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.

#10-Jane Eyre is my number 50!

"My bride is here... because my equal is here, and my likeness" -Mr. Rochester to Jane (Ch. 23)

I'm on my 50th book on the BBC list and I saved a really great one for this: Jane Eyre!

How come no one ever told me about this amazing story?  When I started it, I instantly felt a pang in my heart that no one had read this book to me in my youth.  It's just that good!

Jane and Rochester's love even rivals Darcy and Elizabeth.  The main difference is that Rochester and Jane talk about every single passionate or dark emotion they have, where as Darcy and Elizabeth rarely talk about their feelings, but when they do you feel the gravity of them.

One thing I will say is that the Bronte sisters definitely know how to write "crazy."  Although, I think that Emily's Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights definitely trumps Charlotte's Bertha, but it's a close one.

So if you haven't read it, let me sum it up for you:

Orphan, mean Aunt, puritan school, tuberculosis and typhoid, new order, governess, dark brooding man, suspicious maid, almost burned to death, fire-side chats, trick, bite marks, doctor fetched in the night, trip, mean Aunt dies, proposal, "apparition" of crazy lady, wedding, objection: "you're already married," crazy lady locked in mansion, gotta go,wait, you're my cousin, happy ending.

Love, love, love.  I've busted out 4 more books since I finished Jane, so that brings my total to 54 of 200.  I also finally finished all the Roald Dahl books on the list and I'm very happy to be done with those as great as they were!

If you're looking for another suggestion, I highly recommend A Town Like Alice: SO GOOD!

If anyone has been following my reading progress, you'd notice that I'm 4 books away from 50 of 200. Since this is a fourth of the way to the finish line, I'm pretty excited about it.

I've been going to the library every couple of weeks and it has definitely helped me do this project on the cheap.

I've got a few books in progress right now, such as:

Artemis Fowl-pretty cute little book. Since I've been listening to it on tape I've been thinking in an Irish accent for a few days (not even kidding). Such a beautiful cadence to their speech. Can we go to Ireland, please?  Modern take on Fairies that's pretty cute and there is a spy element mixed with Sherlock Holmes that I'm really liking.

I'm also working on The Golden Compass.  This is number 2 on the big list.  Well, technically His Dark Materials is number 2, but that's actually the name of the whole series.  With so many books to go, I'm not reading the whole series.  At least, not yet anyway.  I've tried to read this book before when the movie came out.  I couldn't really get into it, but I actually saw the movie a month ago and it looked like something I could eventually get into. As I'm reading, I'm really just wondering when the polar bear is going to show up.  When does that happen?  Cause he seemed really cool!

Started into some Oliver Twist...and I'll have you know that the "please sir, I want some more" scene happens in the second chapter.  So what the heck is supposed to happen in this book?  No idea.  I never had to read Dickens in college and that might be because I avoided him like the plague or professors thought his books were too long for a semester.  We'll see how this goes, but I'll probably end up getting the CD of it.  Maybe I should watch a BBC version of it so that I know what the blazes happens in this plot line.  Poor kid, gruel, beatings...Les Miserable again but in a different country?

I'm really not sure what to read next.  So if you go to my Good Reads page and see something that you've really loved and I haven't read it, I'd really appreciate a recommendation.  It also seems like my comments might not be working.  If that's the case for you, please hit up the facebook to let me know you pick.

S'il vous plait et merci!

I've found a renewed motivation for reading through my book list.  I'm determined, but it's daunting since I'm not even 1/4 of the way through...so I'm "reading" a lot of them on tape.  I don't have time to sit down and do much of anything, but a book on tape I can listen to in the car, while I do laundry, when I'm painting the house, and even when I'm at work.

I used to do this all the time in college, especially with books I couldn't will myself to read.  It  helps when the actor reading the book has different voices for different characters or the book is 1,000+ pages.  Long books take hours and hours and hours and I just don't have that kind of time to sit on my ass.  I really wish I still did.  C'est la vie.

So, I hope it's not considered cheating.  I want to get through the great works of literature, but you know how life gets in the way.  For a good laugh, I recommend Angus, Thongs, and Full-frontal Snogging.  Hilarious! It's basically Bridget Jones for young adults.  I lost it when the 3 year old little sister of the main character, Georgia, told the cute, love interest "Georgie took a big poop this morning!" Yeah, I died.  How random and awkward.

#6- To Kill A Mockingbird (revisited)

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Atticus

 I officially recant every nasty thing I've ever said about To Kill A Mockingbird.

The beginning was a little slow for me, probably due to the dread with which I undertook this book, however, by the end, I got it.  I really did.

Even though there is a lot of the "south" in this book, both the good and the bad, I realized that Scout was just like me growing up.  She lived in a confusing world where she was told to treat everyone the same and at the same time to treat others differently and even at a young age she understood the hypocrisy of this.

I loved the spotlight on education in this book, especially when Scout decided never to go back to school because her teacher told her she couldn't read with her dad anymore and I loved when they continued to read in secret.

I enjoyed the the catch-22 of growing up in a progressive southern family and I both respected and hated her aunty for trying to make Scout into Jean Louise.

Atticus was, by far, my favorite character.  He had southern roots, but he knew that if he was going to change the world for his children he would have to put away the country things and take up learned ways.  I loved how Harper Lee used the image of the shotgun to portray this idea with all the masculine connotations of being a "good shot" as well as a provider for one's family.  My favorite characteristic of Atticus, besides his comparably equal treatment of others and his desire for an education, is his trust in his children.  He understands them and loves them and really believes that they can understand the life lessons he is trying to teach them. The final scene reflects this so well when he stays up the whole night to make sure that is son is OK.  He really does love them.

Yeah, I was just as surprised as you were about this realization.  You win some, you loose some.

#6- To Kill A Mockingbird

I'm starting my reading list out with a bit of a challenge: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  I read this book during the summer I was 16, on my own, without a teacher assigning it.  I thought I was being uber studious and intellectual since everyone waxes euphoric about this book.

I hated it.  I didn't understand the hype.  I avoided this book at all costs in college.

When you study literature in college there are really two major veins: English and American.  My focus was on English Lit., although I was forced to take one semester of American Literature where I spent the enitre semester correcting my professor.  The main reason for my anglophilic nature, is that I find American literature to be the equivalent of dry, stale toast.  British writers use vocabulary that turns their sentences into velvet: smooth, soft, and sexy.  I just can't turn it down.

I digress.  The first time I read To Kill A Mockingbird, I was very disappointed, mainly, because of the poor, southern themes in it.  I grew up in a very poor southern town in the middle of nowhere.  While I love the idea of being a "Southern Belle," there were no beautiful planation manors in my life. Think Sweet Home Alabama with Reese Witherspoon and you basically have my mentality about my hometown.  I've spent a lot of time distancing myself from the lifestyle and the accent, getting an education, moving to the city, and basically just trying to get away from such a depressing area.  So, To Kill A Mockingbird didn't sit well with my 16 year old self, who knew what we were aiming for in life was not what Scout had.

I'm hoping for better things this go around since it has been 7 years since the first reading.  I'm hoping that I will see the beauty in this book that everyone else has seen and I'm hoping to realize the importance of this novel to the global, not just the deep south, experience.

My BIG Read

Last week, an insane notion popped into my overwhelmed brain and that was the idea of reading my way through the BBC's top 100 or 200 books.

It isn't as crazy as it sounds since I've read a good bit of them.  I just need a way to read structurally on my own schedule.  I haven't been able to find a bookclub that's taking new members since we moved, so this is my book club: membership of one.

I  fully intend to read my way through some of the most noteworthy litereary works of our time and let you know what I think, in no particular order. Yes, it would be more challenging to do them in order, but it might also get me depressed about this project.

Some books listed are actually series.  Depending on how I like them I might do the whole series or just he first book.

And if you catch the bug to read them with me or just pass along a new favorite book, well, that would be delightful. 

If only I could have you over for dinner, wine, and discussion.