Why I think feminists should love Austen ...

... even when she slags women.

After Henry has been ragging the two women about their mutual misunderstanding, his sister tries to make him say something positive about women:

“You know what you ought to do. Clear your character handsomely before her. Tell her that you think very highly of the understanding of women.”

“Miss Morland, I think very highly of the understanding of all the women in the world — especially of those — whoever they may be — with whom I happen to be in company.”

“That is not enough. Be more serious.”

“Miss Morland, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much that they never find it necessary to use more than half.”

“We shall get nothing more serious from him now, Miss Morland. He is not in a sober mood. But I do assure you that he must be entirely misunderstood, if he can ever appear to say an unjust thing of any woman at all, or an unkind one of me.”

And Catherine quietly lets the side down by assuming Henry must be right:

It was no effort to Catherine to believe that Henry Tilney could never be wrong. His manner might sometimes surprise, but his meaning must always be just: and what she did not understand, she was almost as ready to admire, as what she did.

My argument is that we should not be disappointed. Catherine assumes she has something to learn from Henry. She admires him. And she attributes authority to the teacher even tough she is not yet in a position to understand everything he does. (How good a teacher he is in the end is an interesting question I'll get to later.)

More troubling for some, Jane Austen seems to agree with both Catherine and Henry on this point. She sometimes says feminist sounding things and then appears to contradict them by mocking stupidity in women. I think, both types of sentiment are linked. It is precisely because she is a strong feminist that Austen is so scathing of women who, in her view are letting the side down. And I think she is right. Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Bennett aren't just twits, they are moral failures.

(It's a virtue thing. Once we accept that wit and intelligence are part of what it is to be a woman, or a man but we are talking about women here, then it becomes a moral obligation for every woman to develop that ability as well as she can. As always, there are legitimate reasons for failure but none of these apply to either Mrs. Allen nor Mrs. Bennett.)