Sarah Glosson - Performing Jane: A Cultural History of Jane Austen Fandom

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A CULTURAL HISTORY OF JANE AUSTEN FANDOM

SARAH GLOSSON

Louisiana State University Press Baton Rouge

Published by Louisiana State University Press

Copyright 2020 by Sarah Glosson

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing

Designer: Barbara Neely Bourgoyne

Typeface: Whitman

Printer and binder: Sheridan Books

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Glosson, Sarah, author.

Title: Performing Jane : a cultural history of Jane Austen fandom / Sarah Glosson.

Description: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, [2020] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019044176 (print) | LCCN 2019044177 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0
8071-7195-0 (cloth) | ISBN 978-0-8071-7335-0 (pdf) | ISBN 978-0-8071-7334-3 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Austen, Jane, 17751817Influence. | Austen, Jane, 17751817
Appreciation. | Fans (Persons)

Classification: LCC PR4038.I52 G58 2020 (print) | LCC PR4038.I52 (ebook) |
DDC 823/.7dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044176

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044177

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

For Lee, bringer of coffee and instigator of dance parties.

Im your biggest fan.

Contents

Acknowledgments

This project was born in the American Studies Program at the College of William & Mary, where it was nurtured and raised by a village. Foremost I thank Arthur Knight, Charles McGovern, and Karin Wulf. I have the utmost regard and respect for these exemplary scholars. They have mentored me in more ways than they can possibly know. Special thanks to Daniel Cavicchi at Rhode Island School of Design for asking great questions.

I am deeply grateful to Virginia Torczon, first for her role in establishing the Michael R. Halleran Dissertation Fellowship and second as my most excellent boss and fellow advocate for graduate students. She has cheered me on to complete this project twice now; I couldnt be luckier to have her support.

Jenny Keegan at Louisiana State University Press is a rock star with deep reserves of patience. Her incisive reading has been a godsend. Im so happy we found each other. Everyone at Louisiana State University Press has been superb, start to finish. Copyeditor extraordinaire Elizabeth Gratch offered an expert eye and elegant suggestions. As Jane Austen wrote, Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong? Any deficiencies in this project are mine alone.

I am constantly inspired and challenged by my extraordinary colleagues and students, past and present. I simply cannot imagine these years of reading, research, and writing without Sarah Adams. Diana Floegel, with whom I can always share a good squee, makes sure Im up-to-date with pop culture. Special shout out to the smart women of freshman seminar Jane Austen in America.

Members of my local Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) chapter were welcoming and kind. Amy Stallings and Virginia Lee offered encouragement and help. I am grateful to all the JASNA members near and far who have ever taken time to talk to me about their passions, especially Gracia Ellwood, Lorraine Hanaway, Jim Nagle, and Joan Ray. Many Austen fans on Tumblr and FanFiction.net offered me their time, sharing their love of Austen through friendly and lively correspondence. I cant imagine a kinder, lovelier community of fans. Juliette Wells and Nancy Magnuson of Goucher College have been gracious allies. Tara Olivero and her staff at the Special Collections and Archives at Goucher College always made it a true pleasure to conduct research there. Likewise, my dear friends and former colleagues at W&M Libraries Special Collections Research Center made George Tuckers quirky notebooks accessible to me. I have become very fond of the Austen enthusiasts of past generations whom I have gotten to know through the legacies they left in the archive. I am grateful to Barbara Winn Adams, Henry and Alberta Burke, David Gilson, Jack Grey, and George Tucker for sharing their obsessions with the world.

If Im a fan of anything, its my family. I cant express here just how much I owe to them. My husband, Lee, is my most stalwart supporter and more marvelous than even Captain Wentworth. Calum and Aidan were busy becoming young men as I worked on this project. When Calum was only seven or eight, he made up the phrase Pride and Polyjuice he gets full credit for that. My parents, Joe and Eunice, paved the way for me and now help do the same for our boys. I love you all.

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Introduction

PERFORMING JANE

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

JANE AUSTEN , Emma

In the 2008 British TV miniseries Lost in Austen, the protagonist, Amanda Price, rereads Pride and Prejudice so often that she becomes drawn into the world of Mr. Darcy, literally. When a portal opens from her bathroom into Elizabeth Bennets attic, Amanda and Lizzie switch places and become trapped in each others worlds. Amanda quickly discovers that to survive in Lizzies world, she must put to use her extensive knowledge of the plot and narrative of Pride and Prejudice as well as her understanding of Regency era manners and customs. Yet her presence confounds the plot; she disrupts all of the romantic entanglements and finds herself having to choose between remaining faithful to Austens text and becoming the heroine herself. Should she leave her beloved Mr. Darcy to his intended true love and salvage the purity of the novel? Or should she choose love and Darcy, overturning the sacred text? In the end, she remains with Darcy, while Lizzie Bennet takes up a new life, enjoying the comforts and freedoms afforded to women in the twenty-first century.

The miniseries opens with a voiceover from Amanda that reads as if it were taken from one of the hundreds of blogs and websites maintained today by Austen fans: It is a truth generally acknowledged that we are all longing to escape. I escape always to my favorite book, Pride and Prejudice. Ive read it so many times now the words just say themselves in my head and its like a window opening. Its like Im actually there. Its become a place I know so intimately, I can see that world; I can touch it. I can see Darcy. Amanda is recognizably a fan. She repeatedly immerses herself in the alternate world of her beloved text, and she knows that text inside and out.

Seeking immersion into a favored text and garnering knowledge about its world are central to fannish life. Fans also engage in elaborate social rituals through which they perform their insider knowledge and loving admiration, such as through fanfiction, attending conventions, or dressing in costume or regalia. Once Amanda is trapped inside the world of Pride and Prejudice, she must survive by performing what might be deemed the definitive version of these social rituals of fandom. Whereas the fictional Amanda escapes into the past through a magic portal, actual Austen fans rely on metaphorical means of time traveling. These imaginative acts of time travel form the crux of this book.

While Jane Austen fandom provides my primary case study, this is not particularly a book about Austen. Nor does this study attempt to address, as others have done, the question of why Jane Austen has remained perennially popular and what it is about her, her characters, and her world that continues to captivate readers. I instead emphasize the activities of these enthusiasts, seeking to theorize and contextualize them and recognizing individuals as fans even in contexts in which that term might not at first glance appear well suited.