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William Deresiewicz's A Jane Austen Education is an entertaining memoir of his journey from being a societal drop-out to a husband, teacher and scholar. It not only made me laugh but offered many rich insights into the novels of Jane Austen.
While Austen’s novels were the very last books in the world that Deresiewicz wanted to read, he discovered that not only do they supersede stereotypical romance novels for deep characterizations and complex and unexpected plot twists, but in each book we are forced to confront unpleasant aspects not only of human nature in general but of our own psyches in particular. The author details how each novel spoke to him at different seasons of his life, helping him to mature psychologically, so that he was able to fulfill his potential both personally and professionally. He ties it in with events in Austen’s life as well, deepening my appreciation of her stories.
SPOILERS!
Deresiewicz learns about true friendship from reading Persuasion. By realizing the difference between a superficial friendship and a genuine friendship he was able to help a friend overcome alcoholism. He studied Anne Elliot’s relationships and realized that true friends are not just people who make you feel good about yourself. To quote:
Putting your friend’s welfare before your own: that was Austen’s idea of true friendship. That means admitting when you’re wrong, but even more importantly, it means being willing to tell your friend when they are. It took me a long time to wrap my head around that notion, because it flew so strongly in the face of what we believe about friendship today. True friendship, we think, means unconditional acceptance and support. The true friend validates and supports your feelings, takes your side in every argument, helps you feel good about yourself at all times, and never, ever judges you. But Austen didn’t believe that. For her, being happy means becoming a better person, and becoming a better person means having your mistakes pointed out to you in a way you can’t ignore. Yes, the true friend wants you to be happy, but being happy and feeling good about yourself are not the same things. (p.194)
Deresiewicz takes on critics of Austen, who often accuse her of being a prudish old maid who knew nothing about love. In her novel Sense and Sensibility, where Elinor struggles to rule her feelings while Marianne allows her feelings to dominate her, Austen shows it is better not to lose control of passion no matter how much in love one might be. As Deresiewicz observes:
Austen was not against romance, she was against romantic mythology. No one who wrote as many novels about love and marriage as she did can fairly be accused of being unromantic. If anything, simply believing that people should marry for love, that ‘nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without Love,’ made her all too romantic by the standards of the day. People wrote stories of crazy love, then as now, and some people, especially young people, believed them. But when it came time to lay it on the line and commit themselves for life, most were apt to forget about love altogether. (p.227)
People assume that Jane Austen’s spinsterhood, as well as the times in which she lived, kept her from writing the erotic scenes which so characterize today’s novels. Professor Deresiewicz insists that such is not the case, stating:
If she didn’t put sex in her novels, it wasn’t because she was ignorant of it, or frightened of it, or because people didn’t write such things in those days. On fact, they wrote them all the time. The books that she read as a teenager were ripe with lurid sexuality: abductions, seductions, cries, and caresses; bared bosoms and eager kisses; cads, rakes and libertines; slavering monks and ravished maidens, callous bawds and poxy whores; adultery, voyeurism, incest and rape. If those kinds of things were missing from her books, it was because she chose to keep them out... Austen did not want to tell the kind of story about young women that everyone else was telling. Her heroines weren’t passive, weren’t piteous, weren’t victims, weren’t playthings. They controlled their destinies; they stood as equals.(pp.231-232)
A Jane Austen Education caused me to reflect. In Sense and Sensibility, it is not the wild, wicked young man who ends up being the hero and thus Austen parts company with the typical romance novel. So often in her stories the hero, that is, the eventual spouse of the heroine, is not the handsome, dashing and gallant youth but his quieter, wiser and more prudent counterpart. I came away from reading A Jane Austen Education more convinced than ever before that young people should be encouraged to read Austen’s books. My review copy was accompanied by a Penguin Deluxe Classics edition of Jane Austen's The Complete Novels, a perfect gift for teenage girls who love to read, or girls of any age, for that matter. Even if young readers do not plumb the depths of Austen’s works as did Professor Deresiewicz in his delightful and highly readable memoir, there is much about life and love to be absorbed by osmosis, just by reading and enjoying the stories. It is possible to learn without realizing one is being taught and the better the storyteller, the more subtle the lesson, the more lasting the impact.
