Jane Austen? Boring, twee, read by elderly spinsters because ‘Jane’ is so nice in her ideas.

Oh yeah? Welcome to my Jane Austen. A woman whose forthright opinions on sex and death – “I am proud to say that I have a very good eye at an Adulteress”; “Mrs Hall of Sherbourne was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child… owing to a fright – I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband” – were not confined to her letters (where both those examples reside). Her views also seep in to her novels, often unnoticed by innocent readers.

Take Mansfield Park, for example. Who would have expected, in a book with a heroine  well known for her upright and pious views, to find an anti-heroine who shamelessly mentions the idea of buttock whipping, and quite possibly gay sex, in the Navy? Yes, really! “Of Rears and Vices I saw enough.”

Oh, and if you think ‘dear Jane’ didn’t know what she had written, think again. “Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat,” says Mary Crawford, outrageously drawing further attention to the double meanings in her words.

The other novels references topics such as adultery, illegitimacy, dueling and prostitution amonst others (no, I’m not going to tell you where – go and look for yourselves!). It is perhaps also fortunate that one of Jane Austen’s early novel attempts, Lady Susan is not in wide publication, since despite the ‘Lady’ part of the heroine’s name, Susan is anything but a nice, genteel lady. The story unfolds in a series of letters the portrait of an absolute bitch, who happily lies and seduces her way through life, stepping on anyone who gets in her way.

Jane Austen, nice but dull? I don’t think so!