Bitch in a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen from the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps (Volume 2)

Bitch in a Bonnet
by Robert Rodi
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781499133769
Publication Date: August 10, 2014
Pages: 514
Genre: Books and Reading
Publisher: Createspace

Novelist Rodi continues his broadside against the depiction of Jane Austen as a “a woman’s writer … quaint and darling, doe-eyed and demure, parochial if not pastoral, and dizzily, swooningly romantic — the inventor and mother goddess of ‘chick lit.’” Instead he sees her as “a sly subversive, a clear-eyed social Darwinist, and the most unsparing satirist of her century.”

In this volume, which collects and amplifies three years’ worth of blog entries, he combs through the final three novels in Austen’s canon — Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion — with the aim of charting her growth as both a novelist and a humorist, and of shattering the notion that she’s a romantic of any kind.

I’m probably ruined for any further literary criticism at this point.  This book was so much fun, and Rodi’s analysis laced with so many quips and jokes and sass, I doubt I’ll ever have any patience for staid, thoughtful, academically minded critiques.

I say “Rodi’s analysis” but that’s probably building the lily a bit.  Rodi is an author (whose work I’ve never read), and a man who loves Jane Austen’s work.  Not because it’s romantic, but because it is absolutely everything but romantic.  He’s a true fan of her writing, her satire, her wit, her ability to create characters that are deeply flawed and darkly funny.  He maintains that the prevailing viewpoint that Austen is a writer of romances is the fault of Hollywood and the BBC, who don’t know who to treat her books as the dark comedies they are, and fall back, instead, on the relationships.

Volume 2 covers Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, and he goes through each book in detail, using a lot of quotes and discussing, in detail, what’s going on in the stories, as if he’s sitting with friends in a version of a bitch and stitch gathering.  Only without the swooning over Colin Firth’s wet t-shirt contest of one.  There’s no academic speak here and quite a few moments where I laughed out loud.

The thing is, Rodi’s correct: when you really, deeply read Austen, she’s not even a little bit romantic.  She has no patience for sentiment, or affection, or weddings.  I knew there was a reason I adored her books.  For Austen, the more romantic a character, the bigger fool she made of them, and even her heroines aren’t allowed to be great.  Good, but not great; not flawless in the least, just the least flawed in a cast of fools, villains and cads.

I fully recognise that I enjoy Rodi’s take on things because it’s a form of confirmation bias, but I don’t care.  I’ve ordered the first volume, covering S&S, P&P and Mansfield Park, and I look forward to delving into those with him.