Jane Austen:  The Secret Radical, by Helena Kelly

When one is reading and interpreting a sufficiently complex and layered text, our interpretation of the text reveals more about ourselves than the text we are dealing with.  This happens frequently when interpreters deal with the Bible, thinking that they have understood what the Scriptures are all about while only revealing what is inside of their own minds, and it happens as well when writers tackle literature like Jane Austen’s novels.  To be sure, this book features a lot of close readings of the text, but ultimately this book says a lot more about the radicalism of Helena Kelly than it does about the radicalism of Jane Austen.  This is true for several reasons.  One of them is that Austen was far more tight-lipped than people are used to be right now, at least partly for the reason that her career as an authoress would have been ruined, and perhaps her freedom, had she been seen as a political radical.  If she was not a best-selling writer, she was certainly one whose works were read by important and influential readers during her time and she even drew the attention of the Prince Regent of England, a man whose morals she cordially loathed.

This book is about 300 pages long and is divided into 8 chapters.  The author begins with a discussion about how little is actually known about Jane Austen and the way that certain family myths have been passed down through the years that are taken as fact (1).  After that the author uses a close reading of Northanger Abbey and its references to other novels to show the anxieties of common life in pregnancy and other matters (2).  There is then a look at Sense & Sensibility and a rather dark reading of Col. Brandon that involves some chronologies as well as the importance of money to gentry society (3).  Then the author turns to look at Pride & Prejudice form the point of view of the 1790’s and the prejudices that the author wishes to lampoon (4).  A strong anti-slavery sentiment colors the author’s thinking of Mansfield Park and its lack of strong reception from readers at the time who may have found much to offend them about Austen’s look at the basis of the Bertram’s wealth (5).  Emma then provides a chance for the author to rant about enclosure and its damaging effects on the English villages of Highbury (6) that provides a much darker look at Mr. Knightley.  Finally, the author looks at the decline and fall that forms a part of Persuasion’s themes with evolutionary speculations (7) before a discussion of the end of Austen’s life.

Ultimately, how does this book stack up with Jane Austen’s actual thinking?  To be sure, Austen was a genuinely feminist writer, but not because of any hatred for men but rather out of the same sort of robust sense of self-respect and knowledge of her own accomplishments and just desserts that one would expect out of any well-educated woman of any era, someone who was able to tactfully survive in her society and not alienate those around us but at the same time someone whose intellect and wit were easy to see in her time and still easy to see as readers of her novels.  Such political radicalism she had was attached to her devout Christian morals, such as her opposition to slavery and her continual dislike of Anglican priests who did not take their vocation seriously.  The fact that the author cannot conceive of wit that is attached to moral seriousness means that the author consistently misinterprets Austen, and that is a common trap for contemporary readers to fall into because they do not associate the combination of moral conservatism with criticism of corrupt social habits, gently handled most of the time with a light comic touch to make it less offensive.  A book that had the sense to combine Austen’s wit with her serious morality would have been better, but it’s hard how a contemporary radical would be interested in writing such a book.