Why Girls (more specifically, me) Go Apeshit For Austen

Over the summer, I was staying with my bestie and we finished off a bottle or two of wine while watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.  Needless to say, it was a fantastic evening.  Her flatmate, a self-described viking, asked me: "What's deal was with chicks and this movie?"  He just didn't get it.  My answer was less than stellar--deer in the headlights comes to mind.  I was drunk and it never occurs to me that everyone isn't Apeshit for Austen like I am.  To me it hardly bears explaining, it just is, like breathing: obviously.

I devoted the majority of my studies to Romantic Literature.  Austen falls right before this genre started, but a lot of teachers still include her.  I avoided Dickens in college (mistake) and took every class that offered any of Austen's books. Since everyone in my classes was also into Austen (especially my All Austen class), I only ran into one person in college (also a guy) who wasn't into Austen.  How my professor, Prof. Peter Graham, who has written TEXTBOOKS on Austen didn't fly across the room to throttle this gentleman in the face...I've never quite known except that he is a gentleman of Austenesque standing.  Long story short, it is very rare that I find someone who doesn't get "it" since most of my peer group waxes euphoric about Jane.  I guess I shouldn't be surpirsed, the Bronte sisters really didn't like Jane Austen.  I like both Austen and the Brontes, so I'm excited to read an Austen Spin-off where Lord Byron turned her into a vampire and Charlotte Bronte is her vampire archenemy through the ages.  (Are you really surprised that storyline exists with all the spin-offs and vampire books popping up?  There is a market for everyone.)

Anyway: So, what is the deal with chicks and this lady, Jane Austen?

Allow me to break down what I think attracts women to Pride and Prejudice and then Austen in general.


Since Pride and Prejudice is the most universally popular/viewed/read for school it only makes sense that there are a lot of different types of P&P fans.  Is P&P my favorite?  No.  That distinction goes to Persuasion, Austen's last book.  However, there is a lot of great character development and gooshy love-stuff in there.  In fact, P&P was what originally did "it" for me.  I read Sense and Sensibility in high school and loved it (I'm a bit of an Eleanor), but it wasn't until I watched P&P on my freshmen exam sickbed that I really got "it."

So what's the deal?

1. Yum...Darcy--The Darcy groupies are probably the classic example of the followers of P&P.  This has everything to do with the BBC mini-series and Colin Firth.  I'll admit it: Darcy will always be Colin Firth in my mind, even when I'm re-reading the book.  I've never met a lady that didn't love a tall, dark, and handsome, brooding sort of guy.  It's the mystery and the knight in shining armor bullshit. Austen's world is stocked full with social boundaries: not touching, dressing from head to toe, and all out sexual repression.  So when Darcy takes a dip in the lake on his way back to Pemberley, all the while fighting with the inner turmoil over Elizabeth's rejection and chastisement...well, it's basically wet, t-shirt Regency porn.  True story.
   
2. Pair Darcy with his foil Wickham and girls go nuts.  We all have that guy in our past who is our Wickham, the one we thought was great or "the one" and it turns out that he was a dead-beat.  So we love to watch Lizzy figure out Wickham isn't all he's cracked up to be, because we feel vindicated.
3. The Crazy Mother-- If you made Mrs. Bennet a religious zealot and gave my mother a lace cap they would be the same person.  "Why aren't you maried yet?" or "Why aren't you better at x, y, z" are pretty much my daily bread and butter.  Austen is in true form in P&P with relate-able characters, which brings me to number four:
4. Relate-able characters--Most women can sympathize with at least one of the Bennet sisters. My Austen prof actually wrote a book comparing the Bennet sisters to Darwin's theories about birth order in the animal kingdom. Brilliant.
1. Jane: pretty, shy, gets walked over 
2. Elizabeth: considered pretty (but she's no Jane), witty, bookish, daring, and honorable
3. Mary: homely, misunderstood, blacksheep
4. Kitty: always outdone by her younger sister
5. Lydia-rude, impulsive, notorious flirt
5. The language can be a little obtuse at first, especially if it's your first time reading literature from this period, but as you become more accustomed to the syntax, the language becomes a main point of attraction.  Especially the absolutely biting, subtle, and polite way the characters tell each other off.  Lady Catherine's visit to Elizabeth at Longbourn is probably my favorite example.  It's delightful because if I ever said this to another woman, they probably wouldn't even understand what it meant.  Oh it's so delicious!
6. The costumes are fantastic in the movies and the descriptions are very detailed in the books. You can tell a lot about a person in Austen's world by how they dress as well as their titles.  A knowledge of the history of social titles and dress can explain a lot about personalities in the books.

Austen is nothing without her social commentary.  She is a subtle wit who takes to task society, women's issues, the education system, and the social ladder.  She was a huge champion of education and sense for women.  In fact, she was so biting that her sister destroyed a fair chunk of her correspondence after Jane's death to cover up some of the things she said about people.  I really wish Cassandra hadn't done that, but I guess she had as much prophetic understanding as her namesake.

Austen also bears the attraction that she died very early.  I'd love to see what she would have written if her career had continued, yet at the same time I don't because I fear it might not have been as good.  She was a formula writer, which might sound boring, but even though you always know the book is going to end with a wedding, each time you read her novels you're always in agony about whether they really are going to get together in the end.  She's very good at delayed gratification in multiple ways, again, it's the sex or lack there of.

Even though she might be "old hat" in a modern world, it is her nuances and woman's intuition about people and situations that continues to draw modern readers to her novels, as well as, her extremely detailed characters that continue to hold our interest and parallel people we know.  She reinforces that even 200 years ago, individuals were still yearning for the same things: Love, Happiness, and Social Justice.

Don't you love how this started as a blog post and ended with a conclusion paragraph?  Psh, you don't want to read those college essays.  2 years later I still haven't brought myself to read the solid, gold crap I turned in for my seminar class.