‘A Fine Brush on Ivory’ Recognizes Jane Austen
Jane Austen, born in 1775, died in 1817 at the age of 41, of what is believed to have been Addison’s disease. Although she lived in a time when women were not given formal education, she was extremely intelligent and well read, and wrote from childhood onward. She had four books published during her lifetime: Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815.) Two more were published after her death: Persuasion (1817) and Northanger Abbey (1818), and she left three unfinished works: Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon.
Austen is one of the most popular writers in the English language, though I don’t know if I believe Jenkyn’s assertion that she “has possibly given pleasure to more men in bed than any other woman in history, except perhaps Agatha Christie.” In addition to the general public, she’s also given a lot of pleasure to academics, who love to analyze her works.
Richard Jenkyns adds to the critical works with his *A Find Brush on Ivory*. The title is taken from Austen’s comment on her writing: ‘the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labor. Austen wrote ‘comedies of manners,’ illuminating what seems on the surface to be the placid life of members of the upper middle class. She combines romance with social satire and insight into the follies and foibles of her world.
He terms his work an ‘essay,’ and it is that. He does not focus on all of Austen’s works, but only on his three most favorite: Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. He also says ‘a certain amount’ about Sense and Sensibility, (one chapter) ‘rather little’ about Northanger Abbey or Persuasion, and almost nothing about the ‘other completed work of her maturity, Lady Susan.’
And this is a pity. Pride and Prejudice is one of the most analyzed books in the history of English literature…with Mansfield Park and Emma right up there. Jenkyns makes statements about Austen’s craft and draws examples from these three novels to illustrate those statements – I would have preferred it if he’d concentrated on the lesser known…or lesser liked… of Austen’s works as well. They need analysis now as much as her more popular works do.
Which isn’t to say that Jenkyns doesn’t have fresh insights to add – indeed his analysis, and refutement of other scholars’ comments, gives one cause to think, and that is what good criticism is supposed to do. He intersperses bits of biography on Jane Austen and her family, which are important to understanding the sphere in which she worked, and compares her work to others – from the comedy of P.G. Wodehouse to that of John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers!, to the social commentary of Charles Dickens.
To fully appreciate Jane Austen’s work, first of course one has to read all of her books. Preferably in order, so as to see her growth as a writer. After one is familiar with her work, one can read these criticisms by the academics (or those with an academic bent) and learn so much more about the times and people, mores and morality that Austen portrayed, which are on the surface romantic comedies but are really so much more.
It’s possible to over-analyze works, to read into them more than their author ever intended. It’s also possible that analysis will take the fun out of just reading the books for the books’ own sake. A Fine Brush on Ivory, while scholarly, sets just the right tone.
Jenkyns begins with beginnings – analyzing the famous opening of Pride and Prejudice, which he likens to Austen writing as for the theater. In The Shape of Comedy he reveals some of Austen’s upbringing and how this shaped her writing. He continues this in the Character of Characters.
“Mansfield Park is the book which divides Jane Austen’s readers most,” Jenkyns observes in his chapter A Park With A View. “There seems to be almost universal agreement that Fanny is an unsatisfactory heroine…but it is also generally acknowledged that the novel is inn most respects extraordinarily accomplished.”
Jenkyns regards it as “not far from being a perfect novel,” and he treats his case in this long and detailed chapter, from the intricacies of Fanny Price’s character and how it is matched by the rest of the inhabitants in the book.
In The Prisoner of Hartfield Jenkyns provides an analys of Emma, and ends with clarifying The Sense in Sensibility.
Recommended.
