Jane Austen's 250th Anniversary Interview with Dr. Zsòfia Anna Tóth

An interview with our NEPCA member and Jane Austen scholar Dr. Zsòfia Anna Tóth

Interview by Hannah Sophie Schiffner

What draws you to Jane Austen’s work?

I think Jane Austen managed to write about universal truths concerning life, existence as well as human nature in a way that makes all this accessible with a timeless appeal as well as in a transcultural manner. She is read and understood globally even today. Apparently, she was writing about only a handful of people who lived in a close-knit community at a certain time but, in reality, she was writing about everybody, everywhere and in any time period. I am sure she was a genius, who saw the general laws of existence and managed to put it into a simplified setting to make it understandable for everybody.

She was probably very clever, even brilliant, but not only that, she was wise. It is important to highlight this because cognitive abilities, intellectual capacity or factual knowledge do not equal wisdom, you have to earn wisdom from life through proper choices or learning from bad decisions. She often said that in Sense and Sensibility she was Marianne and Cassandra was Elinor because we always assume the other way around but exactly this statement suggests that she was wiser than Marianne. Additionally, she evidently saw people, she saw through them and understood human nature on a very fundamental level. She wanted to educate people in a way that they do not recognize the act of education but they learn. This she achieved with her use of humour, especially irony.

Thus, another major factor that contributes to her everlasting appeal is her use of humour, especially her expertise with irony and double-entendres. It is fascinating how she managed to write several storylines by using irony because irony facilitates the understanding or misunderstanding things on various levels at the same time. So, one thing means more at the same time and it depends on the characters as well as the readers how something is interpreted and understood. It is particularly entertaining when somebody reads the works, especially Emma, for the second or third time because you already have the knowledge that you did not have upon the first reading, and thus you also laugh at yourself how you were taken in for the first time; and you also see how easy it is to be misled but there are also the clues that you could have understood. Her wit and wisdom are a priceless combination.

I could go on and on, but I would say, these are the major draws for me.

"I have such trembling, such fluttering... such spasms in my side, and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart" is one of many of Mrs Bennet’s iconic lines. How would you say that Jane Austen uses dysfunctional parents in shaping the origin stories of her heroines?

I think Jane Austen creates dysfunctional parents and families in her stories on purpose to educate us about relationships and family dynamics as well as for comic effect. The majority of people assume that Jane Austen’s stories are about falling in love and getting married. I do not say that this is not included in the stories but the point is how to avoid getting married to the wrong person, how to escape social expectations concerning class and social hierarchy as well as marriages of convenience, and how to find real human contact, a relationship in which both partners grow and mutually love and respect each other. The dysfunctional parents are there exactly to show how not to make the mistakes and how terrible these marriages are. Evidently, Austen uses humour to make fun of these foibles and failures. Of course, Mrs Bennet is typically held up as the quintessence of a terrible mother but there are many other mothers and fathers who make many similar mistakes as she does and they are not just as well irritating. Dysfunctional parents are there to teach the younger generation how to make changes to avoid their fates. Again, ironically, usually those parents or parent surrogates are ideal “parent figures,” or one would assume that they would be good role models for parenting, who are either childless or too far away and the heroines can have only minimal contact with them, or they are literally dead. This Austen also does on purpose because there is a conscious pattern in this logic. It is as if she was suggesting with a wink of an eye that with parenting you cannot win.

In your work, you point out how many of Jane Austen’s heroines take on the role of absent male heirs. Could you elaborate a little on this unique identity formation in her work?

It is also a very unique and visible pattern in her oeuvre that there are no (ideal) male heirs or even if there are, they are failed human beings, the only exception is probably Mr Knightley, but he is a special case in every respect. A central problem in the stories is that we have female siblings who struggle financially because there is not a protective male presence, either a reliable father (figure) or a brother, who would protect them and provide for them. Male heirs are either missing or they are worse than any creature on the face of Earth, the most striking example is in Mansfield Park, in which the first-born boy, the promising male heir almost ruins the whole family even while the father is alive and almost destroys himself with all kinds of vices. That is why we often have boy heroines in Austen’s stories, because the family of the female protagonist usually lacks a (reliable or unreliable) male heir. That is why, one of the girls has to become the “boy” of the family. It is typically the second-born girl, e.g. Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice or Emma in Emma etc. This girl typically behaves more like a boy and she also typically has a trajectory considering character development and sphere of action as well as utterances similar to a male character. The future of the family rests on her shoulders and she typically manages to serve the function of a “male heir” in many respects.

You argue that Emma is the perfect flawed Jane Austen heroine. What makes Emma so perfectly imperfect?

Emma is the most perfect of all Jane Austen’s heroines considering that she does not have those problems the other ones have as she has financial stability, high social status, talent in music and drawing etc. She has everything and there is nothing to ruin her happiness, apparently. However, this is exactly her problem that she has too much power, status, control, impact and influence and she misuses them. Her perfection is her own ruin because she thinks she can do and say whatever she wants because she is perfect and nobody ever says no. She does not even see, and later she does not want to see (because of her arrogance), the harm she causes to other people and also to herself (because she cannot be wrong, she thinks). However, Mr. Knightley, the only person who stands up against her, does not let her get away with everything. Even if Emma is on the way to become an abusive Lady Catherine de Bourgh or Mrs Ferrars, she is eventually redeemed by an epiphany when she realizes that she does not know everything and she has been mistaken all along. By being humbled, she learns that she is not perfect and how her mistakes made her imperfect. Yet, all this process makes her endearing and a complex human being, she is both good and bad and she learns to balance that, while at the same time, her story, the novel is considered to be the most perfect masterpiece of Austen. So, perfection and imperfection are played out on multiple levels in this story.  

Jane Austen’s novels are great examples of humor, irony and comedy. In Jane Austen, the Humourist (2022) you argue that Jane Austen is a humorist. How would you say that Jane Austen uses humor to rebel against social norms?

The use of humour is well-known to be the oldest and safest mode of criticism and rebellion. Humour and comedy have their own special mechanisms that soften the impact of the attack and while the truth is said, even if it hurts, this special rhetorical delivery makes it acceptable to people. Austen wanted to criticize many problems in her society but she did not want to do it in a confrontational manner, that is why she used humour and comedy to generate change. She mostly used irony, where you provide, at least, two ways how to understand something, so people could choose which one they wanted to believe or they enjoyed the duplicity. Her stories are also typically called comedies of manners, which specifically target a certain social group and makes fun of their customs, mannerisms, habits etc. It is also true, however, what is even more important is that her stories are also social satires, which is a very elaborate and abstract manifestation of sublimated anger. She covered her criticism in humorous modes, so that is why often people do not understand this and believe that her stories are simple love stories where the point is to get married. She did not write romantic comedies, she wrote social satires, and the new marriages are wrapped up so quickly within a few pages at the end of the novels that she evidently did that only for sales and she was not interested in the wedding because we do not see it happening. She wanted to analyze everything that leads up to this social contract and how people behave in society, and she wanted to make fun of this process. The consummation of the marriage did not interest her because she thought she did her best to avoid it, and since divorce is not possible there is not much left to do, you have to live with the consequences. And in the meantime, she even makes us believe as if it was the wedding we were all reading the novel for and everybody is supposedly happy and got what they deserves.      

How do modern adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels, such as Lost in Austen (2008), incorporate contemporary technology (e.g., social media, smartphones, or digital culture) to reinterpret her themes and characters?

Modern, or rather postmodern, adaptations of Jane Austen’s stories sometimes still try to be authentic and historically accurate. However, when they try to be experimental such as Lost in Austen, they typically use modern technology like computers, TV, phones etc. for comic purposes, for example Mr. Darcy feels very uncomfortable around them or on the bus, so it is comic. Especially, in this TV mini-series, when technology comes into the picture, it is to highlight the discrepancy between the two eras and basically they question whether there is any use of these new technologies because they do not seem to make us happier. Additionally, the female protagonist chooses Regency England over our current times, so she seems to be happier without any kind of technology (the toothbrush might be the only exception that she misses and paracetamol is useful when Jane is sick – but these are not technological devices per se). When Elizabeth (switching places with Amanda) is talking about her ecological footprint, it seems to be redundant and pointless even if it is advisable to switch off everything when you leave your home. In Clueless, however, every device is used functionally since there the switch is complete between the eras and the story is entirely reinterpreted in our contemporary period, so cars or computers or mobile phones are just replacements for carriages and letters or standing in front of your wardrobe.   

Pride and Prejudice has had many adaptations, from BBC miniseries in 1995 to the upcoming Netflix adaptation in 2026. Why are Jane Austen’s novels still so popular in our current times? What do you believe that Jane Austen adaptations say about our modern society?

Jane Austen’s novels do not say anything about modern or postmodern society, they talk about the unchanging nature of human beings. Austen created universally applicable characters and storylines that still work in our times because maybe we sit in cars or use mobile phones or live in Los Angeles today and not in 18^th-19^th century rural England but people are the same. They have the same problems as to how to manage their family lives, how to find love, how to manage finances, where to live, how to socialize etc. Even if we do not have balls, but we also have parties, and if a girl dances with the same boy more times, everybody will notice there is something going on. Certainly, we have much less restrictions concerning behaviour and women are freer in many ways, but the basic logic of how people work and think is the same. And here lies her magic, she created universal and everlasting templates for characters, situations and storylines, and they work even today. Another issue is that while her novels are timeless and universal, the films are not. The film adaptations are always very reflective of the given time period in which they were made no matter how accurate or authentic they try to be, they are marked by their time, and the newer interpretations/remakes always show how we repeat the template to suit our taste, and it is not about Jane Austen. Jane Austen is laughing at us and with us. 😊