It seems that on almost a daily basis Jane Austen makes some list or other. Yesterday, The Guardian offered up a list of the “Best Literary Sex Scenes: Writers’ Favourites” and there she is yet again, despite claims that there is no sex in Austen – read here what Howard Jacobson (his The Finkler Question won the 2010 Man Booker Prize) has to say:
Softcore porn is the literary equivalent of those feathery wimp-whips and talcum’d cufflinks you see in the windows of sex toy shops. If you’re going to torture your lover, at least break the skin, I say. You would expect me, therefore, to chose the scene I find most erotic from the pages of De Sade or Bataille. But as far as writing goes, the best sex is the most implicit. So I nominate the scene in Persuasion in which Captain Wentworth wordlessly, and with none of their past grievous history resolved, assists a fatigued Anne Elliot into a carriage. There is no overt sexuality, no titillatory play with power and dependence – he helps her in and that’s that. “Yes – he had done it. She was in the carriage and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it.” Anne might tell herself that the kindness proceeds from what remains of “former sentiment”, but Wentworth’s hands have been on her body, and we never doubt that it’s her body that receives the shock of the contact as much as her mind.
I couldn’t agree more … what might your favorite sex scene in Jane Austen be?
You can read about the other titles and scenes here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/06/best-literary-sex-scenes-writers-favourites
***********************
And also check out John Mullan’s latest “10 of the Best” – Jane Austen appears on most of his lists it seems! this week is about “wills” and of course, what would be the plot of Sense and Sensibility without that pesky will:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jul/06/john-mullan-ten-of-best-wills
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. The novel is shaped by a will. Henry Dashwood’s uncle leaves his wealth not to his own family, but to his son by a previous marriage and a four-year-old grandson. His wife and daughters, who have attended on the old man for years, are disinherited in favour of a child who has gained his affections by “an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise”.
[Master Harry Dashwood – image from Austenprose]
You can link to Mullan’s other weekly lists here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/10ofthebest
Jane Austen in Vermont 