ABSTRACT
In this essay, Marina Cano draws on the celebrity figure of Lady Gaga and Jack Halberstam’s notion of ‘Gaga Feminism’ to explore Jane Austen’s emergence into the world of celebrity in the late 2010s and the early 2020s. She examines an array of recent Austen exhibitions, events and online platforms, including Which Jane Austen? (the Bodleian Library); Jane Austen by the Sea (the Royal Pavilion); the Austen wax figure unveiled in 2014 (The Austen Centre, Bath); Chawton House’s fundraising campaign Reimagining Jane Austen’s ‘Great House’; the project Reading with Austen (launched in 2018); and What Jane Saw (launched in 2013). The instability and ephemeral quality of some of these spaces and events—either made of pixels or with a short lifespan—add to the anarchic and unpredictable quality of what she calls ‘Gaga Austen’.
