Least Favorite Austen Work

I know that we all love EVERYTHING Miss Jane produced, but certainly we all have a work of hers that we enjoyed LESS than her other works. Which one is that and why?

For me, and many others it seems, Emma is that work. I'm not even sure why. I think I didn't like how Emma was sometimes cruel - she sometimes seemed more like one of Austen's villains than one of her heroines. Obviously, we all know that Emma has only the best intentions and she overcomes her issues in the end, but I found her a bit frustrating.

I also thought the book FELT so much longer than Austen's other works. It was chock-full of events, but sometimes it dragged.

I have always felt the same about Emma. It is just so long! I think it may be in a last place tie with Northanger Abbey for me. It was my first Austen and I had to read it for a college class. I loved it by the end, but it took a while to get through.

Of course I love both of these books over most of my library, just not the other Austens.

*echoes fannyprice and compskibook*

Emma is probably my least favorite, not just because of Emma's nastiness at times, but also because of the slightly disturbing relationship Emma has with Mr. Knightley. I just can't warm up to their age difference, and how he has had such a fatherly influence on her. Isn't there a part about how he helped to "shape her mind"?

Emma was definitely the hardest one to read, and of all the recent film adaptations the least favorite (which doesn't mean I disliked it, I simply liked the others more. Though Mansfield Park wasn't up to my expectations either as a film.) Northanger Abbey comes in close second - but I think it's because I so loved Pride & Prejudice, Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility: for me these three just outshine the rest.

I confess that Northanger Abbey has never kept my interest long enough to be able to say that I've read it.

I agree Jill, I've been having a really hard time finishing Northanger Abbey.

*grins* Of course, it doesn't help that I keep picking up other stuff to read.

I didn't care very much for NA when I first read it, but when I went and read Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and then reread NA, I was laughing the whole way through it. Austen was so devastatingly clever, and I love her for seeing through the hyped-up silliness of the over-the-top Gothic style that was currently en vogue. She did her own thing, and way more people nowadays read Austen than Radcliffe.

Emma is DEFINITELY my least favourite so far. It was the first book I'd ever read by Jane Austen and it almost put me right off. If it hadn't been for a Librivox recording of Northanger Abbey (which is my favourite so far), I never would have tried any others.

I've since read and loved Pride and Prejudice and I'm currently listening to another Librivox recording, this time of Mansfield park. I also have Sense and Sensibility waiting on my shelf and I plan on getting Persuasion as soon as possible.

I think the reason I didn't enjoy Emma so much is that nothing ever seems to happen - it's just one long round of visiting the same neighbours who talk constantly about the same letter they got sent 6 months ago. And I think that Emma herself is an inherently un-like-able character who I always felt was in need of a good, hard slap.

Emma ist my least favourite too. I just could identify myself with her, even if she had just the best intentions in her actions, it goes in line with a snobbish attitude which I dislike very much.

Northanger Abbey wins very much, if you have read all the books beforehand which Austen parodies in that work. There are much allusives on Fanny Burney's Camilla, Evelina and Cecilia, as much as Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda and much other works, which are forgotten today. With that knowledge you can just laugh about every page of Northanger Abbey.

Northanger Abbey is the only Jane Austen that I have not read dozens of times. I read it once. The BBC movie sits on my shelf, never watched all the way through; I blame that partially on the terrible music played throughout.

The posts here have encouraged me to look for Mysteries of Udolpho & see if that helps.

I was surprised to see this list being so full of Emma; usually lists of least-favoured Austen seem to be full of Mansfield Park, my favourite! :)

I love Emma...I love the wonderfully annoying characters.

I don't think I have a least favorite...there are things I love about all of them.
If I had to choose, I guess it would be Persuasion. Maybe...

Many years ago I took a course in research methods and we had to do some wild-goose chases for tidbits of information. One was, "What was the first novel to use the word 'baseball'?" The answer, surprisingly, was Northanger Abbey. I decided that was a good enough reason to give it a try, but I really felt that I was missing the point of it. I couldn't get absorbed in it at all. Thanks Falkin81b for pointing out the parody aspect. I didn't have the background in the earlier works to pick up on it. I'm afraid it will be a long while before I get around to that.

The word "baseball" is in Northanger Abbey? Now I have to bump it up to the top of my reading pile to find it...

Anybody know where it is?

Thanks!!!

I want to point out that Jane Austen herself said that Emma was a heroine that only she would like (interesting).

I agree with the posters who said to read Radcliffe to understand how wonderful N.A. is as a parody. (check out Richardson and Burney's works as well). Just like "Cold Comfort Farm" parodied (and actually destroyed as a genre) the grim English reality fiction of that period.

For a long time I found Mansfield Park my least favorite but now I adore it....go figure. I thought Fanny was a prig, now I truly appreciate her.

My favorite is Pride and Prejudice because Elizabeth is such a strong person, whose common sense for the most part is her best trait. So on the opposite side, Northanger Abbey is my least favorite. Catherine has no common sense and I have a hard time liking her. I am re-reading it now and I remember why I don't read this one every year like I do some the others.

Well I will have to wait to pass judgment until I finish reading all of her books. Some of us are starting to read Northanger Abbey and then discuss it. You are all welcome to join in too. And we are planning on reading all of her works which will be a first for me.
If you must discuss it with others Please don't spoil it for those of us who have never read the book before.

beatles1964

Aww, can't Northanger Abbey get any love? It's my favorite. The one that hasn't held my interest is Mansfield Park.

Mansfield Park is far and away my least favorite. I think it's due in large part to Edmund. His lack of appreciation for what's right in front of him bothers me. Over the years, I've grown to like Fanny, but I just can't get over my initial distaste for Edmund.

Northanger Abbey's not my favorite, but I love it more every time I read it.

I too enjoy Northanger Abbey. It is such great pastiche of the gothic novel that I find it very funny but it is also very different than her other works.

I am with mstrust. Mansfield Park is my least favorite- Fanny is too nice and I get tired of watching her trod upon.

I also loved Northanger Abbey, I just read it for the first time and thought it was terrific (especially since it was JA's first book!). My least favorite by far was Mansfield Park. I cannot find one reason to like it. I didn't like a single character in the book, plus I found the plot tedious.

I haven't yet read Mansfield Park, but I liked Northanger Abbey well enough -- until that squashed ending. The last two or three chapters read like Austen had to finish writing that book for a class deadline.

Mansfield Park is my least favorite, which isn't to say that I think it's a bad novel. While Fanny's goodness grates on me, I can appreciate how it makes her unique not only from the other MP characters, but from other Austen heroines.

I completely agree about Mansfield Park and Edmund's character being the main reason. I do want to reread it sometime soon, though. I'm really hoping it makes a better impression this time around.

I guess I'll have to be the loner when I say, though I love shamelessly all of her novels, my least favorite is Sense and Sensibility. This could be, however, that I read it a long time ago and need to give it another go. I probably didn't appreciate Austen's wit and humor then, so I admit, I am biased. My favorite is either Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion. I love me some Darcy and Wentworth!

You're not alone - Sense and Sensibility is my least favorite. Mind you, I haven't read it since I was a teenager. Perhaps it's time for a re-read through the lense of greater experience (I won't say maturity :-)).

My thoughts exactly. It's definitely on my TBR pile. As are all the Austen's- I'm in need of a good reread and a good man!

In that order, readabook? ;-)

Ha ha!

I'm going to revive a (semi) dead thread here to defend Emma. It's always been one of my favorites and I think that because Emma as a character is the most flawed and therefore, her mental journey is the farthest. Physically, no, the characters don't seem to go anywhere, but mentally, they all seem to mature so much. Emma's a true, arrogant snob at the beginning of the novel but by the end, she's become aware of how her actions affect others and that she doesn't have the right to constantly try to control her friends.

For a similar reason, Mansfield Park is my least favorite. Fanny doesn't seem to change at all through the novel. There's no mental growth. However, after reading a few interesting comments about Fanny's character in the "Help! Trying (again) to finish Mansfield Park..." thread, I think a reread is in order so I can focus on a different aspect of Fanny: how she doesn't sacrifice her morals for an easier life and yes, speaking from experience, it's often harder to hang on to your morals through difficulties than it is to improve your character.

*small disclaimer: I haven't actually read S&S yet. It's on my TBR list for late August/early September so my views only come from the other five novels...

Mansfield Park is definitely my least favourite Austen, I studied it when I was a teenager and I haven't been able to re-read it since. From memory I just found Fanny a dull pointless character, as RebeccaAnn comments she doesn't seem to change at all and whilst not sacrificing your morals may be worthwhile, it didn't make for an interesting read. As for Edmund, and many of the other characters, the least said the better. Having said all of that, I do plan to re-read it at some point, but its a case of so many books, so little time...

Although Emma is not top of my list, that is reserved for Persuasion, its up there with Sense and Sensibility.

I've also studied Northanger Abbey and agree with the posters, it does help if you read the books parodied in the text, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk.

Not to toot my own horn, but I wrote a review of Mansfield Park that a lot of people appeared to like. I don't know if it will change your mind about Fanny, but perhaps it will give you a bug to reread with some new ideas in mind :)

It's here: http://www.librarything.com/review/43852210

>33 atimco:, damn, I've already thumbed this review - I wish I could do it again, its so good. Let's keep defending MP, wisewoman. I feel like we're a rare breed!

I'm with Fanny . . . love Mansfield Park, but Emma, not so much. Mind you, Emma was my first Austen, so maybe I just wasn't in the Austen groove yet. I'll try it again one day.

I think Emma is pretty darn good. Aside from Jane Austen's trademark impeccable elegance of writing, it's a very precise novel of self deception and personal growth,-- unusually psycho analytical for it's time-- and I've heard it's the first novel to handle with seriousness and detail the mental and moral life of a woman.

Mansfield Park is probably my least favorite. I don't hate Fanny, but I do hate Mrs. Norris and I think the novel has a depressing feel to it and is lacking in chipperness compared to Austen's other works. Also, Edmund is a pain in that he strings Miss Crawford along for the longest, dumps her for insufficient reasons, and then is apparently admired for doing so by his author. This frustrates me.
That said, I feel Mansfield Park is a great work of art and a worthy member of the Jane Austen canon. But since I *had* to pick a least favorite. . . :)

Now, my favorite Austen novel is Persuasion. This is simply because Anne Eliot is perfect. I want to be her.

I think Emma is the novel most likely to receive a very wide range of reactions from different readers, and the primary reason for that, I believe, is that it is the novel in which Jane Austen has most successfully concealed layers of meaning beneath its surface. For those who don't "see" beneath the surface, it is the one novel of her six that can appear very boring and eventless. Like the Amazon rainforest, viewed from a mile overhead. But, conversely, when you learn to read between the line, suddenly you find yourself in an intense, chaotic jungle where a thousand things are going on all at once.

It's all a matter of perspective....

It has been too long since I read Emma to be able to comment on it other than to say I liked it at the time very much. After reading Mansfield Park last year for the first time, I would have to agree with those who think it is the most mature and uncompromising of all of Austen's novel--and the most realistic. Although I love Pride and Prejudice, I've not known anyone like those characters, and their very artificiality (which isn't a criticism) is what makes the wrapping up of all the relationships at the end so satisfying. But I have known people who were JUST like Edmund, and Crawford, and Aunt Norris.

And I was married to someone who was just like Fanny, who was, as they say, "too good to be true." She also had an upbringing that encouraged and habituated her basic tendency to do for others and put them first--she was called by everyone "a giver, not a taker." Although everyone admired and respected her, and she had many friends, she was not the kind of person that many people always felt comfortable with--as they had to be on guard lest they do something which might incur her disapproval. This seemed very odd to me, as she never criticized anyone. The fact is, most of us like to associate with people who are just as flawed as we are.

I'm glad I am not alone on Mansfield Park. I don't like the film adaptations of it either.

I started this thread thinking "Oh, I don't have a least favourite" but thinking about it it, I read them all over and over - except for Sense and Sensibility. And I can't even say why, except that I have a vague memory of thinking the story tedious, the last time I did read it. I need to re-read it and look harder at the satire under the surface.

> 38 I agree completely with what you say about 'Mansfield Park'. All I'd add is that, in my opinion, anybody reading their way through JA would be well advised to leave it till last. It's a superb book, and, in some ways, the deepest and most interesting of the lot, but you really need to come to it after your taste for JA has been formed.

Though I still think that 'Persuasion' packs the biggest emotional punch.

I am currently reading my fourth Austen novel, so I still haven't read Mansfield Park or Emma. So from the four that I am aware with, Northanger Abbey would have to be my least favorite. The plot is slow and not very involved. I also never found a large attachment to Catherine Morland or Henry Tilney. The end was also very unsatisfying.

There's a LOT more to Northanger Abbey than meets the eye. There are layers within layers, but on the surface it seems to merely be a Gothic parody.

The thing I didn't like about Northanger Abbey is the ending: the last few chapters read like Austen had to finish writing her book for a class deadline.

Have you considered that she may have done that deliberately, precisely in order to make the perceptive reader (such as yourself) a little uneasy? That she wants you to question whether it really is happy ever after for Catherine and Henry?

Notice that JA does not often do romantic climaxes--perhaps that is a clue to what she is suggesting about the future of the couples.

In reverse order beginning with my least favorite.

1. Emma is dead last for two reasons: I can’t stand Miss Bates or Mrs. Elton; those women wear me out. Emma does some really mean things. Thoughtless but mean. However, I really like the Knightley brothers. Those guys were hopeless romantics. Besides George Knightley’s love among the strawberries, do you know where John Knightley took Harriet and Robert so they could do what everyone knew they ought to do: Ashley’s, A blow your mind, Austen on the cutting edge of technology and entertainment amphitheater/circus where they finally settled their affairs in the absence of Emma. Look it up. It is a slow site but worth the wait.
2. Mansfield Park…I have a much higher opinion of Fanny than most on this thread. Then too, I am an old guy. Hot chicks don’t do it for me. I have seen too many of them run off with the bank balance and the kids. Fanny is a stick it out, come what may girl. She is a keeper.
3. Persuasion…I like Anne, she can be trusted unlike most women.
4. Since I have started, let us finish the list. My number three is Sense and Sensibility. I think…..I think it is because Austen grounded the book in fact and Elinor is a decent woman. Ok, it is not the dark, ripping story that the Bronte girls would have told but it is “realistic”. I say that with a bit of salt.
5. P&P is a favorite, I think because it is a fairy tale. It never happened; never will happen; but maybe, perhaps, could be, someday, somewhere, somehow just like Cinderella. And Collins Firth looks like the perfect Mr. Darcy and what woman can compare to Jennifer Ehle?
6. If I am put under oath and on the witness stand then P&P is my favorite. However comma if one is to go by my behavior, then NA wins hands down. I’ve read it many more times than P&P and I am well over a hundred at least in reading P&P. It is a bubblegum book and requires no thinking; it is sugar, bubbles and fun. When one has slogged his way through a Mary Ann Evans (George Elliot) monster for instance, a guy needs a break. NA gives that pause that refreshes.

After reading a number of comments; this is gratuitous advice: In order to understand Austen, one has to read
“Tom Jones” Henry Fielding, (read this then look again at Austen’s comic characters)
“Vanity Fair” William Makepeace Thackeray, (If one has pretentions to being well read, these first two are musts.)
“The Mysteries of Udolpho” and “The Italian” Ann Radcliffe, Take my word, these can be long.
“The Lady of the Lake” & “Marmion” Sir Walter Scott,
“Lover’s Vows” Elizabeth Inchbald (One has to read this play to understand Mansfield Park)
and it wouldn’t hurt to read
“Pamela” Samuel Richardson, it took some stick-to-it-ness for me to finish.

Here is my list just to understand Emma: (just Emma, I am not saying a word about any other of her works) Jane Austen is one complicated little chick. She alludes, she almost references, she is a partial quote, she had fun writing these books. She wrote to entertain as opposed to say the Bronte sisters who could be described as muckrakers. If one reads these works, then one will get her jokes. One would participate in her fun.

"Vicar of Wakefield", Oliver Goldsmith
"Romance of the Forest", Ann Radcliffe
"The Children of the Abbey", Regina Maria Roche
"Kitty, a fair but frozen maid", David Garrick
"The Hare and Many Friends", fable, John Gay
"Robin Adair" Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858)
N. takes M." for her wedded husband from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer
"An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", Thomas Gray
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" and many others, William Shakespeare
"L'Allegro", John Milton (1608-1674)
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare,
“Adelaide and Theodore” Stephanie-Felicite de Genlis (this one is difficult to get a hold of but there are work a rounds.)

I have just about every book on my grubby little harddrive.

If I was going to stuck on an island for a few years then MP would be my book. For a weekend in the mountains, P&P. Motorcyling through the desert, then NA. For sailing along the coast, S&S. For a trip to Nova Scotia then definitely P.

>46 JosephPoisso: "After reading a number of comments; this is gratuitous advice: In order to understand Austen, one has to read
. . .“Vanity Fair” William Makepeace Thackeray . . ."

Austen had been dead for 30 years when Vanity Fair was written. Why must I read it to understand her?

>47 cpg:

Perhaps because Vanity Fair is set in the early 19th century, when Miss Austen was still alive, and because the two female protagonists face a social order with which the female protagonists of the Austen novels would have had to cope. While Amelia Sedley faces it much the way Fanny Price might have faced it, Becky Sharp takes an approach Mary Crawford might have espoused--were she even more ruthless.

I don't think the author of 46 was suggesting VF had any influence on Miss Austen.

>48 Django6924:

Those reasons fall well short of justifying the claim that Vanity Fair is required reading in order to understand Austen. Furthermore, they are reasons that are met by hundreds of other novels. Are all of those required reading? And what novels are required reading in order to understand Thackeray?

>49 cpg:

"Hundreds" of other novels? I bow to your much wider reading experience, but when I think of novels set in England during the Napoleonic wars in which young single, educated women from the genteel class have to cope with the existing social order when it came to marriage, I'm dmned if I can think of more than 50....

(Incidentally, I wasn't trying to justify any claims but simply trying to offer some reason why such a claim might have been made; as Hazel Motes wisely pointed out, "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.")

>46 JosephPoisso: Fighting talk, if I may say so!

I'd agree that you give a list of book and shorter pieces (I'm gratified to be able say that I've read nearly all of them!) which illuminate JA's work. However, I think you go too far when you say that they are necessary to understanding her.

Surely, one of the most remarkable things about JA as a writer is her universality, the extent to which she transcends her own historical period. For example, witness the enormous popularity of the famous BBC TV adaptation of P&P. This was very faithful to the book, and, in no way at all depended on transposing present day attitudes and characters into JA's world - something which, incidentally, does happen in various other adaptations, for example, in Emma Thompson's (delightful!) film version of S&S.

Or take another example related to 'Northanger Abbey', which you clearly admire. Compare it to Peacock's 'Nightmare Abbey'. The two books share plenty of common themes, and the comparison is fascinating. Then ask the question: which of the two is more likely to appeal to the present day reader? That is, to a reader who is not an Eng. Lit. specialist and who doesn't have any very strong background knowledge of the period. I think that the answer smacks you in the eye.

>50 Django6924: "Hundreds" of other novels? I bow to your much wider reading experience, but when I think of novels set in England during the Napoleonic wars in which young single, educated women from the genteel class have to cope with the existing social order when it came to marriage, I'm dmned if I can think of more than 50...."

I'm impressed that you're so deeply read that you think you should be able to list almost all the books ever written of a particular genre off the top of your head!

"I wasn't trying to justify any claims but simply trying to offer some reason why such a claim might have been made"

Oh. I think the best reasons for that have to do with psychology and rhetoric.

As for the claim itself, if taken literally it would mean that none of the people who read Austen in those decades preceding Vanity Fair could understand her. Not even poor Thackeray himself. If taken as pertaining only to people of our age, it still lacks warrant. Why should a Victorian author like Thackeray, who was a 3-year old living in Calcutta during the Battle of Waterloo, have access to vital information about Austen that historians like Amanda Vickery don't?

>52 cpg: "I'm impressed that you're so deeply read that you think you should be able to list almost all the books ever written of a particular genre off the top of your head!"

Obviously my ironical comment went completely over your head....

I'm not even sure what you mean by "I think the best reasons for that have to do with psychology and rhetoric," but to spell it out, I think the poster was trying to show the similarities between Austen's admittedly small-in-scope view of marriage conventions in the very early 19th century with Thackeray's depiction of them--portrayed over a much larger canvas and with the advantages of several decades of historical perspective.

I think to some extent all great literature can be helpful to one's understanding of any literature, but to say so doesn't mean that it is necessary. Nor do I think it necessary to have lived in a particular milieu to understand the work of an artist who is depicting that milieu.

I'm going to leap over the debate about Vanity Fair to respond to the original question...

Lease favorite Austen? I have to say a tie between Emma and Mansfield Park. Every few years, I go back and try to re-read these, and every time, I fail to get much beyond page 75 or so in either novel.

It's the heroines...Emma strikes me as an obnoxious brat and Fanny is a doormat. Last time I tried to read Mansfield Park, I found myself yelling at the book "Speak up!! Open your mouth! Defend yourself!" Why does being good equate with being silent?

Then I had one of those "this would be a great paper topic were I still a college student...'Austen's Silent Heroine?'" Explore gender and class issues; is it that Fanny can't or won't speak up for herself? Of course, I'd have to muscle through and finish the book to answer the questions...

To be fair, my hatred of these heroines is part of why I love Austen - she created characters so vivid, I couldn't stand being around them for any length of time! :)

I also promise to keep trying to read these novels; someday, perhaps, I will have changed enough to find a new perspective.

>53 Django6924: "Obviously my ironical comment went completely over your head...."

Ouch. So your non-ironical point was that you think there are far fewer than 50 books about the social order of marriage in Georgian England? It would take some time, but I could probably explicitly demonstrate that that's false, if you'd like.

"I'm not even sure what you mean by 'I think the best reasons for that have to do with psychology and rhetoric,'"

Your original post about Thackeray was framed as a response to my question of why I must read him to understand Austen. Later you claimed you weren't really saying why we must read him but were only saying why someone might say we must read him. Once you move from the question of the truthfulness of an assertion to the question of why someone might assert it, you should be looking for much different answers (e.g., "Because Internet discourse encourages people to make hyperbolic comments").

beatlemoon wrote: It's the heroines...Emma strikes me as an obnoxious brat and Fanny is a doormat. Last time I tried to read Mansfield Park, I found myself yelling at the book "Speak up!! Open your mouth! Defend yourself!" Why does being good equate with being silent?

I defend Fanny in my review here. I think she is so often misunderstood because she isn't a sassy, spunky, witty heroine like Elizabeth Bennett. But Fanny is strong precisely because of her weakness. Think how much harder it is for a naturally quiet person to defy every authority figure in her life with such consistency and firmness of purpose! If she was a doormat, she would have caved under all that pressure to marry Crawford. I think Fanny is a fantastic heroine, especially for readers who share her innate timidity.

As for Emma, she starts off as an "obnoxious brat" (and it's understandable why she is that way, given her environment) but she changes over the course of the novel and is one of Austen's more dynamic heroines. I can totally identify with the pain of mortified pride when someone points out flawed thinking/behavior! It's what she does with that correction that endears her to me.

Regarding Vanity Fair, I don't see it as a prereq for enjoying/understanding Austen... but people should read it anyways because it's great! :)

> 54 "Emma strikes me as an obnoxious brat"

It might be an age-related issue. I first read 'Emma' because a very excellent teacher instructed me to. I remember vividly telling the teacher how much I disliked Emma herself, and how she reacted with quiet amusement.

Now ... I'm not going to tell you how many years later it is ... I think I understand the amusement. These days, I don't exactly like Emma, but, at least, I feel some sympathy for her. At some stage in our lives, many of us (that includes males like me) have quite a lot in common with Emma.

I suspect that, in creating Emma, JA was actually recognising and discarding aspects of one of her earlier selves. My only quarrel with the book is that the happy ending strikes me as being a bit unrealistic - Emma is a sight too lucky in having Mr Knightley continue to adore her through thick and thin. In real life, wouldn't he have snapped up Miss Taylor (who would have made an excellent mistress of Donwell) before the amiable, but somewhat dim Mr Weston had got around to wooing her?

> 56, 57

You both hit on the reasons I try to re-read these books every so often. I realize, on an intellectual level, that both Fanny and Emma must change at some point in the novel; it's just that I've never been able to get that far! :)

And I agree, it may well be an age related issue. I've been trying to read these novels for about 15 years; I've given each maybe three tries. So someday, I hope for one of two things: to either see something new in these characters that makes me want to keep reading, or that I will have learned better the art of patience and will thus be able to get further in the story. (Impatience is one of my greatest personality flaws).

Joseph Poisso is right on all counts in his Message 46. You CAN learn as much about the shadow stories of Austen's novels from the reactions of certain perceptive writers (like Thackeray) who came AFTER her, as you can from HER reactions to certain writers who came BEFORE her.

All of JA's novels are in a sense riddle texts, but Emma is the ultimate riddle text. There are layers within layers within layers.

Most readers of JA never get past the first layer, partly because the first layer is already so rich and complex that it is a totally satlsfying experience. But there is more, much more, beneath that first layer.

I think you hit on something - Emma does 'feel' long and also Emma is very cruel. Elizabeth and her father sort of bait Mr Collins but they are never rude. What Emma says to Miss Bates is so hurtful and mean but also the way she manipulates Harriet, pushing her to fall in love with people who are not at all suited and trying to keep her away from Robert Martin is pretty bad. And you get the feeling that she does it because she is rich and can get away with it. It says in the book that Emma hasnt really gone anywhere. Even Elizabeth and Jane and the Dashwood sisters and Catherine Moreland get away from home but Emma seems happy to sit around Hartfield and be a big fish in a small pond.

I'm currently reading Emma (again) and I always got the feeling that she wasn't trying to be cruel but rather she suffers more from the know-it-all syndrome. She's beautiful, wealthy, smart, witty, and naturally talented at almost anything she tries. She feels superior to those around her and therefore thinks she can get away with everything and also that she knows what's best for evryone. But she hasn't really gone anywhere and doesn't really know much at all and eventually, after realizing how she's hurt people and how she's come close to ruining a few lives, she figures that out. I think that's what I like about her the most. She has to take a good look at her life and realize that she has more negatives than positives and that's hard to swallow. But she does and she changes herself. That takes courage.

I really do love Emma. It's one of my favorites...

So many people dislike "Mansfield Park," and I was, admittedly, one of that number for many years. But I re-read it in anticipation of seeing the 1999 adaptation, and again this past month, and I found myself liking it very much.

This, of course, means that "Northanger Abbey" is my least favorite Austen novel. Because of my crusade to read all the novels and watch all the adaptations during this calendar year (it's this year's project for my blog), I'll be re-reading that at some point in the autumn, so maybe my opinion will change there too. Who knows.

Northanger Abbey was the last of the six that I "got", in the sense of realizing how brilliant it was.

It is every bit as brilliant as the other 5, but (big "but").......it is a lot less complicated than the other 5. There are much fewer main characters, and much less complicated course of events. But otherwise, I now understand that it is every bit as beautiful as the others.

I will be speaking about one aspect of Northanger Abbey at the upcoming JASNA AGM in a little less than 4 months from now:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/