http://www.washingtonpost.com/
When I first saw
Jimmy Carter's above quote, I immediately saw the connection to my repeated
claims in this blog and elsewhere that Jane Austen, in the shadow stories of
her novels, was saying more or less the same thing about the deep-seated sexism
of the state-sponsored Anglican Church 200 years ago during her lifetime. I
think she'd be saddened, but not at all surprised, to learn that things have
not changed much in that regard in many places in the world, even today in
2012.
She would not be
surprised, because she showed she recognized the extent of the deep-seatedness
of that church-based sexism, when she put the following rant in the mouth of
Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey:
"If I understand you rightly,
you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland,
consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have
you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live.
Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own
understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is
passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our
laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a
country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing,
where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where
roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have
you been admitting?"
While the
traditional Janeite interpretation of this rant is that Henry Tilney is correct
in suggesting that terrible crimes could not have been perpetrated by General
Tilney on his long dead wife, in an England where the church, the state and the
family structure itself were there to protect English wives like Mrs. Tilney, I
have made the case that this rant is meant to be read parodically, as Jane
Austen's veiled mockery of this rant, because she DID live in an England where
wives and unmarried women were subjected to all manner of abuse in the name of
God, the King and the English family.
And, as for these
American nuns (described in the above-linked Washington Post article) whom the
current Vatican hierarchy is so intent on muzzling and stripping of legitimacy
for their feminism, for their social activism--in short, for their genuine
Christianity!---I wonder why these nuns don't think way outside the box and
electrify the world and start their own Christian denomination on their own
frankly feminist, socially conscious terms--Jesus (and Jane Austen) would have
approved!
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on
Twitter
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