Review: The Historical Austen
Galperin, William. The Historical Austen. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2002. William Galperin’s 2002 work, The Historical Austen, offers a dichotomous approach to understanding both Jane Austen in history, as well as, in literature. Austen’s history remains troubled by a lack of sources for her personal narrative, however, Galperin strives to find her contributions to writing and Austenite studies’ historicity to find his own “probable” Jane. (7) He does this through literary trends, aesthetic trends, and social trends in support of his thesis arguing for widespread understanding of Austen’s dynamic oppositional style, which would correspond with contemporary opinions despite many other scholars’ …show more content…
This conundrum originates in his discussion of the difficulty in finding “the historical Austen” due to the field’s division between what is known about Austen and her family against the various recovery models of class, gender, nationhood, empire, and many others found in her historiography. (17) Titling his first chapter History, Silence, and “the Trial of Jane Leigh Perrot”, he asserts this same historiography permits Jane’s imagination to appeal to the real and natural images in history across generations, turning to his second avenue of understanding history: …show more content…
While Galperin’s first three chapters briefly discuss historical trends, placing the title as a great misnomer, his reading of each work does show great understanding of the period, philosophy, psychology, and Austen. Thus, for those interested in Austen’s writing from a wildcard perspective, his analysis of Jane’s self-consciousness of narrative practices and the novel’s function as a socio-political tool proves useful. For anyone else, the work proves difficult to read. Rather than finding a new insight on Austen’s life or writing, Galperin seems interested in finding what he wants, rather than any hint of history. Chasing his underlying theme of the status of historical agency and the status of the novel at the turn of the century, Galperin takes readers on a wild goose chase left unfinished. Perhaps more appropriate for a philosopher, Galperin’s research does provide occasionally useful insights but on the whole more frustration than use in the historical field, and not recommended for those studying the