Jane Austen Time

"If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to—Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?"

-- Northanger Abbey

A look told me that over the years I have read more classic novels than my overall tendency might suggest (for the longest time, it was hard for me to find a fictional book to my liking), but never read Jane Austen. Well, after all, never was part of The Jane Austen Book Club, which Ebert describes well as contrived but no less good really for being so. I recently re-watched the film (with some interesting extras and a pretty good commentary track with a few actors involved) and was again impressed by the ensemble work. Here are two great bits of dialogue:

Jocelyn: If we stay in this lane, we're going to be late.
Grigg Harris: Given that I have to convert donut grease into biofuel every time I fill up the tank, I try not to drive very fast.
Jocelyn: We're barely moving... Why are you getting off here?
Grigg Harris: I enjoy seeing the river.
Jocelyn: What are you, Mark Twain? Now we're gonna get stuck at every light.

Prudie Drummond: I'm in love with one of my students. I mean, nothing's happened, much. It could if I let it... I fantasize about him constantly.
Bernadette: Sweetie, your mother died. This is grief.
Prudie Drummond: He looks at me like he's the spoon, and I'm this dish of ice cream.

As to the books, I actually did watch four (five if you count Clueless/Emma) film/television adaptions, the exception in effect the book I just read (see opening quote). Austen is known for her "chick lit" (if I may use that term, Roger) plots, which is fine, but the dialogue is what inhibits me. The opening quotation is from an online resource for works in the public domain. You can also get a collection of Austin's "other works" (letters and so forth) and to quote from a random one to her sister, this seems to be her standard speech:

My dear Cassandra,—Your letter this morning was quite unexpected, and it is well that it brings such good news to counterbalance the disappointment to me of losing my first sentence, which I had arranged full of proper hopes about your journey, intending to commit them to paper to-day, and not looking for certainty till to-morrow.

And, that is a not too arch bit. But, the novel I selected attracted me for a few reasons. First and foremost, it is her shortest novel. Second, it is somewhat satirical, quite amusing if you are of the right frame of mind. One problem is that it doesn't consistently hold up the level of whimsy (including asides from the author) though the characters (including, air quotes implied, the young heroine) are often seem inherently satirical here. Our heroine has read one too many Gothic novels. But, the book is half over before we get to the title locale, too much time spent at Bath (of autobiographic interest). Some fun with the characters but the plot isn't that interesting after awhile. Expected a bit more there.

Mixed bag for this reader, some parts slow moving. I sort of saw that in some of the film adaptions too. I could enjoy the characters and characteristics but the starchy flavor is something you have to be able to handle or learn to appreciate. It is one of those books that you can fall into, which is harder these days (at least for me) with so many other alternatives. Thus, the smaller dose. See also, the recent reading of Nella Larsen or another book I just started. Not sure, for instance, of reading a 18th Century Gothic novel referenced that is over five hundred pages by one count. Still, might try to read a bit more Austen. Maybe, Persuasion or the never published (originally) Lady Susan.*

OTOH, for Maria Bello (film reference), I surely would. Meanwhile, how we have grown.

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* Read a comment today suggesting that classic fiction is a way to understand how things are different in the past. Such works are great to imagine a different world.

I can imagine our heroine at the pumps at Bath or on the road in her carriage after being unfairly and abruptly sent home. This is obviously a charm along with the female centered plots (another plus for teenage girls -- Austen seems to disfavor parental figures, many weak characters there, lot of the focus on the younger folks ... well, she did die around forty and never married; wonder how she would have been if she lived longer).