The Northanger Abbey chapter was insightful about the use of the Gothic within that text, if I ever get around to actually reading the Mysteries of Udolpho, I intend to read both NA and the chapter here again. They saw her books as instructional, beneficial even, for women readers of the age, for those who “needed” to learn to behave. She contests that the timing of the publication of Austen’s works have changed the way the novels were read, the arguments that Austen was sneaking in commentaries on slavery and enclosure are weak- filled with much historical context but little substance from Austen’s novels other than character names, setting references and short lines of dialogue.

The Age of Brass" finds Kelly's reading of Sense and Sensibility as a book about "property and inheritance--about greed and the terrible, selfish things that families do to each other for the sake of money.It felt like she was working too hard to make Jane Austen's works fit the "secret radical" image, choosing the most cynical, negative interpretations possible. For as much as the book hints at the subject of slavery and the complicity of the church, that is not what the book is actually about (I have read it twice, and still can't figure out what we're supposed to take away from the story of Fanny and her relations). Anyway, the way to read literary criticism like this isn't to ascribe wholly to whatever the author's interpretations are. Jane’s original readers would have seen all the parallels that the modern reader misses, and these would have been even stronger if the book had been published straight after it had been written, rather than years later, after Jane’s death.

Events of every description, changes, alienations, removals – all, all must be compromised in it, and oblivion of the past – how natural, how certain too! In some places it was interesting, but the things Kelly spoke about just seemed very far fetched and the evidence thin and flimsy. This is a great analysis of Jane Austen's 6 novels, putting them into a context that was lost when her publisher sat on her submission for 10 years without publishing, a supremely frustrating act, because it renders her subversive commentary on society out of date. There was some interesting background info on the social issues of the time, but I did not agree with all the conclusions drawn.It is as if she imagines herself to be the only person who has ever contemplated Jane’s writing before, and the few critics she does acknowledge are swiftly swept aside, sometimes only in a footnote!