Laughing Feminism: Subversive Comedy in Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen (Humor in Life & Letters) Paperback – February 1, 2002

It always seems a dubious enterprise to reinterpret the art of an earlier era in the context of modern ideas. The term “feminism” did not exist in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries so far as I am aware, leaving me with doubts about applying it to the novels of Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen. On the other hand, few have qualms about applying the term to their contemporary, Mary Wollstonecraft, whose explicit arguments in favor of the rights of women are justly famous. It quickly became clear, however, Audrey Bilger is merely applying the label to an existing strain of Enlightenment-era (and even earlier) thought, not asking these authors to embrace feminism in its present form, and on that basis I cut her some slack. Once I did, I was impressed by Bilger’s arguments and happy to see these novels in a fresh light.*Laughing Feminism* is at least as much about laughing as it is about feminism, and Bilger’s insights into the comedy of Burney, Austen, and Edgeworth are enlightening. She situates their humor about men, women, and gender relations in the context of contemporaneous British arguments surrounding women’s behavior and place in society. When Elizabeth Bennet, for instance, says “I dearly love a laugh” and immediately qualifies her claim by saying that she hopes she never ridicules what is wise and good, she is holding a dialogue with the conduct books prevalent in her day, which urge women never to laugh immoderately or to mock others, especially men; and with the misogynistic drama Austen grew up reading and seeing on the London stage, which depicted witty women as harpies.Successive chapters in Bilger’s book break down elements of these authors’ humor into private versus public jokes, comedy based on normative expectations for women’s behavior, laughter at the expense of men, laughter at the expense of women, and what Bilger calls “violent comedy” (most prevalent in Burney’s novels). Each category throws light on particular characters and incidents, and Bilger does a good job of showing how these elements of the authors’ fictions fit into the wider societal debate about the rights of women (or lack thereof) and how inequality between the sexes distorts society and deforms the characters of men and women alike.A term that recurs throughout is “rational creatures”: the prevailing feminist argument of the day was that as long as society fails to recognize that women are as rational as men, no one shall be free. The novels of Burney, Edgeworth, and Austen, Bilger argues, are sustained commentaries on this theme, delivered through the vehicle of entertainment. I found her ideas convincing.

I was anxious to read this book because I've always enjoyed 18th and 19th century literature, and believed that the humor found in the works of Austen and Burney were overlooked and undermentioned. Author Bilger examines the works of Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and posits that the humor they used was subversive -- laughter at the expense of the overbearing patriarchal culture in which they lived.While this isn't exactly what I'd hoped it would be, it was more accessible than many scholarly works, and after I got into the rhythm and jargon of the academic writing, I found myself entertained as well as informed -- such a lovely combination.Laughter is a commodity too often ignored and a tool too often overlooked, but the author makes her case that these three authors consciously used satire, burlesque and parody to criticize their culture while maintaining the guise of docile co-conspirators. Bilger begins with interesting chapters on women & comedy and Mary Shelley's feminism before discussing the lives of her subjects, their beliefs and their use of comedic technique and characters to undermine the dominant paradigm, as it were. Naive observers, female tricksters, competitive women, nimcompoop suitors and ignorant patriarchs are described and then illustrated with short excerpts from the many works by these talented authors -- in particular Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey; Burney's Camilla and The Wanderer; and Edgeworth's Belinda and Helen.I thought the most interesting chapter was on "goblin humor", dark humor that is still considered distasteful by many and seems shocking when found in these quiet comedies of manners. Here the author displayed a mastery of comic theory as well as the literature, and made her case admirably, without descent into the jargon-laden victimization theory that dominates feminist film theory, for example. Rather, Bilger posits that Austen, Burney and Edgeworth found an outlet for what they could have considered a hopeless situation, and that they consciously and actively did their best to undermine the system in which they lived, reflecting and building upon the work of earlier feminists, and sending out beacons of camaraderie to women living under cultural and personal subjugation.The book concludes with a fine Notes section, a bibliography and a good index.