Jane Austen and the Pirate's Queen

It is a pity that Jane Austen's legacy should be lost in the contemplation ―or in the criticism― of crinoline, bonnets, and old country houses. Those who think that they can sum up Northanger Abbey by saying that it is about a young woman's fancies should feel comfortable in saying that Crime and Punishment is about a young student's fancies. If Mansfield Park is a comment on the marrying schemes of the middle class, then King Lear is a reflection on the hereditary schemes of the upper class. Now, why is that anyone would blush after saying such nonsense about Dostoevsky and Shakespeare, but most feel confident that, in reducing Jane Austen to a painter of provincial manners, they have said something remarkable about her?

There is no harm in admiring bonnets and old country houses; and, if there is any harm in despising them, that doesn’t concern me now. We must realise, though, that we need Jane Austen for a different reason. I dare say she might even be important to contemporary politics. At the end of the day, wrote George Orwell, the most precious thing, whose presence stops hellish dictatorships in their tracks, and whose absence paves the way to them, is common decency. That is the quality one finds in Jane Austen.

It has been said, with partial truth, that people may be able to admire and understand art, such as excellent poetry and inspired music, without seeing anything objectionable in concentration camps, except perhaps the bad smell and the disagreeable noises. This was the case, as Richard Evans tells us in his book about The coming of the Third Reich, of many of those who eagerly supported the Nazi dictatorship. Hitler himself often made references to Goethe and Schiller, and Goering admired art even to the point of struggling to appropriate for himself da Vinci’s “Lady with an Ermine” –which had been stolen in Poland. Long before that, the Borgias had recompensed generously the skill of painters, but also that of murderers. In short, proper appreciation of the various arts is compatible with cruelty.

And yet, would that apply to anyone who truly understands the beauty that is to be found in Jane Austen's novels? Would anyone who has come to understand Emma's feelings after offending a poor old woman still remain insensible to the cruelties inflicted upon other defenceless victims? Certainly, one may follow Siegfried’s adventures without caring a straw about the sufferings of political dissidents. One may be inspired by a poem, and still remain the skilful manager of a concentration camp. But this is not possible with Jane Austen's novels ―unless, of course, one only sees old fashioned crinoline and bonnets in them.

It might be pointed out that one seldom finds questions of life and death in Jane Austen's novels. Certainly, the problems her heroines must face are more subtle than alarming. Neither Fanny Price nor Elinor Dashwood has to deal with dragons and pirates. But this is precisely one of the many qualities that make Jane Austen's stories so valuable to us. We don't have to deal with dragons and pirates either, but we too must face subtle moral questions, often made more difficult because they come to our attention only when they have become alarming.

Jane Austen still matters, and you can guess that when reading a headline in the London Times (2/17/2007) that tells us that British “Teachers fight for their right to keep Austen out of class” (unfortunately, The Times can be read only by subscription, anyway I include the links). Or when we find in the same newspaper (8/19/2010) that a journalist thinks it necessary to inform us that Austen knew nothing about proper punctuation, sneers at her novels, and warns Austen readers -who might have been deluded by her- that most men are not like the noble and honest Mr Darcy. Another writer in the London Times (3/22/2009) describes Austen’s success with words such as "cult" and "mania", and tells us that she conquered the world because of  "the belief that a liking for Austen is an infallible 'test' of your taste, intellect and general fitness for decent company was already well established in the 1880s, and is still potent today". Apart from being irrelevant for a deeper evaluation of her body of work, the very fact that so many judges of taste think it proper to attack Jane Austen proves that the pressure that a social test might put on people is no longer –if it ever was- the explanation of her popularity.

Insisting with the attack, in an article published in the London Times (3/12/2007), Celia Brayfield accused Jane Austen of building a gilded cage for the posterity of women writers. According to the article, Jane Austen limited her interests to the fancies of young women and paid no attention to the political and military struggles of her time; she never looked out of the window, she never read molecular theory, and she refused to join the philosophical fight to the death between reason and romanticism. Worst of all, it never entered into Jane Austen's mind that at the other end of the world, a woman called Chen I Sao could command thousands of pirates. A pirate’s queen would be a better character for a film, we are told, than any of the delicate creatures described by Jane Austen.

Brayfield’s criticism shows that the long struggle between sense and sensibility still goes on, and that sense is often defeated. For a start, it doesn’t seem fair to make a case against Jane Austen by mixing what she wrote and what film-makers have done with that material. It makes no sense to form our opinion about Jane Austen’s novels by blaming her for what, centuries later, film makers do. Besides, these are different genera and it may well be that some of the best that is to be found in novels cannot be put into films: this is just one of the many instances in which a few words say much more than a thousand images.

Moreover, there is no doubt that Jane Austen was interested in the struggle between sense and romanticism, and that she wrote about it in many of her books. So Brayfield's reproach, I guess, is rather that Jane Austen refused to enlist herself as another promoter of romanticism ―which on the whole was the winning party in the struggle.

While she looks Jane Austen’s novels with disdain, Celia Brayfield tells us that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a book that engages far more actively with its world and continues to express our anxieties about the advancement of science. Jane Austen, instead, would have felt that it was unwise to excite those anxieties, and would have thought that it was morally dubious to enjoy and to disdain ―at the same time― the advances of science. More advances in science, and not less, could have made Jane Austen's precious life longer than the 41 years she lived. And so it is for millions of men, women, and children. It may be true that Frankenstein became the keystone of the fantasy genre, but it also made a moral contradiction look comfortable, and even enlightened.

Now that Jane Austen has been described a thousand times as the painter of provincial manners, it is difficult to say why she was so highly esteemed by one of the most influential thinkers of the Victorian era, Lord Macaulay. To mention just another name (though Macaulay’s name should be enough) it is said that Disraeli read Pride and Prejudice 17 times. It would seem that they saw more than crinoline and bonnets in her novels.

But, who were the women Jane Austen presented to her readers? They were thinking persons who cultivated their sensibility without forgetting sense. Moreover, the readers were supposed to admire them precisely for that. This was a silent revolution that had started before Jane Austen, but one she advanced and perfected. Now turn to the women we see paraded by the mass media in our enlightened age. In numbers, bimbos prevail. And when we turn to those women who are supposed to be models of sense and sensibility, we realise that we know very little about them: almost nothing about their inner life, and very little about their doubts, their mistakes, and their personal victories.

Of course, I don’t mean that we lack women that unite sense and sensibility: there are millions of them. What I mean is that the media doesn’t seem to be interested in their lives. Jane Austen, instead, dedicated her novels to telling their stories, and made them popular. She wrote about the women she knew, who were neither extremely rich nor extremely poor. Besides, in her time, the idea that a rich man’s gain and a poor man’s ruin are just two sides of the same coin had not still reached the status of a dogma. While Jane Austen never laid down plans for the improvement of the condition of the poor, she may have improved the habits of the nation as a whole, which after all might turn out being compatible goals.

Jane Austen has led millions to love her heroines. But she understood, and still tells us through imaginary examples, that blindness isn’t a requisite for tenderness. Through her novels, we may understand why blind sensibility often leads to the worst of the various forms of cruelty: that which is hidden under the cover of fashionable words and lofty intentions ―a cruelty that ceases to be casual and becomes systematic, even a duty. Many would call it a romantic and highly inspired sort of cruelty. We still have to deal with it in many parts of the world.

A pirate's queen is a dashing character, and that is all that may matter to the writer of a romantic novel or to the director of a film. It is irrelevant whether pirates hacked people to death, sunk ships, and set fire to villages: that would be relegated to the dull territory of sense, and the mean interests of prudence. It is true that Jane Austen ignored pirate queens and gave preference to girls who lived regular lives among relatives and friends, most of them law-abiding people. But, again, this was the best material for novels intended for readers living in complex and highly civilized countries, people who no longer lived in fear that pirates would desolate their villages, but who had not yet forgotten what that fear was.

It may be true that Jane Austen neglected the study of molecular theory ―and I can’t say how much our contemporary novelists know about quantum mechanics. On the other hand, they do look out of the window, though it often means a virtual window on a computer screen. No doubt many contemporary novelists would write a book about a pirate's queen –though it is almost sure that today she would have been advised to call herself the leader of a people's liberation army. A contemporary writer would ask his or her agent to arrange a trip to the area in trouble, would take a plane, would enjoy being toured by the pirates PR staff, would see what he or she must see, take photos, would have a charming meeting with the leader, take a plane back home, have a look at the material his or her secretary has been collecting, and then write a book brimming with shocking realism. Jane Austen never did that ―there were no planes in her time. Besides, she was wise enough to write about matters and characters she really knew. But I think that there was a second motive for her choices, perhaps even more decisive than the advantages of true and intimate knowledge. Jane Austen knew that the silent battles won by her heroines were much more important for the happiness of any nation than the striking victories of a pirate's queen.

I have searched on the Web and found that, unlike Jane Austen, Cheng I Sao managed to live to an old age. After being driven out of the business by competing pirates, she got a pardon from the government, and settled as the manager of a brothel and a gambling house ―which wasn’t particularly romantic.