8/9/2023 0 Comments Hidden deep book series![]() ![]() There’s no need to step outside the gate the call is coming from inside the house. In the charming, uncomplicated happiness of Emma, in the beloved freshness of Pride and Prejudice, a subterranean unease flickers in and out of existence.ĭeep in the heart of Austen’s optimistic social critiques there lies a chilling centre of fear, one that preempts modern horror genres and tropes. Austen’s deft humor, her incisive dialogue that allows us to laugh at everyone, and, above all, her abiding love of happy endings, have kept us from ever having to worry about the world beyond the gate.īut does that mean there is nothing to fear in Austen’s highly cultivated garden, her quietly luxurious country estate? I wonder about the rooms in that house and all that’s concealed behind their closed doors, the shadows that Austen’s characters cast. Bad things happen in Austen’s novels, and threats are very real-Lydia teetering on the brink of ruin, Marianne heedless of her dwindling reputation-but they are not, on the surface, dark. Austen’s fame and establishment success has not stopped her from being seen by many as a mannered writer, a conservative writer, someone interested in drawing rooms and social faux pas. All the same, for critics of Austen, her censure seems to contain some nugget of truth. She writes of Austen’s “carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden” as opposed to the “open country. They’re still unkind but perhaps not so grandiose. Not an entirely true story, it’s based on comments Brönte made in a letter to literary critic G.H. “Step out the gate and we’ll show you the world.” “Jane Austen paints a very fine garden,” she is reported to have said. There’s an urban legend that stalks English Departments about Charlotte Brönte denouncing Jane Austen. ![]()
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