Northanger Abbey is many people's favourite (including mine,) which is a bit strange because it is clearly not her best work. What it has though is a great deal of charm.
* A bookworm's nightmare!
** Take a nap insead!
*** Finished but no reason to skip meals.
**** Don't forget to unplug the phone for this one!
***** A bookworm's bibliophilic dream!
Northanger Abbey is many people's favourite (including mine,) which is a bit strange because it is clearly not her best work. What it has though is a great deal of charm.
ay up
I love Pride and Prejudice. In fact, it's my favourite book and I read it once a year, at least. However, I can't say the same of Emma and Sense and Sensibility. I tried, I really did, but S&S was incredibly boring and I hated Emma (the character).
I also liked Northanger Abbey, but haven't tried the rest yet...it's S&S and Emma's fault.
Now this is a wonderful read. Loved the authenticity in both the story and the characters. One of my favourite books.
"Mortals cannot perceive me with the physical eye whilst in my pure form unless it is of my choosing, for it would result in fatality, which begs the question of why you are an exception." - Al Stone, Talisman Of El
Pride and Prejudice is not a novel that is only about the “conversation between characters” nor is it only a romantic storyline. But, it is truly about how the British society at the time was presented. Everything that occupied the mind of the majority involved around securing the future of a woman- simply by her being married. In a way it is to state that if a woman is not married she can’t be seen as presentable in society.
I would like to also point out that the term "comedy of manners", does not imply that this book is a joke, for the comedy of manners is a genre which depicts the manners and habits of how a society is conducted. For instance in Sheridan’s play “The School for Scandal” written prior to "Pride and Prejudice" depicts a plot on manners with a scandal to which Austin’s novel also shares and this therefore makes it appropriate to state that this term suits both works.
Manners are the “standards of conduct which demonstrate that a person is proper, caring, polite, and refined”. But, is this always the case? Jane Austen in her character of George Wickham – a handsome, polite and well mannered officer was in fact a fortune-hunting liar. We were all fooled and deceived since his cruelty was masked by his polite manners, use of language and position in society. This however, I am sure Jane Austen didn’t want to set across or demonstrate that: proper manners have no worth, since she provided us with other wealthy characters teaching us otherwise, such as Mr. Darcy.
Confucius communicated that if one did not “possess a keen sense of the well-being and interests of others his ceremonial manners signified nothing”.
In short I must say, to communicate, that I have enjoyed reading this classic British novel.
it is true what you said "it is truly about how the British society at the time was presented" but most of the novels are like this , for example, sense and sensibility too
I like Northanger Abbey the most, that being said I really enjoyed P&P as well.Originally Posted by prendrelemick
i would love to offer a review of P&P but it has been about 5 years since i read it and it is not fresh enough in my mind. i loved them all except S&S which i found boring and unconvincing and felt i did not really understand at all especially the character of Elinor which nauseated me with its extreme perfections. i loved Northanger both as a satire and a validation of the concerns of gothic genre especially with the nature of tyranny. my favourite was Persuasion for the reason that Austen situates it very carefully in a minutely specific historical location indicating an awareness of the temporal nature of many of the relationship concerns between men and women of her era but reserves as a purpose of the composition the timelessness of equality. a transcendent work and the jewel of her genius.
The one thing I take from Jane Austen is the fact that we do no longer talk or think the way they did then.
All characters are incredible but not true if we were to match them with our modern day characters.
How can a whole society devolve from such an eloquent language to swear words and slang. Attitudes and manners are no longer supportive the Austen era let alone love matches of a Darcy standard.
Had Austen been around today she/he would not have stood the chance to write the way she did. Imagine then. Where would all the sense and prejudice be then?
Let's pause and think. I guess what was in the past stays in the past.
Last edited by cacian; 11-23-2012 at 09:19 AM.
it may never try
but when it does it sigh
it is just that
good
it fly
The society that she described was not real in her time either. If you took a step out of that hermetically sealed world you would see what everything really was.
Her hair was like a flowing cascade and her breasts were real awesome also.
My ***** Better Have My Money by Fly Guy
My ***** better have my money.
Through rain, sleet, or snow,
my ho better have my money.
Not half, not some, but all my cash.
Because if she don't, I'll put my foot dead in her ***.
Well it was real to an extent, but Austen is operating from a conventional language and form that was not intended to simply capture reality like a photograph. Austen's sense of realism is one that is still drawing on Neoplatonic aesthetics, so that her goal was to provide a glimpse of an ideal reality rather than of the material world. Even so, her novels are skeptical of romantic idealism and are in dialogue with a pragmatic vision of the pedagogic potential of the novel, one that is starting to move towards an appreciation of the form as art within and of itself. She is also a pioneer in terms of the concept of characters with internal worlds. Austen's characters are arguably the first individualized figures in fiction. They are more than caricature or allegory.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
have posted this elsewhere---I loved pride and prejudice and zombies---the movie, I couldn't get through the book.
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