Jane Austen & SEX

In Austen L today, Nancy Mayer disagreed with an interpretation of mine, and said that HER Jane Austen "wasn't that into salacious subjects. That she could be bawdy is evidenced by Mrs. Jennings. No intelligent female who grew up in a parsonage could be ignorant about the many ways in which men and women could sin. She also read French novels . We do not know exactly what else she read though some have offered suggestions of enough books to equal EveryMan's library or the Great Books courses. However, we do know that she had access to more books than most gently bred ladies could claim, That doesn't mean she was salacious. Just because I don't think Austen wasn't salacious or obsessed with sex, doesn't mean I consider her just sweet tea drinking Aunt Jane. The two are not always linked."

I responded as follows:

Nancy, while I completely disagree with your opinions, I believe I understand your position perfectly well. However, over the years and our countless online exchanges on this delicate topic of Jane Austen and sex, you have repeatedly shown that you make the same unjustified assumptions about my position, and that you don't really understand mine. I know you do this in good faith, and with no ill intent whatsoever, and I imagine that you speak for many who read my comments about this topic. So I will make this post just about clarifying the essence of my position about Jane Austen& sex, to the best of my ability, so that there will be no further confusion between us.

I have _never_ said, or suggested, that Jane Austen was "salacious" or "obsessed with sex". That is your characterization. What I have said, repeatedly, however, is that the thematic core of her shadow stories is female _sexuality_--i.e., Jane Austen was deeply appalled that female sexuality was handled by society in the following very important ways:

1. single gentlewomen were under constant threat of sexual predation, particularly when women were denied the kind of sexual education that would enable them to recognize predators, but also to recognize their own vulnerability to a man who would manipulate her so as to use her heart to get to her body;

2. married gentlewomen ran a perpetual gauntlet of serial pregnancy and childbirth;

3. cynical marriage customs, practices, and laws that exerted enormous pressure on gentlewomen to marry without love, in desperate search of a secure home where they would at least not be subject to predation or living in poverty;

4. there was a grotesquely hypocritical and one-sided gender double standard vis a vis sexual behavior, where a woman's sexual reputation was incredibly fragile, subject to permanent ruin at the drop of a petticoat, while a man's was made of Teflon, always winked away;

5. the literary reputation of a male author (like Shakespeare) who frequently indulged in veiled sexual innuendo was not in any way damaged thereby, whereas when a woman author (like Jane Austen) who frequently indulged in veiled sexual innuendo, raised all sorts of horrified eyebrows;

6. where alternative sexualities such as gay or lesbian orientations were treated barbarically with a primitive Taliban-like ferocity; and



The female body was, therefore, the battleground of a war of the sexes that, from the female point of view, was not very "merry" at all, because women were forced to fight it with both hands tied behind their backs!

Therefore, I claim that Jane Austen, in embedding an enormous quantity of subliminal sexual content in her novels, was demonstrating her acute feminist consciousness, and also her extraordinarily witty and profound sense of humor. Because a crucial part of her message was _also_ a meta-message---i.e., that the first act in the direction toward leveling the playing field was to assert the right of women to engage in sexual wittiness--to write sexually suggestive material like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cleland, or Sheridan--which was both serious and funny at the same time, and not be treated as a pariah for it.

For JA to have written a dull, solemn sermon bewailing all of the above six great wrongs I outlined above would have been utterly contrary to JA's own witty, clever, profound, metaphorically rich play of mind. She was a jokester and a punster by nature, but she also was a crusader, in her own subliminal way.

So, for example, having Jane Fairfax say "It must be born(e) some time or other, and it may as well be now", with the double entendre of "borne" with "born", is the masterful production of a genius of deliberately ambiguous and tactful expression. JA would never be so obvious or vulgar, as to be explicit in pointing to Jane's imminent childbirth.

And having Mary Crawford wink about "rears and vices" is not about salaciousness--Mary is JA's mouthpiece, where JA went to the very edge of what she could get away with, in terms of exposing male hypocrisy about sexuality. Mary is not just making a random joke about anal sex in the British Navy, she is giving Fanny a hint that Fanny does not take--which is to warn Fanny that Henry's interest in William Price's promotion has its "price", and that is the _sexual_ price that William, a man from the lower social class, must pay to Henry, a man of privilege, in order to advance in the Navy.

And the following are a few examples of posts at my blog where I explore the intricacies of JA's sexual innuendoes, and show them to be intensely thematic and intellectually challenging, as well as very witty and funny:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2009/08/rears-and-vices-redux.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/jane-austens-great-chasms-and-dirty.html

There is no salaciousness or obsession in any of this--this is JA the Audenesque social observer, objectively depicting the enormous and pervasive influence of sex on every aspect of life in her superficially and hypocritically prim world.

I hope that helps to clarify why I write so often about Jane Austen's sexual innuendoes.

Cheers, ARNIE