Book Review

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

B+

Genre: Nonfiction

I am sorry to inform you, Dear Bitches, that Jane Austen: The Secret Radical is not the stirring tale of an undercover Jane who lives a life of seeming calm while secretly running top secret missions for the abolitionist movement in the dead of night. However, it’s a fascinating nonfiction piece of detective work that points out that in the context of her day, Jane would have come across as a much more politically and socially progressive writer than she does to modern readers.

Author Helena Kelly’s premise relies on the idea that every time period and every culture has its own frame of reference. If I tell you that I do all my shopping at Walmart, that tells you something about me that is different from me saying that I do all my shopping at Whole Foods. Cultural references aren’t always that name brand specific (“name brand” is, itself, a phrase that is a cultural reference) but we all rely on thousands of these references without ever thinking about it.

Over time, certain themes stay current, which is one of the reasons that so many older books remain relevant and meaningful. However, most of the references with which the books’ original readers approached the text are lost, giving the book a different flavor with each new generation of readers. Kelly tries to look at Austen’s texts through the lens of Austen’s first readers, and she finds a lot of plausible evidence that Austen was writing very progressively about marriage, class, slavery, and money during a time when England was at war and dissent or criticism was repressed, often severely.

Here’s an example: In Mansfield Park, there is one reference to slavery that all readers can easily understand, and that is when Fanny brings it up at the dinner table and is shushed. Readers with more knowledge of history also know that when Sir Thomas goes to Antigua, he’s probably dealing with problems on his plantation, which is run by slaves. So far things are pretty overt. However, readers who read Mansfield Park when it was published would also have noticed that Fanny’s favorite poet, William Cowper, was famous for his poems in praise of abolition, and that Maria quotes from a passage about slavery written by Laurence Stern that was all the rage at the time. These, among other references, are obscure today but would have been glaring to Regency Era readers.

The other method Kelly uses is to analyze the text for things like repeated words and certain symbolism. For instance, in Mansfield Park, a book that deals with the idea of being trapped in multiple ways, the word “chains” is used thirteen times whereas in all other her other books combined it’s only used twice. In my opinion, sometimes this method of analysis is plausible and sometimes not so much. It’s clear that Kelly knows her Austen. However, all English majors know the trick of making everything symbolic, whether it’s intended to be or not. I buy the idea that Northanger Abbey is a book with a lot of content regarding sexuality but I don’t buy the idea that the scene in which Catherine opens boxes is about masturbation. Sometimes a box is just a box.

This isn’t light reading, but it’s also not mired in academic jargon. To my surprise, I read it in two days, lured on by the suspense of wondering just what Austen allegedly had to say about various topics. I found the chapters on Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park to be the most convincing and entertaining. The amount of scholarship and the clarity and approachability of the writing is truly impressive.

One of the reasons that I loved the chapters on Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion is that while Kelly does get into the darker subtext, she also celebrates reasons that the romances in those two novels are successful at a level I hadn’t considered. With other novels, Kelly is less sanguine about the eventual happiness of the couples. If you don’t want anyone casting aspersions on Edward from Sense and Sensibility, or Knightly from Emma, or Edmund from Mansfield Park, back away from the book slowly.

I would recommend this to people who have an interest in Jane Austen at an academic level. I would NOT recommend it to people who simply enjoy Austen for some nice reading, nor to those whose primary attachment to Austen is from the television and film adaptation, which tend to soften things considerably. If you fall into either of the latter groups, then this book will either irritate you or successfully ruin all conception of Austen as light and happy. If you like getting into the nuts and bolts of writing and history, then this book will be perfect for you.

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Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly

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  1. Sarah says:

    Omg.WANT !!!! I’ve already made my husband promise to get this for my bday. I always suspected that Jane was a feminist at heart! I might not last that long though.

  2. Zyva says:

    Note that this book will also annoy purists, who will HATE the ( mercifully brief ! ) digressions into “The Hours”-style fictionalized autobiography.

    (Guilty. With mitigating circumstances: my first exposure to ‘Austen-inspired’ was that execrable travesty “The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett”.)

  3. Susan says:

    “However, all English majors know the trick of making everything symbolic, whether it’s intended to be or not.”

    Haha. Sums up just about every one of my college English papers.

  4. Zyva says:

    Carrie: In Mansfield Park , there is one reference to slavery that all readers can easily understand, and that is when Fanny brings it up at the dinner table and is shushed.

    That just doesn’t happen. THIS does (reformatted as a play for clarity):

    FANNY: “But I do talk to him [Sir Thomas/uncle] more than I used. I am sure I do. Did not you hear me ask him about the slave-trade last night?”
    EDMUND: “I did—and was in hopes the question would be followed up by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of farther.”
    FANNY: “And I longed to do it—but there was such a dead silence! And while my cousins were sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all interested in the subject, I did not like—I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to feel.”

    My guess is that there is some kind of ironic juxtaposition with the real-life situation Kelly describes, where the Establishment, and in particular the Anglican church (via inheritance), did NOT want to be asked about their slave holdings, and told elaborate lies about conditions on the plantations to make themselves look benevolent when put under the microscope. (Wasn’t it the church’s spin-doctor guy who was called Norris? Like the appalling Mrs Norris.)
    Contrast Fanny’s genuine interest, and effort NOT to look more-filial-than-thou …

    The more-filial-than-thou pitfall also illustrates in microcosm the double-bind in which the Evangelicals placed themselves and their followers. They were somehow supposed to lead by example while staying self-effacing, especially the women.

    That was something I found really annoying about “Secret Radical”, the way Kelly represented Austen as a fan of the Evangelicals, when it seems probable that Austen saw through the simplifications of prominent forerunner Evangelicals – well-meaning but etiquette-hamstrung toothless tigers – as surely as Joe Hill who skewered as them “pie in the sky” hawkers .

    I read a paper on it: “The Frailties of Fanny: Mansfield Park and the Evangelical movement” by Mary Waldron. To give a taste or two:

    Austen […] criticizes Mary Brunton’s Self-Control (1810)—another attempt at fictionalizing the ideals of Evangelicalism—for being “excellently-meant … without anything of Nature or Probability in it” (Letters, p. 344).


    In its missionary aspect [of Evangelism Austen] must have seen clearly a deep contradiction which is evident in most of the didactic works of the time—they enjoin quietism and submission to duty in the rank to which you had been called together with firmness in the face of error and a steady opposition to sin. This would, they aver, finally call others from their evil ways. But in real life it is difficult, not to say impossible, thus to combine subjection and assertiveness. […]
    They set up a totally unreal model for the lowly and weak to follow, which promises unfailing reward for “right” action—obey the rules and you will get modest reward on earth as well as lay up treasure in heaven. The heavenly treasure may or may not have been sure, but the reward on earth, as More must have been aware, was at the mercy of economics. The tracts are intrinsically dishonest, for, while apparently recommending social progress, they aim at stasis.

  5. chacha1 says:

    This sounds quite similar to the approach I took in my master’s thesis about Frances Burney. I do believe I would like it.

  6. SB Sarah says:

    Susan, I think your comment is VERY symbolic!!! (heh heh)

  7. Msb says:

    @ Zyva
    Tremendous analysis, thanks.

    Jane Austen as “light and happy”? The woman whose central topic was women’s struggle to make a life they could live with integrity? The woman whose work demonstrates, as Auden said, “the amatory effects of brass*”?
    Of course, Austen’s work is fun to read (thank God). But it’s much more than fun.

    * brass = money.

  8. Zyva says:

    @Msb
    Thank you.
    What Waldron said stuck really well, for bad reasons. I’ve seen that old “you’re welcome to your high ideals, but DON’T stick your neck out” attitude around still, unfortunately.

    Re brass: I’m now imagining the “Money” song from ‘Cabaret’ – or the ABBA one – being repurposed for a Jane Austen musical. Thanks, that was fun 🙂

    Source amnesia on this, but pretty sure I read some Penguin or whatever Intro where the writer quoted a friend who had re-read Austen as a more seasoned adult and got a nasty shock. The acid tongue reality bit: “She hated people!”

  9. Rebecca says:

    @Zyva – Thanks for laying out the connections to evangelism. But while I love Jane Austen, I think her critique of evangelism came more from a position of high-church Toryism than from feminism avant la lettre. I tremendously enjoy Austen’s books, but I find it very difficult to think of her as anything other than quite conservative politically.

    For one thing, she’s a brutal snob. She’s tremendously fun and witty (who doesn’t love to hate her awful characters?), but if you think about it, all the characters who attempt some kind of social (as opposed to purely financial) mobility are shown to be either mentally or morally deficient or both. Mrs. Elton, Mr. Wickham, Lucy Steele, even Harriet Smith are all shown to be constitutionally unable to enter the class to which they aspire. All of them have received an EDUCATION above their class, but they are unable to assimilate it into their speech, writing or ethics. Nature trumps nurture every time. This isn’t just in one book, or an incidental thing. Austen believed in a class system that was seriously being attacked during her lifetime, and she upheld it.

  10. Zyva says:

    @Rebecca. Vocab prob with ‘snob’. It was what senior gossip boy creeps called girls who wouldn’t tolerate second-class citizen treatment.
    Also featured in paraphrase on Real Crime Profile podcast. What a pedophile ancillary wannabe priest called kids who went home early from camp he ran: ‘too good for us, they reckon’.

  11. Rebecca says:

    Classist then, if you prefer. I still don’t buy Austen as a radical.

  12. Zyva says:

    I find Kelly’s argument that Elizabeth and Jane Bennett suceed in being socially mobile compelling. They are only landed gentry on father’s side, petit bourgeoisie kinda tradespeople on mother’s. From memory, Kelly may have even put the popularity of the book down in large part to that, to ‘marriage of true minds’ over materialism cum determinism.

    Lady Catherine de Bourgh is also more what we expect as a hate figure. Though I stumbled on Pride and Prejudice midway, so I never expected anything of Wickham. (That proves the ‘rosy vision from media’ idea, in a minor key leftfield way.)

  13. Maureen says:

    @Rebecca-I do understand what you are saying, but what about Fanny from Mansfield Park? She actually was educated above her station, but maybe your argument is that she didn’t “try” to elevate herself above her station. It wasn’t something she chose.

    I started a comment earlier, and had to give up because I had to get to work! I’m a big Jane Austen fan, I belong to a Jane Austen Book Club-I think we are in our 5th year, we read several of her novels a year (and obviously re-read since she wrote so few) and we try to pick other authors from the same time frame.

    I totally agree with @Msb-I don’t consider Austen a light and happy read. The more I read her books, the more I am amazed by her inclusion of adultery, sex before marriage (we know Wickham and Lydia were having a fun time before they were found),and characters with just general unpleasantness. I think that had to be brave in those times, but if I read this book-I will know even more. I am much more knowledgeable about Medieval times, so I definitely need more background. Last weekend I read an article in the NYRB that talked about this book and 3 others, I am hoping we can include some of them in our next year’s book club schedule.

    Thanks so much for the review, I am always so happy to see all things Austen related!

  14. Rebecca says:

    @Maureen – I think the glaring thing about Fanny in Mansfield Park is that she *is* part of the Bertram family. She’s a poor cousin, but she’s a cousin. In fact, part of what Sir Thomas learns at the end of the book is that his fear of cousins marrying is in fact misplaced, and endogamous marriages are the happiest. She’s educated into what should naturally be her station.

    Likewise, I’m skeptical that Jane and Elizabeth Bennet change social classes. They get a lot richer, but as far as Jane is concerned, it’s specifically mentioned that Bingley’s “fortune…had been acquired by trade” and the whole point of his renting (rather than owning) an estate proves that he’s a nouveau riche, who’s from exactly the same social class. In Darcy’s famous letter he notes that [Jane’s] “want of connection could not be so great an evil to [Bingley] as to me” thus making a (presumably unconscious) fairly nasty comment about how he considers himself socially superior to his best friend.

    You could argue I suppose that Elizabeth therefore changes social classes, and there is a somewhat fairy-tale aspect to her elevation, but as she tells Lady Catherine “he [Darcy] is a gentleman. I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far, we are equal.” Lady Catherine, for all her obnoxiousness, is forced to admit “True. You are a gentleman’s daughter.” The social objection to Lizzie Bennet comes from her mother’s side of the family, as the social objection to Fanny Price comes from her father’s side. Austen seems to think it is possible to have only ONE parent from a higher social class and be able to move as an equal within that class, but at least one parent is necessary, and given the portrayal of both Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and the very unhappy Price family, she doesn’t think that marriages between classes work out very happily, although she’s fairly ok with marriages between people of unequal financial standing.

    I think the key here is that Austen clearly believes (as do most English authors of most times) that “class” is a quality distinct from “economic standing.” We tend to hyphenate “socio-economic” as if they were the same thing, or at least related, but for much of history people believed there were intrinsic aspects to “breeding” that were independent of wealth. A lot of this gets displaced onto the construction of race in the US (there’s been some interesting work done about how the portrayal of medieval peasants in a lot of English and French literature uses imagery that we would call “racialized” to suggest that they are perhaps literally an almost different species from aristocrats), but it’s important to recognize just how radical the phrase “all men are created equal” really was. (Hint: If you start out by saying that anything is “obvious” or “self-evident” then it clearly is NOT either.) There were plenty of radical ideas floating around during Austen’s lifetime. She pretty much squashes all of them in her writing.

    Aside from issues of class, it’s worth noting that in her juvenalia and onward she’s extremely hostile to Elizabeth I (pretty much the only modern example of a successful female ruler in her time), and seems pretty suspicious generally of women in positions of power – Lady Catherine is awful, and Emma is humbled. Nor is she unambivalent about women’s education. Mrs. Goddard’s school is a good one because there is “no danger of the girls coming back prodigies” and her most sympathetic heroines have either had no formal schooling or – like Anne Elliot – have actively disliked their brief school experience. All of her heroines read and many of them are accomplished musicians, and you could argue that she was simply satirizing the pretensions of the educational establishment of her day, and saying something along the lines of “never let school interfere with your education.” But in a time and place where there was active hostility to women trying to get a formal education, that’s not a “radical” position, but rather a conservative one.

    Adultery and sex before marriage and general unpleasantness are pretty much staples of fiction in all times and places, because they make for good stories (and good gossip).

    Again, I love Austen (which is why I can quote large chunks of her novels from memory), but I recognize that I would probably have huge issues with her politically.

  15. Zyva says:

    @Rebecca

    Re: all the characters who attempt some kind of social (as opposed to purely financial) mobility are shown to be either mentally or morally deficient or both. Mrs. Elton, Mr. Wickham, Lucy Steele, even Harriet Smith are all shown to be constitutionally unable to enter the class to which they aspire

    I can’t agree that “nature trumps nurture” for Austen. That is NOT what she says as part of the dénouement of Mansfield Park (keyword = education). Which comes after a lot of foreshadowing.
    Yikes, paragraph upon paragraph about Sir Thomas and Aunt Norris’ epic fail parenting (= narcissist/enabler team, sub-variety: stuck in reified roles in “good cop, bad cop” routine)… But a much shorter quote on a different character gives roughly the flavour of Austen’s attitude to nurture versus nature:

    Edmund and Fanny] continued to talk of Miss Crawford alone, […] and how delightful nature had made her, and how excellent she would have been, had she fallen into good hands earlier [= nurture]
    (my emphasis)

    On the other hand, looking deeper into the class issue over after hearing your points, admittedly, it IS hard to gage the contribution of nurture when Austen gives comparatively sketchy outlines of the backgrounds of problematic nouveau riche supporting and minor characters, whereas more detail (explanation?) is given on the conventional (for our time, anyway) Establishment ‘Rich Bitch’ types.

    Still, red flags are a-waving in some sketches:
    – Wickham is the son of a consummate professional…who enables his “extravagant” ( = financial abuser) wife. Wickham is deceitful enough at an early age to remain the Golden Child of his godfather/foster father, Darcy senior. That’s a recipe for a narcissist adult.
    – Harriet Smith is very much not financially abused, but she is denied emotional support, family, right down to her right to know her own identity. That’s a recipe for insecurity. Maybe commitment-phobia. Could prime her to look for a ‘rescue romance’. Speculation, though.
    [There may be more red flags, but they would be hard for me to find. I find
    Sense and Sensibility and Emma small-world universes claustrophobic. Sympathetic characters with verbal diarrhoea, smug people rationalising their self-serving behaviour…equals ‘re-read in chunks with lots of breaks between’.]

    It may be a case of ‘Austen writes what she knows in depth, extrapolates it onto her so-called ‘betters’ in very unflattering ways and, on the strength of a few cursory clues, expects readers to interpolate (?) the data across to explain the actions of supposedly lower-status wildcards’.

    That would not surprise me. It is hard to detach from your background – or ‘reference groups’ close to it – and carries a big risk of making embarrassing factual errors or fudging the ‘spirit’. Less detail means less room for error. And theoretically more room for demonisation…but Austen dishes so much dirt on the middle to upper-middle classes – disengagement and favouritism in their parenting, their sexual predators who ‘charm and disarm’ naïve young women, their ‘materialism over morals and mental health’ attitude – that it becomes clear that universal cross-class problems are in play.

    Middle class status, better access to resources, can provide escape routes from problems – but it can also make abuse, control, the blocking off of escape routes, easier to cover up. Austen exposes dysfunctional dynamics behind closed doors, in big houses well out of earshot of the neighbours. GOOD ON AUSTEN.

    Bottom line, I suppose I consider Austen a Realist, or something, avant la lettre.
    (Probably avant; timelines are NOT my strong point.)

    At least… the ‘competition’ that springs to mind is Balzac. His morals WERE a disappointment. I read the annotation to Le Père Goriot , and it turned out Balzac was pro-primogeniture. He commented on an ad that used a big brother with a new baby in a cutesy cuddle pose: ‘Big brother doesn’t know he’ll have to split his inheritance with the new kid’.
    I wasn’t into Balzac early on, and I was WELL old enough to read objectionable authors who abound in fascinating factoids by then, so it was hardly a crushing disappointment.

    A lot of people WOULD be in for a crushing disappointment if Jane Austen had regressive attitudes like Balzac’s. But there is a LOT of evidence she did NOT in Kelly’s book.

  16. Louise says:

    About class: Sure, Mr Bingley had to start out renting a property. But eventually he will buy land, send his son to a good school, make sure he marries into a good County family … and then his son’s son could call himself a gentleman without fear of contradiction. Hence “It takes three generations to make a gentleman”.

    For me the most class-obsessed person in Jane Austen is Jane Fairfax in Emma. This is a woman who will happily go year after year sponging off her impoverished relatives, rather than risk losing caste by going into the work she was educated for since childhood. Did she even like Frank? Who cares; he is her way out. Did the author intend the readers to despise her? Probably not. But she still gives me the creeps.

  17. Zyva says:

    Re Jane Fairfax. Cf “Agnes Grey” by Anne Brontë on the mental strain and sometimes physical stress (caused by negligeance) on governesses. Jane Fairfax is too physically frail to withstand it.
    (Hell, one of my teacher relatives nearly died of a ruptured ulcer in not two decades ago.)
    Ref:

    “”Austen liked to amuse her family with accounts of what would happen to her leading characters after the endings of the novels in which they had featured. Jane Fairfax, she told them, would enjoy but nine or ten years of marital felicity before she died. It seems that her husband-to-be was in fact detecting a mortal frailty…””

    From “What Matters In Jane Austen”

  18. Louise says:

    mental strain and sometimes physical stress

    One late-19th-century article refers to “the contemptible drudgery often the bane of a governess’s life” by way of explaining why a respectable woman might choose to go on stage instead. Goes to show how some things changed from beginning to end of the century; imagine a Jane Austen character becoming an actress! Still, I always thought Jane Fairfax’s illnesses were just a little too conveniently timed.

  19. Zyva says:

    I can imagine stage-acting Austen characters. What with the amateur dramatics in Mansfield Park and their play featuring a single mother. Add in dim memories from “Who Do You Think You Are?” episodes.
    Though I don’t think it’s something Austen could have fleshed out, having no access to actors, geographically and/or under the social code, but it could work at the close. It would be a more salubrious fate than how some of her characters end up.

    Jane Fairfax is already mentally and physically (going to get letters in the rain) stressed by her ambiguous position and uncertain future. She would be better off carefully selecting a live-in job position, and I was exasperated that she didn’t, even behind her secret fiancé’s back, or in the face of his disagreement. Relying on awful Mrs Elton for a referral is a bit fire sale.
    No wonder she gets sick easily, under that stress.

    It could also be an Adverse Childhood Experiences thing. Parental die, changes of primary carer etc. Turns out these things aren’t only risk factors for mental but also vulnerability to physical illness. Trauma just keeps giving.

    Functional neurological disorder is also a possible diagnosis.

  20. Rose says:

    This book annoyed many Austen scholars, not because of the politics, but because she used others’ research and ideas without crediting them. HK is certainly NOT the first writer to characterize Austen as a feminist or to analyze the dark subtext of the novels.

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