The excellent Gilbert and Gubar classic on classics[1] opens with the line ‘Is a pen a penis?’ Er, no dears, it is unwise to confuse the two. One is sold in WHSmith’s over the counter; one is not. It was very tempting to close the book at this point.

The Longmans Critical Reader on Charles Dickens[2] is a compendium of essays which I find quite incredible. In an essay on homophobia, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick wonders who else has speculated on what Bert and Ernie in Sesame Street do in bed  (p.188). I thought my mind was tangent but I’m at a loss as to quite how a children’s TV show and a Victorian classic novel get to be discussed alongside each other. My own essays would have been heavily criticised for anything lively or jocular, yet these are the musings of a published professor!

As much as I am willing to consider the ‘triangular relationships and homosocial in Dickens’, the expression of such sentiments is as extraneous as it is irrelevant. Surely ‘triangulations’ was invented for the occasion of this paper. And what kind of phrase is ‘homosocial’?  – another academic unnecessary coinage which is unknown to my dictionary or spellchecker.  Sedgwick goes further than pontificating over the true meaning of men’s relationships in Dickens. She sees human excrement and the apparently well known theme of ‘anality’ in Hard Times; logically rendering Dickens’s work to scatology and a word play on constipation. Another in the volume wonders if Dickens preempted Freud; I see that it is the critics who have the Freudian obsessions.

It does seem that academia gives permission to muse on what others do in bed and be not only paid well but also given intellectual kudos. In fact, it seems one is to lose out if one does not.

The late Lorna Sage spent her MA Life Writing seminars deliberating on whether Casanova had located his victims’ clitorises, and repeated a quote from the de Beauvoir/Satre camp about snails and enjoyed watching shocked faces of her students as the innuendo sank in. The undergraduates at another British university were regaled with Tony Pinkney’s concerns on whether Lady Chatterley was buggered by her lover. And for this students pay a couple of thousands each year.

The feminist approach to Beethoven was that he’s a [obligatory] misogynist who ‘wants to be on top’ (I believe I read this in the Oxford Very Short Introduction to the maestro). As a woman and a feminist myself, it disappoints me to say that the feminists do seem to be among the worst. Regarding Ludwig, I find that the huge range of emotions in his work understand and appeal to both sexes (he writes some great PMT music) and the whole gamut of human experience.

I would hate to render anyone’s life work as useless or extraneous, but it is hard to see what a career of such academics gives to the world. It is elitist and so wrapped in a world of its own that it’s not hard to see how many people enjoy the world without recourse to any such discussions. I’m enjoying my first Dickens book better without concerning myself with heteroglossia or – I paraphrase from Connor’s intro – identifying the sense in which Dickens is difficult in identifying his fugitive essence, everywhere impending truth, or his indefatigability: his complex narratives, well drawn characters and social satire speak for themselves.

Perhaps a more interesting and philosophical point is how much can we see in a text before we are simply overlaying our own ideas and need to perhaps prove our powers of analysis? I was immediately convinced by Gilbert and Gubar’s theory about Bertha in Jane Eyre. They state that every moment of freedom that Jane has is followed by an appearance of the mad woman. They conclude that Jane is Bertha’s flip side, what Philip Pullman would call her daemon. Split at the Red Room, Jane fights her passionate side until Bertha is expunged in a dream – and from throwing herself off a burning building. A friend once wryly observed that G and G’s names sound like Muppets; perhaps some might suggest they are Muppets in the derogatory sense of the contemporary insult. Despite their boringly phallic start to their tome, I believe their theory brings a greater depth to Bronte’s work and I believe Charlotte B intended it. It would be a shame to miss this out of a reading of Jane Eyre. The Shared Experience Theatre Company also incorporates this understanding in their play, and as far as I have been able to find out, the thespians came to this conclusion separately.

But how often is literary criticism (or any other) uncovering the true genius of the author, and how often is it about uncovering the academic’s genius? Does it matter that readings of the text might bring discussions about something that authors never intended, who are now conveniently deceased and cannot argue back? As an author, I put high weighting on the wishes and mind of the author; but as an adaptor, I can see the pleasure of the academic, an adaptor too, of seeking a new angle for the text. Perhaps what matters most is whether the criticism adds to the text, in its depth and pleasure. And if we all agreed, there would be no fun in debate.

After this Dickens criticism volume, which is like many others in erudite libraries, I find myself wishing to conclude that after 3 degrees, I shall collect no more, and being glad that I have not pursued a career within university corridors; a narrow windowless path full of closed doors to ivory towers and stuffy offices, who far less aid the enjoyment of a great text than a nice drink and a comfy sofa.

[1] The Madwoman in The Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven: Yale University Press, first published 1979

[2] Steven Connor, ed, London and New York: Longman, 1996