I don't really buy it--it sounds like Greer just hasn't read much stuff written before Austen, if she's genuinely arguing that Austen might have "invented" female self-worth. I mean--Merry Wives of Windson? Fletcher's The Tamer Tam'd? Rachel Speght's Mouzell for Melastomous?
I also gotta say that I disagree with her about Mansfield Park. As I recall, Fanny doesn't hold her tongue and refuse to speak up in any way because "it would make her stronger"--she does it because she's meek and obedient and "good."
I hated her. By the end of the book, I wanted dreadful things to befall her.
I certainly hated Fanny; enough not to have re-read Mansfield Park in a long while. I'm attracted to this reading partly as a way into not hating her - but I suspect you're right, all the same: meek and obedient and smug.
Oh, I do agree about Fanny Price - though this may have something to do with the fact that I studied Mansfield Park for 'A' level. The Crawfords were more to my taste, though they were set up as something of a false dichotomy: I'm not sure even Elizabeth Bennett would have passed muster with FP.
As for earlier examples, I'd chuck Constantia Munda into the mix (as an even more full-on Swetnam basher), and - perhaps more controversially - Pamela Andrews. Jane Austen was a big Richardson fan, after all - and I think Pamela's endurance against various kinds of abuse and temptation may well be an ingredient in the Fanny Price mix. But I much prefer Richardson's version!
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-03-13 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 03:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 02:59 pm (UTC)I hated her. By the end of the book, I wanted dreadful things to befall her.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 03:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-13 07:15 pm (UTC)As for earlier examples, I'd chuck Constantia Munda into the mix (as an even more full-on Swetnam basher), and - perhaps more controversially - Pamela Andrews. Jane Austen was a big Richardson fan, after all - and I think Pamela's endurance against various kinds of abuse and temptation may well be an ingredient in the Fanny Price mix. But I much prefer Richardson's version!