I Just Can't Get into Jane Austen

Nobody is ever supposed to admit this, but I just can't get into Jane Austen.

Sweet polite stuff that's mainly about protocol and manners and polite society has just never been my thing.  People would rave about Jane Austen and I'd say, "Please! Give me the dark festering alleys in Dickens, give me Emma Bovary's depravity, give me Wilkie Collins' wonderful, horrible Count Fosco and the cool way he saw in Marian a kind of yinyang soulmate. Give me people behaving badly!  Who cares about all this tea pouring?!"

 
All right all right, I grudgingly admit that Pride and Prejudice overcame all that trivia superlatively.  Sure, it's full of parlors and needlework and letters about who's courting whom, and loaded with all the who-may-introduce-himself-to-whom protocol stuff, but somehow it manages to make all this serve a story about making vital life-changing judgments based on incomplete information, about people knowing and understanding, or misunderstanding, each other on a deeper level that could happen any time or place. I couldn't believe how long ago this book was written.  Well, sure, that's why it's, like, THE classic.

Oh, and Emma was kind of funny.  That one was alright.  But I was never really interested in reading any more of Jane's stuff.

Well, okay, I did pick up Northanger Abbey, but only because the back cover said it was a satire, and I wanted to see what kind of satire a womanâ€'â€'in the early 1800's for Pete's sakeâ€'â€'could possibly write.  Besides, it was really short.

And it was hilarious.  I really did like it.  When the guy at the dance is talking to the heroine about fabrics and whether a particular material will wash, I think I laughed out loud.  So, yeah, Austen won me over on that occasion. But that book was an aberration.  I mean, everybody said it was just a fun book, not one of her serious things.

Then I stumbled across Persuasion. Okay, I thought, it's both serious and short. I'll try it.

Persuasion, I don't mind admitting, blew me away.  This was no drawing room saga with tea and gloves and fans.  This was a woman whose soul was withering because she had been taught all her life that she wasn't worth much, which had set her up to be persuaded away from her own inner knowledge of what was true, and it was an amazing book.

I guess that Persuasion is the reason I shrugged and said, alright, fine, I'll try another serious Austen book, and I read Mansfield Park.

It didn't blow me away like Persuasion did, but it had its own wow! factor.  I mean, Austen presents Mary Crawford as being everything we're supposed to consider twisted, and yet by today's values she seems so sensible.  But Austen managed to make me understand what was wrong with Mary!  For Mary to be so loose about the standards of her own society was a sign of corruption, because that society, not ours, was her context.  Part of me wanted to fly back and bring Mary to the 21^st century and say, "Here, honey, you weren't made for the early 19^th century, this is where you belong, you're so nice and pragmatic, you'll be fine."  But Austen made me understand that she wouldn't be fine at all, because Mary 's corruption would outgrow our society as well.  There's something missing in her soul.

How the heck did Austen pull this off??

Well, anyway, that leaves Sense and Sensibility, the only Austen I haven't read.  I guess I will.  But I'm really just not into Jane Austen.