Today marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen's death.
For two centuries, Jane Austen has had a large readership and has long occupied a place in the list of must-read classics. And since 1940, her novels have been continuously remade into film and television dramas, and many versions have become classics.
Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist who wrote Reason and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Manor, and Emma. Her novels depict the life of a british squire at the end of the 18th century. Here's portrait of Jane Austen's sister Kassandra, painted for her around 1810.
But in the history of literature, Jane Austen's position seems a little awkward. Her novels are world-famous, but few people seem to regard this wide-ranging female writer as a "literary hero", and there are many criticisms of her, believing that her style is too soft, the subject matter is too scarce, the number is only 6, and the pattern is so small, forever staying in the picture of the life of the squire. From ordinary readers to novelists, they either praised her as "Shakespeare" or slammed her work for being worthless.
In the blink of an eye, 200 years have passed. The voice we are discussing today, Jane Austen, is impossible to hear, moreover, she has never signed this name in her work before her death, she has not seen herself become a classic writer, she is just a dancer in the living room, looking for the ideal freedom and God with wonderful movements. "Female literary hero", maybe she can't do it, and likewise, she doesn't care to do it.
Written by | Miyako
"She has to dance... He always sat in the house, so to exclude him, he had to dance before his own God. One Saturday afternoon, she took off her clothes again and danced, soothingly and rhythmically raising her knees and arms, dancing happily... She was dancing for her own invisible God. ”
This is the classic clip of Anna stripping and dancing in the living room in Lawrence's novel "Rainbow", and it is amazing that this irrelevant passage is so suitable for the world of Jane Austen's novels—a little woman who writes behind the daily affairs, and a literary heroine who searches for God and freedom in her living room—but the controversy is whether she is really a female "literary hero".
Jane Austen's House, in the chawton countryside, was home to the last eight years of her life.
Calling "Jane Austen" a literary hero may always be controversial. She writes in a small, unknown world, takes off her costumes for everyday chores, and dances in a search for her inner God, as if she were free only in this moment of dance.
Unlike others in literary history who have taken off their everyday clothes, some have taken off their daily clothes to show off their strong soul carcasses; some have taken off their everyday clothes and put on another concept coat that doesn't fit in. What Jane Austen shows us in the Dance of Words is a transparent dance dress, which is like an anti-meaning "emperor's new clothes", and you want to praise her, but you can't ignore the disdain of the "high-level audience".
"Jane Austen's characters are only marriageable."
"I'd love to dig her out of the grave and knock her on the head with my little shin."
"She doesn't understand what love is."
Mark Twain, Charlotte Brontë and others have all said that Austin's dance dress does not exist. So you want to deny Jane Austen with the voice of these high-level audiences, and you really can't resist the charm of the novel, you can't ignore the invisible, but gorgeous and heartwarming dance dress.
Are the two contradictory? Not contradictory.
This is the world of Jane Austen, a little paradise in the living room, a master of fiction who makes crystal dance dresses out of invisible heart silk.
Stills from the 1995 film Pride and Prejudice.
Does Austen's novel have any ideas?
Writing is a two-way street, and it is a long journey for the author and for the work. The author is not simply a craftsman, but an explorer, writing while searching for what he wants in his heart—formed or unformed. This is best exemplified by Jane Austen. Every artist wants to find something different, both grand and subtle, and what Jane Austen wants to find in her writing is a material that allows her to concoct a crystal dance dress that makes everyone's heart flutter. However, in the early days of writing, Austin did not find this "invisible silk", in "Sense and Sensibility", she used popular, visible silk, so the work written did not have the feeling of "floating and dancing", but appeared secular and bulky.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Translator: Sun Zhili
Edition: People's Literature Publishing House, April 2017
First published in 1811, Sense and Sensibility was Jane Austen's first novel. The first draft of the novel was completed when she was 19 years old, when it was titled Elena and Marianne.
Preaching, ideas, has never been Jane Austen's specialty, nor is it the charm of her novels, just as we can't put the flowing fashion of personality on every passerby. Her novels are never known for their clear ideas or deep social reflections, and "Sense and Sensibility" is an attempt by Austen to express ideas, but it is not successful, and the protagonists Eleanor and Edward are like puppets in a shadow puppet play, held by the silk thread of the concept, so the action is very stiff. Eleanor has long suppressed her feelings with reason, has not taken the initiative to pursue love, Edward's behavior is also extremely passive, and the marriage of the last two people depends on the abandonment of another woman, Lucy, who gave up edward, and Eleanor and Edward eventually became a family. Such passive hero and heroine image is a latecomer throughout the Austen novel series.
Therefore, it is only when Austin emerges from the machine of thought and preaching that her novels are the most fascinating. This has also become the reason why Austen's novels have been criticized. Lack of depth, no breadth, no profound thoughts, the cliché ending of everyone's joy, each one of which is enough to impact the status of "literary hero", making people question the paleness and powerlessness of Austen's novels, even if her novels are placed in the ranks of world famous works, it seems that she is only a Qiong Yao who was born hundreds of years earlier. The status of her novel seems to depend on temporal orientation rather than depth.
Stills from the 1995 film Sense and Sensibility.
So there are many people who do not like Jane Austen's novels, the ideology is too poor, there is no reflection of the times, the story is all around the marriage paving, people hope to take out from the shelves of the world's classic masterpieces a book that really looks like Shakespeare, there is gorgeous and exquisite language, there are deep soul tortures, there is a great tragedy and joy of fate ups and downs, this reading judgment standard itself is not a problem, but if it is used to evaluate the "female Shakespeare" novel, it is very regrettable. Jane Austen's novels never directly construct these major propositions, and since Sense and Sensibility, every one of her novels has been built on living characters, and correspondingly, those thought-provoking qualities are completely supported by characters.
For example, Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, the author constantly praises her in the novel as "intelligent, independent, and has a strong character", but Elizabeth does not seem to have any earth-shattering events happening, or symbolic fate turns to reflect this character. She was an ordinary person living in the small world created by Austen, without the legendary adventures of Odysseus, nor the poignancy of Juliet, the most independent thing she had ever done was probably to step on the muddy rain road to visit her sick sister, and her strongest moment was only to confront Madame Catherine, who was several times higher than herself, and when it came to intelligence, she was deceived by Wickham for a long time; the rest of the time, like everyone else, she stayed at home to do some textile work, write letters, and play the piano.
Stills from the 2008 film Pride and Prejudice.
But all readers who love Pride and Prejudice will not deny that Elizabeth is a "smart, independent, and strong character" woman, she is a woman who makes everyone feel lovely, which is rendered by relying on the vivid every move in the novel. And, even without tragedy, sublime, and fierce twists of fate, readers can still feel an independent and positive view of love from this novel of everyday life. She is not as direct as Jane Eyre, does not arrange a compassionate and sublime plot, but through writing the words and deeds of the characters, writing marriage comedies has achieved the same effect as other classic works.
This kind of wonderfulness is no longer something that "female literary heroes" can summarize. "Literary hero" is too heavy for Austin, she belongs to the artist, she does not write directly about ideas, but her novels have always expressed ideas. In the earliest days, she devoted herself to "reason and sensibility" with mediocre effect; in the last novel, Austin did the opposite, no longer writing "persuasion", but instead showing more textured thoughts—she had already created her own style.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Translator: Wang Keyi
Edition: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, December 2014
Would it be more exciting to let Austin write the big picture?
Jane Austen's novel characters and another recognized great literary hero Dickens have "the same thing", Dickens's big world has only two kinds of people, good people, bad people, clear and distinct; Austen's small pattern is only two kinds of people, cute, annoying, no big adultery, big wrong, everything depends on personal feelings.
Her novel pattern is exquisite, does not talk about social morality, does not talk about human poverty, but it is more favored by poor people than novels that directly describe the reality of poverty, which is the charm of fantasy, although the pattern is small, but it is not closed. Jane Austen's book club was held in England, and only one of the people who went was a man, and the rest were middle-aged women living in gray life. It is these poor people who live in the shadow of reality who enjoy the greatest pleasure of fantasy in Jane Austen's novels.
Is Jane Austen's novel only appealing to those who also inhabit small families, and only to those who are interested in the shortness of their parents? According to the way of thinking in classic works, shouldn't a novel present more social storms and historical torrents, and should write about humanistic thinking that is entangled with the tragic fate?
Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice has always been believed to satisfy women's fantasies about men.
If we follow this line of thinking, expand the pattern of Austen's novel, write a history of family changes, write about the characteristics of the times, write about adventure and personal heroism, the result may only be more boring. Because these are realistic and visible, and the charm of Jane Austen's novels lies in the unrealistic reality—the world of her novels has an alternate nature, as if hanging from the ground.
The family routine in Austen's novels is not a family routine in the ordinary sense, these families live in small areas such as Pembory, Northangjue Temple, or Mansfield Manor, and are always busy with dinners, traveling, dancing, writing letters, and getting engaged, and these five things include almost all the actions of Austen's novel characters. People in these small patterns move freely, as if they never have to work, and their source of income is either to receive the priesthood or inherit the inheritance. Men go back and forth in horse-drawn carriages every day, women stay at home and wait for their lovers to come to the door, in short, devote themselves to emotional life.
Whether it's Mansfield Manor or NorthangJue Temple, these faraway places are the small utopian worlds that Austin has built, and by looking at this small world she has created herself, and giving life to the characters - just like Nüwa created a person, she is also detached from the gray real life, with a small living room that takes off her daily coat and dances freely.
But this fantasy is by no means absolutely unrealistic like a Gothic novel. It is suspended, but there is enough full of reality in this suspended space. Because they are suspended in the air and have no extra connections, the words and deeds of those virtual characters are cut off from the stage background, and all their actions are directed at their pure selves. Through every word and deed, the character is presented in the most condensed way, and it reaches a full dramatic tension.
Sometimes, it only takes one action, such as a short segment of Catherine sitting in Thorpe's carriage in Northangjue Temple, where Thorpe shouts "God bless!" Give me five pounds and I can hit a round trip from here to Yorkshire and make sure a nail doesn't fall," Catherine was stunned to hear. An action, the comical sense of the former, the cultivation of the two is immediately presented. The large and small characters created through dramatic actions are countless in Austen's novels.
Thus, in this world, we can see the selfish and arrogant Emma, we can feel the exaggerated manners of Mr. Collins, we can see Admiral Tierney who is greedy for money and has two faces before and after the novel, all kinds of characters are miniatures of real life, Austin did not directly write about the era of all living beings, but put them in a small pattern and presented them most strongly through dramatic effects. Hypocrites who run for money, women who survive marriage, noble or despicable squires... At that time, the weather of the vast world was outlined in the small pattern of Austin.
Stills from the 2009 miniseries Emma.
Therefore, although Austen's pattern is small, it does not mean that the world she depicts is also small, and it does not mean that it is boring. She does not blindly portray the daily life of two or three families, but depicts the world in the stage built by two or three families, and creates different humanity in the characters. Even without the ups and downs of the plot, the novel is extremely exciting because of the sound of the collision. When reading, it is not the story that is appreciated, but the people and the humanity represented by the characters.
Although "marryability" always revolves around the women in her book, underneath "marryability" is still a noble human quality, the protagonist's marriage freedom is not limited, can break the door restrictions, but also can break the property gap; the word marriage, in Austen's world, is both a worldly small wish and a noble idealized destination. In the face of this ideal, although nothing has ever been discussed positively, Austen's grasp of good and evil in the world, the level of the soul has never been tilted, and good and evil are right and wrong, and eventually there will be results. Reading Austen's novel is like looking out the big world from a private living room, pulling open the gray curtains and seeing distant sunlight shine in.
This bright touch has not changed in 200 years.
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