Reviewed by Harriet
‘A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane’ promises the subtitle of this new book by Austen scholar Looser. I wonder how many people still think of Austen as a quiet, reserved spinster, the view Looser sets out here to demolish. I certainly didn’t but then I know a good deal about her, having read (and taught) not only all her novels but also her often hilariously subversive juvenilia and her letters. Anyone who’d read those would be in no doubt that she had a brilliant satirical eye, enjoyed dark comedy, and didn’t hesitate to make fun of her neighbours. And indeed the novels, as Looser shows in her analysis, could not have written by someone with the exceptionally quiet life often, and wrongly, attributed to Austen. Most of the blame for the mistaken way she has been perceived is attributable to A Memoir of Jane Austen, a biography published in the 1860s by her nephew James Edward Austen Leigh, whose purpose was to present ‘dear Aunt Jane’ as ‘a comfortable figure, shunning fame and professional status, centred in home, writing only in the intervals permitted from the important domestic duties of a devoted daughter, sister, and aunt’. Victorian novelist Margaret Oliphant saw in Austen ‘a fine vein of feminine cynicism’. But the demolition of the picture started rather forcibly in the 1940s, when D.W. Harding published an article called ‘Regulated Hatred’ pointing out Austen’s often cruel satire of her society. I also very much liked Claudia L. Johnston’s 1988 Jane Austen: Women, Politics, and the Novel, which places Austen very much in the context of her time.
Anyway enough of this academic stuff; Looser has a point to make and many people will have their eyes opened by how she makes it. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1: Wild Writings explores the writings themselves, from the Juvenilia to Austen’s unfinished work. Here each novel is picked apart, with Looser highlighting the use of the words ‘wild’, ‘wildly’ or ‘wildest’ and their meanings in different contexts. So in Pride and Prejudice for example, when Elizabeth Bennett turns up from a longish walk with muddy boots, the antagonistic Mrs Hurst calls her appearance ‘almost wild’, meaning uncouth or savage. In Persuasion the word means eager: ‘the young people were wild to see Lyme’, and in Sense and Sensibility, Marianne’s dramatic nature is emphasised by the use of ‘wildly’ or ‘wildest’. Unfortunately my favourite novel, Mansfield Park, can’t be fitted into Looser’s scheme, and she makes no secret of the fact the she doesn’t like the heroine, Fanny Price, at all – she’s not wild enough, apparently. I find her admirable and fascinating, but that’s a story for another place.
Part 2: Fierce Family Ties looks at some rather odd or rebellious members of Austen’s extended family, and ranges from beautiful cousin Eliza whose French count husband’s spying activities earned him as execution during the Reign of Terror, to Aunt Jane Leigh Perrot, whose shoplifting trial caused a sensation. Looser considers the question of abolition of slavery, often discussed in relation to Austen’s own views on the subject, examining the way three of her brothers either did or did not support it. This is all designed to show, quite rightly, that although her life appeared to be quiet, she had plenty of knowledge about the goings on in a ‘wilder’ world.
Part 3: Shambolic Afterlives looks at some often very peculiar ways in which Austen’s work has been interpreted. Its subdivisions include ‘Seeing Austen’s Ghost’ which speculates on what the novelist actually looked like, and another section which looks at the way her writings have been used in court over the years, including a 2022 case in which judge ordered the defendant to read Pride and Prejudice. There are the various speculations about Austen’s life, including one completely baseless one that she had a lover in Switzerland. Then of course there’s Austen Erotica such as Lissa Trevor’s Spank Me Mr Darcy (2013) and many others. Looser argues that
These texts deserve to be taken seriously. As we try to come to grips with Austen’s wildness, we ought to examine what these most blatantly sexed-up versions of her fiction say about her changing reputation, about our habits of reading, and about her reputation going forward.
Finally, she devotes a section of this chapter to a consideration of her own attitude to Austen as compared to that of those who dislike her.
Looser has devoted a great deal of her impressive career to teaching and writing on Jane Austen and there’s much of interest in this latest book, which conceals its academic nature under an attractively lightweight and conversational style. I have say I got a bit tired of the repetition of the word wild and all its variations, but obviously these need to be there to justify the attractively catchy title. A must for Austen lovers.
Harriet is one of the co-founders of Shiny and a co-editor.
Devoney Looser, Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane (Manchester University Press, 2025). 978-1526193704, 336pp., hardback.
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