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

    For devoted Janeites, an interest in Jane Austen leads to an interest in learning more about her artistry and her life and times. If you are ready for some deep dives into Jane Austen, either for yourself or as a gift for a friend, there is an overwhelming number of titles to choose from. Even if you limited yourself to books with titles that start with "Jane Austen and..." you'd have enough reading to keep you busy for years. There's ....and Critical Theory, ....and the Enlightenment, ...and Literary Theory, ...and Philosophy, ...and Her Readers, ...and The State, ...and The State of the Nation, ...and Reflective Selfhood, ....and Leisure, ...and The Ethics of Life, ...and Altruism, ....and Her World, ...and Other Minds: Ordinary Language Philosophy, ...and The Reformation, ...and Performance, ...and Animals, ....and Her Art, ...and The Ethics of Description, ...and The Drama of Woman, ...and the English Landscape, ...and so on! 
   All of this reading would be pricey if you were buying the volumes, but if you are a university alumnus, you might check with them to see if you have access to their library. I've also bought a community library card from my local university. You can also speak to your local public librarian about getting inter-library loans. JASNA Canada has an online catalogue of books about Jane Austen and you can borrow from them if you are a member.
​   Here are three scholarly books that I've found worthwhile:

   Ann WIngrove's The Spinster’s Tale (1801) caught my eye because of the title. It received no reviews when it was published, so here is another of my better-late-than-never book reviews. 
    The Spinster’s Tale is jam-packed with numerous plot-lines, backstories, and weddings. Plus a separate short gothic novel is stuck in the middle. There are so many characters, it’s difficult to remember them all.
    Have you seen people in social media point out that Regency romances are unrealistic because there weren’t that many eligible young dukes and earls in Regency England? Well, that was the case from the get-go; the novels written at the time featured handsome, eligible lords by the bushel. There are half-a-dozen titled men running around in this novel, all of them in want of a wife, and they all marry girls of humbler birth.
    One thing that sets this novel apart is that two of the major protagonists, and one minor, are older ladies. The titular spinster, Mrs. Caroline Herbert, ("Mrs." denotes an older lady, not necessarily a married one) is approaching 50. The kind and charitable Dowager Lady Brumpton has a fun back story where she dresses herself in boy’s clothes and climbs out a window after she’s abducted by a libertine. The minor character Miss Woodley is the impoverished authoress of the novel-within-a-novel Langbridge Fort. “Romance is not my forte,” she tells one of the young heroines, “but I had been told nothing would sell now, but the horrible, the wonderful, and the improbable.”
​      In addition to centering older females, The Spinster's Tale has other features which might be of interest to academics...

   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...

    ​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...