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In early August, Lev Grossman wrote a piece for Time <\/em> on the continuing apotheosis of Jane Austen: <\/p>\n \u201cIt was a clich\u00e9 10 years ago to say that the Austen phenomenon was big. It has now burst completely out of its bodice. Jane Austen, who recorded the last gorgeous gasp of pre-industrial England, has herself become a thriving, throbbing industry. Pride & Prejudice <\/em> alone sold 318,000 copies last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, and this is to say nothing of the numerous spinoffs by other, lesser hands that imagine the later life of Elizabeth Darcy, or her sex life, or recast her and her husband (or Austen herself) as detectives (the winning title in this category has to be Suspense & Sensibility) . . . <\/p>\n Along the way Grossman quotes Princeton\u2019s Claudia Johnson, who described \u201cthe real Austen\u201d as \u201cvery satiric, and ironic.\u201d So far, so good. Then: \u201cShe\u2019s very dubious about the world she lives in, but she\u2019s not radical, or revolutionary. She does try to explore ways of finding pockets of resistance and independence in a world that\u2019s pretty grim.\u201d There\u2019s something to this. Austen had something of the impish rebel about her. But as a description of her overall program, it\u2019s hard to agree: Austen certainly did not her world \u201cpretty grim,\u201d nor think of it as a prison. <\/p>\n Grossman is way over the top when he says, <\/p>\n \u201cThere is a suggestion of Orwellian despair in Austen: as in 1984, her characters cannot hope to break the iron cage around them, can only clear a little space inside it where they can be themselves. Austen\u2019s upper lip is defiantly stiff.\u201d <\/p>\n His most telling observation is this parenthetical comment: \u201c(Johnson notes, fascinatingly, that at the turn of the 20th century, Austen\u2019s reputation was as a man\u2019s novelist, not a woman\u2019s\u2014her hard-boiled, buttoned-down, unsentimental attitude was considered insufficiently feminine.)\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In early August, Lev Grossman wrote a piece for Time on the continuing apotheosis of Jane Austen: \u201cIt was a clich\u00e9 10 years ago to say that the Austen phenomenon was big. It has now burst completely out of its bodice. Jane Austen, who recorded the last gorgeous gasp of pre-industrial England, has herself become […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"yoast_head":"\n
\u201cAnd books are the least of it. Becoming Jane <\/em> , an Austen biopic starring Anne Hathaway, opens this week. September will bring the movie of The Jane Austen Book Club <\/em> . Masterpiece Theater is currently re-filming four of the novels\u2014 Mansfield Park <\/em> , Northanger Abbey <\/em> , Persuasion <\/em> , and Sense & Sensibility <\/em> \u2014in preparation for a marathon broadcast of The Complete Jane Austen next year. We can\u2019t seem to put down Austen, or leave her alone, or get to the end of her. She has become a commodity for which there is an infinite demand. <\/p>\n