Ho hum.
The weekend that I had swine flu (I think it was swine flu) my Grape-stomping Sister-in-law threw her third annual "Hallowgiving" party: Thanksgiving hosted on Halloween. My husband's entire family gathers to eat turkey and candy under the vacant eyes of ghosts and witches and skeletons. My kids were so excited for that party they could hardly stand it, so my husband drove them the three hours to McMinnville while I stayed home with just a fever for company – a fever, and Jane Austen.
This summer I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time. I mentioned on the blog how much I liked the book, even though I didn't like Mr. Darcy. Apparently most women swoon over him. It puzzled me. I mean, I get the romance of his pained declaration of love, but I find him (as Austen would say) insipid. Thinking more reading might clarify his appeal, I read Sense and Sensibility. I loved that novel, too, but I still didn't like Darcy. Or Edward, for that matter. Then, the weekend that I was ill and alone in the house, I watched Becoming Jane.
Tom Lefroy! Now there's an interesting man. Granted, I had a fever when I watched the movie, which (I can say now, several viewings later) isn't very good: but Tom Lefroy! Where Darcy is haughty, Lefroy is devilish. Lefroy is vibrant and daring and lithe. I did like him.
I don't care for tall, unathletic men, I guess.
That weekend I also watched the BBC versions of Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion and I read the novels Persuasion and Mansfield Park, and after my family returned but while I still needed recovery time, I watched Northanger Abbey. Then while dealing with all the instances of this Christmas' stomach flu I finally watched Emma (the charming 2009 version) and read the ending, which I knew must be different in the book. I'll read the whole novel as soon as I have a chance.
I am totally overdosing on Jane Austen.
The world she describes is so different from mine that it's hard work trying to understand it. I find myself admiring its coherence, as if it were one of LeGuin's imaginary worlds rather than 200-year-old realistic fiction. So many things matter deeply to her characters but don't matter at all to me, like the quality of the roads or the quality of their neighbors or what the servants – who live in their houses – might say about voices raised in the night. It's just so interesting to contemplate. They have a domestic servant, while I have a dishwasher and a washing machine. All day every day they see people they've known since birth, and very few of them, while I mostly see crowds of strangers. When it's dark they sleep because they haven't electricity; when they have a fever it's terrifying because ibuprofin hasn't been invented.
And marriage, of course, matters more than anything else, because marriage will alter a woman's life completely and permanently. I wish Jane Austen had written a few novels about being married.
What a rambling post.
How about you? Have you gone through an Austen phase?
4 comments:
I definitely went through an Austen phase. And I love re-reading her. Pride & Prejudice is a favorite, but I also identify strongly with Emma. It's been ages since I read either.
You know, if I cut back on the blog reading, I might find the time to read an occasional book. But apparently I'm still too hooked.
I've been in an Austen phase, off and on, for the last 15 years. Those books (or my favorite parts) are the well-thumbed "comfort reads" of my library.
When your Austen phase occurs during high school, the culture is alarmingly familiar. They talk differently and dress differently, but otherwise, it's just the same: the rigidly hierarchical and stiflingly unvaried society, the narrow focus on social opinion and heterosexual attractiveness. Austen's novels ARE about high-school - especially P&P, which has a large dose of "my family is so embarrassing" thrown in.
I would recommend that you do NOT read the Jane Austen Book Club. Hated that one.
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