October 27, 2010

Austen charges spark outrage

by


A MobyLives story yesterday detailed how Oxford professor Kathryn Sutherland examined 1,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts by Jane Austen and, finding lots of blotted ink and crossed-out words, concluded that Austen’s terrific precision, spelling, and punctuation were mostly due to an editor named William Gifford.

Based on the fact that these were obviously first drafts, with no indication that the author didn’t — as would be only natural — revise them further herself, we thought the charge was essentially sexist, but a couple of readers wrote in to take us to task for that assessment.

There were, however, a few people who agreed with us. In a post at the First Draft blog, Cindy Jones, author of My Jane Austen Summer, reports that, “Janeites are not happy, emails have been flying …” She says there has been “outrage” at the Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America, going on now.

At Austenprose, Seattle bookseller Laurel Ann Nattress writes, “I was going to coldly ignore this folly and nonsense … but this is just the outside of enough. The media has grabbed on to Sutherland’s grandstanding publicity tripe and a full on scandal has erupted.”

In a smart and withering comment entitled Enough already with the “Jane Austen needed a man” to rescue her prose condemnations!, which is worth quoting at length, she continues,

Sutherland assumes that because Jane Austen’s later novels Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were relatively free of spelling and grammar errors that the editor who worked for her publisher fixed her mistakes and polished her manuscripts. Basically, that she needed a man to rescue her bad prose!

I would like to openly ask Kathryn Sutherland a question. Did you analyze the original manuscripts of Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion published by Murray, or Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park published by Egerton to draw your conclusion? No? Gee, I wonder why? Because, they no longer exist.

What you did use? The 1,100 pages of original manuscripts mentioned in Richard Garner’s report (in the Independent] could be her juvenilia, fragments of The Watsons and Sandition, and the novella Lady Susan. Besides some other minor works, they are the only original Jane Austen manuscripts in existence.

We can hardly hold a brilliant author accountable for her spelling, grammar, punctuation and messiness in her juvenile writings. The Watsons and Sandition were created in maturity, but are unfinished works in progress. Of course there would be words crossed out and untidiness. Lady Susan is the closest we can get to what Jane Austen might have presented to a publisher as a final manuscript for publication. The surviving manuscript was transcribed by the author in the early 1800′s as a “fair copy.” Would it have been the version that Jane Austen would have presented for publication? Since it was not, we shall never know.

So, as far as I can muster, Sutherland based her accusation on one line in a letter written by Austen’s publisher John Murray who mentions the “untidiness of her writing style” to his editor William Gifford (who we are not certain edited Austen’s books). Those four words have inspired this brouhaha, a damning insult to one of literature’s finest authors.

… Shame on you Kathryn Sutherland for using a line written in confidence two hundred years ago for your cheap self-aggrandizement. Now the general public thinks Jane Austen is a sham.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.

  • http://www.dianemeier.com Diane Meier

    There are countless stories of Max Perkins and his brilliant interference in the production of “Gatsby” and “Look Homeward Angel”, but do we hear that Wolfe or Fitzgerald couldn’t have “done it” without a man? Are we in any less awe of their talent or value? Of course not.

    Women’s worth always comes with a much higher price tag. Each tiny opportunity for criticism is hunted and exposed, with a kind of self-satisfied glee. If you don’t agree, ask yourself why so many orchestras increased their ranks with female musicians only after “blind” (behind screen) auditions came into vogue.

    Look at the storms over the cataloguing of “Women’s Literature” instead of “Literature”, when the stories are written by and about — hold on to your hats — women . Only stories about assassins and heroin addicts seem to escape the labeling that means to diminish the worth.

    Kathryn Sutherland proves once again that this carping isn’t something that men do to us. It is something within our culture. We all fall prey. Sloppy scholarship or ill-considered ambition is only part of the story. The suggestion that Austen needed a man to “help he”r is the far more damning part of the picture, and not so much for Austen, but for us.

  • http://www.dianemeier.com Diane Meier

    There are countless stories of Max Perkins and his brilliant interference in the production of “Gatsby” and “Look Homeward Angel”, but do we hear that Wolfe or Fitzgerald couldn’t have “done it” without a man? Are we in any less awe of their talent or value? Of course not.

    Women’s worth always comes with a much higher price tag. Each tiny opportunity for criticism is hunted and exposed, with a kind of self-satisfied glee. If you don’t agree, ask yourself why so many orchestras increased their ranks with female musicians only after “blind” (behind screen) auditions came into vogue.

    Look at the storms over the cataloguing of “Women’s Literature” instead of “Literature”, when the stories are written by and about — hold on to your hats — women . Only stories about assassins and heroin addicts seem to escape the labeling that means to diminish the worth.

    Kathryn Sutherland proves once again that this carping isn’t something that men do to us. It is something within our culture. We all fall prey. Sloppy scholarship or ill-considered ambition is only part of the story. The suggestion that Austen needed a man to “help he”r is the far more damning part of the picture, and not so much for Austen, but for us.

  • http://www.callynpierson.com C. Allyn Pierson

    Complaints about spelling are ridiculous when the writing was 200 years ago. Spelling was not standardized at the time and not much standardization exists even now. Noah Webster was the one person to have a major effect on spelling when he came out with his dictionary first dictionary in 1806. He spent the next 28 years completing “A Dictionary of the English Language,” which reformed and simplified the English language. The main result of this dictionary was to make American and English spellings different, with the American spelling simpler (color vs colour).
    At any rate, spelling does not make the author and it is unfair to judge an author of rough drafts of his/her work. I suspect that this study would not have been done if Jane’s brother had not boasted that her writing came perfect from her pen.

  • http://www.callynpierson.com C. Allyn Pierson

    Complaints about spelling are ridiculous when the writing was 200 years ago. Spelling was not standardized at the time and not much standardization exists even now. Noah Webster was the one person to have a major effect on spelling when he came out with his dictionary first dictionary in 1806. He spent the next 28 years completing “A Dictionary of the English Language,” which reformed and simplified the English language. The main result of this dictionary was to make American and English spellings different, with the American spelling simpler (color vs colour).
    At any rate, spelling does not make the author and it is unfair to judge an author of rough drafts of his/her work. I suspect that this study would not have been done if Jane’s brother had not boasted that her writing came perfect from her pen.

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