Of Spades & Roses

Yes. Yes, of course, there's this:

                    What's in a name? that which we call a rose
                    By any other name would smell as sweet

Romeo and Juliet (Act II, Scene 2) by William Shakespeare

And it is true that the name given to something (anything, really) shouldn't be that important, and that the thing itself is more important than the name that allows us to find it in a dictionary.

Paradoxically, I'm also quite fond of calling a spade a spade [Writer's Warning: I've just noticed an American controversy about the use of that saying; the first to suggest any hint of Americanism in this post, and on my blog in general, gets a free meeting with my rolling pin, and an invitation to the naughty step for a millennium].

I think it all boils down to (that artificial, pseudo) political correctness, which I simply cannot stand.

Do not get me wrong. I believe in equality. I dream about equality.

But PC is the way some people have found to hide their disrespect. Usually, I say that it's a way to call someone something pompous whilst still believing that that person is fully unworthy of everything. C'mon! The one who came up with "vertically-challenged" was smoking the lawn or deserves the spanking of the decade!

Basically (and I've been thinking about this all day), I think that I don't mind equal synonyms, but I may have a slight allergy to terms that can be ambiguous, which brings me to the heart of today's post: Jane Austen (you knew that my Regency addiction wasn't too far, didn't you?). 

[Note to fellow sewing bunnies: I'm working on the Regency toile; it's just that things have been a tad bumpy here these past few days. Update soon, I promise.]

The thing that's bothering me is the bout of sexism around her devotees' name. Of course, we can forgive Mr Saintsbury, who coined the word "Janeite" in 1894; he was a Victorian man, and there might have been a fondness in the creation of that word. The word seem to have been adopted by most Austen enthusiasts, and if you look for it in a search engine, it'll give you about 12700 results in the world.

Out of curiosity, I did the same with "Austenian": about 2640 results.

So, here's what's bothering me, in spite of the fact that I know we're dealing with a word that's been used for over a century and that's now a part of History for better or for worse (and that was most probably invented with a lot of admiration), we're still dealing with Miss Austen's works as if she were mostly "Dear Aunt Jane", the charming woman who helped her family first and who wrote astounding plots when she could steal a few moments of quiet here and there.

She was Jane; the daughter, sister, aunt, and kind neighbour. She was all that. And her life was as fascinating as everybody's life (all right. Almost everybody!) on this Earth.

But... her works are so good that she's still read, published, used for films and series regularly. There are fanfictions and acclaimed authors borrow her works to write sequels, prequels, and paid fanfictions (fine... I'll admit that I don't believe in updating her works - but I loved Lost in Austen; I can understand that a lot of people like those modernizations of her works).

And still, the devotees are Janeites.

Were Shakespeare's works written by "Bill"? Is Dickens called by his first name? No.

Dickensian is an adjective in the OED. Bill gets a noun and an adjective.

Dear old Jane does have her page, but that's all.

We've got a History of naming important things by using the surnames of the people linked to them. Perhaps it's time to have the devotees of Miss Austen mutate into Austenians (this could work as noun and adjective, or a daring Austenesque could be considered for the adjective - there are possibilities). She's quite important, and even though we can still love her, and, yes, coo, and rejoice when we reach the happy ending in our favourite novel, using her surname would be quite an interesting change.

Love and admiration would still work with more respect and seriousness.

Miss Austen would certainly appreciate Regency manners more than Victorian traditions.

From now on, when asked, I'll declare myself a fervent Austenian.