She’s no plain Jane
Austen hasn’t been immune to gossip
Thanks to the PBS Masterpiece series Sanditon and Autumn de Wilde’s new film, Emma, starring Anya Taylor-joy, Jane Austen (1775-1817) is again proving a hot screen commodity. Yet the author best known for Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Sense and Sensibility (1811) has had her share of troubles, too. These myths about her have circulated for more than a century.
Myth No. 1: Jane Austen was a secluded, boring homebody.
The myth of her sheltered existence originated with her brother Henry’s short biographical notice, published as a preface to the first edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1817). There Henry describes his late sister as having lived “not by any means a life of event.” Today, it has become a trope. But things happened to her! For one thing, she had seven siblings. Her father ran a small boarding school for boys out of the family’s home. How quiet a girlhood could that have been? She visited London and frequented its rowdy theatres, where vendors sold rotten fruit specifically for the purpose of hurling it at the actors.
Myth No. 2: There is no sex in Austen’s work.
Henry Austen’s biographical notice claims that Jane was “fearful of giving offence to God.” Novelist Charlotte Brontë cemented Henry’s vision, complaining in 1850 that “the Passions are perfectly unknown” to the late Austen. But you’ll find plenty of illicit sex in Austen’s fiction, including seductions, adultery, out-of-wedlock pregnancy and prostitution. Any author who could create
Mr. Darcy must understand the power of sex appeal.
Myth No. 3: Austen approved of slavery and colonialism.
Did Austen’s novels have “racist subtext,” as a Salon headline claims? Austen certainly benefited from the cultural and economic privileges of her race and class, so it’s complicated. Anti-slavery commentary appears in Emma, when elegant Jane Fairfax decries the dehumanizing slave trade and governess trade, comparing the sale of human flesh to that of human intellect. It’s also been argued that the title of Mansfield Park intentionally echoes the name of Lord Mansfield, the judge whose 1772 ruling said chattel slavery was unsupported by English common law.
Myth No. 4: Austen’s work wasn’t noticed before she died.
Austen’s “books were not known during her own lifetime,” according to the Independent. Austen published Sense and Sensibility with the anonymous credit “By a Lady.” She published her next books “by the author of Sense and Sensibility” and “by the author of Pride and Prejudice.” The most famous was of Emma, in the prestigious Quarterly Review. The anonymous reviewer, bestselling novelist Sir Walter Scott, claimed the book’s author was “already known to the public by the two novels announced in her title-page.” Scott may not yet have known this admired author’s name, but others got wind of it.
Myth No. 5: Austen-inspired fan fiction emerged in the 20th century.
The Guardian claims Sybil Brinton’s 1913 Old Friends and New Fancies, which imagines Elizabeth Darcy, Elinor Ferrars and Anne Wentworth as chums, was the first work of Austen-inspired fan fiction. But Austen-inspired fan fiction dates back a century earlier. A piece of real-person fiction, using Austen as a character, appeared in the Lady’s Magazine in 1823. Perhaps this piece of fiction was so long overlooked because critics wrongly believed Austen was unread in the 1820s.