I just don't get Jane Austen

[kiery]

Oh, how I've tried and I've really, really, wanted to like them: I just can't!

I fell asleep with Northanger Abbey, was bored and confused with Sense and Sensiblility (I couldn't even finish the graphic novel); the list can go on............

I think they represent a small proportion of women who led a very priviledged life at that time. The game play and social intercourse is completely alien and dull, dull, dull. I can't care for these characters at all.

What am I missing? Please help me....should I try the Zombie Jane Austens?

[CalatalieSisters]

Oh I think he cares about the no-so thing way more than Mrs B doesn't he? I think the different characteristics of his five children represent precisely the quality of his disappointment at the arrival of each girl. Jane he completely loves as a female, because the boy was sure to come, so she is a perfect female, beautiful, gentle, mild mannered, graceful. Lizzie he loved and accepted too and was wildly impressed by, but she knew as a child that he wanted his second child to be a boy so she plays to what she knew he thought of as male virtues intelligance, self assurance and as a result becomes a wonderful person who transcends many gender constraints but is nonetheless fabulouly womanly in the best ways. Then the remaining awful children are successively more marked by his bitter neglect.

[CalatalieSisters]

whoops: no-so = no-son

[CalatalieSisters]

Wow. I never knew that the american P&P had a different ending. That reminds me of the time that an american TV company dropped an already-begun collaboration with the BBC adapting Crime and Punishment when they discovered than the hero battered an old lady to death.

[Insomnia11]

The thing is writers can write about what they know, or they certainly would have done more then. Must have been very hard to research most things. and as a woman JA could hardly experience the Napoleonic wars from the front line. Someone like say, Tolstoy had the opportunity of a far wider experiences as a writer just by being male.

But surely as an author you don't have to touch on everything going on in the world at once or be remotely topical if you don't want to be. JA was writing social commentary, not a history of her own time, though of course in itself it provides an insight into her time. There must be authors writing novels now without touching on globalism, terrorism, the Arab Spring, economic problems...

[hocuspontas]

JA wrote about what she knew. I love her and love the 'smallness' of the world in her novels. I love the figures of fun like Mr and Mrs Elton and Mr Collins. Northanger Abbey and S&S are my least favourite with P&P my favourite book of all time. When I start to re-read a JA novel I feel a happiness come over me, knowing I won't be disappointed with the writing, she doesn't waste any words or go into lengthy irrelevant descriptions and all the endings are satisifying and there aren't many authors that I feel like that about. In contrast the Brontes are too heavy and depressing for me.

[TrillianAstra]

I think the wars affected her characters exactly as much as they affected her - hardly at all.

They happened many days' journey away and involved only people who were in the Army and Navy. Reports back would be in the form of very infrequent letters. Women would not be encouraged to take an interest at all, apart from looking at eligible officers.

[kiery]

You are completely right TrillianAstra, not everyone will like every book; sorry, I didn't mean to be snippy either

[DilysPrice]

Calatalie, the Laurence Olivier is reset by 50 years because they had a job lot of crinolines they wanted to use, and, shockingly, has Darcy conspiring with Lady CDB to test whether Lizzy would still marry him without his money. There are no words for what an appalling mistreatment of his character this is.

[hocuspontas]

The Olivier/Garson P&P was a howler. I find it really watchable though because it IS so bad...

[MyBrainIsOutOfTune]

When my grandmother heard that I was going to read Austen at University, she was very surprised. In her day, Austen had been the equivalent of chick-lit, and she thought people at University only studied serious literature, like Dickens

I sometimes think there are two reasons some people don't take Austen seriously - because she is funny, and because there are so many women in her novels. If you accept that she probably was sensible in writing the world she knew, then there are only so many options available to the female characters. I don't know why it should be so that the things (middle-class) women experience aren't deemed as real as the experiences of the men who are off to war or whatever. If you want to read the latter, you go to another writer. It doesn't necessarily mean that Austen is lacking in some way, it just means that you have different interests.

She makes fun of ridiculous people, and I love that about her. I think it takes real skill to make fools so lifelike without going over the top. In ridiculing certain persons, she also ridicules the ideas that they represent - like always thinking about money/position/formalities/a good match, and so on. If people try to make fun of someone in a difficult position (sick, poor, etc.), though, they get an earful (like Emma with Miss Bates).

I thought the ending of P&P with Keira Knightley that I had seen was bad. I now have to go and wash my brain. Thanks a lot, TeamDamon

[piprabbit]

OP - perhaps you could try approaching Austen from a different angle (if you still feel like persisting)?

You could try looking at some of the things she wrote as a teenager (this is a good collection) which will give you a feel for her rather unladylike sense of humour. There's much fainting and running mad, murder and cheating.

Or you could try a good biography (Claire Tomalin's or David Nokes' are both very good) to get a different perspective on the life she was living (rather than the lives she was writing).

[Deliaskis]

Calatalie I do agree with you that Mr B does care about having no son, but I don't believe that Mrs B sees that. I think she sees him getting more and more distant (i.e. caring less and less) as each daughter arrived. And whether or not he was hugely disappointed, it wasn't enough for him to make adequate provision for them was it? Mrs B is at least trying to do something to secure their future, even if she goes about it in a questionable way. I don't like Mrs B per se, but I have often thought the world is rather harsh on her, and rather too kind to Mr B, who isn't really doing a very good job as a father IMO. Mr B at least had the intelligence to see the options available to him, but no conviction to do anything about it. I would be more than a little furious if DH took such a casual approach to DD in similar circumstances. He could have started saving after Lizzy, he could have taken more interest in the younger girls so they were more likely to find eligible husbands, he could have given them all a better education so at least they could become governesses or similar, but no, he picked a 'favourite' and apart from that, just sulked away in his library.

That's my opinion anyway!

[CalatalieSisters]

Yes, actually. I agree with you. He is infuriating. I just find it so interesting how the character of each of his children (and I edited myself down hugely from the detail I wanted to give about that) is a picture of the precise stage of his bitter disappointment at each of their arrivals.

But, yes, he is hopeless, and as an intelligent man with resources and power he has less excuse than his wife for being hopeless -- even though he is far more likeable. Why does he give up his responsibilities so entirely? I suppose it is because the plot demands that Lizzie has cause to be ashamed of both parents.

[Deliaskis]

Well, you're right, the plot demands that Lizzy is somewhat ashamed of both parents, and also demands that the younger sisters are silly, that the estate is entailed away, and that the family is not financially secure. It would otherwise be a bit dull!

D

[desperatelyseekingviolet]

I think you have to read them when you are 17.
I read 'Women in Love' when I was 17 and thought it was the revelation of the truth. Read it again when I was 27 and kept vomiting. Is this what is meant by 'interaction with the text'.
Eg, Harriet keeping the stub of the pencil that Elton had used. Only a teen could get that.

[desperatelyseekingviolet]

I have never read Wuthering Heights, and I don't think I ever will. Lots of bad weather and non-keepers.

[ZZZenAgain]

read something else. I don't think you need to perservere with it if her novels aren't in any way relevant for you and you are bored by them.

[Insomnia11]

Oh yes, read and enjoyed The Rainbow when I was 17 dsv. Don't think I'd enjoy Wuthering Heights now, but I did when I was 16. Still enjoy the song :)

Just finished Lady Chatterey's Lover earlier this week and quite enjoyed that though. Apart from the ending which I thought rather tailed off. PIL had it in a series of free novels from the Telegraph. So I read it after Clockwork Orange which was the only other book in the series I hadn't read, and discombobulated myself thoroughly.

[KaraToytown]

My favourite Austen novel is Northanger Abbey because I knew a girl 8exactly8 like Isabella Thorpe. Times change but people often don't.

[KaraToytown]

darn, meant exactly to be bold.

[TeamDamon]

Ooh, I completely forgot about a book my older sister sent me when I started studying 'Emma' for A Level.

It was Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen by Fay Weldon and it is a brilliant read to help you understand what Austen does and why in her novels.

I definitely recommend it to anyone tackling Austen for the first time.

[kickassangel]

there's also quite a lot of politics in there & questioning of the social order - how men have to have a career that is 'gentlemanly' enough for them, how women aren't allowed to work without lowering themselves, the church & clergy are treated with quite a lack of respect (remember her dad was a clergyman), and the army.navy etc don't get much either.

the thing about mrs b is, although she's incredibly crass, she has a very accurate & concise understanding of how society works, and sets out to get her girls fitted into it. in a way, she's at least more honest than the people who pretend to be friends, but really aren't, they're just being polite.

i think a lot of the media versions somehow think that the audience won't get subtlety, so they exaggerate things, and make characters into caricatures, which isn't how they were written. Dickens wrote those kind of people, austen has far more subtlety.

[Deliaskis]

You're right kickass re caricatures, I have a much easier time thinking about characters that I don't like, but do understand, in Austen's work, whereas a lot of the characters in Dickens are outright bad or good. And also agree about some of the TV/film versions, in fact in this respect, Andrew Davies' BBC P&P makes the worst Mrs B, as she is a complete caricature, the Joe Wright (Keira Knightley) Mrs B at least came across as a mother who wanted the best for her children.

Even Miss Bingley in P&P. although I can't stand her, I can understand her, having been raised above her family trade roots, had a taste of the high life, and is desparate to stay in that sphere and be properly accepted. She's not a nice person, and goes about things in an unkind way, but you can see why she wants what she wants.

D

[senua]

JA's books are all about characters and relationships. It is precisely because they are not rooted to a particular time or political situation that they have become classics. They can be re-invented (eg Bride and Prejudice) for a contemporary feel, just like Shakespeare.
Their biggest fault (narrowness/microcosm) is also their biggest asset (universality).

[CalatalieSisters]

Interesting thought, but I'm not sure that I agree. They are about characters and relationships under certain very dominating constraints -- for example relationships dominated by the conventions and the economic factors governing marriage. So they are very very much of their time and only moderately universalisable to relationships-as-such.

Also, I'm not sure I would go along with the idea that, in general, the narrowness/smallness of a novel's world could be equated with its relative immunity from what you might call historical parochialism (non-universalisability). A drawing room has as much historical specificity as Tolstoy's battlefield I would think.