Take Two

Okay, that certainly did not come out right. I am certainly not advocating a return to the slightly progressed Victorian age, the time of the tet-a-tet and rules for how to sit, stand, smile, or frown... the days when women would sit at home making small talk over tea and embroidery, waiting for the slight excitement of a hopefully-not-horribly-boring male suitor. I stand by what I had to say about those two passages and about the underlying morality I admire in the society of the early 1800's but need to amend and add a few more thoughts.

As fellow blogger and twitterer Gina commented on my past post (I hope you don't mind me bringing this up in another post - it's an excellent point), this is roughly what I seemed to be saying. That blog post felt a bit muddled and confused as I wrote it - apparently with good reason. Let me see if I can take a step back and clarify.

The rules of Jane Austen's time were painful. You couldn't speak to someone unless you'd first been introduced, there were certain things you could read - as I was discussing with that passage from Northanger Abbey about novels. Everyone knew their place in society relative to everyone else - and the slightest change in dress, behavior, or speech could send someone into a tizzy.

So, yes, I agree Gina - I couldn't possible tolerate these rules either - but why I LOVE Austen novels is that they show us how things were then and allow us to appreciate how things are now. Like it or not, this was how women DID live and I think it's important to keep this picture in mind when walking to school in jeans and flip flops, hugging guy-friends and being able to openly say what you're thinking.

Before I go more into detail - or rather, more into generalities - let me just say that Mansfield Park bored me out of my mind and I'd be perfectly happy if I never heard another word about Fanny Price again. Some people can be TOO good and she was one of them. Grow a spine, girl. Also, I haven't had the chance yet to read Persuasion or Sense and Sensability, though I know the story of the latter from the BBC series.

When it really comes down to it, what I admire most about Jane Austen's novels is Jane Austen herself. This woman managed not only to write novels when no one - let alone a woman - was supposed to do that ... and she managed to write novels that I think are still prevalent in the 21st Century (hence the lovely picture I included above, found via a quick Google search). Catherine Morland is a rather boring character, true, who's head was full of silliness and who sat around waiting for Henry to decide if he liked her or not. But, this was how it was - a woman couldn't show feeling unless the man showed it first. Like I've said, these rules were stupid, but they were there.

But, consider two other characters: Emma and Elizabeth. These girls acted - true, one was misguided, and a bit snobby, but I still think Emma had good intentions as she tried to help Harriet. And Elizabeth, well, that gal knew how to speak her mind! She stood up for what she wanted and believed in - the right to marry for love despite her poor financial situations, the right to an opinion, to have her family and herself respected - and it's for these reasons that I think Pride and Prejudice is such a timeless novel.

Rather than spend all day extoling the virtues of P&P, which I will defend with my dying breath against anyone but guys who irrationally hate it because it's a "chick book" (they just don't get it), let me go back to Austen. The fact that we are still talking about these books, still reading them and admiring (or disliking) the heroines is amazing to me! The fact that we can hear Jane Austen's voice standing up for what she believes in, in the novels she wrote with fervor... well, I guess that fills the role of the strong woman, taking the place of a strong female narrator or weak female heroines.

And, Gina, do not mean to go after your point of view at all - I agree that many of the women in these stories simply sit around waiting for husbands... and I haven't read Bleak House (though now I want to!), but I guess what I'm trying to say is that these aspects of Austen's books are like having a flawed character - like Harry Potter, even. If the books depicted society as perfect back then, I can't help but think they'd be a lot less interesting.

Bottom line: What jars me so much whenever I read Austen is how much our society has changed since that point in time. Since ANY point in time. If you've read this blog, you know I'm constantly fascinated by technology - the newest Twitter Applcation (Tweetie, in case your wondering... it's totally awesome), or the 1 billionth App sold on the Apple Store (the grand prize went to a 13 year old). But, what I love about these books is that they make me take a step back from the minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow observations of how far we've progressed since... last week. They make me look at the big picture: Of how far we've come in the last 200 years. And through it all, I can't help loving Austen for managing to preserve that time in history for us to read and attempt to understand.

Lighthearded Misunderstandings

I wanted to take a momentary break from studying today (I'm home for a glorious five day weekend) to review a book I finished reading last weekend and greatly enjoyed. The book I'm thinking of is Northanger Abbey, one of Jane Austen's shorter, lighter, and lesser-known works. I decided to read it now - of all times - because it is the current topic of discussion in the Austen group I participate in every Sunday night. I'm sure my opinion of it will morph and change as we discuss it - in fact, I think it already has since the time of our first meeting - but I still wanted to share a few thoughts.

Since you probably don't know unless you've read it, Northanger Abbey tells the story of the young and innocent Catherine Morland who is invited to Bath by her family's friends, the Allens. In Bath, Catherine meets the Thorpe family - befriending the girl of her same age, Isabella. She also meets a young Mr. Henry Tilney, later befriending Tilney and his sister Eleanor. The plot heats up when General Tilney, Henry's father, invites Catherine to stay with them at their Abbey home - for a reason that causes much distress and confusion by the end of the novel. Because Catherine had been reading the type of Gothic romances that were oh-so common in Austen's era, she expects (but does not find) a dark and ancient home, full of fantastical mystery. The novel was one of the first Austen wrote, but also one of the last that was published after her death.

The character Catherine is a tricky one to interpret. She's not as easily likable as Elizabeth Bennet, nor easy to immediately dislike like Fanny Price, and still not as flawed as Emma. In many ways, her naivete was what really frustrated me - the same dramatic irony that led me to call the story's end three chapters end annoyed me beyond end when the story's heroine couldn't seem to understand what was going on. That said, being a simpleton is not the greatest fault and, overall, I liked the heroine and the story.

There were two particular passages in the novel that I just knew I had to share as soon as I read them. They're in so many ways the epitome of Austen - funny, witty, and full of voice and social commentary. Northanger Abbey has a much stronger authorial voice than the other novels - it's pervasive throughout almost the entire novel, compared to simple passages here and there like Pride and Prejudice. Perhaps this is because Austen was less practiced as an author and had not yet found her true style, or maybe it's just how she wanted to write this story, but because of the shortness and sweetness of the novel, it works.

Any-who, there is one passage when the reader learns that - gasp - Catherine enjoys reading novels. I'm not sure what it was that girls during this time were supposed to be reading, but it's clear that Austen didn't agree with the societal disdain for the type of writing she was endeavoring to create:

[Catherine and Isabella would] shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; - for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances of which they are themselves adding - joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally takes up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of our novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans.

Now, at the risk of this turning into an English essay, I do want to talk about this passage! It's hard to explain why I'm so drawn to it, but reading these few sentences absolutely makes me grin. It's SO Austen. Her voice - though part of a story, wrapped up in a character - is so strong. You feel as if she's in the room with you, reading passages like these. You can hear her disdain for hypocritical authors dripping from each word. The power of writing like this - to come alive before you - is phenomenal... and all done in a time when women weren't even supposed to be writing at all!

One more, and then I promise I'll go back to my usual college chit-chat, my professions of Harry Potter love, and my blathering about movies. As the story progresses, we see the usual rituals that mark Austen's novels and bring her time period to life. The societal traditions, the "dos and do NOTs" of being proper, the balls, dances, and propriety. Northanger Abbey has a particularly interesting take on all this as Austen focuses her lens on Bath - a bit of a more public and social setting than the usual small villages of Meryfield or Highbury. At once of the dances, when Mr. Tilney and Miss Morland finally make it to dancing, Henry begins to compare dancing and marriage, exclaiming how very alike they are:

"We have entered into a contract of mutual agreeableness for the space of an evening, and all our agreeableness belong solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten themselves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not chuse to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours."
[...]
"Taken in that light certainly, their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. - You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between a man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavor to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbors, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else."

Okay, if talk of dancing and marriage made you cringe away from the entry, that's fine. In fact, you probably didn't even make it past the mention of Austen at the beginning, but I simply had to shout out to the world what a wonderful bit of writing this is. Did you notice that the second part of the quote is almost entirely ONE sentence? Seriously.

But what gets me most about this is the difference between this society and ours. Theirs, rules meant something. None of this "the government says we don't use torture, but lookie here, I guess we do" back-handedness. (Okay, there was some back-handedness in Austen's time, but it was different). There was a basic morality - something that could unite even things as dissimilar as dancing and marriage - that protected everyone from each other and kept the wheels on the bus going round and round.

I've often lamented this tradition of dance dying out - and I still think it's a phenomenal tradition, but more importantly, I like the base principle that kept this society together. Even young people - I believe Catherine is still a teen in this novel - is raised with a basic idea of what's right and wrong. I think this is fading from our society now; being mixed up by warring factions of religious, political, or ethnic beliefs. I think it's time we returned to a simpler time - yes, in many ways this rigidly governed society was simpler - when a dance could be compared to marriage, when people would have a "contract of mutual agreeableness" and be happy with each other for an evening.

Anyway, I found this a very interesting Austen novel - quite different from the other "high-profile" ones I've been reading so far. I'd best get back to studying - IB and AP tests begin in a little over a week, and I've got knowledge to cram into my brain. Cheers! <3

Ruminations from a different time

Whew, I've just finished reading Emma, one of Jane Austen's wonderful novels. What a ride! I always feel like I've been transported to a totally different place and time when I'm in the middle of one of those books... Life was so different then - for women, for men... for everyone!

I can't imagine living in a time where everything was about marriage, social visits, and propriety! It was so simple, and could so easily be tedious.

Women had nothing to do but to search for a husband, to manage the servants and the household, and watch the children. If they were lucky enough to live in lively social circles, they could partake in balls and grand evenings... but that would only lead to social ridicule and inevitably someone whispering about someone else when backs were turned. They were quite mean to each other then, but really did nothing more than exchange pleasantries. The cattiness that Jane Austen paints - I assume it reflected how life reallyw as - is astounding! It's like high school only in a ball gown!

Men had nothing more to do than to manage the farm or the money, to meet with their friends, and to search for a wife who would be acceptable for their position in society. If he was lucky, he ended up with a wife he liked - or even loved... but it seems a too often occurance of ending up with a silly prattling woman like Emma's Mrs. Elton.

It sure makes for a fun read, though. I love being in that world of social conduct, of tête-à-têtes, and searching for a way to find a spouse above anything else is quite refreshing compared to a world of college, technology, bad economies, and global warming.

I was particularly struck by a theme in Emma - or rather, an idea. It's an important part of the plot that one character will fancy it that another loves them... and it leaves to all sorts of miscommunication and wrongdoings. It really shows how objective the world is... That what I perceive is completely different and perhaps even totally independent to how you would perceive it. I suppose this is important to remember for dealings with anyone, as Emma learned, and Jane Austen was probably trying to teach... That you never know what someone else is thinking!

Anyway, I do intend to get down some thoughts about Slumdog Millionaire, but that will have to be tomorrow's task. Have a lovely evening!

Oh, and in the words of the great John and Hank Green.... DFTBA!