Camp Austen

My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan
by Ted Scheinman

Plus: Janeites vs. Bontë Fans et al

A friend sent me a copy of a small paperback, "Camp Austen." It was short, I love Jane Austen's fiction, and while I didn't have high hopes I picked it up, idly as the famed writer might say, one rainy afternoon.

Imagine my surprise when it turned out not just to be a fun and fascinating read, but that it provided fodder for thought, a question I'd never asked myself before: if I had to pick only one set of books, would it be the novels of Jane Austen, or of the Brontë sisters?

First, though, to Ted Scheinman's book. Scheinman's mother is a "superfan," a lecturer, expert, and regular at what turns out is the equivalent of the Comicon or Trekker Convention of Austen fans. Worldwide, gatherings are held from weekend extravaganzas to week-long "camps" at which fans of Austen novels gather to discuss, debate, role play, and live in the late 18th and early 19th century, affecting the clothing, foods, manners, dances and social affairs of their favorite novels and characters. 

Now, were I to have to live in an historic period, and assuming it would be at a social status above that of scullery maid, I'd have to say the Austen era would be one of my primary choices. The clothing was elegant yet comfortable - at least for the women, while the men's was attractive, if not quite as easy to wear. The food was tolerable, women were expected to be reasonably well-educated, and riding, games, balls, reading and other amusements weren't unpleasant.

But I was, I admit, shocked to learn that people actually got together to spend hours, day, nay, weeks simply considering the work of a young woman who wrote 200 years ago - and whose books were about nothing more complex than love, romance, wealth, gossip and goodness. Not religious goodness, but about those qualities that - by example of the characters alone - helps us discern whether this person would have been someone worth knowing, or an intolerable ass. 

As Scheinman unfolds his week as one of the precious few males - and therefore all the more precious! - at Camp Austen, he opens the door for us so we can peek at the world of people for whom Austen has become a figure of such devotion. And he helps us understand why. 

Jane Austen wrote 6 novels, of which Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813) and Emma (1816) are probably best known, while Persuasion (published posthumously in 1818) and  Mansfield Park (1814) gained more notoriety thanks to films, and Northanger Abbey (published posthumously in 1818) is one of my personal favorites.

Most young people, especially young women, discover the novels of Jane Austen at some point in their "tweens," which, it turns out, is when she began to write, experimenting with sardonic and ironic sketches in Juvenilia as young as age 12. As Scheinman points out, hers are the kind of books most fans will read multiple times in their lives, finding something new to value with each reading. Among other things to admire, the writer has written beyond the very obvious styles, tastes and manners of her era and into the heart of human relations, objecting to the limitations placed on young people, male and female, of being forced aside feelings and intellect for wealth and position, and the degradation for all people when genuine heart and strength are put second to where, and to whom, one was born.

Aside from the fun of reading the book - Scheinman writes with a whiff of period style - I was surprised to discover that fans of older fiction can be as wildly devoted to their subject as Manga or Anime kids; Marvel Comic lovers; or even the Trekkers (they are not Trekkies!) of way back in the last century! Austen is not the only writer who has garnered such fandom.

Among others, The Harry Potter series, Tolkien, Thackeray, Melville, Dickenson, Poe, Fitzgerald - heck, Sophocles has a fan club! 

Now, granted, other than authors such as J. K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien, there's not as much in the way of dressing up and gathering for cosplay associated with the fiction (though Fitzgerald's Jazz Age might make a good candidate, not to mention the horror/gloom of Poe or the whalers of Melville), but much as I privately covet my collections of many (well, okay, most) of these authors and many others as well, I never thought to dress up as one of my favorite characters and actually attend a camp or convention. It might, however, be worth investigating!

As I was reading Scheinman's book, and discovering the world of Austen fandom, I began to think about the Brontë's and other beloved books of that Empire-waisted, loosely-tied cravat era. And I began to play with the question: Austen, or Brontë? The Brontë's were being born around the time that Jane Austen died (1816), so while they are often loved by the same audience, Jane was writing about the Empire period, and the Brontës were heading into the Victorian era. 

And while Jane Austen wrote about, often with irony and great wit, matters of the heart with a more flip and frivolous nature, the Brontë's, with Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë,1847 under the pen name Currer Bell), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë, 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Anne Brontë, 1848) wrote more deep, dark, and "romantic" works. And some of the film versions of the books have been classic romances.

Yet, though they were not contemporaneous, as it turns out, the question was not mine alone, and many a reader has wondered the same. Without much consideration, I would have cast my vote for the Brontë's, loving as I did the depth and complexity, the passion and angst, of the characters that populated the blasted heaths and barren moors of the North.

But as I read Scheinman's book with growing enjoyment, and then watched almost every version of the various Austen films made over the years (as early as 1940, Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in Pride and Prejudice), I had to put my first decision aside and opt for another choice: I can't decide. 

And that, she wrote, with a flourish of her pen, is that.