Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures

by Claudia L. Johnson

Jane Austen completed only six novels, but enduring passion for the author and her works has driven fans to read these books repeatedly, in book clubs or solo, while also inspiring countless film adaptations, sequels, and even spoofs involving zombies and sea monsters. Austen’s lasting appeal to both popular and elite audiences has lifted her to legendary status. In Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures , Claudia L. Johnson shows how Jane Austen became “Jane Austen,” a figure intensely—sometimes even wildly—venerated, and often for markedly different reasons.
Johnson begins by exploring the most important monuments and portraits of Austen, considering how these artifacts point to an author who is invisible and yet whose image is inseparable from the characters and fictional worlds she created. She then passes through the four critical phases of Austen’s reception—the Victorian era, the First and Second World Wars, and the establishment of the Austen House and Museum in 1949—and ponders what the adoration of Austen has meant to readers over the past two centuries. For her fans, the very concept of “Jane Austen” encapsulates powerful ideas and feelings about history, class, manners, intimacy, language, and the everyday. By respecting the intelligence of past commentary about Austen, Johnson shows, we are able to revisit her work and unearth fresh insights and new critical possibilities.

 

An insightful look at how and why readers have cherished one of our most beloved authors, Jane Austen’s Cults and Cultures will be a valuable addition to the library of any fan of the divine Jane.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Books About Books, Literary Criticism, Biography, Literature, Criticism

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Bry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to stop. I just had too. Mainly because I just read a ridiculously long paragraph about spoons. Yes you read that right. SPOONS. WTF do spoons have to do with Jane Austen?? I read the paragraph twice and I still have NO IDEA!

This entire book has been a complete struggle for me. I'm sure the author knows her shit and totally knows Jane Austen but she is seriously lacking when it comes to relating that material in a succinct and animated way. Every paragraph was the length of 2-4 paragraphs in any other book - EVEN SCHOLARLY ONES. the vocabulary was if she where writing with a thesaurus in her lap. I mean why use a 1-2 syllable word when you can use an obscure 4-5 syllable word?!? And a third of this book has been references to others writing on Jane Austen and most of the reflections about those writings were snide and degrading.

Im sorry but any book that takes something I am obsessed with, enjoy, and love and turns it into a boring chore that I am begging to be done with is a disservice to that love.

[Ana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel like I understand more about the cult of Jane Austen, but I'll need to revisit this book after I re-read the novels.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures by Claudia L. Johnson is not a book intended for those who fancy themselves Janeites because they have seen all the screen adaptations of Austen's novels. Instead, it is a scholarly work which addresses the place Jane Austen has held mostly in English culture in the first 150 years following her death, although there is some assessment of recent developments. Johnson is a professor of English literature at Princeton University and this treatise is written in an academic style. She employs a rich vocabulary that is likely to send the most literate reader often to the dictionary. At times, her style can descend into academia-speak with phrases such as "consolatory potential of designification" and an abundance of "ize" suffixes such as "historicize." Mostly though, Johnson uses language expertly to deliver astute examination of the effects that Austen has had on scholars and devotees alike.

The current perception of Janeites seems to have settled on young women who have recently graduated from Harlequin romances but still seek to be entertained by literary romance. Claudia Johnson shows us that this type of Janeite is far different from the historical type who delighted in the incisive social insight for which serious readers of Austen know her. Each era seems to have put its characteristic stamp on their perception of the divine Jane, from the Victorian belief that she embodied the gentility and primness of a golden age to the notion from the world wars that Austen maintained a "regulated hatred" in her writing. Until the era of the screen adaptations of the 1990s, Janeites were overwhelmingly male. They were not only male but they were the intrepid explorers of the Edwardian age, the trench warriors of World War I, and the legions suffering battle fatigue in the second world war.

Not only does Claudia Johnson examine the view of Austen from literary critics to the hoi polloi, she analyzes how Janeites have treated the physical things that Austen has left history, from her dwellings to the paltry few items she owned outright. It is in the years after the world wars where items with only a tenuous connection to Austen have been offered as relics for conservation and become included in the places of pilgrimage. Jane Austen's Cults and Cultures is recommended for the serious student of Austen and for Janeites who have an interest in the history of our ilk.

[Rikke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book holds a rather interesting idea. Johnson implies that because we do not have a substantial grasp of Austen's physical appearance, Jane Austen becomes bodiless. Because we do not have a full portrait of her body and her face, we try to fill out the gaps and holes through fan fiction and fan culture.

It is endlessly interesting.

[Mirte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having just finished this book, I cannot but mourn the afterword of this otherwise interesting and informative book. In her last pages, Johnson is so negative about screen adaptations and other modern Austenian paraphernalia, and speaks in such discriminatory tones of fans of the television series and films that it left a bad taste in my mouth. In the other chapters, she provides a wealth of information on Austen's stature throughout the ages and zooms in on interesting artifacts and critical works. But in her introduction and afterword, she comes forward as a Janeite herself, and one that is very haughty considering her status as a reader and editor of Austen's works. Pity, really.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this is a very well written and quite scholarly book on Jane Austen but I did not find it overly engaging and though I am an Austen fan, I did not give me information I was glad to get. I am glad I read it and my use it as a reference book in the future. I doubt if I ever read it through again.

[Mell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Johnson's book has some interesting facts and insights, but they are buried by her laborious writing style. I love reading about Austen and her life, but found large parts of this dull, wordy, and uninspiring. This is an okayish read. Rounded up from 2.5 stars.

[Maggie]

Particularly enjoyed the exploration of Austen during WWI and WWII as typifying what to defend in England and as helping readers bear the war. Hollywood's production of Pride and Prejudice as a means of showing solidarity with England during the war.

J.E. Austen Liegh "describes his fairy-aunt's writings as 'like photographs in which no feature is softened; no ideal expression is introduced, all is the unadorned reflection of the natural object" (Memoir, 157, 152); and Lord Barabourne writes that "she describes men and women exactly as men and women really are, and tells her tale of ordinary, everyday life with such truthful delineation, such bewitching simplicity" (Letters I, xxii)." (87)

WWI: "Janeite allusion here produces an intensely tragic reading of her novels, where the world is not magically safe and uncomplicated, where the stakes are higher and the dangers keener than we imagined before. Austen's novels are about nothing if not the perils of living in a confined, narrow, profoundly bruising place where experience unfolds under the aegis of ordeal, where vulnerable, deferent young protagonists with next to no autonomy are exposed to adversities so brutal that they cannot be essayed, much less assailed directly." (109)

"English character is on display" "promoting a fellowship across temporal as well as class borders" (125)

"Ragg finds that 'far from being surprised that three out of Jane's completed novels contain no mention of the war, we should be astonished that it bulks so large in two of them" (P. 129).

P. 147 "tempting to argue that Harding's Austen is a hero of social integration, confident enough ... 'to be playful, malleable, and optimistic," to test 'propositions against an opponent's out of spirit of inquiry rather than competition," and to be 'governed by the desire for conversation and not by a defensive impulse to leave the table when confronted with difference." "...the heroine achieves preeminence 'above her reasonable social expectations by conventional standards but corresponding to her natural worth (RH, 16)."
For Harding, "the marriage plot (via the Cinderella story) as the principal significance-bearing element of her novels, the chief reward and consolation for the heroines." (p, 148).
Lee Harding, Regulated Hatred

C.S. Lewis: (149) "disciplines Austen by making her the teacher, the enforcer of discipline, finding in her comedy "hard core morality" and "a vein of religion." (He would.)

"Yet it is not the seat and grounds that Elizabeth most powerfully esteems, but rather the harmonious, well-regulated state of relations they signify, ordered as they are by a man whose virtues are conceived relationally: 'As a brother, a landlord a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship!" (p. 171)

[Deborah Markus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm trying to stay focused when it comes to the research I'm doing, but I saw this at the library and couldn't resist. I'm glad I went ahead and picked it up. It's short, accessible, and fascinating. The chapter about Austen's portrait -- is that really Austen, and is the "Rice Portrait" definitely *not* Austen? -- alone makes it worth reading.

I was also interested (and rather furious) to learn that R.W. Chapman, he of the famous Chapman editions of Austen's works, lifted "the entire setting of the text" of his *wife's* own scholarly edition of "Pride and Prejudice" "into volume 2 of his 1923 set without acknowledging it or her, much less accounting for this wholesale duplication." Grr.

I very much enjoyed Johnson's thoughts on Austen's writing. This is lovely:

"I lay it down as axiomatic that whenever objects are made to stand out with any sort of specificity in Austen's novels, something is wrong. ...In most cases, particular things become prominent because they are noticed by a character who is a snob, a bore, or worse. In _Northanger Abbey_, for example, we learn about the hothouse pineapples, Rumford stoves, and a set of Staffordshire china manufactured two years earlier because General Tilney, that great and nasty social climber, brags about them. He calls that set of Staffordshire 'old' because he has a passion for new and newfangled things, and two years makes them pitifully out of date."

This is that rare book about Austen and her work that might well be of interest to the most casual reader of Austen (if there is such a thing as a casual Austen reader), or to the reader who hasn't yet picked up her novels.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. At times, Johnson's language was a little academic-opaque and some of her references could have used more context for a nonexpert in the field (ie me). However, it was very informative and I enjoyed learning of the progression of Austen fandom over time. Now, Austen is extremely feminized, so much so that male authors like William Deresiewicz (A Jane Austen Education) write entire books and expect pats on the back for discovering that Austen wrote masterful works that he can appreciate. This was not always so. Early on, many of Austen's fans were male intellectuals, prime ministers, etc. She has been beloved by soldiers in trenches in both world wars, and societies have sprung up around her to collect objects even remotely connected with her. For myself though, I especially enjoyed learning the complicated history of Jane Austen portraiture, and the appendix containing three fairy stories passed down in the Austen family was a treat. I also enjoyed the textual criticism relating to material culture in the final chapter, particularly as it relates to the problematic Mansfield Park.

[Robert Muller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like any collection of essays written over a long period, the essays here are very uneven in quality and interest for the general reader, even a Janeite reader. I found the essays on magic and fairies (and fairy tales) unreadable and the essays on Austen's body and Austen's house to be fascinating. The WWI and WWII essays were interesting reviews of Kipling's story and other Jane-centered writing as they contributed to the culture of Britain at the time, but I wasn't enthralled. Johnson's writing shows here background as an American academic steeped in the language and thinking of the late 20th century humanities; I could wish for clearer organization and insights, fewer syllables, and shorter sentences. Since Jane Austen is perfectly readable with much the same afflictions (due to the language of the early 19th century), I can't criticize too much. I find very different things in Jane Austen than does Johnson, but that's the beauty and wonder of her writing, as Johnson points out, and why she has become a saint (with relics) in the religion of everyday life.

[Kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this is an academic book, boy howdy is it.

This is an overview of Jane Austen's critical reception as an author. Johnson begins with a brief biography, then discusses Austen's reception in five major eras: her own time, the Victorian era, through both world wars, and finally the surge of interest that led to the foundation of various museums after World War II.

Now. I found it very interesting. That said, holy crap is this ever an academic book. Johnson never says something straight out when she can say it in a convoluted way with a lot of academic jargon. It's interesting, but it took me so long to plow my way through the language to figure out what she was trying to say. I think academia is the intended audience, but still, just. Wow. This is why people make fun of academic writing.

Interesting book, but don't bother unless you're both a fan of Austen and a recovering English major like yours truly.

[Devoney Looser · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had the pleasure of reviewing this book: Looser, Devoney. “The State of the Union of Jane Austen, Fact and Fiction” (Review essay). Los Angeles Review of Books (27 Jan 2013): n. pag. Web. http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.ph....

[Mills College Library]

823.7 J665 2012

[Infinink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best bits were defiantly the information on her impact in the trenches of WWI and WWII, although the fact that what we think of as Jane Austen visually is not really her was also good to learn about.