Is Mr. Darcy's Pen a Metaphorical Penis?

"You write uncommonly fast." Ahem.

A couple of days ago, disappointed in some of the twists in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, I started to read up on Jane Austen's sexual politics. It is a common theme lately to debunk the sanitized image of Austen as an asexual spinster who never left her house and replace it with the image of an Austen we'd all like to hang out with: world-savvy, cuttingly funny, and quick on the double entendres. I do not know enough yet to tell if this reconstruction is more faithful to her character than the last, but I admit that a part of me cheers for this 3rd wave Jane Austen. (A part of me finds it slightly problematic, though, but that part needs to read a lot more before opening its mouth.)

Anyway, one of the articles I read this week is Jill Heydt-Stevenson's "Slipping into the Ha-Ha": Bawdy Humor and Body Politics in Jane Austen's Novels. Heydt-Stevenson argues that the racy elements some readers see in Austen's writing are not only there, but they are there for a purpose. They are a veiled - and thus acceptable - way of criticizing the patriarchy, of subverting its values. The dirty joke signals that the author sees through the patriarchy's game. Among other things, Austen uses this bawdy humor as a way of exposing the (rather crude) sexual and power dynamics behind the romantic ideal of courtship, as a way of "collapsing boundaries between prostitution and courtship."

There were a lot of things I appreciated in this article - and it's well worth a read - but there were also places where I felt it veered into "literary criticism gone mad." Take, for example, this exchange between a desperately flirtatious Caroline and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, Chapter X:

"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well."

"Thank you—but I always mend my own."

For Heydt-Stevenson, Caroline's line is a "powerful metonymy of phallic power," while Darcy's reply, recognizing her sexual allusion, "playfully invokes autoeroticism." The more I think of it, the more I think this cannot be right. Mind you, this is not just an exercise in interpreting metaphors Freudian-style, where no cigar is ever a cigar and "all vegetation is pubic hair" (to slightly misquote Maud Bailey). In order for this interpretation to work, the characters themselves must be in on the joke. But if they are, how is Darcy's reference to masturbation a good or cutting reply to Caroline's (supposed) innuendo? "Thank you, I've never needed a woman for that"? Is Darcy really the ultimate Socially Awkward Penguin?

But then again, perhaps I'm being naive and reading less into this than I should. (It happened before.) So I'm crowdsourcing this one. What do you think, internet? Is a pen just a pen? Is this pen a, erm, "powerful metonymy of phallic power" and its owner the Socially Awkward Penguin? Is there a third choice I'm missing?

Vintage Illustrations of Jane Austen's Persuasion

What's a footnote?

Do you know what we love? Books is a good answer. Old books is an even better answer. Old books with pretty illustrations the best answer (or at least, the best answer considering we don't want to be here all night). So I was pretty excited to come across a 1898 edition of Persuasion containing some lovely illustrations by C.E. Brock (who was apparently a well-known Victorian illustrator; thank you, Google, for that piece of information!).

You can see all six of these vintage illustrations below, together with their context in the book. Our favorite thing about illustrations is seeing how the artist envisioned the characters and how closely his sketches match the pictures we had in our minds. It is also the main reason some people dislike illustrations *cough* Charles Lamb *cough*. What do you make of Brock's depictions though? We have to admit, we're not quite sold on his Captain Wentworth, but what do you think of Anne and the other characters?

Review: Persuasion by Jane Austen

I'm quite thrilled today to not only pen my first proper book review here on the blog, but to also cross off my very first book completed for The Classics Club: Persuasion by Jane Austen. 

Persuasion is the third Austen novel I've read, the other two being Pride and Prejudice and Emma. Quite unlike my other previous encounters with Jane Austen novels, Persuasion represented a totally new experience for me because I knew absolutely nothing about the book before reading it.

With Austen's more famous works, it's so easy to be aware of their basic plot lines through cultural osmosis (chances are if you haven't read Pride and Prejudice, for instance, you already have a pretty good sense of what it's about... and maybe a healthy admiration for Mr. Darcy). But, for me at least, that wasn't the case with Persuasion. It was a completely blank slate. I knew nothing of the characters or the plot--in fact, all I knew about the book was the title.

That intrigued me and, since I like Austen quite a bit, I picked up the book with great interest. Here's what I discovered along the way.

The Central Theme

(Warning, gentle readers: a few mild spoilers lay ahead. Not into that? Why, just jump on down to The Bottom Line for my overview review.)

Austen's final finished work, Persuasion is the story of twenty-seven Anne Elliot, a baronet's daughter, who eight years before the novel opens is briefly engaged to dashing naval officer Frederick Wentworth. Under the influence of her pompous father Sir Walter (rendered in satirical perfection by Austen) and her well-meaning mentor Lady Russell, Anne was persuaded to end her engagement to Wentworth, deemed an inferior match for a woman of Anne's position.

We meet Anne close to a decade after this fateful event, living a quiet, if by turns unhappy, life with her father and elder sister Elizabeth, who is Sir Walter's protege in manners and temperament. Rounding out the family is the youngest (married) sister Mary Musgrove, another brilliant Austen caricature of self-absorption.