I
just read an Op/Ed piece in the NY Times today…
…by the
Indian actress/singer/activist Priyanka Chopra entitled “What Jane Austen Knew:
Priyanka Chopra on Educating Girls”
I urge you to read the whole column, and contribute what you can to her
philanthropic cause. Today I want to focus on the part of Chopra’s piece that
connects directly, in a couple of interesting and important ways, to Jane
Austen:
“… That
experience, and the time I spent working with my parents after that trip, are
what drove me to use my name and my voice to support the education and
empowerment of girls. I was a girl, from a modest background. I have two loving
parents who educated me and gave me the opportunity to chase my dreams. I worked
very hard, and today I am financially independent and successful in my chosen
career. If I can do this, so can countless other girls! They can do it, but not
alone.
…[2014]
ended with a schoolgirl in the headlines for all the right reasons, being
celebrated for her achievements: In October, Malala Yousafzai, a student and an
education advocate, and the Indian child-rights campaigner Kailash Satyarthi
were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their “struggle against the
suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to
education,” as the Nobel Committee explained. The committee noted that Malala
had shown by example that children and young people can help improve their own
situations. We can make 2015 a turning point for girls across the world. As
Malala said: “Let us pick up our books and our pens — they are our most
powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the
world. Education is the only solution.”
.. The
best part about all this is that no matter where I go, I always find that
efforts to improve a girl’s life are rarely about just the individual — the
goal is always to help her family and her community as a whole. Girls want to
help themselves so they can help everyone they hold near and dear, and that’s
where the positive ripple effect of change comes into play.
THIS
IS NOT NEW. JANE AUSTEN KNEW IT TWO CENTURIES AGO: “Give a girl an education
and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one she has the means of
settling well, without further expense to anybody.” END QUOTE
At
first, I was stumped—where had Jane Austen written those quoted words about
giving a girl an education? Google quickly led me to the surprising source---Mrs.
Norris, not a character that most Janeites normally associate with female
empowerment---in the beginning of Mansfield
Park, when she convinces brother-in-law & family patriarch Sir Thomas
Bertram to take their 10-year old niece Fanny Price out of the urban squalor of
her overcrowded family in Portsmouth, and raise her in the rural splendor of
Mansfield Park:
“My
dear Sir Thomas, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity
and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your
general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety
of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a
manner taken into one's own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in
the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own,
who should I look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the
children of my sisters?-- and I am sure Mr. Norris is too just--but you know I
am a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us be frightened from a
good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly
into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without
farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours, Sir Thomas, I may say, or at least
of yours, would not grow up in this
neighbourhood without many advantages. I don't say she would be so handsome as
her cousins. I dare say she would not; but she would be introduced into the
society of this country under such very favourable circumstances as, in all
human probability, would get her a creditable establishment.”
Mrs.
Norris goes on to reassure Sir Thomas that Fanny will never marry one of her
cousins, and of course we all know that Mrs. Norris proves to be a poor
prophet, as Fanny does indeed marry cousin Edmund, in no small part because Edmund
becomes her mentor: “Having formed her mind and gained her affections, he had a
good chance of her thinking like him…”
So,
in a way, Edmund wins Fanny’s love through education, adding irony to Mrs.
Norris’s statement which Chopra quoted in support of Chopra’s worthy and
important advocacy for education of girls in the 21st century in
parts of the world, like India, where female education is widely ignored, feared,
and even actively condemned and forbidden.
But I
hear a distinct echo of yet another, more famous line from an Austen novel in the
quoted words of Malala Yousafzai, the incredibly brave young Pakistani woman
who narrowly survived an assassination attempt prompted by her advocacies for
women, and fearlessly returned to her extraordinary mission on behalf of women’s
rights, and just won the Nobel Peace Prize:
“Let
us pick up our books and OUR PENS — they are our most powerful weapons. One
child, one teacher, one book and ONE PEN can change the world. Education is the
only solution.”
Yousafzai
has clearly drawn inspiration from the thrilling words at the end of Persuasion, when Anne Elliot defeats
Captain Harville in their amicable debate about gender:
“…Well,
Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice,) "as I was saying we shall never
agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let
me observe that all histories are against you--all stories, prose and verse. If
I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment
on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life
which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs,
all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all
written by men."
"Perhaps
I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have
had every advantage of us in telling their own story. EDUCATION HAS BEEN THEIRS
IN SO MUCH HIGHER A DEGREE; THE PEN HAS BEEN IN THEIR HANDS. I will not allow
books to prove anything."
Sure
enough, in a 2013 Salon.com piece about Yousafzai, we read “In her new book “I
am Malala,” Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai …offers up surprising bits of
information about her life in Pakistan, her recovery and her adolescence –
including a liking for both Jane Austen and Stephenie Meyer.”
And I
found this at the Facebook page for the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation:
“Similar
to Jane Austen’s father, who was a rector and a teacher in the village of
Steventon, the father of Malala Yousafzai supported his daughter’s education.
He explains in this video how he encouraged his daughter to join the school he
was teaching at in order to further her 'emancipation through education'.
And...I just found another quote from an article about Malala's father...
http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/4425185-malala-yousafzai-s-father-ziauddin-speaks-to-students-at-secord-elementary-school/
...which shows that he and his daughter share a love of Anne Elliot's famous quote:
And...I just found another quote from an article about Malala's father...
http://www.insidetoronto.com/news-story/4425185-malala-yousafzai-s-father-ziauddin-speaks-to-students-at-secord-elementary-school/
...which shows that he and his daughter share a love of Anne Elliot's famous quote:
"He enthusiastically said he loved Canada for
it had given so much love – honourary citizenship to Malala – to his
family. After an uplifting greeting to the kids, calling them “diverse,
beautiful flowers,” Yousafzai explained the challenges that inhibit some
children in Pakistan and other countries from receiving a proper or any
education.
“You can imagine how difficult it is,” he
said. “They should have BOOKS IN THEIR HANDS AND PENS IN THEIR HANDS,
but they don’t. They have hammers in their hands, some work in
workshops, some in domestic child labour.”
So, I
believe that if Jane Austen knew two centuries ago that her words would inspire
extraordinary real life heroines like Yousafzai and Chopra to carry forward the
cause of female education worldwide as they are now doing, she would smile with
satisfaction. Why? Because I am 100% certain that Austen’s prime purpose in
writing her fiction, even more than to express her creative artistic genius and
make an independent living, was precisely that much larger goal—i.e., to in
effect give girls and women everywhere another powerful tool for growing their
minds—a novel---a tool that would not require taking those girls and women out
of their homes, but would empower them to change their own living conditions.
We
can see clearly that Jane Austen has inspired Yousafzai and Chopra to grab the
pen, as is their right as a human being, because they can see that Jane Austen,
even now, two centuries after she published her novels, remains the preeminent
female holder of that “one pen” that has indeed “changed the world” -- because
Jane Austen recognized that “education is the only solution” and had the vision
and genius to wield her pen effectively beyond her own wildest dreams.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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