Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
May 17th 2007 11:34
Kiera Knightley makes for a poor Elizabeth
Today I passed by a Dymocks shop window which had a display of Jane Austen's works. So, I came home and started leafing through Pride and Prejudice.
I have a friend who rolls up his eyes whenever the name Emma is mentioned. After all, Jane Austen is the mother of chick-lit, isn't she? There was a time when I read her novels avidly. I was very young, I was big on romance and also read Barbara Cartland and Georgette Heyer and among that crowd, Austen stood out. Now, after so many years have passed by, I wasn't sure how I would react to her.
Pride and Prejudice held up surprisngly well. The first two or three chapters were slight but thereafter, the famous insights start dropping by and the novel starts to grow on you. The characters are all people whom youhave met in real life and their reactions are plausible. It's as if you are reading your own life. There is no doubt that it is quite a good read.
Still, Austen's enduring appeal is a mystery. It is not just that Pride and Prejudice regularly tops the greatest novel of all time lists but that many newpapers print more words about her than they do about many famous, contemporary authors.
The Brotherhood also joins in the praise and usually blesses the novel by praising its "sly text." A variant of this is fthe frequently quoted take by W.H.Auden,
You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle class
Describe the amorous effects of "brass,"
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.
Is she sly and shocking? I don't think so. It just reveals that liberals are hopeless romantics ( even if they protest to the contrary like Shaw) who have their heads in sand, who imagine this immaculate world, free of not just suffering but even ordinariness. And once they discover real world, they usually go into agonising convulsions. What should be obvious,is not, and will be magnified and exoticised. Look at the distortion iintroduced by dropping the context in the words " the economic basis of society." Austen is not shocked because she knows and understands ordinary economic necessities but that knowledge is tempered by other things. That is why she is sober.
She comes across as a caring but cautious , a loving but not unseeing matron. Her insights are not penetrating, just sensible. One meets many such women in real life but rarely in fiction because they lack scandal and most literature is about woman's scandal and a man's defence of her honour. The non-scandalous women never appear and if they do, they are in the background. It is to Austen's credit that she revealed the half life of domestic virtue and made it interesting and lively. There's nothing more to it. We don't need to agonise over her.
I have to find a way of reading Emma again without my friend knowing though.
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Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen: Japan Edition
This is about your previous entry... I've never read any of Dostoevysky's works before, but I heard he's a genius. I plan to read some these holidays. Is there one particular work of his you recommend?
Comment by nagster
Cenacle
Thanks for your compliment. I have been trying to answer your comment since yesterday but Orble delets my comments!
I'd say first finish the four major novels before reading any other works. Of them, Crime and Punishment is the most accesible. Idiot is uneven. The Brothers Karamazov is not an easy read even though it is the most famous. I like The Possessed the best but it will be too heavy for beginners. So start with Crime and Punishment, move on to Idiot, then The Possessed and finally the Brothers, the order in which they were written.
Comment by Anonymous