The Austen-Paradox

Well, I know, there are many people out there who love Jane Austen. And since I am open to trying new things, why not read something I will probably not be interested in? Usually I discover something unexpected and even if I do not really succeed in liking a book, I can still at least imagine why people would want to read it.
So I have tried reading Jane Austen. Several Times. Different Books. I never get past the first 50 pages. It all seems so empty to me!
What I would like to know is: Is it worth trying again? What is so fascinating about her books? Maybe I can start relating?

I dunno. I've never liked Pride and Prejudice despite trying to read it several times (and making it all the way through once). I liked Sense and Sensibility okay once I understood the historical and social context, but I still did a lot of skimming. It seems to me that people tend to love P&P but not care for S&S... and then I read Northanger Abbey and really liked it quite a lot, but hardly anyone says they like that one best of her works, so I seem to be a bit of an anomaly.

I wish I could explain what is so fascinating about her work, but I just don't know. I greatly prefer the Sentamentalists that were writing at the same time, because they tend to be so over-the-top dramatic (and I think that's something Austen was writing against? it seems that way with S&S), and also the Gothics for the same thing (and that's what NA satirizes).

". . .hardly anyone says they like ...(Northanger Abbey) best of her works..." (2)

Having managed to finish all of Austen's "major" novels, I can see
why N.A. is not highly rated among them. And yet, the most memorable thing
by Austen, to my mind, is one chapter of it: in which there is a hilarious description of the breakdown of plans for the immediate future -- appointments, etc. during a
trip to Bath. You start to think "If only they had had telephones...". But then you think, telephone messages would
probably only have introduced further compllications and would have been part of the problem,not part of the solution.
This is a literary fore-runner of what a classic Kafka short story calls "A Common Confusion".

I can see, Lena' Sings, how getting through the first 50 pages can be really hard. If "not getting Jane Austen were a disease, I would have to say I have at least a mild case of it.

Jane Austin had a very shrewd eye for the ridiculous and makes subtle digs at the mores of the society in which she lived. (remember the perfectly DREADFUL Mr Collins).

Her characterisations are brilliant and in some cases very funny.

Indeed, Mr Collins was so awful, he was one of the reasons I had to stop reading Pride and Prejudice. And yes, the ridiculous details (though not to me) are funny. But I always think, I have read books that described similar aspects of social singularities or odities. And they were much more fascinating. Or maybe it's just the love-story that is bothering me...
And I have not tried Northanger Abbey. Thanks for the tip!

It's all about characters and character interactions and description on how society works. She expresses some opinions, mostly subtly, but for the most part she concentrates on telling how it is, not how it should be. And much of it is indeed in the details and subtle actions.
Personally I enjoy reading about these rather strict "comme il faut" societies with attention to detail (and beside Austen I also like e.g. some Japanese authors who do this) but I understand that sort of stuff is not for everyone...

Love stories are a nice thing, but as such they are interesting in how they affect the social standing of the people involved, especially the young women, and contain loads of opportunities for disaster.

3> Of the three I've read, I just don't see why NA isn't rated more highly! It's shorter and overall less tedious and has the added bonus of the satire of Udolpho & co. I happen to love those early Gothic novels, but I also love to make fun of them, so I really enjoyed that about the book.

I keep thinking I should read Emma or Mansfield Park eventually, so I can say I've done so, but with how much I hate P&P, I just don't know that I can bear to do it. Except I've been told that Mansfield Park is also less tedious than the ampersand books. (Emma, though, I suspect that I would hate the title character.)

€0,02: Being from outside the anglophone cultural sphere yet getting most of my information on literature from the internet, I have a constant feeling that the relative importance of classic English literature is overemphasised. I'm yet to be convinced that eg. Austen is universally essential reading.

Read it if you want. Don't if you don't. It's really that simple.
and yeah, any dominant culture is going to seem overpowering and overemphasized if you're not part of it. only natural.

What Bookmarque said - really that simple.

I love Austen, but ...

After 50+ years of steady reading there are still well-known old novels that I haven't got round to reading and always more and more reading I want to do. Life is too short to persevere with stuff to which you've given a good go but just don't like. You have to allow something to personal taste - just like music or food or whatever.

Thanks again! I will probably give it one more try with these new impressions in mind. But maybe I should read more Voltaire first to work on my free will and accept the fact that there are books I do not like, even though they might enrich my reading experiences. ;)
And to start that: never read anything by Joey Goebel. Worst recommendation I ever got.

8: €0,02: Being from outside the anglophone cultural sphere yet getting most of my information on literature from the internet, I have a constant feeling that the relative importance of classic English literature is overemphasised. I'm yet to be convinced that eg. Austen is universally essential reading.

I wouldn't disagree, but then again I don't think there are such works that are universally essential. Western people tend to stick to Western works, which is heavily saturated with British - and more significantly, English - novels. England, more than any other European empire of modern history, focused on developing an emphasis on what it meant to be cultured, and spreading that to really about every people they came across (when they weren't busy focusing on economic resources and religious conversion). Its culture saturated so many different areas because, well, the empire of the United Kingdom was huge; and even the colonies that broke away or are multi-cultural à la America still retain a bias for the English.

So while I don't expect the works of Austen to be significant to the peoples of Korea, the English-speaking world, or the neighboring Western European countries, should be able to recognize what Austen was satirizing.

Plus, in an age where young girls are still being told relationships with controlling boyfriends are preferable because Good Boys are Boring, Pride and Prejudice works because it shows both sides of the couple working out their titular shortcomings and earn their happy ending as equals.

>2 keristars:-3
Having read most of Austen's novels, I think what people dislike about Northanger Abbey is that the last few chapters are so rushed, sorta like she had to get it done in time as a high school English class assignment.

You might enjoy this article from the Washington Post called The Battle of the Bonnets :)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/jane-eyre-movie-rekindles-austen-v...

I am in the Bronte camp.

MGP

14: You are either a Janeite. Or you are a Charlottan.

Or, you like them for different reasons; admittedly I haven't read Anne Brontë's works yet. That said, I think the pitting of Austen and the Brontës is more weird than anything else. It's as though readers think, "Here's these women writing around the same time. And it's not like you are either a Tolstoy or a Dostoevsky fan; with men, you can be a fan of both. Women? One or the other, ladies, pick your side."

Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë were not writing the same book; Charlotte and Emily were not even writing the same book. If fans of Austen go into Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights expecting Darcys, no wonder they are repulsed. If fans of the Brontës go into Pride and Prejudice expecting passion over reason, no wonder they are disappointed. Perhaps if more people knew that just because they're women focusing on relationships doesn't mean they're the same, people could appreciate each author for what she was trying to say.

Weird.

#12

"So while I don't expect the works of Austen to be significant to the peoples of Korea"

I bought my wife (a non-english reader) both Pride and Prejudice and Jane Erye, translated into Korean. She liked Jane Erye, but did not like P&P. In her case, I think the tragic nature of Jane Erye appealed to her. A lot of Korean dramas are tragic in nature, and so it was something she could relate to better.

Small sample size, as I am aware, but that was my take on why she liked Jane Erye over P&P. I think ultimately a good story is a good story, no matter the nationality of the reader or writer.

My two cents,

Bill Masom

15, Well, there is room for pitting Tolstoy and Dostoevsky against each other, maybe one can't be a fan of them in equal degree? Or for comparison's sake, Tolstoy against Gogol or Chekov? They do have quite different outlooks in things, and as you mentioned Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte are in some ways quite opposite from each other.

About Austen to other cultures, I did mention above the similarity I observed with, say, some Japanese authors, and I'd still argue that e.g. Junichiro Tanizaki does have a resemblance (as does occasionally Yukio Mishima if one looks past the violence and kinky sex) so I don't really see why wouldn't anyone enjoying Makioka Sisters to not get Austen (but of course I'm not Japanese so I don't have any concrete proof).
Similarly by a bit of serendipity I happened to read Niskavuori series of plays the same time I read P&P, and while in many ways they are very different, the world is quite similar between the two, never mind the difference of 150 years and quite a lot of miles (it's a shame Jane didn't get around to write about the life of older, married women...)

#14 - I'm not sure the journalist's premise that people take sides between Austen and the Brontes actually holds water. I think where that would arise would be with two very similar authors - they are different enough for one to comfortably love both. Now, if Emily and Charlotte had both written several more, really iconic novels I bet their respective fan clubs would be fighting tooth and nail today.

#14 - Phocion -- I agree with everything you said, right down to your "weird" comment. I too, like the Brontes (including Anne) and Jane Austen all very much.

The Brontes may be more accessible though--they were for me, anyway. I loved Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre when I read them (and yes, as you point out, they are two very different books). My first Austen was Emma and I hated it. I knew that it was supposed to be social satire, and I saw that, but it just didn't work for me. My problem was that I was reading it too quickly (even though it took forever to read)--but with Austen, every word makes a difference, and also the way she arranges those words. And my second mistake was that I didn't look for the humour. She's a lot more enjoyable if you read her with your humour eyes. I've loved all the other Austen books since and now plan to reread Emma to see if it's not wonderful too.

And Austen has the best hateable characters (unfortunately in Emma, it was the lead character). Mr. Collins, Lady Catherine, Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Bertram, Fanny Dashwood, and so on.

15 I just like moody books ;)

MGP

It took me ten years and several other Austen novels before I could start and finish Emma.

21- I did well then--it only took me four. Suddenly I'm feeling efficient. :-)

Naah, Emma is great, if one accepts that the protagonist of a book can be unpleasant. Mansfield Park was the one which I hated with a passion because I'll pick annoying Emma over wet hen Fanny any day.

Hi Keristars,

Jane Austen's books are class based. Her writing I find promotes strong independent women. She can be classed as a Feminist writer. I am aware that many would disagree because her characters (women)do pair themselves with men who do have worth. Nevertheless, the females most of them come from a wealthy background.

I'm not sure why that was addressed to me, Juljo? I'm well aware of the feminism in Austen's writing. I still don't like most of what I've read - I'm grateful that I've muddled through and read 3 of them, but I had to force myself to do it, because I wasn't particularly enjoying her writing style.

Also, I loathe Darcy and I also dislike Elizabeth, and I think such awful people deserve each other, but I don't deserve to have to read an entire book about them. They're not even awful in the entertaining way that other character are - they're boring.

This time last year, I would have been asking the same questions! I have always dismissed Austen out of hand, thinking that all she ever wrote about was 'white frocks and weddings' - which is, you know, sort of true - but now I have totally fallen under her spell! Emma is my favourite, but I love Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey and yes, Pride and Prejudice too. Mansfield Park I can live without, though I did give it a second try, and I have yet to reach the pinnacle of Austen-love which is Persuasion, apparently (I'm not a fan of saintly, long-suffering heroines).

Anyway, my tip is to watch a decent adaptation first. The 2009 BBC miniseries of 'Emma' hooked me, and the 2005 film version of 'Pride and Prejudice' totally brought the story to life for the first time. Card-carrying Janeites sniff at both adaptations, but I don't care about the text-to-script ratio - I just want to know if I will enjoy reading about the characters. And I did, and still do!

My sister wrote her thesis on Jane Austen, so her name was common around our house, and I was expected to put her a on pedestal too.

I tried to read Pride and Prejudice a year or two ago and only made it through the first 100 pages.

Are these books simply about a bunch of golddiggers? I don't need to read a novel to learn about that.

I tired of the fact that, unlike American literature, so little happened. That chatty Englishness and the circumlocutory Englishness of the prose which made reading it a chore. I felt guilty about not liking it, but there it is. I just couldn't take it.

I saw the movie versions of Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion and thought they were not bad. Especially liked Persuasion. On the Bronte side, I've seen a couple productions of Jane Eyre and liked them, even the recent movie which everyone seems to hate.

Are these books simply about a bunch of golddiggers? I don't need to read a novel to learn about that.

In my mind, not even a little bit.

Indeed, calling Lizzy Bennet a golddigger seems a bit ludicrous to me.

27: That you thought the books focused on golddigging shows a shallow reading, at best. Marriage is a focus, and while women in Austen's works rarely married down, the focus itself is not the money. The point of P&P is about two people willing to overcome their eponymous vices to earn each other - and avarice was not Elizabeth Bennet's vice.

And yet they wound up in that mansion in the end…

What's your point? That marrying into money is somehow wrong? The point was, if you read the book, that money was not Elizabeth's main concern (she had other men available if that was her focus).

It's one matter to dislike the book for what it is, it's another to make up reasons that are irrelevant.

or to be so out of touch of the societal norms of the time as to make a fool of oneself.

In that time period, there was little a woman could do to make something of herself - marriage was one of the few options. The Bennet family was in trouble, since there were five daughters and their estate was only able to go to the males of the family. Their obnoxious cousin Mr. Collins was to inherit after Mr. Bennet's death, so the only way their home and living would stay in their family was for one of the girls to marry Mr. Collins. The only other hope for the girls was to marry money. For Elizabeth to refuse Mr. Collins and (spoiler alert) Mr. Darcy at first, actually put their family at risk, though it does seem romantic that she wanted to marry for love and respect.

It sounds like golddigging, but most single women of that time had so little choice, especially if they themselves didn't come into money. Otherwise, they may have to resort to being maids, or in Jane Austen's case, an old maid who relied on her brother and was called on to help out with the nieces and nephews. She only started making any money on her novels late in life.

33 was just an insult. Redemption is possible for having read Look Back All The Green Valley by Fred Chappell.

I thank 34 for a thoughtful response. "It sounds like golddigging, but…"

Are these books simply about a bunch of golddiggers?

Well, the problem is slightly larger than that: under that veneer of drawing-room gentility, P&P is basically a story of raw survival.

{SPOILERS*}

If Lydia really IS 'ruined', the Bennetts are pretty much destroyed.

{*...IF one can give away a spoiler for a two-hundred-year-old book...}

When I was 14, I picked up P&P and had never read anything quite like it. I really enjoyed it, once I got past the language. Then I read S&S and enjoyed that as well. However, as time went on, I read "Emma" and "Persuasion," and couldn't stand them. Ever since then, I never picked up another Austen book and I cannot read anything like it anymore, I find this style of writing so thick and tiresome these days.

Interesting, it's the language that draws me in. And I had to mature into its appreciation. Hated Nathaniel Hawthorne when first introduced to The Scarlet Letter in college, but found the 50 plus word sentences completely wonderful in this last decade.
There is a precision and charm to older literature that most modern works lack.