Jane Austen reading Fifty Shades of Grey and she is shocked. SHOCKED.
This is a hilarious illustration, but IN FACT I doubt she would be that shocked at all by the novel’s content, saving her disapproval and raised brows instead for the author’s unfortunate predilection for meaningless exclamatory verbiage such as “wow!” “holy crap” and “Gee Wilikers!” (okay, maybe not gee wilikers.)
Let’s not forget, Saint Jane had read plenty of Eliza Haywood and her ilk. Quoth Wikipedia on Haywood:
Eliza Haywood’s prolific fiction develops from titillating romance novels and amatory fiction during the early 1720s to works focused more on “women’s rights and position” (Schofield, Haywood 63) in the later 1720s into the 1730s. In the middle novels of her career, women were locked up, tormented and beleaguered by domineering men.
And another huge Austen influencer, Samuel Richardson, wrote entire novels that were long chronicles of creative attempts on women’s virginity.
(via fuckyeahjaneausten)
