And I whole heartily agree!!!Originally Posted by LadyWentworth
As soon as I saw your choices I was going to immediately tell you to read Persuasion, but somebody else beat me to it!It is actually, in its own little way, much different than Pride and Prejudice. Plus, it is a much better story. At least, I think it is.
"Come away O human child!To the waters of the wild, With a faery hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand."
W.B.Yeats
"If it looks like a Dwarf and smells like a Dwarf, then it's probably a Dwarf (or a latrine wearing dungarees)"
Artemins Fowl and the Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
my poems-please comment Forum Rules
So do I
I would prefer not to compare Persuassion and P&P in this way: Better/worse. They are totally different, with absolutely different characters and plot. They give us different lessons of how the one should act (except the principal advice to stick to your own judgments). So to say, in P&P the basic lines of the opposition is totally distinguished from Persuassion. Pride and prejudice VS modest sequacity & noble faithfulness.Plus, it is a much better story. At least, I think it is.
I have to agree.I just don't find the "o when will I find my happy prince" premisse engaging enough. Not a tenth as engaging as Wuthering Heights' tempestuous little world.
At the moment I'm being slightly unfair, as I've only read one of her works (Pride and Prejudice) but I got the distinct feeling that it was, at essence, just comfort food. There was no real edge to the work that I could detect. It felt like dazzling gloss and shine, but not much else. The dialogue, however, was quite snappy and entertaining, I suppose. Wuthering Heights, on the other hand...now that's one hell of a novel. Even Jane Eyre has more 'bite' than what I've read from Austen so far.
As I said, however, I may be unfair here, as I should read more of her work before I dismiss her. Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should read from her next?
Well, I started Austen entirely with P&P because I saw Lost in Austen on ITV. Hysterical! If you get the chance to see it, do! It is so entertaining and yet so true to the original feeling of that book, and equally surprising at the end (even for readers of the original!).
But anyway: I started with P&P and now I am reading S&S, but it is totally different. Although I like it for the style and for my vocabulary (because I am not englishspeaking), I do see your point about it being comfort food... P&P, though, was very entertaining, but I am kind of having trouble with S&S as it is much more subdued and not so hysterical, which I found a great merit of P&P. At the same time it's a great teacher towards other books like Jane Eyre as you get more inside-information about that society, but it does not go all that deep.
Let's say it is a light break amongst others to read. (ok, I'm gonna get slaughtered by the Austen-fans now)
Persuasion is more like P&P, then?
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
Jane Austen is described as pretty and the picture of health. But these scholars never seem to use her many personal descriptions, which to me are and should be, the starting point.Novelist Jane Austen has been given a makeover for the cover of a book about her life after publishers decided an original image of her was unattractive. "She was not much of a looker," said Helen Trayler, managing director of publisher Wordsworth Editions.
This person has never read one of her books. She wants poverty? Try Persuasion. Try Mansfield Park. Austen didn't JUST write Pride & Prejudice. As for corruption and ambition, again, Persuasion. And wickedness is present in all of her novels but Emma."There is no poverty in her novels, no corruption, ambition, wickedness or war. Yes her wit is enchanting and her human observations enduringly accurate, but the world she writes about is so tiny. I find it claustrophobic."
Sense and Sensibility is her worst book. I thank my lucky stars I started off with Emma.
If this is all you see in her books, you really miss the point.
The SETTING is the world in which women had extremely limited options, yes... but the PLOT is a lot more than marriage. "Emma" isn't about Emma finding a man... it's about her struggle to overcome her vanity and to start treating other people with more respect. "Mansfield Park" isn't about Fanny pursuing anyone, it's a Moralistic story about how what's "flashy" isn't always what's right.
Pride & Prejudice is about a family with five unmarried daughters and no sons. If none of them married before the father died, the whole family would become homeless and impoverished. They literally depended on marriage for survival-- when Elizabeth rejected Mr. Collins' proposal, she betrayed her family's only hope of keeping their house after Mr. Bennet died.
If you don't feel the edge, you aren't looking for it.
As for what to read next, that depends entirely on your taste. You're a fan of Romantic writing, so I'd go with Persuasion.
A lot of people seem to think that Jane Austen had no sense of humor. They should read Northanger Abbey. It is a witty attack on the Gothic genre, and there are scenes in it that are truly funny.
Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. - Albert Einstein
I couldnt agree with you more.
"Come away O human child!To the waters of the wild, With a faery hand in hand, For the worlds more full of weeping than you can understand."
W.B.Yeats
"If it looks like a Dwarf and smells like a Dwarf, then it's probably a Dwarf (or a latrine wearing dungarees)"
Artemins Fowl and the Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
my poems-please comment Forum Rules
I think a lot of people just get thrown firstly by the topic (women looking for a spouse) and secondly by the language that is so amazingly dry, but so funny in that dryness. It is a lot of words though, and some things you have to consider twice in their idea or concept to actually understand the joke and laugh at it.
I agree about Northanger Abbey, though.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
^
I've just been rereading Northanger Abbey which had been my least favorite Austen. However I've been struck by how hilariously funny it is. It is perhaps undervalued because many people today haven't read the novels she was satirizing.
Austen, to me, is so much about morality and realizing one's own faults and selfish, impolite, and improper behaviors. Austen though can make these things a major theme without coming across as 'preachy' because of her incomparable and truly funny irony, which is her 'sentence'.
I don't agree with the statement that evil is not present in Emma as contrasted with the other books. Emma has been referred to as one of the first female characters in English literature with a moral life. The evil in Emma does not come so much in the form of a Wickam (sp?) to seduce a virgin and throw a whole family into disgrace. The evil is something in Emma's own character, nature, and behavior, that at some point in the novel she must discover.
I think that the media and our modern day conceptions have contributed to a belief that Austen was a writer of romantic novels. There's actually a nascent feminism in Austen heroines and outlook. And despite the undeniable 'courtship' themes, it's very obvious that Austen realized that marriage was about so much more than mere 'romance' or mere 'convenience' . She shows us couples who have married for either reason, and then she makes us laugh at them. Although obstacles to marriage serve as a plot device in novels, Austen bent this to her purpose. The time between the introduction of her hero and heroine and their eventual understanding is filled up with journeys of self-awareness. If Lizzy, for mercenary reasons, had agreed to marry Darcy at the time of the first proposal the marriage would have been treated with irony. Austen wants her heroines (Lizzy, Marianne, Emma and Anne most notably) to learn about themselves, before they can enter upon a successful marriage based on respect. For a time when marriage was a girl's only prospect, and when one might receive only one good proposal , this was a nascent feminist statement. (I'm not entirely sure wherebut I know that I'm indebted to my friend Mette for some thought here.)
Last edited by L.M. The Third; 09-19-2010 at 01:48 AM.
I agree that all characters I have seen up till now in her novels (which are all of them minus Mansfield Park and Lady Susan, which wasn't complete, right?) need to go through a proces of cleansing before they can start on their life. Also their counterpart, whose process is not so much addressed as the heroine goes through the same, goes through it in secret. Still, his changes are apparent in small hints, the same as developments in Austen's society went on in secret, but had their appearances on the surface. There is always a lot to be added to the secret plot.
That idea of self-development is very much present in 18th and 19th century lit (eventually the Bildungsroman) and even earlier. Moll Flanders is portrayed like that (excellent excuse for writing all the filth, 'I am just doing it to prove a point'), Fanny Hill too (great filth that was
), and it carries on with Scott and Brontë, not to mention Hardy.
Beside all this moralistic stuff, which Austen must have read as well, she really had had it with the world and decided to blow things taken as matters of course up to ridiculous proportions so that people would see how ridiculous they were. She did that very much in Northanger Abbey with Gothic novels, vanity, words ('best friend in the world'). It takes a great mind to be able to detatch oneself from reality and in-bred ways in order to question all. Most people cannot do that unless they are faced with satire and then it still takes a little effort to see what that satire is really about. Otherwise, they just find it normal. They cannot see beyond their own nose, so to say. Austen was one who saw past the end of her nose.
I am not sure, though, if that feminist idea is intended. Sure, Lizzie refuses two proposals because she does not deem her husbands-to-be worthy, but possibly it is also her own blindness that moves her to it. Mr Collins she did not have to marry for comfort. Her comfort would have been the same as her mother's if she didn't have a son (which was still down to the woman in those days; now we know better): being expelled and end up like the Dashwoods in poverty in Sense and Sensibility. Imagine her husband were to die when her children were still small... Big trouble and poverty awaits. Not to mention that she would have been stuck in a small parsonage with a nasty landlady and a husband who is insufferable, uneducated, slimy etc. I think that is an argument for anyone to say, nah. Her father even agreed with her. Her second refusal, though, she seems to regret (why otherwise would she burst out in tears after Darcy has left in a huff?). In this case, she would have lived in a great mansion, so she could have escaped her (insufferable) husband and she would never have had to worry about finance anymore and had all her little heart desired with a hubby who worshipped the ground she walked on. But, as he bursts into that parsonage and declares his love in such a stupid and a little impolite manner, her pride stands in the way of saying yes. Firstly, she is taken by surprise and cannot deal worthily with it all. She would have imagined something nicer (walk in the park, you know; gradual development, you know), but no, this man bursts in there and demands a decision; no, wait, even takes it as a matter of course that her decision is favorable. She had probably hoped that it was Mr Fitzwilliam and not the guy with a first name Fitzwilliam himself. After all, their walks in the park of Rosings denoted more than mere walks, didn't they? Secondly, she is picked by his declaration about her connections (rightly so), so she refuses, but regrets it afterwards. She let all the money go. He was the biggest fish in the pond, and she threw him back again, never to see him ever again because which gentleman would make a second attempt? That is really sad. For her pride. How magnificent she would have looked with a name 'Mrs Darcy'.
I have always thought that Mr Darcy was more like his sister than merely proud alone. He does admit to his views being conceited, but I think his silence is more down to shyness than anything else. For a man that is really not done (see Jane and Lizzie's comments at the beginning about how young men should be). I think his first proposal is a little conceited but I think he is rather saying, 'see what I leave for you. I worship you and so I will defy society and my aunt to have you.' She interprets it differently, but I think he didn't mean it like that, it only came out totally wrongly like it always does when one does not know what to say. The same principle he will employ in order to help her sister (though for his own gain, tssss). There is no gradual development because he doesn't want to know, but also because he is too shy to show it, unlike his friend. Maybe he is too shy of feelings in themselves, even to himself, like she is to her feelings for him too. Maybe he is too shy to admit to his friend Bingley that he does find her handsome at that frist ball. She is certainly the handsomest lady in the room (everyone agree about that), but he is not disposed to admit it within hearing distance of her and so gives the honour to her sister. He must get himself free from that façade which has been forced upon him by education ('you are a man, you will not show any emotion.')
If anything, her refusals of those propsals can also be taken as a symptom of her pride.
All her characters go through a different cleansing process, though. Lizzie and Darcy through one of pride and pragmatism; Emma through one of egoism and self-awareness (something that also counts for Knightley); Anne and Wentworth through one of anger (they are both angry at each other and other people SPOILER for preventing their frist plans SPOILERS OVER though that was for the best, although the feeling is double in view of that family in Lyme); Elenor and Marianne take over some things of each other.
I think Northanger Abbey stands on its own in that it is not really a cleansing process, only maybe in childishness... Catherine needs to get out of that girlish and meaningless world of Gothic romances and see that they are great for amusement, but otherwise, not worth much. Tilney needs to be less of a 'son' and more of a 'man', independent of his father. The father of course neds to be more of a 'father' than a tyrant.
I think I will need to read Udolpho. I am sure that Northanger Abbey will even be funnier if I have read that, somehow. Especially General Tilney I suspect to be hilarious.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
Lady Susan is actually complete, although it's short. Lady Susan is different from Austen's other protaganists because she does not become morally aware. She is essentially a miscreant.
Beside all this moralistic stuff, which Austen must have read as well, she really had had it with the world and decided to blow things taken as matters of course up to ridiculous proportions so that people would see how ridiculous they were. She did that very much in Northanger Abbey with Gothic novels, vanity, words ('best friend in the world'
Yes, it takes a great mind and a certain bravery too.
Okay, about the feminism, I was very careful to call it nascent. The very idea of feminism was only nascent at the time. And, yes, Elizabeth's rejections of both proposals stem from pride. But I beg to remind you that Mr. Collins was to inherit the Bennett's home. Yes, a son might not result from the union and Elizabeth might be in the Dashwood's situation, but a son might result. Her mother certainly was placing pressure on her. Lizzy's pride (although sometimes leading her astray) could be said to stem from her self-worth and intelligence and her decision only to marry where there was true respect. So, I guess this is really going back to issues of self-awareness and moral behavior. I don't have the time to explore the feminist aspect right now.
Last edited by L.M. The Third; 09-19-2010 at 01:09 PM.
Well of course, it could be that, I agree, but it is all too often attributed to that alone. That is all I wanted to say, though.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
Uhm, this website takes care to discuss the POINT, not your classmates (who may be b****es for all I know) or the fact that Austen can 'lick your sack'. Saying that one great writer is far superior on another one can be offensive to fans of the latter. You realise that, I suppose.
Ok, maybe you didn't want to be offensive, and that's fine, but it would be good for yourself that you were to take some effort in trying to understand why you didn't like it.
I realise you are a male, which is a downside fo reading Austen, and I can't imagine why your teacher (as there are so many) regard this book as to be read by all, male and female alike. There is a lot of female energy in Austen (of course, she was a female, doh) which some men do not get, and certainly not in high school.
Why didn't you like it?
Forget the film, I found it marvellous, but I found it slightly lacking in just fun. It was fun by moments, but it was really a little flat and too sugary in parts (mind you not everywhere). Particularly Mr Collins was great.
Maybe you saw the novel as too factual and true and don't know much about the ways then which Austen was trying to make ridiculous.
Tell us. I promise you, it'll be of great use to you (and not only for this book, also for David Copperfield, on another forum of course
gr
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One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
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