Did Mark Twain Really Hate Jane Austen? Who Cares?
Emily Auerbach aims to explain that Mark Twain may have secretly enjoyed Jane Austens novels in the article entitled “A Barkeeper Entering the Kingdom of Heaven: Did Mark Twain Really Hate Jane Austen?” Auerbach analyzes Twain’s unpublished, unfinished, and relatively unedited essay on Austen’s novels, and in spite of Twain’s outspoken detestation of Austen and her characters, Auerbach tries to explain that Twain truly admired Austen’s novels and social commentary.
Auerbach begins her argument by cataloguing William Dean Howells’s responses and interpretations of the various quips that Twain made at Austen’s expense. Howells wrote, “[Twain’s] prime abhorrence was my dear and honored prime favorite, Jane Austen. He once said to me…, ‘You seem to think that woman could write,’ and he forbore withering me with his scorn, apparently because we had been friends so long and he more pitied than hated me for my bad taste” (Howells 15- 16). In spite of their very different personalities and writing styles, Howells and Twain were very good friends. Because Jane Austen was a personal favorite of Howells, and since Howells and Twain were the kind of friends who exchanged ideas freely, it is highly likely that the two discussed Austen a great deal. This means that Mark Twain could have gleaned the majority of his information about Jane Austen’s novels from Howells, and Twain, therefore, could have made it through the course of his life and his criticism of Austen’s novels without actually reading any of them.
The idea that Twain could have obtained much of his research on Jane Austen from a friend who actually enjoyed her writing is a possibility that Auerbach completely disregards. She tries to explain the incompleteness of Twain’s essay.
“Did he leave the essay unfinished because… he had been defeated in his attempt to appreciate Jane Austen? Or was it… that he could no longer reconcile his virile desire to disparage Austen with the fact that he actually ‘got’ her? I suspect that he was afraid that admitting honestly to reaching the final parts of Sense and Sensibility would be unmasculine” (116).
It is safe to assume that Mark Twain would not have considered it a matter of defeat to discover that he legitimately had no appreciation for Jane Austen’s writing. Furthermore, while it is a manly prerogative to dislike Jane Austen, there is not too much to “get” in her novels. Her novels do contain social satire, but the novel’s irony is embedded in a girl-meets-boy story that is often summarized quite easily on the back cover. This being the case, why would Twain want to bother venting about Austen in an essay when he could simply tweak Howells? It is also safe to assume that Twain would have had no trouble admitting to reading the end of Sense and Sensibility had he actually completed it. Twain respected and admired Howells in spite of the fact that he read and loved Jane Austen novels, so there would be absolutely no reason to think that he would not want to admit to reading Austen because he was afraid it would mar his masculinity. Auerbach also tries to argue that Twain appreciated Austen’s writing because he disapproved of the villainous characters in Sense and Sensibility. This argument could have worked were it not for the fact that all readers are willing accept that Willoughby is a ne’er do well. Also, Twain stated quite plainly that “[Jane Austen] makes [him] detest all her people, without reserve” (1).
When Mark Twain says that he hates Jane Austen, why should it even be questioned? It is simply a profound professional dislike for another author’s work. Twain and Austen both wrote social commentary, and the goal of social commentary is to come to a greater truth through writing and analyzing the culture. As a social commentator, when Twain claims that “Just [the] omission [of Austen’s novels] alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it,” (1) he means that society as a whole could arrive at a greater sense of truth in a world where Austen’s novels did not exist. Therefore, it is not worth anyone’s time to try to argue that Twain secretly admired Austen’s writing.
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