Alison G. Sulloway (1917–2004)

This is an excellent book for either scholars or serious Jane Austen fans. It contains a great deal of information, but is not ladened with jargon, obscure schools of interpretation, or outlandish attention-getting novelties.

I would recommend reading this with Margaret Kirkham's Jane Austen, Feminism & Fiction and Claudia Johnson's Jane Austen, Women, Politics & the Novel. All three are worthwhile for the reader interested in Austen's reactions to her society, since all three have slightly different approaches.

Sulloway considers Austen's writing in the view of conduct-books and other sources of masculine advice, as well as the writings of moderate and radical feminists. If Sulloway is right, and I think she probably is, I have been missing a great deal of the irony in Austen's work. I shall try to keep this in mind as I read them again. The advice for the proper rearing and conduct of women is rather horrifying, worse than I knew (which was bad enough). Sulloway points to such things as Austen's mimicking of works that were then famous and now obscure to make her point.

Sulloway has organized her work into topics such as "Dancing and Marriage", and analyzes examples from the works, rather than a book by book analysis. In all, very worthwhile for increased understanding of the books.

Kirkham and Johnson approach the subject more from a look at contemporary literary works.

I have two cavils with the book. One, Sulloway, writing in 1989, often states that such-and-such is the first feminist reading of this point in Jane Austen. She is the one who has read the literature, but while her particular analysis is new and useful, I think that the general point has been made before. I could be wrong.

The other is that this simply isn't the most readable book. As I said above, it is not that it is an example of clunky academic writing, somehow it just doesn't flow. I was certainly interested enough in the contents to make the effort, but I am a little surprised at how long it took me to read it.

The book has a few explanatory notes included with the bibliographic notes, although it is not necessary that these be checked as the reader goes along. One annoying point is that while the notes are divided by chapter numbers (e.g. Chapter 2), with no names, while the pages of text have running titles with no chapter numbers. This makes the notes somewhat difficult to match up. There is an extensive bibliography and an excellent index. I particularly like that the index includes some brief notes in paragraphs such as "Anna Austen (niece). If one finds oneself wondering who Anna Austen is, it isn't necessary to look up a lot of pages.… (mere)