Gupta, Radhika. “Reading Austen’s Fiction as Modern: Women’s Outward and Social Movements in Jane Austen’s Novels”

Contrary to the perception of Austen’s novels as centering on domestic heroines who adhere to traditional patriarchal values within narrow social and spatial constraints, Gupta argues that the depiction of transgressive heroines who gain agency through female friendships and their reorientation of male-dominated spaces makes Austen’s fiction potentially proto-feminist and decidedly modern. This even though all of Austen’s novels end in marriage, “a marriage order which creates rivals out of women,” such that “[i]f any female companionship can exist in Austen’s world, it must find a subspace or an interstitial space to reconcile with the larger heteronormative love plots.” This prompts the question: why do we need Austen’s fiction to be modern?Gupta praises Austen’s stylistic innovation and her development of distinctive free indirect discourse. Her observation about how Austen’s masterful balancing of the bird’s-eye view of objective realism with the subjective, inner perspective of the characters privileges “the real chartering of spaces over their theoretical expositions” proves insightful. The opportunity this creates for relativity, resisting absolute opinion, and inviting a variety of interpretations of her multidimensional characters, is part of the reason why critical studies of Austen’s works can be so fruitful. To this end, the works of Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre provide a useful framework for Gupta’s argument. The disruption of the binary between rural and urban landscapes in the “Urban Movements” section of the essay, introduced through an analysis of significant events set in cities that precipitate revelations in the mindsets of the heroines, is also illuminating. In Mansfield Park, the urbanized Crawford siblings catalyze Fanny’s growth, “making her cognizant of her desires through her jealousy of Mary, enabling her to express her subjectivity by resisting Henry’s proposals.” London social events show Marianne Dashwood and Jane Bennet “the true faces of people, revealing the duplicity of Willoughby and the Bingley sisters.” In Bath, Northanger Abbey’s Catherine Morland is “equip[ped] with a superior understanding” of society and Anne Elliot gains “relative freedom of movement enabled in the diversified space,” which allows her to navigate the class divisions that caused her to refuse Frederick Wentworth at the start of the novel. Gupta concludes that “Austen’s fiction does not provide a univocal reading of the cityscape,” but that “the heroine’s urban experiences, both negative and positive, are essential for her growth,” a conclusion which helps to prize away simplistic binaries that surface-level readings of Austen’s novels all too often produce.For all of this personal growth, however, the fact remains that efforts toward resocialization are rewarded in Austen’s fiction with marriage to a suitable man. While we might admire the way that Austen offers us access to the multifaceted subjectivity of her heroines and insight into the experiences of some women living in nineteenth-century England, her fiction surely cannot be considered “proto-feminist.” Gupta suggests that “Austen’s tone, not her plots, allows her proto-feminism to thrive,” and invokes Lydia Bennet as an example of an Austenian woman whose transgression of codes of sexual conduct causes no lasting damage because she is “ultimately rehabilitated,” rather than ejected from the narrative. To consider this as proto-feminist requires us to overlook the distressing consequences suffered in the text and by real women who lived in the period.Gupta’s article raises very interesting questions: why is it that we want historical texts to retrospectively ratify modern attitudes? Is it because we feel this justifies our critical attention to canonical literature that espouses traditional values? Does Austen need to be progressive to be worth studying, or can we enjoy her fiction regardless?