In
support of the publication today of Elena Ferrante's introduction to a new
edition of S&S, the following piece by Ferrante was just published online
in The Guardian:
“Elena
Ferrante on Sense and Sensibility: ‘I was passionate about Austen's anonymity’ “
Jane Austen kept her identity
secret – Elena Ferrante, whose ‘Neapolitan’ series of novels has taken the
literary world by storm, does the same. She pays tribute to a novel that casts
a clear gaze on the condition of women
“The
fact that Jane Austen, in the course of her short life, published her books anonymously
made a great impression on me as a girl of 15. It was the surly English teacher
who told us this, and I was tempted to ask why, but I soon abandoned the idea,
out of timidity. Meanwhile, I read Pride
and Prejudice, but it didn’t interest me. At the time, I was enthralled by
the great male adventure novels, with their stories that ranged all over the
world, and I wanted to write such books myself: I couldn’t resign myself to the
idea that women’s novels were domestic tales of love and marriage. I was past
20 when I returned to Austen. And from that moment not only did I love
everything she had written but I was passionate about her anonymity. Sense
and Sensibility appeared in October of 1811, in three volumes, with the
sole clue: “By a lady”. The three other books that she published in her
lifetime – Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma
(1815) – also came out anonymously. As for the two novels published
posthumously in a single volume, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey,
they, too, appeared without the name of the author, but with a note about Austen
written by her brother Henry: an interesting example of how the living can both
respect and, at the same time, violate the memory of the dead.
I
still like to contemplate the moment when Austen decided to make public one of
the texts she had been secretly working on for years, to have it printed at her
own expense, and even to renounce the idea of a pseudonym. Who wrote Sense
and Sensibility? Who invented Marianne and Elinor and their mother and the
many female characters who appear, disappear, reappear, first in the confined
space of the country, then in London, and, finally, again in the country? Who
devised the plot that led both to marriage? Who advanced the story by means of
verbal exchanges, conversations that in wit, intelligence, and dramatic force
rival those of Shakespeare? Was it Jane Austen or, simply, a lady, no name or
last name, an extremely cultured, extremely perceptive lady who was well
acquainted with the ways of the landed gentry, who knew the rituals of the
London bourgeoisie, who was aware of how unstable the world is – of how
everything changes in spite of sense and in the tumult of sensibility?"
Ferrante
then goes on in satisfying length answering her own question. While I
ultimately disagree with her core position (oversimplified, she sees Marianne
very negatively and Elinor very positively, while I say that is only the overt
story of S&S, which I say JA reversed in her shadow story), Ferrante makes
her case very eloquently and intelligently, so her essay is well worth reading
and rereading in full, as I will do in the coming days.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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