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Reading "Pride and Prejudice"
I'm risking losing perhaps one-third of my friends list with this post. . .
Motivated entirely by the warm comments made by friends here over the past several years, I finally obtained a copy of Pride and Prejudice on Friday and started to read it. I've just finished reading Darcy's letter to Elizabeth and her reactions, so I'm about halfway through.
I've been reading attentively, open to the virtues expounded upon by so many people whose opinions I respect, wanting to like the story, to like Elizabeth, to like the writing style -- but I simply can not understand the passionate love and loyalty this book and its characters inspire. If it were any other book, I would not have kept reading beyond the first chapter.
If I read one more time about how a person's "amiable conversation" and fine manners obviously mean that he or she is person of good character, I shall choke. And maybe that's part of the point of the book, that Elizabeth and others learn that being a model member of society has little to do with a person's actual worth or quality, but it's not a storytelling journey I feel any need to take. Likewise, the sheer monotony of the characters' lives makes me skim over paragraphs at a time and send up countless prayers of thanksgiving that I do not live in a world where my primary entertainments are visiting and going to balls. What do these women have to talk about besides men, clothing, and marriage prospects?
It feels churlish to write such things about a book and characters that are so deeply beloved by others. . . and I feel like there must be some part of myself that is lacking in discernment since I can't even be engaged by the plot.
What am I missing? Do I need to read through to the end to appreciate the rest of the book? Or should I just give up now and admit myself a hopeless savage, incapable of appreciating the divine Austen?
Motivated entirely by the warm comments made by friends here over the past several years, I finally obtained a copy of Pride and Prejudice on Friday and started to read it. I've just finished reading Darcy's letter to Elizabeth and her reactions, so I'm about halfway through.
I've been reading attentively, open to the virtues expounded upon by so many people whose opinions I respect, wanting to like the story, to like Elizabeth, to like the writing style -- but I simply can not understand the passionate love and loyalty this book and its characters inspire. If it were any other book, I would not have kept reading beyond the first chapter.
If I read one more time about how a person's "amiable conversation" and fine manners obviously mean that he or she is person of good character, I shall choke. And maybe that's part of the point of the book, that Elizabeth and others learn that being a model member of society has little to do with a person's actual worth or quality, but it's not a storytelling journey I feel any need to take. Likewise, the sheer monotony of the characters' lives makes me skim over paragraphs at a time and send up countless prayers of thanksgiving that I do not live in a world where my primary entertainments are visiting and going to balls. What do these women have to talk about besides men, clothing, and marriage prospects?
It feels churlish to write such things about a book and characters that are so deeply beloved by others. . . and I feel like there must be some part of myself that is lacking in discernment since I can't even be engaged by the plot.
What am I missing? Do I need to read through to the end to appreciate the rest of the book? Or should I just give up now and admit myself a hopeless savage, incapable of appreciating the divine Austen?
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I was also underwhelmed by the novel. It was a first for its time. . . a romantic comedy, and has also garnered acclaim because the author was of the "gentler" sex.
Uh huh.
And so I view it much as I view mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, bedbugs and lice. There has to be a reason for them to exist, right? And we should be thankful for all the living things of this wondrous creation, yes? So I spent considerable time pondering this, and finally puzzled through the mystery.
So I would be grateful when they were not around. . .
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Never have been able to read Virginia Woolf. I feel like a bad feminist for saying so, too, but that's just the way it is.
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I can tell you what I find in it; I think it's a finely crafted glimpse into a particular world, it's quite often very funny, and the characters are extremely well done and realistic people. Austen excels at miniatures, at telling details, and at having characters who are flawed without being stupid.
I think that's the main thing for me; I detest stories where the main characters are either shallow puppets or idiots (fraught! with! tension! makes me hate people). I can enjoy a story that's just a fun ride, but if there are no additional layers, I'll never go back to it. Every time I go back to P&P, I find more to it, a new way of viewing it, more to catch.
If it doesn't work for you, it doesn't work. I've certainly had that experience, and slogged through books or movies that I was told I would love and resented wasting my time on (oh god, some of the books I've made myself read. If only I could target specific brain cells, I'd drink more just to get rid of them).
Austen's books really are character studies. The plot often isn't amazingly engaging in and of itself, it's just a dance floor where you can see how the people move around each other. If it isn't a book for you, then it isn't a book for you.
Feel free to give up on it. It's a great book (IMO) but if it isn't a great book for you, then better to sigh and say Baby, the relationship just isn't working out and you need to start seeing other literature.
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It's difficult to explain - but there's a bit later in the book where Elizabeth finally stands up for herself and I found myself punching the air when I read it and shouting ' go girl, you fucking tell her ! '
Ahem..
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If this book did not appeal to you, then I very much encourage you to avoid George Eliot, as well, especially Middlemarch, which is supposed to be one of the greatest English novels ever written and which I found more annoying than anything else because the characters were completely moribund.
If you'd like to get the gist of Pride and Prejudice I would actually recommend the movie,
If this book did not appeal to you, then I very much encourage you to avoid George Eliot, as well, especially <i>Middlemarch</i>, which is supposed to be one of the greatest English novels ever written and which I found more annoying than anything else because the characters were completely moribund.
If you'd like to get the gist of <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> I would actually recommend the movie, <Bride and Prejudice</i> which moves the venue to modern-day India, adds musical numbers, and lasts ninety minutes as opposed to umty-ump pages
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There are a ton of people I know who are completely bored with Austen and the whole genre of books that she was a part of. I'm not one of them ... but then I had my second major in Victorian Lit. ;) Maybe it is a past life connection, as
What I love about them is their ability to provide a snapshot of what life was like then, from a woman's perspective. Even if it is fiction, the details provided make her works rich with history on the drawing room scale. Beyond that, her heroines are women whose characters were often unconventional even while they struggled to stay well within the conventions. Her stories are always places where virtue, literally Virtue, triumphs, as does goodness, patience, and being true to one's self (as long as you were virtuous!). I am always comforted by that, as I am by a time when excellent manners counted for something. I miss manners.
No, Austen isn't for everyone. No more so than the Brontes, Dickens, Gaskell, Collins, etc. And not liking them is no more damning than me not liking the works of Stephen King. Which I don't. ;)
I'm glad you gave it a try, though. Because you'll never know until you do.
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... no that is the point.
the thing I liked most about Pride is that moment toward the end where Lizzy actually can see how GOOD a man Darcy is and comes to regret her harshness toward him...
oh, and yes, every time I read Austen I am grateful to be a child of Virginia Woolf, with a Room of My Own and a bit of income and everything of freedom and independent choice that allows... whew...
eh, if it feels like you're wasting your time reading it, you would probably like the movie anyway and get all the point AND get to ogle Colin Firth (who plays Mr. Darcy in the long A&E version)...
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Be warned...
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Re: Be warned...
(Anonymous) - 2008-08-10 20:58 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Be warned...
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I HATE JANE AUSTEN. No, you're not a hopeless savage. I think her books are... well... drivel, to put it nicely.
Like you said, what do these women have to talk about besides men, clothing, and marriage prospects? In archaic, flowery English, no less.
I HATE JANE AUSTEN and I have hated her vile, anti-feminist writing since I was a teenager.
Personally, I like the Bronte sisters more, for that era.
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Two quick points: One, yes, women's entire social lives in that period consisted of visiting and going to balls, dinners, parties, etc. And yes, they really truly never set foot outside the house when it rained or snowed. What she writes about is how women of her class actually lived back then.
Two, it's useless to try to read this book (or any older piece of fiction) as though it's modern. You've simply got to pay attention to the period which gave it birth. Hating Austen for giving an accurate picture of what women's lives were like in her time, long before such concepts as feminism entered the social and political sphere, is like hating Mark Twain for showing an accurate picture of what race relations were like in the shallow south before the Civil War or civil rights. This doesn't mean you can't find their writings upsetting or offensive or unreadable, but if you don't take it with a dose of perspective you'll be reacting from your own internalized biases instead of from a position of understanding.
(Try imagining what Austen would have thought of, say, Erica Jong. It's illuminating.)
And yes, you can put the book down if you really don't like it!
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However, I spend a lot of my time when reading Austen feeling sorry for the protagonists and thinking "why couldn't they go to a proper school and then get a proper job...? The hopelessness of the 18th and 19th century middle classes is so alien to us, we should be grateful.
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On the one hand, your above commenters have a point that this was written in and for a different time. But your friends list is packed mostly with a certain kind of feminine viewpoint, one that I don't generally share. Neither do I share the feminine viewpoint that generally will go gaga for Austen.
The fact is there are huge swathes of women in America whose lives resemble the basic outline of Ms. Austen's society. The things that interested Austen interest them. The specific manners may be different, but they are still very conventional. Many woman do not find that conventional life in any way binding or confining. They are happy with it and enjoy it. That woman is going to find P&P a much more enjoyable book than you are going to.
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"You're a terrible book with a horrible ending that I didn't believe even for a second!"
I haven't felt any intense desire to read Jane Austen, though I have a few of her books because people find out I like to read and feel I need to own those "great classics". I know I'll have to be in a certain "mood" to attempt reading it, but am not sure if I'll enjoy the books. I think that one of the reasons some people may like the story of Pride & Prejudice is that it might be a story that teaches them something (I'm basing these opinions on the various film versions I've seen.). And I feel that you've progressed so much further beyond the lessons that it doesn't feel novel to you. I experienced this phenomenon when I read The Da Vinci Code. I loved Angels and Demons (which actually takes place before TDVC) and assumed all the hype surrounding TDVC meant it was even better. By the end of the book I was disgusted that I'd wasted my time reading it, but later understood that was because people were impressed by the big "ah-hah" moment at the end, and this was not news to me.
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