Quote Originally Posted by allegro View Post
What the hell?? That whole article is irritating to me, even the English Prof’s approach to it. She knows full well that most colleges don’t have a Regency period specialization so they group those authors and poets from Regency as “pre Victorian” for lack of a better way to offer them in academia but also because Victorian was INFORMED by Regency and Romanticism. She’s nitpicking, and so am I. Not that Idiot Yiannopoulos knows any of this. Anyway, this idea that Austen was a staunch feminist amuses me; I did a lengthy research essay in college viewing Elizabeth in P&P from the feminist perspective and the academic research was about 50/50.(Full disclosure: I actually enjoy reading academic criticism of Austen more than reading Austen.) Elizabeth knew she needed a husband to survive and she held out for the BEST ONE; Darcy is RICH and POWERFUL with a giant MANSION. But her heroines do express the desire for the same education and esteem that men possess, so there is that aspect of "feminism" (which of course didn't exist at the time, but the very fact that Austen was an AUTHOR yet she had to hide in her room so nobody would come rip up her novels shows what she was up against; it wasn't about hot or not). Austen wrote about the realities of that era. Mary Wollstonecraft was a total babe, arguing against smarmy romantic heroism. Then her daughter, Mary, married that romantic poet SHELLEY ... comparing the works of the two Marys to Austen is an interesting study.

Edit: Ugh I hereby resolve that I will never again attempt to read or compose anything of substance via my iPhone 7+. STILL TOO SMALL for this purpose.
True, I don't think you can call Austen a straight-up feminist. That strikes me as a little anachronistic. I suppose Vindication of the Rights of Women was already out by the time Austen was writing, but I'm not aware of her interacting with those ideas, and it doesn't seem to appear in her work. And anyway, even though Wollstonecraft is incredibly awesome, she's more like proto-feminism, simply because feminism as an organized movement and philosophy was not really up and running at that point.

But still, it's totally insane for alt-right dudes to try and claim Austen. Her work is not about celebrating patriarchal social structures, or idealizing antiquated notions of feminine purity/submission, or anything else these fucking idiots love to fantasize about. The conflict of her stories often boils down to "individuals vs. their society," so it makes no fucking sense to view the depictions of early 1800s England in a nostalgic or positive light. Austen's all about showing how the lives of both men and women are constrained by social conventions, how personal happiness is at odds with the cultural demands and expectations of society. It's not some virtuous Edenic vision for the world. She shows the how women try to navigate within their depressing limitations. Her characters make do with the conditions they were born in to because it's all they have, and so they do what they can to carve out some happiness for themselves whenever possible. Women's dependence upon men is written about because that was the reality of the time period, not because Austen was trying to show how wonderful it is to live under a gendered hierarchy.