In case you missed it, Germaine was in Melbourne over the weekend speaking at a conference on Jane Austen and Comedy organised by blogdom’s own Laura. Helen went along and has all the good oil posted at the Cast Iron Balcony. Another Outspoken Female was there too. And so, Helen reports, was that lioness of teh Decent Left, Pamela Bone, who, as you would expect at a conference on Jane Austen and Comedy, seized the chance to ask Greer why she wasn’t doing teh loud condemnation thang about rape in Darfur:
Maybe shamefully, I was hoping for a hint of controversy – a provocative remark, a hint of intellectual stoush maybe – and blow me down if Pamela Bone didn’t stand up right at the very end, in question time, and ask why, if Germaine was able to talk about the patriarchal structures binding Fanny Price and other female heroines, why she wasn’t … I forget here what she was actually advocating Greer do at the time, but anyway, feminists aren’t doing enough.
Unsurprisingly, this is the one aspect that Andrew Bolt has picked up on, taking time out from that last redoubt of the defeated culture warrior, climate change denialism blogging, which has seemingly been the focus of most of his energy since the election. Bolt observes of Greer:
(She was speaking to an audience of English teachers, nearly all women.)
Hang on dude! Remember the culture wars script. You’re meant to be the true feminist… So you might be better off not implying that an audience made up of “nearly all women” are teh dumb. Or those Maoist postmodernist teachers. Whatevs. I wish I’d been there to hear Greer talk about, well, Jane Austen and Comedy.
Update: Another Greer talk report from Pavlov’s Cat.
Barcelona Tonight had their usual quality story on Germaine wiining the FHM Woman of the Year Award and opining that she wasn’t a worthy winner.
It’s just all QUALITY from the abovementioned media outlets. And ACA (see story on Laura’s blog). What maroons.
Thanks for the link Kim!
LOL!
I would certainly have missed teh Bolt piece. Good to know he too is on the ball with regard to all things related to Jane Austen.
It was conference about Jane Austen.
The worst forum I attended at the MWF featured Bone and a couple of blokes (the editor of The Age – Landeryou would know his name). Bone’s an impressive woman, but she’s obsessed with the old ideological divide. She had a kind of Margo quality about her: couldn’t sit still or let go.
I say people who don’t think feminists aren’t talking about issues like Darfur don’t know how to use Google.
“Barcelona Tonight had their usual quality story on Germaine wiining the FHM Woman of the Year Award and opining that she wasn’t a worthy winner.”
But that’s only because they don’t have a Pointless Crone of the Year award.
I really wish I could’ve made it to the conference, and not just for Greer’s lecture. I’ve been reading some Austen with one of my students and am reminded of how much there is to these novels.
PS In light of the MSM response to her visit, I’ve decided to abandon the qualifying statement that tends to accompany any positive mention of Greer – ‘…but I don’t always agree with her’ – since it should really go without saying. I hope that everybody that appreciates any aspect of Greer’s body of work, but who is prone to using such defense mechanisms, will do the same. Call it polarisation, but I’m sick of the scoffing half-wits: it’s time to follow the enlightened readers of FHM and come out as Greer fans.
We of the Right have nought to fear.
No one is as irrelevant as Germaine Greer.
And Germaine was irrelevant yesterday.
I pray to God she’d go away.
For as long as Greer provokes irrational frenzy from The Right, her contribution continues to be useful.
It sounds like it was a brilliant lecture, and well worth attending. No cxomment on the out of context question from the ultra feminist in the audience. Its irrelevance speaks for itself. Austen is probably one of the greatest novelists who will ever write in English. I take gentle exception to the idea that being an admirer of Austen is a girl-thing.Its a literature thing,which has bugger all to do with issues of race, gender and class (I’m sure some will disagree with me there) unless the texts are being used as primary sources for history. Its to do with widening ones understanding of one’s own and others’ humanity.
Hear hear Paul Burns
The TV series of “P & P” awoke our household including a teenage daughter not until then a novel reader; we thank the BBC, but mostly Jane with her wit and deep understanding and deft touch. It’s a person thing, or a reader thing. I’m the grateful Dad of the former teenager.
Homage to Jane Austen.
No comment on the out of context question from the ultra feminist in the audience.
It in fact had a spurious connection with the subject at hand – the question was something like the following:
Do you think the repressive patriarchal society outlined in Jane Austen’s books relates to the oppressive patriarchal society in Darfur, and by the way, what do you think of the rape situation there?
In no way a direct quote, just illustrative of the general way in which the question was asked.
A fine lecture, all up. GG was eloquent, witty, and diplomatic in her answers to questions from the audience.
“Do you think the repressive patriarchal society outlined in Jane Austen’s books relates to the oppressive patriarchal society in Darfur, and by the way, what do you think of the rape situation there?”
And that’s why marijuana should be legalised. You don’t think someone went with that question under their arm determined to shoe-horn it into any Q&A session, do you?
Good on you Paul and Ambigulous. I was taking tickets and was pleased to see *some* men in attendance, even some young ones. Men do tend to stay away from things to do with Austen, though – in my course on her last semester I had 59 students one of whom was male, and he broke his leg in week 4 and couldn’t come to class.
It’s the cluuter and paraphernalia of bonnets and muslin etc which puts off men ore than it does women, apparently. Those of both genders who look past that and get into reading soon find out that what Paul said is right. (Although I would argue that race, gender and class are part of what constitutes humanity, gender especially. Wouldn’t be happy to universalise gendered experience out of the picture in the Austen novel.)
Craig, given that the questioner in question rang me some weeks before the lecture and said she would ask her question from the audience if GG would not grant her an interview, Yes.
How did Bolt know the women in the crowd were mainly English teachers? Did they have their occupation tattooed on their foreheads?
Robert: It’s Jane Austen dude.
“the questioner in question rang me some weeks before the lecture and said she would ask her question from the audience if GG would not grant her an interview”
How did you respond?
“Ummm, sure Pammy, knock yourself out. Sure you don’t want to think of something less, y’know, stupid to say?”
Robert, they have a barcode tattooed just behind the ear, and a microchip embedded under the skin (which they get at maoist boot camp). Some Herald-Sun operative must have bought a ticket to the lecture and waved a barcode reader.
Oh and Darlene:
I say people who don’t think feminists aren’t talking about issues like Darfur don’t know how to use Google.
THANK YOU!
That is all.
Laura,
Of course gender, race, class are part of humanity. But that is probably not where the reader is coming from when one first approaches her novels. Its the elegance of language, the subtle wit, the comprehensive depiction of male/female relationships, and, if you look deep enough, her depiction of Regency England. [smile]/
and, if you look deep enough, her depiction of Regency England.
…which was beset with issues of gender, power and class, as exemplified by the tension surrounding the getting of a suitable man by various women, and the impact on their lives and that of their families if they did not.
‘On first encountering Jane Austen’. Hmmm…
I remember when I first fished Pride and Prejudice and Emma out of a cardboard box sitting at the back shed of my place in Annadale in Sydney, evidently left there by a previous owner. (My attitude has always been you take literature where you find it!) I hadn’t read anything by Austen at that stage, and had only the vaguest image in my mind of BBC serials, bonnets, and so on – I don’t think it really had anything to do with my choice to read the books. It was more to do with a deep interest in English literature, and some knowledge of Romantic and Augustinian literature of the period that Austen was writing in.
Of course, when I first dipped into P&P shortly afterwards, it was the constant wit that drew me in, the acerbic observation of certain characters and situations. By the end, it seemed to me I recognised something of the same spirit that I had met in certain poems by Swift and Pope. Though of course, in this case, it was enlarged and complemented by a comprehensive plot, and a novelist’s eye for dramatic events and character reversals.
In other words, I agree with Paul! Perhaps the marketers think they’re onto something with this bonnet/romance/chick-lit angle that is continually associated with Austen – maybe they are. Though from my own experiences, I’ve come to think that people’s reading any author – Austen included – are always much more individual, and idiosyncratic than the marketers could ever wish for.
I agree with Helen. No Austen I’ve read has been more than spitting distance from feminist politics for more than a couple of paragraphs, and I don’t mean the “everything’s political” claptrap. She’s talking about gender politics non freaking stop.
Which is of course not to say that it’s writing “for women” to the exclusion of men. That would be a silly thing to say.
JA invented the literary tone whose echoes are easily audible in comments of many women on this blog.
NTTAWWT.
There is a kind of class-bound immanence to Austen’s characters that can unsettle ‘progressive’ (and especially male) critics, who tend to lazily assume that literature can and should cross those boundaries unopposed, and that transgression is a more valuable approach. Of course this ignores the constraints of the present (even in our transgressions), but they are scarcely visible to us, whereas those in Austen’s work are totally visible.
On the other hand, there is a small, middle class universe of values in Austen that seduces the reader into it’s own dominant complacencies. The condition of being an insightful and aware ‘insider’ is the risky but rewarding part of Austen, and it is very easily lost without diligent and critical attention.
Update: Another Greer talk report from Pavlov’s Cat.
I have to confess extreme stupidity: in Year 12 English Lit “P&P” went right over my head. Probably too subtle. I thought it was just about class (incomes, husband hunting). I didn’t notice the wit, or to be charitable to the pimply youth – didn’t LOL. Now I do.
At that time I liked a translation of “Good Soldier Schweik”, so apparently I could appreciate slapstick and broad irony.
Litterateurs, mesdames et messieurs: now I’ve fessed up at last after 4 decades.
Homage to Jane Austen
PS: my teenage daughter LOVED the BBC “P&P” right from the first scene. Mr Darcy emerging from the lake was just a bonus.
“I thought it was just about class (incomes, husband hunting).”
I thought it was about boring people sitting around drinking cups of tea their whole lives. I may have missed the magic.
Go back and have a read, Craig Mc. I think you might have. She’ll repay your trouble in spades, I guarentee.
Craig Mc would be well advised not to attempt to read Austen until he turns sixteen.
If only schools thought like that Katz.
I agree with Craig Mc [winks to audience] Austen’s good but she’s no Frank Herbert
True, Austen continually failed to take into account the larger socio-galactic perspective and the possibiities of interstellar travel in favour of the rich dramatic possibilities of the drawing room and cups of tea. Quite an astounding oversight. I’m sure H G Wells never forgave her for it…
Craig Mc should try Treasure Island.
Not Kidnapped. That opening chapter is too long and boring for him.
It isn’t widely known that Jane Austen wrote an unpublished science fiction novel. An extract:
Anthony: Busted. Although I tend to read Noir these days having fished out most of the good sci-fi. Perhaps you’ve read “David Coperfield” by Edmund Wells.
It’s true! If Mr Bennett had eaten his new-born progeny in a murderous, primal frenzy it would have improved the book no end. Alas, by halfway I was hoping that tea was carcinogenic.
Maybe I’ll try again. OTOH, maybe I’ll just pop Clueless into the DVD player instead.
Maybe this sums the divide.
Craig – try Persuasion. War, and only one fleeting reference to tea.
It’s really like comparing apples and oranges, though, comparing genre fiction with literary fiction. I agree with those who suggest that it may be worthwhile giving Austen another go, but ultimately sci-fi etc is mostly about pushing different mental buttons to the ones pushed by literary fiction, or at least pushing them in different ways.
I went to a talk, I think it was last year, by Karen Joy Fowler – writer of book ‘The Jane Austen Book Club’ (now a film), and before that, several pieces of science fiction. She made a point contrary to yours, Klaus – that Jane Austen fans and readers were quite like science-fiction fans and readers.
Maybe the fandom shares traits, but I find the pleasures of genre fiction to be quite distinct from those of literary fiction, and the pleasures of different genres to be markedly different as well. Also ‘fan’ and ‘reader’ are two different, if related, things, I would imagine. I might also argue that Austen can be read, and is read and enjoyed, as a genre author by many people who enjoy her work.
Of course there are problems with sharp distinctions, as there is much variation within ‘the literary’ or ‘science fiction’, and there are authors and works that draw on both and on other genres at the same time.
Laura: I’ll try your recommendation. I was going to crack “Vanity Fair” after “The Cold Six Thousand”, but Thackeray’s waited this long, he can wait a bit longer.
“that Jane Austen fans and readers were quite like science-fiction fans and readers.”
Try James Tiptree Jr, a bisexual and respected female member of the US intelligence community during the cold war whose short stories take Jane Austen into pansexual, polymorphus SF terrority well beyond what Ursula Le Guin, Philip Jose Farmer or William Burroughs ever came up with. And while never losing sight of the sly and subtle social and cultural nuances that underpin all our dealings with our known corporeality and how that would translate into geninely unhuman terms.
Start with “Mamma Come Home”, where a CIA black psy-ops unit deals with an stealth invasion of interstellar seven foot tall Amazons by using Hollywood tech to create even scarier men. Yes, it’s bloody funny as well. Or “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” about sex with aliens as an uncurable and society-sapping addiction.
And then Ms James gets really out there. Rocket packs? Who needs ‘em when your ship is powered by the Lovepile. Only Angela Carter came close with “The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman.” And then only on this planet.
And I defy any bloke to read “”Beam Us Home” without feeling a lost twitch for their childhood dreams of being an astronaut.
The only writer I can think of that was on first name terms with the architect of he Bay of Pigs and had access to top secret U2 stuff while also writing stuff that’d make Williams Burroughs do a double take.
Have you read Rudyard Kipling’s story about the Janeites? It’s a hoot.
Nicely summed CraigMc
and thanks for the Tiptree tip Nabs, and yes I did sit upside down on the recliner chair as a kid while having conversations with Mission Control.
I recently picked up a Tiptree anthology that I’m saving for Xmas hols reading. I’m looking forward to it even more now!
Just to flog this dead thread a bit more, here’s a pertinent article. I’d concur with his assessment of lean times for Sci-Fi. Sci-Fi shelves have been swamped by erzatz Tolkein books for years now. It’s frustrating when you’re looking for some book tackling future possibilities only to see endless books about: friendly dragons; noble hyper-intelligent dragons; dragon porn (see everything!); and dragons’ favourite recipes and gardening renovations. I don’t know how it began, but I think dragons have become the nerd-chick’s version of a pony. Still, Amazon solves everything.
Laura: you’ll be glad to know I picked up Persuasion last night. I was a bit disturbed by the bodice-ripper blurb on the back, but i’ll break its spine soon anyway.
Not sure where you are, Craig Mc, but a specialist sf bookstore like Pulp Fiction in Brisbane is usually a good corrective to the shelves of Dymocks or whatever.
Good for you, Craig. I think Persuasion is exactly analagous to a contemporary novel about the aftermath of 9/11, ‘told slant’ – filtered through the perspective of a mourning widow who’s psychologically isolated in a very self-absorbed social scene which just doesn’t recognise her (and the nation’s) massive wounds.
Contemporary possiblities SF is a bit lean I agree but Kim Stanley Robinson and Geoff Ryman have both written exciting stuff in this mould recently.