The Jane Austen Fan Club
Jul. 5th, 2005 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
itsallovernowFor ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elishavah and fbf, both of whom have expressed a large amount of "Jane Austen… So the hell what?"
And even the glory of wet and naked Colin Firth as Fitzwilliam Darcy was not enough to sway Eli:)
So, why the Austen love? What is it that makes entire generations of women reread these books and obsessively watch the very looooong BBC versions, and go to the movies to see each and every incarnation from Bride and Prejudice to Clueless? What's the appeal?
I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was 12 after seeing the film version with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. It was my mother's favorite book and I still remember how it felt and how the pages smelled. She had two copies – a hardbound one that was treasured and a battered soft copy that was losing pages from overuse.
I have to admit that I was swayed more by the loveliness of Greer Garson than by my mother's recommendation. She has never lived down forcing me to read My Antonia and I still hate Willa Cather to this day.
Austen's gift is the weight she gives to the ordinary moments, to the way that she offers up importance to small conversations and letters and gestures. Minutiae is a way of life for her characters, particularly the women who are not allowed to have occupation that doesn't involve the house or each other, but who are still responsible for finding what happiness they can in life. Elizabeth Bennett is the second eldest daughter. Jane is lovely and sweet, Kitty and Lydia foolish and reckless, Mary a sort of nerdy, not terribly talented spinster to be and then there is Lizzie. She's headstrong and pretty, but not beautiful. She's flawed – rushes to judgment, is acutely embarrassed by the flaws of her family, and yet loves them regardless, stands beside them with absolute finality. She's bright, she's a little contrary and she is absolutely a product of her age. She's Austen's voice, with her sly bite against the society she inhabits, against the limitations put upon her because of her age and her sex and her status.
Austen doesn't shy away from the issues of class, or the very real role that money plays in society, or the necessity of a girl marrying well if she hopes to have a life that doesn't involve more drudgery and mind-killing tedium, quiet desperation. Lizzie embodies all of that. Yes, she ultimately falls in love with Darcy, much to her chagrin, but she also falls in love with Georgiana and Pemberly and the possibility of a life that has more to offer than her flighty mother and their poverty, of waiting until their house will be taken away in the face of her father's death.
Austen is a brave writer, unafraid to layer romance and pragmatism, to give meaning and weight to women's work and women's words, to gossip as realistic communication and pride as a way of life – pride in oneself, in honesty, in family and loyalty.
I also love that Mr. Darcy really isn't a prince. He's arrogant, he's a snob, he's stuck up and stiff and handsome and rich. He makes some really bad calls and is utterly in love with Elizabeth and utterly horrified by the circumstances. When he keeps Jane and Mr. Bingley apart, he does so because he honestly believes that it is the right thing to do. It's misguided and obnoxious and none of his business but Darcy is following through on his own sense of loyalty to his friend.
Darcy's redemption is found not in his love for Elizabeth but in his persistence, in the way in which after fumbling and failing to win her hand, he still maintains his loyalty to her, is honest with her about his family, about Georgiana, does everything he can to help Elizabeth's family recover from the shame of Lydia's elopement.
I also like that when the engagement is announced, it isn't a case of everyone saying, "Oh, of course, we knew it all the time." Mrs. Bennett is somewhat swayed by the zillion pounds a year income, but Mr. Bennett is dubious, doesn't want his daughter marrying for money or out of a sense of obligation and neither of them likes Mr. Darcy much. Elizabeth is forced to trust her instincts, to make a decision about her future based upon her past and the potential in front of her and she chooses Darcy, whom she has come to love.
Austen writes about the ways in which we try and fail, in which the small moments of our lives guide us, are so much more important at times than the large events. She gives credence to the conversations and interests of women and none of her characters come away unscathed. She is honest with them and with the reader about their flaws – their brashness and their timidity and their propensity for gossip and for greed and for false reticence and for family.
Her characters get second chances to correct old mistakes, to clear up misunderstandings in ways that seem less like a case of bad dues, and more like those real and unexpected second chances that somehow fall into our laps when we least expect them to. And Austen's characters take their time, live out their full days so that one has a sense of the endless repetition, the way that one new thing can be focused on and dissected and done to death in a need to create excitement and focus, to give one's life it's own defined purpose.
I don't much care for Emma, but Sense and Sensibility is lovely as is Persuasion and Northanger Abbey is particularly funny if you've had to read a lot of bad gothic romance from the 1800's. Her use of language is calm and lovely and not overdone, she has a simplicity of style that is both reflective of her time and revolutionary in the way she uses small moments and small conversations to carry entire scenes instead of utilizing the typical device of telling the reader every excrutiating detail that comes to mind because she's being paid by the word coughDickenscough.
When I finished Pride and Prejudice, I understood what my mother loved about the book, why it resonated for her – a women who was never given a voice in her family's household, who barely had a voice in her own marriage, or indeed the decision to be married, who was brighter than she was ever given credit for and fought and struggled to be in charge of her own fate in small ways that were meaningless to the outside observer and meant everything to her and finally, years later, to me. She lived a life of quiet necessary moments for a very long time, in the shadow of my louder more flamboyant father and this book was a place she could go to and retreat into the quiet, I think. When she decided that she needed more from a life and a partnership than she was being given, she left and I don't think she's ever regretted the decision, or the importance of finally giving herself credence for her own small moments and her inherent worth.
elishavah and fbf, both of whom have expressed a large amount of "Jane Austen… So the hell what?"And even the glory of wet and naked Colin Firth as Fitzwilliam Darcy was not enough to sway Eli:)
So, why the Austen love? What is it that makes entire generations of women reread these books and obsessively watch the very looooong BBC versions, and go to the movies to see each and every incarnation from Bride and Prejudice to Clueless? What's the appeal?
I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was 12 after seeing the film version with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. It was my mother's favorite book and I still remember how it felt and how the pages smelled. She had two copies – a hardbound one that was treasured and a battered soft copy that was losing pages from overuse.
I have to admit that I was swayed more by the loveliness of Greer Garson than by my mother's recommendation. She has never lived down forcing me to read My Antonia and I still hate Willa Cather to this day.
Austen's gift is the weight she gives to the ordinary moments, to the way that she offers up importance to small conversations and letters and gestures. Minutiae is a way of life for her characters, particularly the women who are not allowed to have occupation that doesn't involve the house or each other, but who are still responsible for finding what happiness they can in life. Elizabeth Bennett is the second eldest daughter. Jane is lovely and sweet, Kitty and Lydia foolish and reckless, Mary a sort of nerdy, not terribly talented spinster to be and then there is Lizzie. She's headstrong and pretty, but not beautiful. She's flawed – rushes to judgment, is acutely embarrassed by the flaws of her family, and yet loves them regardless, stands beside them with absolute finality. She's bright, she's a little contrary and she is absolutely a product of her age. She's Austen's voice, with her sly bite against the society she inhabits, against the limitations put upon her because of her age and her sex and her status.
Austen doesn't shy away from the issues of class, or the very real role that money plays in society, or the necessity of a girl marrying well if she hopes to have a life that doesn't involve more drudgery and mind-killing tedium, quiet desperation. Lizzie embodies all of that. Yes, she ultimately falls in love with Darcy, much to her chagrin, but she also falls in love with Georgiana and Pemberly and the possibility of a life that has more to offer than her flighty mother and their poverty, of waiting until their house will be taken away in the face of her father's death.
Austen is a brave writer, unafraid to layer romance and pragmatism, to give meaning and weight to women's work and women's words, to gossip as realistic communication and pride as a way of life – pride in oneself, in honesty, in family and loyalty.
I also love that Mr. Darcy really isn't a prince. He's arrogant, he's a snob, he's stuck up and stiff and handsome and rich. He makes some really bad calls and is utterly in love with Elizabeth and utterly horrified by the circumstances. When he keeps Jane and Mr. Bingley apart, he does so because he honestly believes that it is the right thing to do. It's misguided and obnoxious and none of his business but Darcy is following through on his own sense of loyalty to his friend.
Darcy's redemption is found not in his love for Elizabeth but in his persistence, in the way in which after fumbling and failing to win her hand, he still maintains his loyalty to her, is honest with her about his family, about Georgiana, does everything he can to help Elizabeth's family recover from the shame of Lydia's elopement.
I also like that when the engagement is announced, it isn't a case of everyone saying, "Oh, of course, we knew it all the time." Mrs. Bennett is somewhat swayed by the zillion pounds a year income, but Mr. Bennett is dubious, doesn't want his daughter marrying for money or out of a sense of obligation and neither of them likes Mr. Darcy much. Elizabeth is forced to trust her instincts, to make a decision about her future based upon her past and the potential in front of her and she chooses Darcy, whom she has come to love.
Austen writes about the ways in which we try and fail, in which the small moments of our lives guide us, are so much more important at times than the large events. She gives credence to the conversations and interests of women and none of her characters come away unscathed. She is honest with them and with the reader about their flaws – their brashness and their timidity and their propensity for gossip and for greed and for false reticence and for family.
Her characters get second chances to correct old mistakes, to clear up misunderstandings in ways that seem less like a case of bad dues, and more like those real and unexpected second chances that somehow fall into our laps when we least expect them to. And Austen's characters take their time, live out their full days so that one has a sense of the endless repetition, the way that one new thing can be focused on and dissected and done to death in a need to create excitement and focus, to give one's life it's own defined purpose.
I don't much care for Emma, but Sense and Sensibility is lovely as is Persuasion and Northanger Abbey is particularly funny if you've had to read a lot of bad gothic romance from the 1800's. Her use of language is calm and lovely and not overdone, she has a simplicity of style that is both reflective of her time and revolutionary in the way she uses small moments and small conversations to carry entire scenes instead of utilizing the typical device of telling the reader every excrutiating detail that comes to mind because she's being paid by the word coughDickenscough.
When I finished Pride and Prejudice, I understood what my mother loved about the book, why it resonated for her – a women who was never given a voice in her family's household, who barely had a voice in her own marriage, or indeed the decision to be married, who was brighter than she was ever given credit for and fought and struggled to be in charge of her own fate in small ways that were meaningless to the outside observer and meant everything to her and finally, years later, to me. She lived a life of quiet necessary moments for a very long time, in the shadow of my louder more flamboyant father and this book was a place she could go to and retreat into the quiet, I think. When she decided that she needed more from a life and a partnership than she was being given, she left and I don't think she's ever regretted the decision, or the importance of finally giving herself credence for her own small moments and her inherent worth.
