Husbands could beat their wives, rape them, imprison them, take their children away, all within the bounds of the law. At the very least, she found the verities of class structure and institutional religion problematic and often mockworthy. Either hire a British narrator or let the American one just speak in her own voice, this switching to a really uncomfortable British accent every time a quote comes up is incredibly distracting.

Still, Austen scholars are few and Austen fans are legion, so this book, pitched as it is for the general reader, arguably has a place.To me this just undermined the many good points that the book was making and eventually it frustrated me to the point where I just didn't want to continue. A sublime piece of literary detective work that shows us once and for all how to be precisely the sort of reader that Austen deserves. What's more, she often makes insane theories about her books (no spoilers, but the Sense and Sensibility and Emma sections get weird), and then acts as if they are fact, but doesn't accept the same in others. Kelly may be right, for instance, that the world of Persuasion, Austen’s last completed novel, is one in which old social structures seem to be collapsing and the landed gentry are shown as vain and enervated. I would hope that these vulnerabilities would not discourage too many readers, however, because there is much of value here.

And indeed, despite the strident claims of the book jacket, Austen’s engagement with the social issues of her day is not exactly news. According to Debrett’s, there were about 90 English earldoms alone at the start of the Regency – a very large handful!wasn't the whole project of the book to get Austen away from the romanticising gaze of her later critics and reaffirm her as an intelligent, self-aware person who was so much more than a sad little spinster who lived solely through her books?

The point readers have traditionally assumed is that the girls have yet to learn the moral self-control Fanny has acquired at Mansfield Park, not that they are prepared (armed by Fanny) to slit their father’s throat. There's plenty of context, but the method and manner in which Kelly sets about "radicalising" Austen means ignoring all of the work on Austen that came before. The great chapters contained a unifying theory that brought together the historical context and the actual plot and actions of the characters: Northanger Abbey (where the childbirth stuff is contained, as well as some fascinating stuff about gothic novels), Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice were the standouts, followed pretty closely by the chapter on Persuasion.Kelly argues in lucid terms for a thinking, challenging, contrarian-minded Jane Austen who has a tremendous gift for subtlety and who makes her points through deceptively cozy, everyday stories. These are issues percolating through the book and these are factors that must be considered, of course: class, gender, politics. This was a very interesting read and I absolutely sped through it - surprising for a work of literary criticism! That in “Northanger Abbey” Austen describes Catherine Morland masturbating (“Let’s not mince words here”) requires an elasticity of imagination beyond the breaking point for the pusillanimous. Also, she gives no indication that she has read much literary criticism of Austen’s work, which allows critics to dismiss her as a lightweight.