Dan, Right Again!

I now have allies in my battle against those-who-say-that-I-read-too-much-into-Jane-Austin. My allies are generally the fine editors of The New Criterion and Judy Stove particularly.

First I should explain the background. Once upon a time I had to sit in a class with twenty people who thought they had read Emma (they merely ran their eyes over the pretty black letters and then assumed they understood the letters because the saw a movie with Gweneth Paltrow). During this class we where trying to find the deeper significance of the book and I came up with an interpretation that would infuse the book with significance, meaning etc. However I was harshly hissed at and told that I was off my rocker. What was my sin against the god of English parlor comedy? I suggested that Ms. Austin might me saying that the root cause of Emma's moral curruption was in the revolutionary ideals that abounded at the time of the comedy. Luckily Emma sees that these ideals are wrong because of there consiquences; a kind of reductio if you will. These resonable ideas of mine could not be tolerated, and like a jew living in 16th centry Teledo I was silenced and ridiculed.

I know you think that I was badly treated. I agree, but gentel reader we must not hold a grudge. Besides now I have people to back up my most reasonable of argument. In January's edition of The New Criterion there is an article "Jane Austin, Anti-Jacobin". In it Ms. Stove argues that Austin was a true Tory and much of her humor is at the expense of the followers of Rousseau and Goethe. In fact not only are they absurd but also malicious, see Emma's whole hearted rejection of these ideas as proof, and her acknowledging that one must lead a true Tory life with someone like Mr. Knighlty. Any other reading of the text is both shallow and indolent.