The love of Jane Austen

Eva at A Striped Armchair had a post yesterday about the annotated version of Pride and Prejudice. For just the social commentary, I want this book. In writing my comment to her, I realized that I really want to do a post about Jane Austen.

Jane Austen is the incomparable wonderful exquisite first real female novelist of the English language. I'm not counting gothics here, nor male writers. When I look back in the history of the development of the English novel written by women, she stands foremost, head and shoulders above anyone else. Why does she cast such a beacon? Why are her books still read and loved almost 200 years later?

Eva in her post says that she started reading Jane Austen when she was 11. Eleven! I didn't discover Jane until much later in life. In fact, I can't remember how or when I first read Jane Austen. Just that suddenly, like much that I love, she was there one day, and a permanent fixture in my life. By the time I was 26 she was firmly fixed as one of my favourite writers. The father of my eldest son's best friend (we were all in university at the time, I had gone back to school after having my son, to get my BA in English Literature, and my son's friend's parents were studying at the same university, and our sons were in the same daycare) asked me who my favourite author was. I hate this question. I don't have a favourite author; I have many authors that I really enjoy, and a few that I can't part with, that go with me everywhere. So I said, "Jane Austen." Well, he was stunned, because he and his wife were avant-guarde artists! And here I was saying I liked a stuffy 19th century author most of all! but it's never really changed. And the late 1980's and early 1990's were all about breaking with tradition in the arts and exploring new ways of writing the novel. So I was out of step with the times, but then, I always have been.

My first love with Jane's books has to be with Persuasion. I have no idea when or where I picked it up, just that the first time I read it, was a revelation for me. Not only could I read Jane Austen and understand it without ten million footnotes - anyone who has tried to Clarissa (often thought of as the first epistolary novel in English) or Tristam Shandy will know what I mean - but I laughed. I was delighted, I was moved, I loved Anne and loathed her pretentious family and delighted in Jane's clever put downs of them - which is something you or I might do about pretentious people today. I have always loved Captain Wentworth, who remained faithful in spite of trying to forget her - although my real hero has always been Darcy of Pride and Prejudice. And I've never really forgiven Lady Russell for not seeing through Anne's cousin, even though it was Jane's way of showing that in the end, Anne did learn how not to be persuaded against her better judgement. Persuasion has always been a powerful and gentle novel about the only power a woman had back then, which was who to choose to marry, and how she married - whether for money, or for love.

I might have sought out Pride and Prejudice because of the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle tv production from the 1980's; I think I did. I was desperate to know if the book had any more of Darcy and Elizabeth, and to my joy, I discovered that P&P was as full of the witty comments and sparklng wit as Persuasion. It was as even better than the TV show! there was more of Darcy and Elizabeth, and more of Jane's observations of life in early 1800's England. Elizabeth Bennett is my favourite Austen heroine. I would dearly love to meet her and she is someone who I could easily see being my best friend. One of the things I like best about this book is that they reflect and learn on their mistakes.

For me, one of the highlights of Persuasion and P&P are the letters that Wentworth and Darcy send to Anne and Elizabeth. It is the first time that we see the men - these principal male characters - from inside their minds and hearts - and while Wentworth's letter is about a man succumbing to love a second time, Darcy's letter is about a man reaching out to defend himself to a woman he loves. This is the moment when I believe that he does, really love Elizabeth, and the rest of the novel is Elizabeth realizing that she was too proud, too, and didn't realize until too late what a perfect match they were.Darcy's letter shows that he is just, reasonable, kind, loving, honourable, and honest - all the qualities Elizabeth, and we readers, are looking for in the ones we hope to marry. In one masterful swoop, suddenly Elizabeth is no longer the slighted one (he refused to dance with her, sniffing no one in the room could tempt him but her sister Mary, and she was already taken by his friend), but the slightee - she never recognized that he was falling in love with her, although we as readers do, starting with as soon as the first social event is over and Mary and Bingley start spending other dances and social events in eachother's company, Darcy and Elizabeth see eachother, but do not mix yet: "But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. ......He began to wish to know more of her." And to know Lizzie is enough to love her, as we readers all do. Except that she doesn't realize she is proud, until her treatment of Darcy shows to herself and us that she is, in her way, as proud as he is. And the way that she comes to know him and love him is the same way that he has come to know her and love her - after initial rejection. Oh yes, there is much to love in this novel. Darcy and Elizabeth are to me the perfect couple in English literature - smart, funny, honest, loyal, and they are also flawed - pride being their worst failing, and if I'm honest, it's probably mine as well. P&P is one of the great novels in English literature of all time. Even though it is a novel about love, and manners, the story it tells is timeless. You can change the setting and scenery, but the story is one that everyone tells about how and when they fell in love, too. "Well, first he did this, and I got mad and did this, but then I realized..."No love story ever went smoothly, there are always obstacles to overcome, and P&P is perhaps one of the cleverest love stories ever written. It is also full of social commentary, that explores different views on love that we still try to sort through today. I think this is why it is timeless, and about as perfect a novel on love as can be written.

Wentworth's letter to Anne in Persuasion has the equal effect of revealing his emotions finally to her, and to us the reader. Once again, although we have his exploits as a naval officer and his treatment of his friends - he retains his friends no matter their actual social standing and relative poverty or wealth - it is not until he reaches out to Anne that we see how much he still loves her. Again, we see the themes of love and pride; he doesn't seek her out when he comes to shore, even though he has gained wealth and standing, which were the reasons Lady Russell persuaded Anne to not marry him 8 years ago. His pride was hurt, and he was too angry with her. How human is that? And Anne, who still loves him, is too proud to go to him or let him know that she still loves him. She is too guilty at having rejected him, having understood long ago that she would not have let herself be persuaded against him, if she had known herself and love, when she was young.

So it is not until she opens up to Captain Harville, Wentworth's friend, and they end up discussing who can love best - this such a typical Jane move, to have a woman and a man discuss love in a corner of a crowded room, and only person overhears - Wentworth. And what does he do? Pens her one of the most passionate love letters in English literature, and under the pretense of forgetting his umbrella, comes back into the room and shows her where he has hidden the letter on the writing table for her. *sigh* Now that is romantic! And stylish, and funny, in the setting Jane sets it in!

These are some of the reasons why I love Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are two of my favourite novels. Like Eva, I have read them many times now, and seen the tv productions many times. I read them every couple of years. The characters are part of me, Anne and Elizabeth, Darcy and Wentworth, Jane and Bingley.... Whenever we have these questions on our blogs about which literary character would we like to meet/be friends with/have dinner with, Elizabeth Bennett is always at the top of my list.

I could write about Jane's other books, but for me, they show the growth of Jane Austen the writer, and are not as equal in terms of development of character, social commentary, and observations on life, although these qualities are all there to some extent.

Northanger Abbey explores the effect of bad reading on a girl - although Henry Tilney is surely the sweetest male hero ever! and very adorable! ; Mansfield Park has the worst of all the Austen heroines, and I can't read the book - I hate the idea of the story, and the tv version I saw recently was so boring that I read another book and had it on in the background, because I don't like how passive the heroine is.

In Emma, Emma herself annoys me; she is the most cruel of all the Austen heroines, and I have to admit to some satisfaction when she is humiliated by Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill when their elopement is revealed, although Mr Knightley is another marvellous Jane Austen hero. She too is proud, and yet, when she meddles, it is with the best of intentions (even though it smacks of pretension also), and her humiliation and realization that she isn't a matchmaker at all, makes her finally suitable for Mr Knightley.

Sense and Sensibility is full of moral tone - the most serious of the Austen books, and sadly lacking in humour, at least to my view. So while I admire Marianne and Elinor, I don't like them - Marianne humiliates herself too openly, and Elinor suffers too humbly, though I understand her better! - and I always thought Colonel Brandon deserved to be loved for himself, not settled for which Marianne does (I always doubted if she truly loved him). Elinor's only love interest Edward lies to her by not confessing he was engaged to someone else - even secretly - when they first meet and spend time together. And he wants to be a parson! Even though he confesses to her, and she spends the novel pining for him, it's because her choices are limited. Austen is not kind enough to throw Elinor any other options - but then Sense and Sensibility is the most realistic of all the Austen novels, because it shows the very real plight of most women in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, dependent as they were on the kindness of relatives in the family if the male figure -husband/father - died. Elinor and Edward do truly love each other, and Edward does suffer for his folly of the secret engagement, so he earns the right to be with Elinor, but I always thought that Elinor and Colonel Brandon were the two most eminently suited for each other. So the meeting of minds and characters is not the same in Sense and Sensibility as are in the two other novels Austen wrote, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.

Well, you now know how passionate I am about Jane Austen! One of the ironies for me is that I didn't get to do a course on Jane Austen in university. A whole English degree, 4 years of study, and no course on her....but what I do want to learn more about is the society Austen wrote in, the history of that time, and how that influenced her novels. So I want the annotated version of Pride and Prejudice. Yes, another book recommendation! And it would allow me to expand the number of books I have on Jane Austen, which are not very much considering how much I love her writing!

Eva's post has also made me consider the value of owning more than one copy of a book I love. Her post is wonderful for the memories that each copy that she owns of Pride and Prejudice evokes in her. Eva has shown the covers of the four versions of Pride and Prejudice that she owns. I have to confess that I only own one version of Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey and Emma. It's the Penguin Classics editions. I love Penguin. They are well-bound, the glue hardly ever gives on the paperbacks unless you force the spine back - and even then sometimes the spine doesn't crack! not that I've done this very often, precious books! and they just feel so good in my hand. The smoothness of the cover, the classic portraits or pictures often chosen to grace the cover. Unfortunately for Persuasion I have the Bantam Classic edition, which although it too shows a painted portrait, doesn't feel the same, the printing and page colour are different, and it just feels different in the hand. I will say that their bindings are good also. It's just that I grew up, here in Canada, with the Penguin Classics as the paperbacks that were the best quality and had the best introductions on the books (if we wanted to read it, which I being obsessive-compulsive and wanting to learn, and also read everything from cover to cover, I naturally did!). The Bantam edition has no introduction.

Kailana at The Written World yesterday had a very thoughtful post on book covers and series, here. This is what got me thinking about collections of books, and she raises a very good question: when you are collecting an author, or a series, do you want the editions/covers to all match? Does it bother you if the covers change halfway through the series? For me, when I consider my Penguin editions of Jane Austen's novel all lovingly lined up on the shelf, and then the one sad stand-alone Bantam edition, I confess that it bothers me. It shouldn't, and I decide again to start looking for a Penguin edition of Persuasion.

Very smart readers will notice there is no copy of Mansfield Park. I don't own one yet. I am looking for, of course, the Penguin Classic edition. I will read it one day!
Here is today's Bluenose Ghosts excerpt:

However, all stories of the Teaser are not dismissed that easily. We must go back now to the twenty-sixth of June, 1813, when a privateer, the Young Teazer, was trapped by British warships in Mahone Bay on our southwestern shore. She would have been captured if a young officer had not set her afire rather than swing at the yardarm. I have talked to people whose parents witnessed the event when they saw a huge explosion as she went up in a blaze of fire. Windows were broken at Blandford, so strong was the blast. From that time, and never before, her apparition has been reported. The old people would tell about having her sail to within a couple of yards of their boat and filling them with fear because they were sure they would be run down. In one case a fisherman told how she stood directly in his way and he could hear the ropes creak in the blocks. From Boutilier's Point it was reported that the ropes were all on fire. It was seen then coming to East Chester from Quaker Island at two o'clock in the morning. Again some St. Margaret's Bay men were in a boat near Clam Island when they to get out of the Teazer's way, and they said they could see the crew in the rigging. I have never heard of any calamity following the appearance of this burning ship, but it often seems to have had a frightening effect.

and another, because I have not been able to post this week as much as I'd planned to.

Similarly a Seabright man was on a vessel off the Gaspe coast when another vessel showed up ahead. Telling of it later the captain said, "I was going to speak it because it was so close and I could see the lights and the sails. Something told me to wait till morning and I did. It stayed in sight of us all night and, just before daybreak, one of the crew said, 'Where's the vessel?' It wasn't there. We learned later that we weren't the only ones who had seen it, for it had often been reported there. It was a good thing we didn't speak of it, for that would have been the end of us. You see, if we had spoken it, not realizing she was a ghost ship, that would have been our doom." That, as a Lunenburg fisherman once expressed it, was a fairy of the time - the belief.

Jane Austen Challenge update
I am going to consider this my first review for the Jane Austen Challenge, for Persuasion. I have read two other books for the challenge, which now that I have done this post, will be coming shortly!

Watchmen

I read Watchmen for Nymeth's mini challenge. Molly was my partner, and she posted a brilliant edition (all her own effort) of the email discussion I sent her about Watchmen, here, for the challenge. However, while I sent her many of my thoughts about the novel while I was reading it, I've had a couple of weeks to let it sit, and here are my final thoughts.

Brilliant. I am so glad I finally let myself read it. It is powerful, intoxicating, gripping, tragic. It's an ode to humanity. I can't rave enough about the story, about the graphic art, about the complex characters. This book is bittersweet. It's 23 years old, and it should be dated, but it's not. The Viet-Nam War makes an appearance. The Doomsday Clock ticking towards midnight. Ronald Reagan. The Kennedy assassination. Nuclear bombs. Love. Sex. Murder. Death. Most of all, irony. This books drips with a wicked sense of humour. How can I not like a book that talks like I do?

Rorschach: Why are so few of us left active, healthy, and without personality disorders? Not only is this the height of irony when Rorschach's story is finally revealed, but it's something I often wonder about people: what is normal? How do we know what lies behind someone's face?

Watchmen explores what the meaning of a hero is. Entertwined with this is what it means for our society, as we both accept the need for a hero, and deny them when we have them. In order to be a superhero, something extraordinary, it must be to fill a gap -that is what is really a personality disorder, Watchmen hints at. No one ordinary would want to go hunting at night for criminals. But what if there is a need for them? Who would step in? Why? And, as is spray-painted all through the book - another supreme irony, it's on the walls and garage doors below the apartments where some of the Watchmen live, so someone is watching them! - who watches the Watchmen? How do we know they mete out justice to the deserving? How can we trust them if only misfits and the doomed are the Watchmen?

And in spite of their failings - of which all of the Watchmen are slowly revealed to have, as we go from one story to another, even as the clock ticks closer to midnight - we do pin our hopes on them. We have to. Because we are busy living our ordinary lives and hoping someone else will watch the darkness for us.

I love the stories of each of the characters. I don't like all the characters, several of them left me feeling like they were nasty people, and yet they chose to do this courageous, heroic action. Once again, Watchmen takes the superhero myth and pulls it apart and asks some very interesting questions. Of the characters, I liked most Laurie (Silk Spectre #2), her mother Sally Jupiter, Dan and Hollis, all of whom are the most easily human and accessible characters. I know this! Rorschach was fascinating (and a little creepy) - how is it I can prefer the superhero figure and not the real man underneath? That is one of the most difficult questions I think that this book asks. The Comedian, Dr Manhattan - scary, and sad. Nothing is what it seems, no one is exactly who they appear to be.

A favourite scene is meeting Sally and her daughter Laurie and their first conversation together, when Sally says: "Life goes on, Honey. Life goes on." Juxtaposed with this is a view of the cemetary, where a funeral is taking place. A few windows on, Sally says, again with the background of the cemetary: "I mean, without your health, where are you?" How can you not love that kind of writing/art together?

Or, Dr Manhattan says: "Things have their shape in time, not space alone. Some marble blocks have statues within them, embedded in their future."

"It stretches more than three thousand miles, so that one end knows day while the other endures night. Temperature differences breed shrieking winds that herd oceans of fog along a canyon four miles deep. Does the human heart know chasms so abysmal?" Yes, mine does.

"....Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold....that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermo-dynamic miracle."
"But....if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle....I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!"
"Yes. Anybody in the world."
Did I say that at it's heart, Watchmen is about the wonder of life, and the mysteries that make up each person, and the world? That every person is part of a bigger story, and every person has a story to tell? And that it's about how everything is connected, which physics is discovering in deeper levels every year or so? The same physics that creates Dr Manhattan, who gives us what a real superbeing's perspective would be? This is such a thoughtful, deep book. How can a comic book be so good?

What would you do to stop the insane build up of nuclear warheads, if you had the means to stop it? Do the ends justify the means? This is another level of subtext in this novel. This book talks about one possibility, what it would take to stop it, and it is chilling and horrifying, as insane and horrifying as the build up we constantly, still, hear about, even today. If you can destroy the world once, why is being able to destroy it 30 times over, better?

This is a book about life, death, love, and chaos, the things we wrestle with our whole lives, and to me, it was a revelation. It was like having a conversation with a very dear friend about things I already knew, and hearing the same cynicism and hope, faith and fear, that I carry with me. I kept nodding my head, saying "Yes! Yes!" as I read it. I love this novel. It is spectacularly human, and breathtaking in its many textured levels of meaning. I think this is a book that captures our essential angst at this juncture of human culture.

I am a product of the 1980's, as are any of us who were alive then must be. The saddest thing to me is that my son, who was born in the 1980's, is also somehow a product of that same clock ticking towards midnight fear/faith/helplessness. He wrestles with the 'how does anything matter' angst, too, with all the talk of the wars constantly in the background, the same as in Watchmen, the same as in the 1980's. In twenty years' time, nothing has changed. This is when, like Dr Manhattan, we - I - have to find the things that root us in time and space, or we would float in fear, unconnected. One thing I did learn in the 1980's was to take everything, anything, one day at a time. And, I did protest, I went on nuclear peace marches, protesting the building of nuclear bombs, because I had to do something. My son is still wrestling with what to do. Watchmen is about that feeling too. I'm not sure what kind of superhero that makes me, or that I would want to be anyone in the book! but any time we take action, that we choose love over hate, makes us a superhero, in my humble opinion. So Watchmen is about taking action anyway, no matter the odds. In the end, it's about hope and the belief that, despite our frailties and faults, it's worth doing - well, except what Ozymandias does. Watchmen also shows what happens when we let fear take over our decision-making.

This is one of my top 10 books for 2009, I know this already. It might be one of my favourite all-time books, that I end up carrying around with me for the rest of my life. It's that good.

Andi Lit's review here
Nymeth
Carl
Kim
Mariel
Trish's Reading Nook
Musings of A Bookish Kitty

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Middlemarch. I will never again look at the classics with foreboding in my heart. I'm not about to jump into reading only classics now! Not when I have 80+ books on my immediate TBR shelf! Some of which do contain some classics, I am happy to add. I am going to anticipate War and Peace with a lighter heart, though. And maybe even Ulysses.....

I feel like for the first time, I understand how great a 'classic' novel can be. The richness of the characters, the depth of their natures, so precisely rendered by Eliot, made me feel like I had just stepped over a bridge into Middlemarch. That indeed, somewhere in the mists just over there, lies this tiny town, inhabited by such a range of people that the town feels real. It's not just the characters either; Eliot takes time to notice the weather, the gardens: 'He found Mary in the garden gathering roses and sprinkling the petals on a sheet. The sun was low, and tall trees sent their shadows across the grassy walks where Mary was moving without a bonnet or parasol.' p 424. Families gather to eat, ride different kinds of horses, live beyond their means in a house they can't afford. The townspeople hold meetings, attend a rally, and we see the ranks close against what is different, or new. This is a wonderful, great, deep novel, that contains so much observation about life and people.
Look at how Mr Farebrother, a clergyman is introduced: "Before it ceased Mr Farebrother came in - a handsome, broad-chested but otherwise small man, about forty, whose black was very threadbare; the brilliancy was all in his quick grey eyes." I can already see him, and Eliot then spends the rest of the novel revealing how he is brilliant, and why he is poor.
This line is perfect: "But of course intention was everything in the question of right and wrong.' p 580. Simple, and clear, and true.
'"I know the unhappy mistakes about you. I knew them from the first moment to be mistakes. You have never done anything vile. You would not do anything dishonourable."
'It was the first assurance of belief in him that had fallen on Lydgate's ears. He drew a deep breath, and said, 'Thank you.' He could not say more; it was something very new and strange in his life that these few words of trust from a woman should be so much to him.' p 626 You can see the characters of Dorothea and Lydgate here - Dorothea being her passionate, outspoken self, setting out to see if she can restore Lydgate's position in Middlemarch, and Lydgate, too proud to ask for help, humbled when someone offers it anyway. That is the richness of Middlemarch, that these are ordinary, mortal people George Eliot is writing about. There are smart people, dull people, ordinary labourers and landed gentleman. This novel is about Dorothea and Will, Lydgate and Rosamond, Mary and Fred, and it's about love, and what happens in a marriage as two people find their way to each other - or not, as is the case with Dorothea and Mr Causabon. This book is like a slice of English society at 1830, which was Eliot's intention, and to show how the changes to the Land act, and Parliament, were felt in the distant countryside, by ordinary people. There are the old ways - the old doctors - and the new ways used by Lydgate. People who have always been Middlemarchers, and newcomers.

There is so much that is good and delightful in this novel, that I can hardly begin to tell you. Partly I don't want to give too much away for those readers who are reading it (Bybee! I'm looking at you!) or perhaps thinking about reading it soon, or might give it a try. It's a chunky novel, I don't deny it, but it doesn't read like one. Instead, it's like being immersed in a quieter time of English life, when the life in the town still revolved around the mill, the wool industry, as well as general trades, when the main purpose in life was to settle in a career one hopefully liked, and marry. Sounds a bit like now, doesn't it? In Eliot's novel, Fred, Will, and Lydgate are the prime examples of young men trying to find a career - only Lydgate does has a dream of what he wants, a clear career he is aiming for, as the novel opens. Fred finds an unexpected one that he does well at. Will does find his calling, which is due to the changes in public life. I can't say it without giving it away! However, all these careers come in the way it does it real life - some fail - Lydgate can't do what he wants because of choices he makes, that end up pulling him away from the life he dreams of, so that he regards himself as a failure. Fred succeeds almost inspite of himself, and Will - Will finds that there is only love, after all. These characters are so vivid, so much so that I wanted to yell at Fred, that I cried as Lydgate finds himself squeezed and squeezed some more until there is no room for dreams, that I longed for Will to do something. Have a goal, man! It is refreshing to read about the dreams of people setting out in life, and then seeing what life wroughts into them. It seems to me that novels have become smaller as the 20th century ended, so that a book wasn't centered around goals about making a mark in the world, it was about one's immediate world only. Middlemarch has ideas, and discusses politics (in a very amusing way, I might add), and the characters all have opinions - rightly or wrongly, they all think and have their own ideas, and it is fun to watch them collide as the characters intersect.

Above all, Middlemarch is about love, all the different ways people love, the quiet contentment and little discords that fill married life, about good matches, and about how people learn about one another. One of the best things about Middlemarch is that characters reveal depths as things happen - Mrs Bulstrode, who is Rosamund's aunt, finds herself faced with a terrible choice, and though it costs her everything, she makes the one she can live with. That part had me crying, in fact, a few scenes in the book had me crying. I didn't cry when Mr Causabon died, but I did cry before he died because of Dorothea and what she was doing to herself in order to make her marriage work. There are characters to dislike as well as love in Middlemarch, but they aren't one dimensional bad people, pure villains; they are are rich in motivation and they have longings and desires. Eliot gives them good sides as well as the bad. Even Ruffles the ruffian (I can't help it, she named him!) doesn't deserve the death he gets, and revelation of the darkness in Bulstrode is fascinating to watch. Characters are stupid - if Rosamund has a genuine original thought in her head, I believe the world would stop spinning, honestly!, they are mean to their relatives, they are kind - Caleb Garth deserves a medal! his generosity and faith changes two lives so very much, and affects a third sadly - I couldn't help but feel sorry for Mary Garth's other admirer. There are laughs, as well as tears, and Dorothea and Celia do come across as real sisters. It was just so refreshing, and humbling, to see how good a book this is.

I don't really have anything bad to say about this book. I have not come across a book like this in a long time. This is not to say we are not writing good novels now, it's to say a novel as large and well-crafted - a canvas of life - as Middlemarch doesn't come along very often.

This is a book I am so happy I read, and that I already love.