Jane austen biography halperin
The Life of Jane Austen
I found the biography, generally speaking, very informative. The author explains in his introduction that he decided against footnotes in order to provide the reader with a more continuous reading experience, since footnotes have the tendency to distract and break up the flow of the text. The chapter notes at the end were very helpful.
It is thoroughly researched and the writing is engaging and maintains the reader interest in the subject matter, although it is a bit outdated.
This is were my reduced rating comes into play. I understand that much work has been done on the subject of Jane Austen’s life since 1984 and that what appeared to have been fact is now being disputed as embellished by family members after her death.
For example, the notion that immediately following the news of having to move to Bath permanently Jane is supposed to have fainted. During my most recent trip to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath and through my own further readings, I have to agree with their argument that it is highly unlikely Jane actually did faint.
As a very outspoken writer against the ridiculous notion of having female characters constantly faint in novels, most of her early works, especially Love & Freindship, satirizes swooning and fainting. Furthermore, Jane’s friend Martha Lloyd was present at the time and only commented on Jane’s distress about the news. Distress could mean fainting, but since no other records exist of her having a constitution prone to fainting, it makes this claim rather unlikely.
The author also makes a rather big assumption and puts the label of an outdated condition on her behaviour and the comments she writes. The author attributes her moodiness to neura
The Austen Catch-Up Project: John Halperin
Work on Jane Austen, whether biography or literary criticism, arrays itself along a spectrum whose poles might be labeled Jolly Jane and Angry Austen.Jolly Jane is a secure, contented woman who grew up surrounded by fond, supportive relatives. Her delightfully escapist comic novels poke gentle, affectionate fun at human foibles while ushering charming heroes and heroines into blissful marriages. Ultimately, the books reaffirm traditional Tory values and portray a fundamentally just moral universe.Angry Austen is a frustrated, rebellious woman who grew up surrounded by difficult, oppressive relatives. Her dark and edgy satiric novels ruthlessly skewer the misogyny and materialism of her era while ushering deeply flawed protagonists into problematic marriages. Ultimately, the books reveal the emptiness of traditional patriarchal values and portray a fundamentally bleak moral universe.John Halperin’s 1984 biography, The Life of Jane Austen, falls about as solidly into the Angry Austen camp as any book could. I chose it as the next entry in my Austen Catch-Up Project, wherein I spend 2016 plugging gaps in my Janeite education, because I knew that it was one of the most controversial of the many Austen biographies. “I can imagine Janeites burning effigies of John Halperin all over North America,” one academic reviewer wrote not long after the book’s publication.
My own view of Austen falls somewhere between the Jolly and Angry poles, and as a general rule, I don’t read with matchbox in hand. Still, Halperin’s book annoyed me no end, and not just because, in his telling, Austen is a cold, sarcastic, cynical, nasty, and cruel woman, driven largely by sexual frustration – why were no worthy men proposing to her? -- and irritation with her unsatisfactory relatives. To illustrate his claims, Halperin pounces with relish on every uncharitable remark about a neighbor that Austen ever confided to her Making fuller use of Austen's correspondence than previous biographers, Halperin shows us the costs exacted on a sensitive and critical personality by a society--and, frequently, a family--that paid too little attention to the predicament of unmarried women, especially those with inadequate financial means. .The Life of Jane Austen