anghraine

An anon said:

I don’t have a dog in this fight but I am absolutely fascinated at the evidence that academia has these kind of hot takes about P&P. Not that having a PhD makes one infallible, but I kinda expected people who were taught to think critically about literature and have certainly read more literature than I have have these kind of wrong analyses.

I responded:

It’s really odd.

I think part of it is the culture of academic literary studies that heavily prioritizes theory and thus selects for people who are deeply grounded in theory, which can lead to perceptive and valuable insights into texts, but can also create a square peg/round hole problem. I think a lot of academics get so attached to their pet theories that they apply them to literally everything without considering whether they’re the most appropriate or relevant lens for a given situation or text.

Moreover, readings of texts frequently become vehicles for application of the pet theory more than … well, readings that really attend to the details of the text (sometimes very basic details). I think that’s also part of the reason that you get the problem that my fave Richard Strier talks about in Resistant Structures; a lot of critics spend so much time digging beyond the obvious that they disregard what is plainly stated and can’t seem to countenance the concept of authors actually meaning what they say.

It’s not that sensitivity to subversion and the like, and application of theoretical paradigms aren’t ever appropriate! Some texts really benefit from them. But (twist!) critics can be kind of uncritical in their approach to and application of their preferred theories and information.

Tagged: #i got seriously into fandom bc i was so frustrated with academia so i have my bias #but i do think texts as vehicles rather than primary subjects of study leads to a lot of this #it's led to really important insights too but can go astray #if not handled with care #(fandom also has its frustrations that sometimes overlap #but also often don't #it's just... academia has its problems)

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moggett responded to this post:

It also seems to utterly ignore how Elizabeth is also supposed to be overcoming her initial incorrect first impression of Darcy. It’s not like Elizabeth is perfect in the text while Darcy changes…

I replied:

Oh, definitely. With fandom, to be fair, you get a mix of that and more balanced takes, but I think academia generally (though not always) tends to resist the equality between them forwarded by P&P’s structure and dynamics.

I think it’s partly because P&P does a really good job of inviting readers to participate in Elizabeth’s perceptions and mistakes while leaving open the possibility of doing otherwise, which is especially uncomfortable for academics of a certain type (who are often not great at accepting being wrong), and all the more so for ones who can’t bring themselves to complicate their initial judgment of Elizabeth as the only truly right-thinking character.

It’s an old piece, but I remember reading an essay about how Darcy’s letter hijacks readerly sympathies that should continue to belong with Elizabeth to the point of provoking resentment from readers. I don’t think it actually does that for most readers (Darcy has always been popular, as Austen intended; when she was worrying about what her beloved niece would think of P&P, Austen wrote, "Her liking Darcy and Eliz[abe]th is enough. She might hate all the others if she would"). But it does have that effect for some people who are often prone to these academic approaches. But it’s—the evidence that Elizabeth’s judgments are skewed by her vanity is pretty copious by the time that Darcy proposes, if you’re willing to see it, and unwillingness to see it or give it ethical weight even upon re-reading is, I think, basically an unwillingness to engage with the novel on its own terms.

Tagged: #/rambles #i genuinely think a lot of academia handwringing over pride and prejudice comes from being unable to accept being wrong #with a side of hugely prioritizing theory to the point of neglecting the details of the text #i don't mean subtle detail either ... it's more of what strier was talking about imo

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I’m obviously a big fan of bringing together major or minor characters from across Austen’s novels into one big Jane Austen Cinematic Universe. I do think, though, that there’s a sort of … I don’t know if I’d say problem, but there’s an issue.

If you’ve got a world populated primarily or heavily by Austen’s own characters, I think the “everyone back then thought/did X” argument (though always problematic) becomes stronger than it really is, because it treats Austen’s characters as normative. This goes both ways; Austen’s characters become representative of the typical, and attitudes/conduct assumed to be typical are imposed onto Austen’s characters.

What it tends to erase is the possibility that some of Austen’s characters—certainly not all, but some, especially among the central characters—are extraordinary people. Not necessarily in the melodramatic OTT sense, but in the sense that they’re in some way (usually many ways) atypical of the world around them, even as they’re bound up in it.

Just going w/ P&P, Elizabeth and Darcy are very much embedded within the world they live in, but they don’t live demographically representative lives within it. There’s no point where most young ladies were like Elizabeth, or where most rich landlords were anything like Darcy. Some were! They’re not unrealistic as in beyond the realm of reasonable possibility. But they are beyond the realm of reasonable frequency.

I think it’s more apparent that the characters are fairly unique people when you treat the novels as discrete continuities. Alternately, there’s the possibility of a really big world in which the cross-novel Austen characters are a minority who can thus be treated as the unusual people they are. But otherwise … even though I’m really fond of the JACU, I think something pretty important can get lost in it.

Tagged: #strier talks about how historically-minded critics tend to ignore the possibility that elements in fiction might be unusual or surprising #/in their own time/ #and how sometimes 'it seems to be saying this but it would be odd at the time' is just ... an odd thing. bc people write about odd things. #and it got me thinking about this #i remember mags at austenblog used to fight the good fight with this too #and be like ... yeah but just bc real life people usually did such and such doesn't mean it's how austen wrote her characters

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One of the critics I’m reading is talking about the underrated importance of the obvious in literary criticism, and criticizing the tendency towards the incessant “it might seem like xyz, but a truly sophisticated/knowledgeable/insightful/whatever reader will see that actually…”

That is, the idea is that if your readings constantly ignore or dismiss the obvious … maybe it’s a you problem.

He’s talking about early modernist lit-crit, but tbh I’m really reminded of fandom.

Tagged: #lol especially silm fandom

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