter and her virginal friend. Heydt Stevenson theorizes: “Mr. Woodhouse might have been a libertine in his youth and now suffers from tertiary syphilis." 

   Heydt-Stevenson’s evidence for this is Mr. Woodhouse's poor health and his fondness for a nice warm fire and some thin gruel. She overlooks anything he says, or anything people say about him, that doesn't fit her thesis... ​


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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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