What I Love Most about Jane Austen
Excerpted from the introduction I wrote for the printed version of my adaptation of Pride & Prejudice:
I’ve always been shy of favorites. People talk about their favorite song, their favorite movie, their favorite book. How on earth do they choose? Is it always their favorite? But I’ve finally had to admit that Pride and Prejudice is probably my favorite book.
I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was twelve years old. On a family vacation, I found a copy on a bookseller’s table at a village market somewhere in Wales, and spent the next few days ignoring my parents from the back seat of our hired car as I was introduced for the first time to Jane Austen’s rich characters and her marvelous wit.
Since then I’ve probably re-read it at least once a year. It has become one of my regular choices when I’m not feeling well, or when I’ve been unhappy or overwhelmed, so in some years I’ve read it two or three times. And when I admit this in public, I am joined by a chorus of fellow-travelers. Pride and Prejudice is on every top ten list of favorite novels of all time.
It can be hard to explain exactly why it’s such a favorite. The story is relatively small and deeply rooted in the particular society of rural England at the turn of the 19th century. It does not deal with grand themes and none of its characters are heroic or unflawed. In fact most of them are quite imperfect, each in their own petty ways, even her protagonists.
Perhaps that is the secret: these characters seem real and by reading about them we can feel that we know them. They are filled with the foibles that make for true individuals. Each is self-absorbed in a particular way-Mrs Bennet’s obsession with the local marriage market, Mr Bennet’s library escape from his own mistakes, Jane’s insistence on the good in everyone, Mary’s longing for accomplishments she lacks the talent to achieve, Darcy’s confidence in his own superiority, Wickham’s clinging to his own likability-the list goes on and on. In the company of these characters we can feel, as Lizzy admits to Jane, that we have not been “so very weak and vain and nonsensical” in comparison, or that if we have, we are at least not alone.
One of the frustrations for the modern reader is the many rules which constrain Austen’s characters and make modern adaptations so very problematic. Why can’t Lizzy just tell all of her suitors to go hang, find herself a nice flat in London, and get a job? Well, because she can’t without exiting the box by which her entire existence is bound. Some readers are rebuffed by these limitations, but I think that for many they are part of the attraction. The game of life in Austen’s work has rules that can seem both quaint and reassuringly solid.
And yet Austen is not chronicling an unchanging society, but one poised at the brink of transformation, in which we cheer the characters on. When Darcy, the example of pride in one’s station, writes to Elizabeth-an unrelated person of the opposite sex-he is committing a major transgression, and in his choice of friends-Bingley is only one generation removed from trade and the Gardiners, with whom we are told he continues to deal famously from a gracious start, are not removed from it at all-he tramples the previously accepted class boundaries, before marrying for a very modern version of love.
Perhaps part of our enjoyment of the story is the quiet revolution it embodies, the idea that major change can stem from such small beginnings.
____________________________
And somehow in all of that I forgot to mention that I'm a sucker for romance and the wit is wonderful. I think those are the reasons it's a fun read, but the above are some of the reasons for its staying power.
This entry was originally posted at http://lillibet.dreamwidth.org/597511.html. You can comment either place! There are
comments over there now.
I’ve always been shy of favorites. People talk about their favorite song, their favorite movie, their favorite book. How on earth do they choose? Is it always their favorite? But I’ve finally had to admit that Pride and Prejudice is probably my favorite book.
I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time when I was twelve years old. On a family vacation, I found a copy on a bookseller’s table at a village market somewhere in Wales, and spent the next few days ignoring my parents from the back seat of our hired car as I was introduced for the first time to Jane Austen’s rich characters and her marvelous wit.
Since then I’ve probably re-read it at least once a year. It has become one of my regular choices when I’m not feeling well, or when I’ve been unhappy or overwhelmed, so in some years I’ve read it two or three times. And when I admit this in public, I am joined by a chorus of fellow-travelers. Pride and Prejudice is on every top ten list of favorite novels of all time.
It can be hard to explain exactly why it’s such a favorite. The story is relatively small and deeply rooted in the particular society of rural England at the turn of the 19th century. It does not deal with grand themes and none of its characters are heroic or unflawed. In fact most of them are quite imperfect, each in their own petty ways, even her protagonists.
Perhaps that is the secret: these characters seem real and by reading about them we can feel that we know them. They are filled with the foibles that make for true individuals. Each is self-absorbed in a particular way-Mrs Bennet’s obsession with the local marriage market, Mr Bennet’s library escape from his own mistakes, Jane’s insistence on the good in everyone, Mary’s longing for accomplishments she lacks the talent to achieve, Darcy’s confidence in his own superiority, Wickham’s clinging to his own likability-the list goes on and on. In the company of these characters we can feel, as Lizzy admits to Jane, that we have not been “so very weak and vain and nonsensical” in comparison, or that if we have, we are at least not alone.
One of the frustrations for the modern reader is the many rules which constrain Austen’s characters and make modern adaptations so very problematic. Why can’t Lizzy just tell all of her suitors to go hang, find herself a nice flat in London, and get a job? Well, because she can’t without exiting the box by which her entire existence is bound. Some readers are rebuffed by these limitations, but I think that for many they are part of the attraction. The game of life in Austen’s work has rules that can seem both quaint and reassuringly solid.
And yet Austen is not chronicling an unchanging society, but one poised at the brink of transformation, in which we cheer the characters on. When Darcy, the example of pride in one’s station, writes to Elizabeth-an unrelated person of the opposite sex-he is committing a major transgression, and in his choice of friends-Bingley is only one generation removed from trade and the Gardiners, with whom we are told he continues to deal famously from a gracious start, are not removed from it at all-he tramples the previously accepted class boundaries, before marrying for a very modern version of love.
Perhaps part of our enjoyment of the story is the quiet revolution it embodies, the idea that major change can stem from such small beginnings.
____________________________
And somehow in all of that I forgot to mention that I'm a sucker for romance and the wit is wonderful. I think those are the reasons it's a fun read, but the above are some of the reasons for its staying power.
This entry was originally posted at http://lillibet.dreamwidth.org/597511.html. You can comment either place! There are
comments over there now.