How Could 39YO Austen Be so Interested in "Young People"

[Futurehope]

Hi! I'm a 56 year old who enjoys reading Jane Austen. I just finished Emma. It took me a while to get used to who everyone was. It also took some perseverance in wading through all the shananigans of the young people to realize at the end what Austen was trying do. I also had to look in the dictionary many times to find the meanings of a word I'm not familiar with.

It was a clever, well-done book, but I still cannot imagine a 39 year old women having an interest in the activities of young people. All I can say is, Austen had never married, and maybe this kept her stuck in some sort of "courting" mode. If she had had a husband and family, I do not know if her writings would have included as much courtship and love.

Any ideas, why a 39 year old would pick a young person like Emma to spend 400 pages on? It seems odd to me.

[B-Mental]

Maybe it was a stage in her life she enjoyed, relished, lived the most vibrantly...could really be anything. Maybe that was just the ideal age for the story she wrote.

[cactus]

One writes with the view for others to read. Austen's readers would have been young females whose lives at that era are very much centralised around love, marriage, social class, financial security....

[B-Mental]

I really don't know who she was writing for...I sometimes wonder if she was writing to explain women to men...does that make any sense?

[LadyWentworth]

I don't know. Maybe I am really going "out there" with this one. Maybe, just maybe, she was a storyteller. She created stories to entertain and amuse people. Maybe she felt these were the appropriate ages to use for her characters with the stories that she wanted to tell. Especially since they tend to revolve around marriage. Besides, I know that you are singling out Emma but, in Persuasion her heroine is 27 years old. An "old maid" back then. I would think that, considering Austen's same situation in life, 27 and 40 weren't that different. So, I don't think that this is a character in which one could question why she wrote about a women younger than herself. I don't really think that if she'd been married she would've had husbands and childbirth as the main topic of her stories. Which is more entertaining? The story about the hero trying to capture the heroine, or the hero already having captured his heroine? I think it is the pursuit rather than the conquest.

[J.D.]

It isn't odd at all that Austen would want to write about "young" people. If writers only wanted to write about people their own age, imagine the great literature we would miss out on. I'm thinking, for instance, of Huckleberry Finn. If Twain wasn't interested in writing about kids, we would have lost one of the greatest literary characters of all time.

I will say this, however. There is probably something about these writers, a perpetual longing or a romantic feeling toward their youth or another period in their lives, that makes them want to write these things. Nothing odd about it, though.

[Bakiryu]

Usually old writers like to write about young people, maybe they wish they could be young again like most old people usually do.

[maiar69]

You have to remember that the times were very different when Jane Austen wrote Emma. Although there are definite parrallels to our modern lives (which is why her stories are so timeless and relevent today) you have to remember that the main thing that consumed womens' thoughts and lives was getting married. Also, she ends her story with a wedding, the way Shakespeare did with his comedies to show a "happy ending." This could not be accomplished without a younger main character.

[TurquoiseSunset]

I think she wrote about these things because they were what women were talking about all day long. None of them worked...they all just did needlework, played the piano and read books. So when someone got engaged or married or there was some other social scandal, that was what the talked (gossiped) about. It didn't matter what age they were...

Besides, authors don't only write about characters their own age...

[mazz]

Heavens ! Futurehope your thinking is so old for your age. What does a story have to do with how old you are? I love your response Lady Wentworth. To write a good story you need a good understanding of character, which Austen does. A message to Bakiryu - the jokes on you because you will be old one day, like the rest of us, What will you think then? or were you joking?