Janeite
Janeitism did not begin until after the publication of J. E. Austen-Leigh's "A Memoir of Jane Austen" in 1870, when the literary elite felt that they had to separate their appreciation of Austen from that of the masses. The term "Janeite" was originally coined by the literary scholar George Saintsbury in his 1894 introduction to a new edition of "Pride and Prejudice". As Austen scholar Deidre Lynch explains, "he meant to equip himself with a badge of honor he could jubilantly pin to his own lapel". In the early twentieth century, Janeitism was "principally a male enthusiasm shared among publishers, professors, and literati". Rudyard Kipling even published a short story entitled "The Janeites" about a group of World War I soldiers who were secretly fans of Austen's novels.
Jane Austen in popular culture
Such is the appeal of Austen in Asia that during the period when Korea was a Japanese colony (1905-1945) Austen was first translated into Korean as the Japanese colonial administration- which always justified itself on the grounds that Korea was hopelessly backward and in need of Japanese rule to progress- sought to use Austen's books as an example of the sort of cultural progress the country was experiencing under Japanese rule. It should be noted that in Asia during this period, books by Western authors were always seen as embodying modernity and progress, and thus Austen in colonial Korea was presented as a symbol of modernity, at least during the so-called "Cultural Rule" period (1920–37) when Japanese rule was more moderate as compared to prior and succeeding periods. The South Korean writer Park Wansuh wrote two novels influenced by "Pride and Prejudice", "A Faltering Afternoon" (1977) and "Pride and Fantasy" (1980) both set in Yusin era South Korea. In "A Faltering Afternoon", three sisters from a lower-middle-class background who resemble Elizabeth, Jane and Lydia Bennet respectively find that their only hope of social-economic success comes with marrying the right men. Unlike "Pride and Prejudice", two of the Ho sisters' relationships end unhappily and only Ho Malhi, the sister who resembles Elizabeth Bennet, ends up well with her choice of a man. Hŏ Sŏng, the once successful small businessman who was now struggling as the "chaebol" came to dominate the South Korean economy in the 1970s, resembled Mr. Bennet as he watches his daughters' "quest" to find the ideal husband, through unlike him, Hŏ ends up committing suicide on the day of his daughter's wedding. In "Pride and Fantasy", Park took on one of the most painful subjects in South Korea at the time, namely the fact that the "Chinilpa" elite who had served Japan in the colonial period was the same elite that ruled South Korea in the 1970s. General Park Chung-hee, the military dictator of South Korea from 1961 until his assassination in 1979, had started his career as an officer in the Manchukuo Army and served with the Kwantung Army in its campaigns to "pacify" Manchukuo. During Park's rule, he applied the same methods he learned in Japanese service to his own people, and in the 1960s-70s, South Korea was one of the world's worst human rights abusers. "Pride and Fantasy" concerns the relationship between two men, one of whom is a male version of Elizabeth Bennet, and the other whom resembles Mr. Darcy. The Bennet-like Namsang came from a family that resisted Japanese rule and were ruined as a result while the Darcy-like Hyǒn comes from a "chinilpa" family that became fabulously rich by collaborating with the Japanese.