This is Your Brain on Jane Austen

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/austen-reading-fmri-090712.html

How could I resist a headline like "This is Your Brain on Jane Austen" ????

I have been of the opinion for 7 years now that Jane Austen wrote her novels as double stories in no small part because she wished to train her (mostly female) readers to be able to see social reality in its full ambiguity, where the next man you meet could be the noblest hero or the darkest villain---and it might be extraordinarily difficult to decide which one he was.

So...perhaps an interesting wrinkle in Natalie Phillips's Stanford experiment would be to ask some veteran Janeites, who know the novels well, to first read a passage as they ordinarily read it, i.e., the overt story, and then read the same passage after being given hints in that passage which point to the shadow story.

Wouldn't it be wild if the brain wave pattern got even more complex in the latter case?


Food for thought!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The Mysterious Stuffed Shirt in Katha Pollitt's 1989 poem Rereading Jane Austen

The following 1989 poem by Katha Pollitt has been making the rounds today on the Austen Internet:

Rereading Jane Austen's novels  

This time round, they didn't seem so comic.
Mama is foolish, dim or dead, Papa's
a sort of genial, pampered lunatic.
No one thinks of anything but class.

Talk about rural idiocy! Imagine
a life of tea with Mrs and Miss Bates,
of fancy work and Mr Elton's sermons!
No wonder lively girls get into states –

no school, no friends. A man might dash to town
just to have his hair cut in the fashion
while she can't walk five miles on her own.
Past twenty, she conceives a modest crush on

some local stuffed shirt in a riding cloak
who's twice her age and maybe half as bright.
At least he's got some land and gets a joke –
but will her jokes survive the wedding night?

The happy end ends all. Beneath the blotter
the author slides her page, and shakes her head,
and goes to supper – Sunday's joint warmed over,
followed by whist, and family prayers, and bed.

In Austen-L, the following exchange occurred today between Ellen Moody and Christy Somer: 

Ellen:  I like it but I can't figure out who is the woman who falls in love with the local stuffed shirt?

Christy: Probably…..Mr. Knightley, Ellen. Only two of the heroes in her fictions answer to ‘twice her age’.

Ellen:  I see it's Mr Knightley. Thank you. But who else could it be? who is the other male twice the heroine's age?

I responded as follows:

I don't agree with either of you---I think Pollitt is pointing very slyly to Mr. Darcy, and here's why.

1. As P&P begins, Darcy is a total stuffed shirt, he is in fact the biggest stuffed shirt in the entire Austen canon.

2.  Darcy's got some land (to put it mildly--as we know, seeing his land has quite the impact on Lizzy).

3. Darcy is 6-7 years older than Lizzy, which may not be "twice as old", but is strongly in that direction, given Lizzy's youth.

4.  Lizzy is indeed the only heroine who cracks jokes around the hero all the time, including after they are engaged. But Lizzy, as engaged woman, is already becoming cautious about continuing to tweak Darcy's beard, so to speak.

5. And last but certainly not least, there is a fair question at the end of P&P as to whether Darcy's miraculous, sudden transformation from Mr. Sourpuss to Mr. Easygoing is going to last, especially, as Pollitt so wisely speculates, once the enormous pressure of the sexual attraction he has been feeling for Lizzy for most of the novel has been vented, which will occur (as Pollitt so aptly puts it) on their wedding night. What will happen 18 months later, when he finds himself alone in London on business, while Lizzy is knocked up back at Pemberley with a newborn underfoot as well. It might well be that Lizzy won't be cracking jokes anymore, but will be very worried about what her husband is doing in the great den of dissipation and vice.

So while the one point that is clearly off in Pollitt's precis is that Darcy's every bit as bright as Lizzy, and more knowledgeable than she about a lot of things, the rest fits him like one of Frank Churchill's beaver gloves.


Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Jane Austen's Last Poem as the Memorial Drawn Up Per Letter 160

Today, I finally received from the library a copy of Claudia Johnson's new book, _Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures_, which Christy had mentioned a few weeks ago. When I got home, I immediately started browsing in it with eager anticipation.

Not surprisingly, it is very well written---Johnson has a brilliant mind and appears to have worked on this book for a while,it is clearly a labor of love. So it has that going for it, regardless of what a given reader may think about Johnson's ideas which are so elegantly presented.

But also not unexpectedly (given that, as Christy had pointed out, Johnson asserts that the famous "dull elves" epigram is only about grammar and book editing), I disagree all over the place with Johnson's tame, unthreatening interpretations in this book, which are a far cry from the bold, sharp feminist interpretations contained in her early (i.e., 2 decades ago) seminal readings of JA.

But even if I disagree with the 2012 version of Claudia Johnson, she continues to demonstrate a good nose for passages in JA's writing which are worthy of attention. So I decided that as I browse through her book at a leisurely pace during the next week, I will write blog posts about points of divergence between Johnson and myself. And here is the first.

On P. 28, Johnson, who has been discussing JA's interment in Winchester Cathedral, speculates as to why JA is buried there:

"...True, Cassandra avers that Jane admired the cathedral, but we have no indication that she ever worshipped there or wished to do so. Though Austen jokes in a letter of 27 May 1817 that if her doctor fails to cure her, she will "draw up a Memorial & lay it before the Dean and Chapter [of Winchester Cathedral] & have no doubt of redress from that Pious, Learned & Disinterested Body," the idea to bury Jane in the cathedral instead of taking her home to the churchyard at Chawton was probably, most agree, Henry's..."

I had not previously taken note of that short passage in Letter 160 to (the 19 year old) JEAL, but what leapt off the page at me as I read Johnson's above comments was an obvious connection to JA's last poem, Winchester Races!

Just think about it:

1. On May 17, 1817, JA, still holding on to hope that she will survive her serious illness, jokes in a legalistic way with JEAL about obtaining ""redress" in the event of the failure of Dr. Lyford to save her life. The conceit is that the breaching party is going to be held accountable for the damages done to JA's body.

2. Then, a scant two months later, as JA, now fully cognizant that she has reached the end of the line, and seeing Death loom before her, harks back to her legalistic joke in Letter 160---or maybe she has been thinking about it off and on during those two final months stretched out and helpless, what her last written words are going to be---and she goes ahead and......

3. ....actually composes a perverse sort of "Memorial" about the taking of redress into one's own hands---in legal jargon, we call this a "self-help remedy"---and that "Memorial" is none other than her final writing, the poem Winchester Races, which I have written about several times previously:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/07/when-once-we-are-buried-you-think-we.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/henry-austens-biographical-notice.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/01/mr-fitzhugh-corinna-st-swithens-stone.html

Now I see this _additional_ wrinkle in this poem which turns out to be so much like her charades, and her novels, i.e., with _multiple_ different meanings layered on top of each other (and by the way, I recently found yet another layer of meaning in the poem, which I will write about at a future date).

In addition to registering JA's objection to being buried in Winchester Cathedral, this poem also contains JA's objection to _dying_ itself! Just hear her defiant, almost Don Giovannian death roar:

"When once we are buried you think we are gone, But behold me immortal!"

So, Dr. Lyford may have broken his contract to save JA's life, and there's no time left for joking, but JA''s indominable spirit--wearing the mask of St. Swithin---will defeat even Death itself--by the immortality of her writing.

And somehow, incredibly, dozens of scholarly commentators have referred to her last poem, Winchester Races, as a frivolous joke, of no importance in understanding the mysteries of Jane Austen. Incredible.

So, my thanks to Claudia Johnson for her inadvertent assist in prompting me to spot the connection between Letter 160 and JA's last poem.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S. re Aphra Behn, Jane Austen and The Witty Few (i.e., Sharp Elves)

In followup to my previous post about Aphra Behn.....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/aphra-astraea-austen-since-tis-to-witty.html

...I did some Googling looking for any other references to "the witty few"--I just had a hunch that Jane Austen would have left some other witty clue to her general admiration for Aphra Behn's feminist writing, and to her specific admiration for the sentiments expressed by Behn in the Preface to The Lucky Chance. It turns out that my hunch was correct, and it is easy to demonstrate.

What I quickly found, by Googling "the witty few", was the following poem, which I noted with satisfaction had been included in an anthology edited by some Lady of Quality named.....Aphra Behn (in 1685)!!! That was two years before The Lucky Chance was first performed. So it turned out that Behn enjoyed that turn of phrase "the witty few" so much that she deployed it _twice_---once in prose in the Preface, and once in poetry, as follows:

The Female Wits by a Lady of Quality

Men, with much toil, and time, and pain, At length, at fame arrive;
While we, a nearer way obtain The palms for which they strive.

We scorn to climb, by Reason's rules, To the loud name of Wit;
And count them silly modest fools, Who to that test submit.

Our SPARKLING way, a method knows, More airy and refined;
And should DULL Reason interpose, Our lofty flight 'twould bind!

Then, let us on! and still believe! A good bold faith will do!
If we ourselves can well deceive; The World will follow too!

What matter! though the witty few, Our emptiness do find;
They, for their int'rest, will be true! 'Cause we are brisk and kind.


Whether Behn wrote the above poem first and the Preface second, or vice versa, or wrote them both contemporaneously, seems unimportant to me. What seems _very_ significant to me, however, is that this poem expounds a more assertive feminism than the Preface---this poem playfully yet unmistakably asserts the idea not merely of female _equality_ when it comes to Wit, but of female _superiority_! I believe Behn is suggesting that what passes for Wit coming from most famous male pens (I suspect she would have excluded Shakespeare from that judgment, however) is too heavy handed---the male writer works too hard, and too obviously--whereas the female wits, who are the "heroines" of this poem, work with a lightness of touch which is much more effective, because more subtle.

And of course, when I thought about .....

(i) writing that was "light", and

(ii) the words "sparkling" and "dull" both appearing in the third couplet, and

(iii) (as I pointed out in my previous post) how Behn's "Since 'tis to the witty few I speak..." was transformed by JA into her famous "_Dull_ Elves" quote about the (deliberately) ambiguous pronouns of Pride & Prejudice.....

...I was immediately prompted to connect all these dots to the _other_ very famous epistolary quote of JA's about Pride & Prejudice, which she (totally disingenuously) called "too light, bright and _sparkling_"!

There can be no reasonable doubt that JA was so exuberantly proud (in the best sense) of her achievement in writing and publishing Pride & Prejudice in January 1813, that she felt it only proper to pay covert homage to one of her literary heroes, Aphra Behn, by covertly alluding to Behn's own exuberant celebration of her own talents!

Therefore, this is yet another reason why those who read JA as being sincerely modest and self-deprecating in calling P&P "too light bright and sparking" are reading JA's writing upside down from her true meaning! JA obviously _loved_ to dream that she was about to achieve the kind of fame that she believed Behn had merited, but had never fully received, since she was a woman--hence the plain brass floor plaque in a forgotten corner of Westminster Abbey.

And it wasn't just in January 1813 that JA was channeling that exact same satirical sentiment of Behn's in the above poem. No, JA also noted Behn's dismissing the toilsome, painful, time-consuming wit of male writers who achieve fame by the literary equivalent of brute force, when JA's narrator obtruded into the text of Northanger Abbey in the famous Defence of the Novel in Chapter 5, and asserted in no uncertain terms:

"And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the [female] novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, WIT, and taste to recommend them."

Indeed, JA held to these sentiments over the length of her lifetime, I suggest, and I also suggest that JA's above-described veiled allusions to Behn _also_ "have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend _them_"!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Aphra, Astraea, Austen: "Since 'tis to the witty few I speak..."

Anielka Briggs wrote today in Austen-L: "Behn is every feminist's forgotten favourite: you may recall Virginia Woolfe said we should all drop flowers on her grave for earning us the right to speak. Most of us are forced to endure a touch of restoration drama as a compulsory unit of a literary English education. May I propose that instead we voluntarily flock to Behn's metaphorical feet, read her plays, throw entire bouquets on her monumental slab a-la-Virginia, and recognise her as Austen's seminal source?"

I responded as follows.

A couple of reactions to the above:

1. Anielka, it sounds like your on-again-off-again position on whether you agree with me that JA was a radical feminist or not is now "on again".....at least for the moment. I have been aware of Behn as a proto-feminist inspiration to JA for several years.

2. Apropos [Anielka's] reference to Behn's "monumental slab a-la-Virginia" (Woolf):  had you been present (as Christy was) at my 2009 Portland JASNA AGM presentation about the late Mrs. Tilney as the shadow heroine of Northanger Abbey, [Anielka] would have learnt that Aphra Behn is _not_ buried under a monumental slab a-la-Virginia or a-la-Anybody-Else. For a description of the exact, and much humbler, location where she lies buried, here is the text of the relevant portion of my Portland presentation, which was part of the case I made for the real-life Samuel _Morland_ being an allusive source for the death in childbirth theme in NA:

"I recall standing in that access-restricted nave in Westminster Abbey, looking up at those awful memorials [erected by Samuel Morland to his two young wives who died in childbirth], imagining Jane Austen stood right there, like Catherine looking up at Mrs. Tilney’s portrait! And this is right in front of a plain brass floor plaque denoting the crypt of the great proto-feminist writer _Aphra_ _Behn_, Morland’s contemporary. Morland’s memorials above, Behn’s plaque below;the irony of Behn spending eternity at the foot of Morland’s memorials to ego masquerading as grief for the two poor girls he “murdered” is just too perfectly aligned with Austen’s ironic double bluff."  END QUOTE

During my July 2009 visit, I took a photo of Behn's plain brass floor plaque, and as I stood there, I truly did feel the full force of the poetic injustice that Aphra Behn does not like in Poet's Corner, where she belongs, but instead lies underfoot in a forgotten corner of WESTminster (not to be confused with NORTHanger) Abbey, literally at the feet of Morland's monstrous memorials.  But...I also really did feel the thrill of knowing that approximately 2 centuries ago, Jane Austen herself stood there where I was standing--I imagine JA looking up, looking down, smiling and laughing out loud, and deciding to correct that injustice in her inimitably sly satiric way!

Here are links to my earlier posts that amplify on various aspects of the Samuel Morland subtext in NA, including providing photos I took of Morland's memorials:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/01/byrne-portrait-two-abbeys-their-awful.html

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1011B&L=AUSTEN-L&P=R24&I=-3

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1011C&L=AUSTEN-L&P=R183&I=-3

Otherwise...Anielka also wrote, in relevant part: "Aphra Behn had the pen in her hands and with that pen she wrote the following sentence when proving that "The Lucky Chance" was a great deal more chaste (even though quite sexy) than comparable writings by men. "All I ask, is the Priviledge for my Masculine Part the Poet in me, (if any such you will allow me) to tread in those successful Paths my Predecessors have so long thriv’d in, to take those Measures that both the Ancient and Modern Writers have set me " Compare this with Anne's (Austen's)  "All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!" " So Behn wishes for the writer in her which she describes as masculine is to compete on an even footing with men. Whereas Austen, in the part of Anne, claims for her own sex the ability to "love longest when existence or hope is gone" This resemblance in sentence construction might be sheer coincidence. However, the same pasage from The Lucky Chance (I'll post it below in full as a link) goes on to say: "I am not content to write for ...(money)... only. I value Fame as much as if I had been born a _Hero"_ And we all know Austen's famous comment: "I write only for fame, and without any view to pecuniary emolument" "

Bravo on that discovery, Anielka! I believed Behn's plays were on JA's radar screen, but never got past skimming one of her plays, and finding nothing that caught my eye, and not going further. Kudos to [Anielka] for finding it.

Truly there can be no doubt that [Anielka has] found something significant----JA read that Preface, and alluded to in not only in the two places [Anielka has] so aptly pointed out, but also in a _third_, in the immediately preceding portion of that same paragraph of that Preface, an allusion by JA which is near and dear to my heart, as the name of my blog illustrates:

"I cannot omit to tell you, that a Wit of the Town, a Friend of mine at Wills Coffee House, the first Night of the Play, cry'd it down as much as in him lay, who before had read it and assured me he never 'saw a prettier Comedy. So complaisant one pestilent Wit will be to another, and in the full Cry make his Noise too; but SINCE 'TIS TO THE WITTY FEW I SPEAK, I HOPE THE BETTER JUDGES will take no Offence, to whom I am oblig'd for better Judgments; and those I hope will be so kind to me, knowing my Conversation not at all addicted to the Indecencys alledged, that I would much less practice it in a Play, that must stand the Test of the censoring World. And I must want common Sense, and all the

Degrees of good Manners, renouncing my Fame, all Modesty and Interest for a silly Sawcy fruitless Jest, to make Fools laugh, and Women blush, and wise Men asham'd; My self all the while, if I had been guilty of this Crime charg'd to me, remaining the only stupid, insensible. Is this likely, is this reasonable to be believ'd by any body, but the wilfully blind? All I ask, is the Priviledge...."

"Since 'tis to the witty few I speak, I hope the better Judges..."  is obviously a line which JA took to heart, and then reinvented in a different form to convey exactly the same idea:

"I do not write for such Dull Elves, as have not a Great Deal of Ingenuity themselves...."

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S.: I disagree with [Anielka] only on one interpretation you made---you suggested that Anne Elliot spoke for Jane Austen in altering Behn's assertion of a masculine poetic prerogative into a feminine amatory prerogative. I think it's clear from all of the above context that Anne Elliot did not speak for JA in that alteration, and that JA saw herself very decisively as "holding the pen" with a firm hand that would have been called "masculine" back then.

Jane Austen's Letter 76(C) and its Subversive Feminist, Slavery Subtext

In the group read of Jane Austen's 154 surviving letters (one letter per week) that we have recently resumed in Janeites and Austen-L, we are up to Letter 76(C) dated October 29-31, 1812 (or two months and a week shy of exactly two centuries ago!), a very short letter written by Jane Austen to niece Anna Austen.

I posted a link to the post I wrote about Letter 76(C) in this blog last October....

 http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/rachel-hunters-1806-sentimental-novel.html




Diana Birchall then responded, in relevant part:  "It would take a lot of work to try to unravel what, exactly, Jane Austen was saying about Mrs. Hunter's Lady Maclairn to her niece Anna. Looking a few things up with each Austen letter is profitable and fun, but this one is a subject for a book in itself. Arnie tells us that Isobel Grundy has written extensively about it and he has his own conjectures, as others have theirs. I have no doubt that Jane Austen meant something but the references are too obscure for me and the unpicking is way too much of a project."

I replied to Diana as follows:

I just reread that post for the first time since I wrote it, and I beg to differ with you----it really isn't such a project to to pick one's way through the few steps I took in sleuthing out the true significance of Jane Austen's allusion to Lady Maclairn. And it's worth the small effort, I suggest, in part because it is a quintessential example of how hard Le Faye sometimes worked in order to make an "unseemly" Austen allusion _more_ obscure than it was! It's clear to me that Le Faye did not want anyone reading Letter 76(C) to imagine that:

(i) Jane Austen might actually have approved of Hunter's novel, which exposed the moral corruption of English colonial slavery, both at home and in the West Indies, and depicted a cavalcade of patriarchal oppressions of African slaves and English women; and

(ii) even more shocking, Jane Austen might have drawn parallels between the morally corrupt fictional family of Hunter's novel and the real-life families at Godmersham and Goodnestone; and

(iii) still more shocking, Jane Austen might have shared those subversive perspectives with literary niece Anna, age 19, in a series of little epistolary in-jokes, that continued from the writing of Letter 76(C) in late 1812, at least until the writing of Letter 108 (also to Anna) two years later---and we can only imagine what Anna wrote in her half of that particular "thread" of correspondence!

Horrors! Much better to sanitize Jane Austen's meaning, and turn Letter 76(C) into a silly, harmless, meaningless, innocent bit of joking between aunt and young niece. Or so goes the editorial thinking of Deirdre Le Faye, it seems.


Diana further wrote: "Grundy's article that Arnie alludes to sounds interesting...It does seem likely, as Grundy/Arnie suggest, that the joke is that JA is comparing the houses in Lady Maclairn with ones she and Anna are familiar with - such as Godmersham and Goodnestone; that would be consistent with JA saying it was a complete likeness, and she'd like to read 4 more volumes about the inmates' lives, which she jokingly compares to the soap operatic and spicy events contained in Lady Maclairn....But of course if she was making fun of the Knight family, she would wish concealment. "

And I further replied to her as follows:

I was not clear about one thing, Diana---all the speculations in my above-linked blog post about topic (iii), above, are entirely my own. 99% of Isobel's article does an extraordinary job of elucidating the serious significance of Hunter's novel, and showing that it is anything but silly. But Isobel only notes the Austen connection in a single, passing sentence...

" Jane Austen, paying Lady Maclairn the dubious compliment of ironical encomium and fantasy, pretends to believe in the existence of the characters as real-life persons."

...and then elaborates briefly in a single footnote:

" Austen directs her mockery at the sentiment surrounding Mary (Flint) Howard, and ignores the Jamaican component (Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman, 2nd edn, London: Oxford University Press, 1952, pp. 406-407). It is noteworthy that critics are divided as to whether her treatment of Sir Thomas Bertram's West Indian property reflects pro- or anti-slavery views."

Isobel is being very coy in that footnote--she first points out that JA ignores the Jamaican (i.e., slavery) component of Hunter's novel, but then obliquely suggests in the latter footnote sentence that perhaps that slavery subtext really was on JA's mind anyway.

That is why I commented as follows in my October 2011 blog post:

"Had Isobel been aware of Letter 108’s veiled allusion to Hunter’s novel, and also had Isobel had the benefit of reading the past 17 years of scholarship about the slavery subtext of MP, and had realized that the consensus has clearly turned toward seeing MP as the unified, complex _anti_ slavery (and feminist) work that it so clearly is, perhaps she might have looked past the joking tone of Letter 76(C) and perhaps might been induced to read Letter 76(C) more deeply than she did. Isobel’s article is a gold mine for an Austen scholar with my feminist, anti-slavery perspective, demonstrating in a dozen ways why JA would have been so interested in Hunter’s novel, to the point of initiating her own beloved niece Anna into these mysteries as well, so that Anna, as a budding novelist, would learn to weave allusive shadows into _her_ fiction as well! This was much more important advice than the familiar nostrums about writing about people you knew, and only about a few families in a country village, and Anna’s fiction demonstrates that she absorbed this lesson very well indeed."

I stand by those comments today.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Todd Akin’s Belief in “Biological Defenses” to Pregnancy After Rape: Shades of Mr. Perry’s “Cure” for Mr. Woodhouse’s Ailments

When I posted yesterday about the eerie, dreadful resonance between the recent prison sentence handed down on courageous female musicians in Russia….

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/08/englands-jane-austen-russias-pussy-riot.html

…and the prison sentence handed down on courageous journalists in Jane Austen's England, it did not occur to me that _another_ news item would cross my monitor within a day, which would carry an even _more_ horrid, dreadful resonance to the patriarchal abuses that Jane Austen covertly satirized in her novels. But it seems that in 2012, we live in an era when pretty much the only thing that unites the men doing bad things in the world today (and men do seem to account for pretty much all of it)  is their hatred and abuse of women. Religious extremist men, whether they be Christian, Moslem or Jew, who all want to blow each other up, nonetheless seem to agree on _one_ thing, which is that women need to be suppressed, and then God’s order will be restored, and everything will be happy ever after—until the next war, that is.

And speaking of magical thinking, here are the key excerpts from the article I just read….

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/todd-akin-legitimate-rape.php?ref=fpnewsfeed

…that made me shake my head in horror:

“Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.  “First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” …. In a tweet, McCaskill said she was “stunned” by Akin’s comments. … As a state legislator, Akin voted in 1991 for an anti-marital-rape law, but only after questioning whether it might be misused “in a real messy divorce as a tool and a legal weapon to beat up on the husband,” according to a May 1 article that year in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch….”

Now, what, you might ask, have Todd Akin’s primitive opinions about female reproduction to do with Jane Austen?

Well,  think about the most famous hypochondriac in English literature, Mr. Woodhouse, of course the father of the heroine in _Emma_, with his implicit faith in the “thin gruel” and other cures prescribed to him by Mr. Perry the Apothecary---and his Satanic love of a “great fire” during the heat of summer.

As I first learned in early 2005, and have been doing my best to spread the word since then, Prof. Jill Heydt-Stevenson, in a 1999 article, blew the roof clear off of Austen scholarly studies of sexual themes in Jane Austen’s writing, by convincingly demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that the stanzas of Garrick’s Riddle, which Mr. Woodhouse just _cannot_ remember in Chapter 9, of _Emma_,  are actually a thinly veiled, sharp-as-nails satire of the medieval belief held by more than a few Englishmen during Jane Austen’s lifetime, that men with advanced syphilis could be cured if they had sex with virgins!

Perhaps you think I am putting you on, because this is too absurd to be true? Well, if you can’t put your hands on her 1991 article, or on p. 161 of  her followup 2005 book “Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions” where this brilliant interpretation is updated, then have a look at the wonderful 2010 dissertation by Melanie Osborn….

http://scholarship.rollins.edu/mls/29/

….in which Osborn amplifies on Heydt-Stevenson’s discoveries and makes the case trebly more convincing still.

And now I think you probably already see the sickening resonance between the “medical” theories of 18^th century England about the cure for syphilis, and the “medical” theories of Todd Akin about pregnancy after rape---both of which ascribe a supernatural power to virginal or chaste women---i.e., it seems that raping a virgin can cure a man of syphilis, and, on the other side of this perverse coin, raping a woman who does not enjoy it even one teensy bit cannot result in a pregnancy.  Taken together, they might almost sound like they provide mutual corroboration, until you realize that they are both completely absurd—and what is even worse, arising out of male fear, ignorance and misogyny!

As I contemplate the truly horrid and horrible absurdity of all of this, I am reminded of the chilling line spoken in the movie Time After Time by Jack the Ripper, sitting in a hotel room in late Sixties San Francisco, opening the naïve, idealistic eyes of his old friend H.G. Wells about the future of humankind:

“90 years ago I was a freak. Today I'm an amateur.”

Other than to change “90 years” to “2 centuries”, that’s _exactly_ what Mr. Woodhouse would say if he heard Todd Akin’s opinions about the female reproductive system. At least no English law was ever enacted exonerating men from having sex with virgins to cure syphilis---but if Todd Akin and his odious ilk had their way, similarly crazy male ideas about women’s bodies would have the force of federal law.

And if Jane Austen were to travel to 2012 in a time machine and hear Mr. Akin’s opinions, she’d nod sadly and remind us that, yes, Henry Tilney’s rant, in Northanger Abbey, about Englishmen being Christians….

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/remember-that-we-are-english-that-we.html

…is a satire, because what Jane Austen saw in her world two centuries ago, and what anyone with eyes can see in the likes of Todd Akin (or the Taliban) in 2012, is that those women who would allow the likes of Todd Akin or the Taliban the right to regulate what happens to women’s bodies, are greater fools even than Mr. Woodhouse.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter