Jane Austen - Sarcasm and Subversion - Extra History

📜 Jane Austen: Sarcasm and Subversion - Jane Austen wrote in the name of making critical social commentary of the privileges she and others held while the rest of Europe was in political turmoil. Her novels like "Pride and Prejudice," "Mansfield Park," and "Emma" made waves in their time for how they criticized Victorian-era society.

#ExtraHistory #JaneAusten #History

[extrahistory]

Jane Austen saw the hypocrisy of an entire class of the most powerful
empire on Earth taking tea and planning balls while the world burned. And from a young age she took up arms against that hypocrisy with the only weapon she had: her pen.

[Nightheartchan]

"Burn all my letters" was the Regency equivalent of "delete my browser history."

[ramshacklealex]

"I find you agreeable."
"I also find you agreeable."
British marriage proposals are so romantic

[DeborahDavitt]

"That criticized Victorian society." Except she died in 1817, and was a product of the Regency. Victoria herself would not yet be born for another 2 years, in 1819.

[AMoniqueOcampo]

This is basically why I love Jane Austen. She gets written off and underestimated even today because people don't see past the surface of her work. To me, Sense and Sensibility is about determining what we value most and about growing up, emotionally. Pride and Prejudice's moral is to be willing to change your mind and laugh at yourself. Mansfield Park is a morality play that cautions against people who choose appearances and status over what actually matters. Emma is about humbling the privileged. Persuasion is about the advantages of a mature mind. And Northanger Abbey basically pokes fun at girls who take Gothic romance too seriously.

[Trolligarch]

Fun fact: Jane Austen is on the British £10 note. It is accompanied by the quote "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"


The quote was spoken by one of her characters in Pride and Prejudice, Caroline Bingley, who had no interest in reading and was actually being sarcastic. Oof.

[extrahistory]

(Comment from Belinda) I don't know if anyone else has had this experience with Jane Austen's works, but in the educational culture I grew up in, the historical context of Austen's writing was almost never emphasized. Pride & Prejudice in particular is frequently reduced to being the original formula for romantic comedies (to say nothing of its own spin-off movies of the same name). I remember in high school class it seemed really weird to me that we would be talking about this 19th century novel as a progressive feminist work because it's already a given in the 21st century world that marrying for love is extremely commonplace. I'm really proud of our writers Jac and Rob, and our artist Ali, for bringing to life the "extra History" of Jane Austen that gets glossed over by popular culture. <3

[abcdef]

I still trying to imagine how Jane would react to "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"...

[ReaverLordTonus]

One of Austen's burned letters:
"It was Walpole"

[frankupton]

P.S.  There's a scene in Mansfield Park which is a metaphor for slavery.  Fanny Price is made to spend a long time outdoors picking flowers - a luxury product, like sugar - on a hot day.  She becomes exhausted.  One of her aunts, Mrs Norris, is the overseer - she forces Fanny to do some extra work while the other aunt, Lady Bertram (wife of the estate owner), lounges about enjoying the nice sunshine and pretty flowers.  Fanny's suffering is not one-thousandth of that of the enslaved field-workers, but the system of cruelty is the same.

[Pikazilla]

*“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”*

[Daniel-mfyn]

From my understanding, it was fairly common in her time to burn letters of deceased family members. I believe it was to keep the relationships between people "personal". That is one of the reasons we know little about the personal lives of people from that time.

[leeboy]

Austen's works pre-date the Victorian era, just fyi.

[ConriDubhghail]

I know it's not relevant to her legacy, but I am nevertheless deeply disappointed you didn't mention Mark Twain's borderline irrational loathing of Austen's work. Some of the funniest things he ever wrote were in reaction to her novels. It's a pity he didn't enjoy her work, though.

[alexanderadkins]

I want a Hamilton style musical about this amazing woman

[rashkavar]

It's entirely possible that the destruction of the letters was simply an effort to keep her private life private. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've always had a vague discomfort with the idea that if I became significant to history, suddenly messages I sent to family and friends with the implicit understanding that they were only intended to be read by their recipients, would become resources for historians. I'm not trying to suggest it's a legitimate source of historical information, but it's kinda the equivalent to when archaeologists dig up grave sites - weirdly ghoulish and invasive.

I mean, odds are I'm not going to become a historically significant figure - most people who do show signs of that by my age - so it's largely irrelevant, but.... *shrug*

In my mind it's entirely possible that Jane Austen, or her family, had similar reservations about that sort of prying, and, knowing that she was likely to become historically relevant, decided to ensure that such invasions of her privacy would not occur.

[rutnieves]

Loved this video. I do know who Jane Austen was when I first read Mansfield Park, the first book of hers I had ever read and immediately loved her “subtle” ways of criticism. Still my favorite line is “If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow."

[benjamingrist]

Burning the letters of departed relatives was commonplace at the time. Even the letters of people who by all accounts were the most upstanding individuals you could meet in both their public and private lives were burned upon their death. Don't assume the person deceased did something scandalous just because their surviving family burned their letters.

[AncientAccounts]

"The person who be it gentlemen or lady, who had not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid" -Austen

[ButterflyScarlet]

I always hated how people reduced Jane Austen from "Progressive Feminist" to "The One Who Wrote All Those Chick Flicks". Her stories were subversive. At a time when a woman could be thrown in a mental asylum for disagreeing with a man or not wanting kids, she wrote female characters who had their own opinions and goals.

Jane Eyre, supposedly the most boring and least compelling heroine, not only leaves the romantic lead because he had imprisoned his wife in the cellar, she also turns down another dude who tried to force her to be with him by pulling the Nice Guy act (or in this case the "I'm a priest and God said you should marry me" act). She only comes back when she and Rochester are on equal footing. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth full on fucking roasts Darcy to his actual face. They don't get together until he apologizes for being a dick to her and her family.

I hate that her contributions to literature are watered down to "trite romance"