Oh Jane...
When I feel like I am coming undone in anger or frustration I always feel like I am dripping fire from my very fingertips and at any moment I might spontaneously combust. That's typically when I disappear into some other world via books or films. I find more and more I go back in particular to Jane Austen.
To say I am a fan would be putting it mildly. I adore her work. I love the films even the ones that are far from the literary base. It is no wonder after 200 hundred years that she still holds a draw for so many people who share Austen. She feels like home to me. Somehow I can wrap up with a cup of tea and one of her novels or watch one of my favorite films and the world is a little more beautiful, love a little more possible, and manners that much more present.
I sometimes feel like all the difficult situations and whirling questions can be found in her novels. I know it sounds silly, but it takes me away and reminds me that how we choose to act as an individual...our own character is what matters not all the crap outside ourselves. She has those character's which torment us the ones who represent someone you have known at some point who caused you grief or pure annoyance and still the heroine's and hero's forge on with grace no matter the situation. There is such strength and peace of mind in that.
I've started to write a sort of diary to her when I'm feeling angry and disconnected with the world. In those moments where this time and place get on my last damn nerve I think of Austen and her life and start to see so many of the things I take for granted and equally the things that I would improve upon in myself. I start to think to myself when the dark seems to creep near and those secret desires of the past come calling "What Would Jane Do?"
To say I am a fan would be putting it mildly. I adore her work. I love the films even the ones that are far from the literary base. It is no wonder after 200 hundred years that she still holds a draw for so many people who share Austen. She feels like home to me. Somehow I can wrap up with a cup of tea and one of her novels or watch one of my favorite films and the world is a little more beautiful, love a little more possible, and manners that much more present.
I sometimes feel like all the difficult situations and whirling questions can be found in her novels. I know it sounds silly, but it takes me away and reminds me that how we choose to act as an individual...our own character is what matters not all the crap outside ourselves. She has those character's which torment us the ones who represent someone you have known at some point who caused you grief or pure annoyance and still the heroine's and hero's forge on with grace no matter the situation. There is such strength and peace of mind in that.
I've started to write a sort of diary to her when I'm feeling angry and disconnected with the world. In those moments where this time and place get on my last damn nerve I think of Austen and her life and start to see so many of the things I take for granted and equally the things that I would improve upon in myself. I start to think to myself when the dark seems to creep near and those secret desires of the past come calling "What Would Jane Do?"