"It is ironic that Austen, the elegant, precise satirist that she was, should provoke this crude and unsophisticated and wild meanness."

"She was no stranger to anger, to simmering resentments and harsh judgments, to taking people down a notch, but her sentences were if anything the opposite of 'a bomb was placed in front of your house.'"

Writes Katie Roiphe in Slate, about the Jane-Austen-on-the-banknote controversy we were talking about yesterday.

Why is that ironic? Isn't it more exactly what you'd expect, that an elegant, precise writer's antagonists would be crude? What's ironic is that Roiphe, championing the elegant, precise writer would misuse the word "ironic."

I checked the complete works of Jane Austen to see if old Jane had ever used the word "irony" or "ironic." The answer is no, but the search turned up the uses of "iron" as well, and I was amused by this exclamation, in "Northanger Abby," about James's gig:

"Break down! Oh! lord! Did you ever see such a little tittuppy thing in your life? There is not a sound piece of iron about it....."

Tittuppy.  Is that the adjective for the phrase "tits up"? The (unlinkable) OED marks the word as colloquial and defines it to mean: "Apt to tittup or tip up; unsteady, shaky." The first recorded usage is the "Northanger Abby" one I've quoted above. It's based on the noun "tittup," which is "apparently echoic, from the sound of the horse's feet" and means "A horse's canter; a hand-gallop." I guess we'd say "clip-clop." Now, a second meaning of "tittup" is "An impudent or forward woman or girl; a hussy, a minx." You might want to try using that!

1762   D. Garrick Farmer's Return 9   Some Tittups I saw, and they maade me to stare!

We're referred to the second meaning of "tit," which is "A girl or young woman: often qualified as little: cf. chit n.1; also applied indiscriminately to women of any age (? dial.).  (a) Usually in depreciation or disapproval: esp. one of loose character, a hussy, a minx.  (b) Sometimes in affection or admiration, or playful meiosis. (Common in 17th and 18th c.; now low slang.)" This is a very old usage, going back to 1599:

1599   T. M. Micro-cynicon ii. sig. B5v,   He hath his tyt, and she likewise her gull. Gull he, Trull she....
1886   G. M. Fenn Master of Cerem. vii,   She's a pretty little tit....
1932   S. O'Faoláin Midsummer Night Madness 62   I'm sorry for his two tits of sisters, though.

Wow. The oldest meaning of "tit" is a small horse. Surprising, no?

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Threats of rape and murder over replacing Charles Darwin on the £10 note with Jane Austen.

The NYT describes "a countercampaign of online harassment.... against several high-profile women." What was the "campaign" corresponding to the countercampaign, who were these "high-profile" women, and how high-profile were the threateners? 

Caroline Criado-Perez, a blogger and co-founder of the Web site The Women’s Room, began her campaign months ago when she realized that soon there might be no women — except Queen Elizabeth II, of course — left on British bank notes. The issue seemed urgent: in April, the Bank of England had announced that the only woman currently featured among five historical figures, the social reformer Elizabeth Fry, would be replaced by Winston Churchill, indisputably male. Surely, Ms. Criado-Perez argued, there were enough women of note in British history to find at least one more?

Nice to hear that bloggers are "high-profile." When do bloggers get pictured on bank notes? And why wasn't the Queen enough? This seems like a pretty lame feminist issue. By comparison, we women of the United States have never gotten a picture of one of our kind on the paper money. They keep putting one of us on a dollar coin...



... and then acting disappointed when no one wants to use it. Get rid of the damned dollar bill! George Washington is on the quarter, the favorite coin. All those already minted dollar coins would circulate like mad if you pushed Washington back to 1 not 2. And don't tell me Lincoln has 2, so Washington should have 2. We're not talking about testicles. We're talking about representation on money. Get rid of the penny and the dollar, push the 2 rivals for best President back to single representation, and it will free Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea to circulate through the pockets and vending machines of America. Release the women from that vault!

There. I — a female blogger — have started my campaign. Let's see if I can hit the high-profile heights of Caroline Criado-Perez.

So who are the nefarious attackers? They were nobodies:

“I’m going to pistol whip you over and over until you lose consciousness,” one Twitter user warned Ms. Criado-Perez, threatening to “then burn ur flesh.”...

Two men, ages 21 and 25, have been arrested so far in connection with the harassment. Scotland Yard’s electronic-crime unit is investigating the Twitter attacks involving mostly anonymous Internet users, so-called trolls.

It's idiotic to threaten anyone on line, even if you think the target can't possibly believe an attack is in the offing. You'd think the hardcore fans of Charles Darwin would be more evolved.

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"As a feminist, I find it infinitely sad to imagine a vibrant young woman sitting alone at her computer..."

"... and turning herself into a sex object for a man... she does not know — even if she is also turning him into a sex object. Twentieth-century feminism always linked the social progress of women with an expanding sense of self-worth — in the sexual as well as intellectual and professional spheres. A willingness to engage in Internet sex with strangers, however, expresses not sexual empowerment but its opposite — a loneliness and low opinion of oneself that leads to the conclusion that any sexual contact is better than no contact at all."

So writes Susan Jacoby, in the context of the Anthony Weiner story. I suspect that Jacoby was sitting alone at her computer when she wrote that. And I'm sitting alone at my computer writing this now. Is anything infinitely sad about writing at the computer? Is it sadder when you expect someone is waiting to read what you write and you expect them to write back? These days I choose, for each post, whether I want to allow comments or not, and for this one I haven't chosen yet. Is the sadness of what I'm doing right now dependent on whether I allow comments?

Or is this infinite sadness dependent on whether you are writing about sex, which I kind of am, or writing about sex while hoping that your reader finds you sexy?

As a feminist, she finds it infinitely sad, so perhaps you have to be a feminist to feel what's so terribly sad about a woman sitting at a computer, writing sexily to someone she expects will write back sexily. And perhaps the woman at the computer needs to be vibrant and young for it to be extremely sad for her to chose bodily solitude and sex in written form. Those are the words of the self-identified feminist, feeling sad about women writing alone and sexily at computers. Jacoby is 68 years old. Is she like Paul's grandfather in "Hard Day's Night," scoffing at Ringo for reading — "tormenting your eyes with that rubbish" — instead of "gettin' out there and living... Parading the streets!"?

That's not about sexting. It's timeless advice from the old to the young. Perhaps the elders in Jane Austen's life pressured her to quit writing about love relationships and get out there and fall in love.

But Jacoby seems most concerned with context:

Sex with strangers online amounts to a diminution, close to an absolute negation, of the context that gives human interaction genuine content. Erotic play without context becomes just a form of one-on-one pornography....

Deep down, what does a man really think of himself when he must feed his ego with phony gasps of erotic pleasure from strangers in a digital vastness? What does a woman think of herself in the same arid zone of sex without sensuality?

Sex without context is pornography (to Jacoby). It's arid and fake. Even the man's orgasm is fake: "phony gasps." Even the man must lack self-esteem. That's the wrong kind of equality, with the woman straying out into the "arid zone" where meager men satisfy themselves. That's "not the sort of equality envisioned by feminism," she says in the end.  Women should shun this "lowest common denominator" sexuality that "debases the passion and reason of both men and women." Jacoby claims this end for feminism, but it's the oldest task in the world for women: channeling male sexuality, taming them, civilizing them, lifting them up, pumping the phallic lever for the elevation of us all.

(I'll put the comments on to make this more sad.)

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"What do you think the difference is between a tourist and a traveler?"

"I think a tourist is usually someone who is on a time budget. A tourist is out to see sights, usually which have been enumerated for him in a guidebook. I think there’s a deeper degree of curiosity in a traveler."

So it's a continuum, and if you want to move to the extreme good side of that continuum, perhaps you ought never to leave your home town. The quote is from Philip Caputo, author of "The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America, From Key West to the Arctic Ocean," and he's dialoguing with William Least Heat-Moon, author "Blue Highways: A Journey into America."

Heat-Moon reframes the tourist/traveler distinction in terms of destinations: "let’s pick Arizona — those tourists are likely to head for the Grand Canyon, whereas a traveler in Arizona might light out for Willcox. Why somebody would want to visit Willcox, I don’t know, other than to see what’s there. Ask questions: Who was Willcox? What kind of place is it? A tidy little place, by the way."

You go to all that effort to drive way the hell out somewhere, and then you just check out some little towns? Why didn't you just go to all the little places within a close radius of your hometown? That's what doesn't make sense. Heat-Moon comes right out and admits he sees no sense in his own idea.

Here are these 2 big travel writers, and they trash the tourism and hew to the old cliché that one ought to be a traveler, not a tourist. But they can't really explain the worth of this travel that isn't tourism. Unspoken is the reality that for each of them, travel is their work, if they are travel writers. Those who get paid for a particular type of work may find it hard to explain the value of the activity to someone who isn't getting paid but must in fact pay.

They do recommend writing as a way to "deepen the travel" — but writing is a way to deepen whatever it is you do, wherever you are. How do you decide what it is you will do? Let's say you buy into the importance of depth. Is traveling around, going slowly, going to small places, journaling, really worthwhile? Most of our depth comes from the life we live at home, and if we were really observant we would never run out of things to perceive and contemplate at  home.

2 of my favorite quotes are on this topic. First, from my favorite movie "My Dinner with Andre":

I mean, you know, there was a time when you could have just, for instance, written, I don't know, Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen! 

Talk about close observation, sharp writing, and sticking within a short radius at home.

And I'm sure the people who read it had a pretty strong experience. I'm sure they did. I mean, all right, now you're saying that people today wouldn't get it, and maybe that's true, but, I mean, isn't there any kind of writing, or any kind of a play that--I mean: isn't it still legitimate for writers to try to portray reality so that people can see it? I mean, really! Tell me: why do we require a trip to Mount Everest in order to be able to perceive one moment of reality? I mean...I mean: is Mount Everest more "real" than New York? I mean, isn't New York "real"? I mean, you see, I think if you could become fully aware of what existed in the cigar store next door to this restaurant, I think it would just blow your brains out! I mean... I mean, isn't there just as much "reality" to be perceived in the cigar store as there is on Mount Everest? I mean, what do you think? You see, I think that not only is there nothing more real about Mount Everest, I think there's nothing that different, in a certain way. I mean, because reality is uniform, in a way. So that if you're--if your perceptions--I mean, if your own mechanism is operating correctly, it would become irrelevant to go to Mount Everest, and sort of absurd! Because, I mean, it's just--I mean, of course, on some level, I mean, obviously it's very different from a cigar store on Seventh Avenue, but I mean...

The other quote is from one of my favorite books, "Walden," by Henry David Thoreau: "I have travelled a good deal in Concord..." Concord! Not even Massachusetts. Concord. Of course, he didn't have a car.

But then again, he didn't have the internet.

Unspoken: Does Althouse ever leave Madison?

ADDED: A reader quotes my "Those who get paid for a particular type of work may find it hard to explain the value of the activity to someone who isn't getting paid but must in fact pay" and says that "made me think of this sublimely wonderful passage from Moby Dick":

Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of paying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But being paid, -- what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!

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