Yesterday,
on a strong personal recommendation, I went to see the new film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which
Rotten Tomatoes describes as follows: “Any comic book character that sticks around
for more than a few issues tends to build up a pretty interesting backstory,
and Wonder Woman - one of the medium’s longest-lasting and most beloved heroes
- certainly fits that description. But as this weekend’s Professor Marston and the Wonder Women illustrates, the
lasso-wielding defender of justice has a real-life history that’s every bit as
interesting -- and occasionally just about as colorful -- as anything she’s
gotten up to on the printed page. Starring Luke Evans as Wonder Woman creator William
Marston, this biopic depicts the forward-thinking views that helped Marston
mold the character - more importantly, details the many ways in which her
development was strongly influenced by the polyamorous relationship between
Marston, his wife Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall), and their lover Olive Byrne (Bella
Heathcote). It’s the type of story that could have been given a luridly shallow
treatment under different circumstances, but critics say writer/director Angela
Robinson has assembled an appropriately thoughtful ode to the
behind-the-scenes life of a wonderfully complicated superhero.”
After
seeing Robinson’s film, I couldn’t agree more with that collective critical
thumbs up. I found it both poignant and thought-provoking, not least because I
had zero prior acquaintance with any aspect of the Wonder Woman (back)story
beyond these facts: Wonder Woman was the first female comic superhero; Lynda
Carter had played the role on TV decades ago; & there was the excellent
2017 action movie which has not only broken box office records, but also has
been widely applauded for its powerful female role model, a superhero who uses
her powers to bring peace to a male-dominated world of oppression and war. So, before
I go further, I urge you to go see Robinson’s film!
What was
of special interest to me as an Austen scholar in Robinson’s film was its
dramatization of the covert feminist agenda behind the origin of Wonder Woman.
That agenda was succinctly described by Prof. Ann Matsuuchi as follows back in 2012
in “Wonder Woman Wears Pants: Wonder
Woman, Feminism and the 1972 'Women 's Lib' Issue ”:
“William
Moulton Marston, Harvard psychologist and inventor of the first polygraph test,
created the Wonder Woman character with a stated pedagogic intent. In a 1937 NY
Times interview, Marston, with seemingly genuine optimism, predicted that ‘within
100 years the country will see the beginning of a sort of Amazonian matriarchy.
Within 500 years a 'definite sex battle for supremacy' would occur, and after a
millennium 'women would take over rule of the country, politically and
economically.'’ In an attempt to avert the sort of moral censorship that led to
the Hays Code in Hollywood, comic book publishers at the time sought
institutional support from psychologists and educators, prominently listing
their names as part of an editorial advisory board. Marston was hired as a
psychological consultant and hoped to utilise this popular medium as an
“emotional reeducator,” using images of gender reversal to inspire social change.
His vision of a feminised utopia was distant: a 1943 cover of Wonder Woman
issue #7 depicts an American presidential campaign 1000 years in the future,
with Wonder Woman standing triumphantly over a crowd of supporters.”
As I
watched the film, and read that scholarly summary, I couldn’t help but be
struck by the remarkable coincidence that just over a month ago, I gave a talk
at the 2017 JASNA Annual General Meeting, entitled “ ‘Galigai for ever and ever’, St. Swithin,
& Diana Parker: the power of the strong mind over the weak, & the dying
Jane Austen’s ambition for immortality & gender justice". In that
talk, I made my most comprehensive public argument to date in support of my
longstanding claim that Jane Austen was a pioneer in creating female characters
who, when properly “decoded”, were Regency Era “wonder women”, with “superpowers”,
i.e., strong minds, which they used to subvert and counteract patriarchal
oppression, and in particular to subtly advocate for gender fluidity, freedom,
and equality.
With
that brief introduction, then, I will in the remainder of this post present
excerpts from my AGM talk, which focus on Lady Susan, the character whom I
believe was Jane Austen’s first, fully developed “wonder woman”, a powerful,
defiant, charismatic female arch-nemesis of patriarchal oppression. It should
be obvious as you read along why the Marston
film resonates so strongly with my beliefs about Jane Austen’s heroic,
feminist, pedagogical agenda:
RELEVANT
EXCERPTS FROM MY OCTOBER 6, 2017 JASNA AGM TALK: During 15+ years of research, I’ve come to
see Jane Austen as an ambitious author who joked about writing for the money,
but whose deepest motive for seeking fame was noble. She dreamt of exerting
widespread, lasting, benign influence on her female readers. She was determined
that her words would survive her mortal body, to vindicate and promote the power of women, by strengthening their
minds by reading her radically new type of novel. My talk today springs from a
clue to the motivation of that ambitious, radical feminist Jane, not in her published
novels, but, when mortality loomed large, in her lesser known 1817 writings, in
which she three separate times asserted her strong powers of mind:
FIRST, in
a comment in her letter written 2 months before her death, to old friend and
former Godmersham governess Anne Sharp: “But how you are worried! Wherever Distress
falls, you are expected to supply Comfort. Lady P. writing to you even from
Paris for advice! It is the Influence of
Strength over Weakness indeed. Galigai de Concini for ever & ever.-Adeiu.”
SECOND,
in her last fiction, the Sanditon
fragment, in words spoken by the “officious” DIANA Parker:
“The
world is pretty much divided between the weak of mind and the strong; between
those who can act and those who cannot; and it is the bounden duty of the
capable to let no opportunity of being useful escape them”;
&
THIRD, in
what truly are her last words, the final stanza of her deathbed testament, the
“fanciful” poem “When Winchester Races”:
“When
once we are buried you think we are gone But behold me immortal!...Set off for
your course, I'll pursue with my rain.… Henceforward I'll triumph in shewing my
powers…”.
I perceive a maternal presence hovering over
these expressions of the power of the strong mind over the weak, and the duty
to be useful in exercise of that power. That ghost is the author who preceded
Austen in publication, in protofeminism, and in death --Mary Wollstonecraft,
who throughout Austen’s career, I will argue, seemed to call to her successor
to remember her advocacy for the power of the strong female mind. I believe
Wollstonecraft electrified the teenaged Jane Austen in late 1791 with her
revolutionary Vindication.
Then I
believe Mary’s death in childbirth in late 1797, and the ensuing misogynist
attack on her legacy, further radicalized the 22 year old Jane. At the 2010 JASNA
AGM, I argued that the late Mrs. Tilney was the symbol of Mary Wollstonecraft
and all the other victims of that uniquely female childbed epidemic. I also
believe Wollstonecraft’s tragic death inspired Austen to pick up the pen
dropped by her fallen idol, and to further the cause of strengthening female
minds, and to strive for gender justice.
….When
she was dying and knew she’d never see Ann Sharp again, with her “Galigai for
ever and ever. Adeiu” Jane Austen was bidding her very dear friend a sad
farewell, and using a lesbian rallying cry to do so. This is the only letter
Austen wrote to Anne Sharp that has survived –preserved, perhaps, because,
along with her precious first edition of Emma,
it was all Anne had left of Jane, just like Ennis’s bloodstained shirt kept
for years by Jack, as we see in the poignant final scene of Brokeback Mountain.
That
brings me to the second 1817 Austen passage, in the Sanditon fragment,
in which Diana Parker (perhaps named for
the chaste huntress goddess who wasn’t into men?) refers to her own and her
sister’s strong minds, which I’ll repeat:
“…my
dear Miss Heywood, we are sent into this world to be as extensively useful as
possible, and where some degree of strength of mind is given, it is not a
feeble body which will excuse us or incline us to excuse ourselves. THE WORLD IS PRETTY MUCH DIVIDED BETWEEN THE
WEAK OF MIND AND THE STRONG; between those who can act and those who cannot;
and it is the bounden duty of the capable to let no opportunity of being useful
escape them”. …etc etc
The
echoing of Diana Parker’s words by her brother Sidney, and also in yet another
1817 letter written by Jane Austen to brother Charles, shows how much of
herself Austen was pouring into her latest parodic fictional alter ego, Diana
Parker. Diana’s hypochondria reflects the essence of the tragedy of Jane, a
genius of strong mind trapped in a prematurely dying body, but still ambitious
to keep being useful by writing till her pen dropped.
And all
of the above also fits with her final written words, dictated to her sister in
her final days of life—the last stanza of the poem “When Winchester Races”,
which I quoted before. I’ve long argued that St. Swithin is Jane Austen in her ironic,
defiant thumbing of her nose at Death and at anyone who thought her fiction
would die with her. Even as her weak body surrendered, her still strong mind hurled its
final defiance: “When once we are buried, you think we are gone. But behold me
immortal!”
Jane
Austen the author and would-be teacher knew that she, like Wollstonecraft, was
dying before she could completely fulfill her mission; yet her “darling
children”, the six completed novels, would survive and become immortal. And
even if she never dreamt that in 2017, she’d triumph not merely in book sales,
translations, and adaptations, she did aspire to the triumph of the “powers” of
her strong mind, and hope that the dangerous secret of her “deviant” sexual orientation, would one
day become fully manifest. And now I’m ready to show you the best examples of
how “the influence of the strong mind” played out in Austen’s fiction,
beginning with her novella which strangely mirrored Edgeworth’s Leonora, Lady Susan.
A year
ago I blogged about resolving the apparent contradictions of Austen’s Lady Susan
after seeing Love and Friendship, Whit Stillman’s brilliant film adaptation. Many were
puzzled by the seeming irreconcilable contradiction between its subversive
anti-romantic heroine and the sophisticated positive romance in Austen’s six
novels. Why did Austen decided to create
an unapologetic female rake, who revels in her effortless ability to manipulate
men, and even make her a boastful protagonist, a female Richard III? And
how and why did she make Lady Susan so irresistibly witty, daring, and
entertaining, that many of us actually fall under her spell, and somehow forget
to recoil in disgust at her machinations? For those of you who’ve only seen the
movie and haven’t read the book, rest assured that pretty much all those
zingers that Beckinsale delivers so perfectly were Austen’s own. Stillman’s film
isn’t anachronistic, it doesn’t impose a modern feminist sensibility on a late
18th century woman, it’s faithful to the sociopathic brilliance
of JA’s own heroine.
I think that part of what makes many readers (and viewers), like
myself, forget to feel too much sympathy for the victims of Lady Susan's guile
--- especially her principal male target, Reginald de Courcy--- is that Lady
Susan manages to turn what was ordinarily a kind of death sentence for
middle-aged women in that era --becoming a widow without money--into
opportunity---like a female Nemesis spawned
by and sicced on Austen’s male-dominated world, as poetic justice for the
universally ignored abuse and oppression of women, both married and single.
In Northanger Abbey,
an appalled Henry Tilney castigates Catherine Tilney for imagining his father
the Bluebeard-like murderer of his mother, as if all the “worthy” powers that
be of English society would turn a blind eye to such horrors – but Austen’s
bitingly ironic joke is actually on Henry and the unsuspicious reader, because,
as the narrator drily notes at the end of the novel, Catherine was correct in
essentials, if not details, about the horrible English every-husband, General
Tilney. Lady Susan would’ve known exactly how to handle General Tilney, rest
assured!
And I also see Austen’s seeming indulgence of her female rake as
echoed by her much later refusal to judge a transgressive, real life female, in
Austen’s candid comments about Princess Caroline to Austen’s most trusted
confidant, Martha Lloyd, in her January 1812 letter:
"I suppose all the World is sitting in Judgement upon the
Princess of Wales's Letter. Poor woman, I shall support her as long as I can,
because she is a Woman, & because I hate her Husband….if I must give up the
Princess, I am resolved at least always to think that she would have been
respectable, if the Prince had behaved only tolerably by her at first. --"
Jane Austen might just as well have said “if I must give up Lady
Susan, I am resolved at least always to think that she would have been
respectable, if the patriarchal social system had not been totally rigged
against women, and she could have attained personal fulfilment in an ethical
way". Indeed, “the influence of strength over weakness indeed” could have
been Lady Susan’s motto!
I see it in what Lady Susan writes to his bosom buddy Alicia Johnson
about Reginald:
“He is lively & seems clever, & when I have inspired him
with greater respect for me than his sister's kind offices have implanted, he
may be an agreable Flirt. There is
exquisite pleasure in subduing an insolent spirit, in making a person
predetermined to dislike, acknowledge one's superiority. I have disconcerted him already by my calm reserve; & it
shall be my endeavour to humble the Pride of these
self- important De Courcies still lower, to
convince Mrs. Vernon that her sisterly cautions have been bestowed
in vain, & to persuade Reginald that she has scandalously belied me. This
project will serve at least to amuse me, &prevent my feeling so acutely
this dreadful separation from You & all whom
I love. Adeiu. Yours Ever S. Vernon.”
And she is later unwittingly echoed by her unwitting boy toy
Reginald in his bitter reproach to her:
“…From
what have I not escaped! I have only to be grateful. Far from me be all
complaint, every sigh of regret. My own folly had endangered me, my
preservation I owe to the kindness, the integrity of another; …After such a
discovery as this, you will scarcely affect further wonder at my meaning in
bidding you adieu. My understanding is at length restored, and teaches no less
to abhor the artifices which had subdued me than to despise myself for the
weakness on which their strength was founded.”
Googling about Lady Susan as a
Wollstonecraftian symbol of a strong minded woman, I found a brilliant
June 2016 article entitled “Jane Austen
Vindicates the Rights of Women” by Sarah Skwire, which adds these insights: “Lady
Susan is a wrecking ball in petticoats…Austen’s and WSC’s works…taken together…provide
a persuasive argument --philosophical and artistic-- for the importance of
women’s liberty and for the crippling effects of denying that liberty.”
But, as I suggested at the start, my research has gradually
shown me Wollstonecraft’s pervasive influence on all of Austen’s writings, not just Lady Susan. The published work of a dozen renowned Austen scholars,
from the late Allison Sulloway in 1976, to Margaret Kirkham, Claudia Johnson,
and Jocelyn Harris, provide many pieces of the puzzle, to which I’ve added my
own findings. I assert that Austen took Wollstonecraft in an extraordinary new
direction, using fiction to dramatize the power of strong female minds who use
what Wollstonecraft dismissed as mere cunning….”
END QUOTE FROM MY AGM TALK
In the not too distant future, I will present the remainder of
my AGM talk in this blog, in which I made the case for several other, previously unrecognized "wonder women" in Austen's novels. Until then, I leave you with my playful speculation
that if Marston and his two real life wonder women were alive today and could read
my interpretations of Austen’s “wonder women”, they would surely exclaim, in
unison, “Great Jane, give me strength!”
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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