Nobody else' s book club: Jane Austen's Persuasion
I started reading this book two days before I was to travel to Bath and by the time Anne, its main character, moves to this beautiful city, I was already comfortably seated in the train on my way there. What a serendipitous coincidence!
Jane Austen is an author which I am more than happy to return to. Her use of the English language is always a delight, her wit legendary and laughing-out-loud. Her novels (in the genre known as novel of manners) offer the reader an intimate peek into the private world of the English gentry in the British countryside of the early 19th Century. And this is another reason I find them fascinating.
But I must confess that I now regret having chosen this book for the book club. Even though nobody else is reading these posts, I know that there are a lot of nobodies out there that are extremely passionate about Jane Austen. I am just scared of writing nothing at all they may find extremely offensive. Thus I am trembling with fear and more than willing to censor my opinion in order to avoid being scalped or lynched. But what is the point of doing so? So here I go...
I do not like her novels for any of the reasons most Janeites do. I find her narrators and characters shallow, petty and often mean. I also find most of her male "heroes" to be close to non-characters, in the sense we know next to nothing about them. They are handsome, polite and proper, and they are rich and love the heroine, that is it. My only explanation for Janeites worship of these characters is that, since we know nothing of certain about them, not even the colour of their hair, each reader can create her own image.
About Persuasion in particular, I am afraid it is hard to say anything specific to this novel. It is fair to say that every Austen's novel is a variation on the same theme. There is a family belonging to the gentry, there is one or more unmarried young women in this family, there is the importance of making a good marriage at a time when women did not inherit from their fathers or husbands and marriage was, as a consequence, much more than an affair of the heart, there is a happy ending which involves one or more of the aforementioned young women being engaged and married. Anything else is details and I will avoid giving those away. If you have read the book, you already know, if you have not, it is easy enough to read a synopsis somewhere else.
My general opinion of Austen's work in general and this book in particular is better described in the second paragraph of this post. But I am afraid the tone of what follows may sound a lot more scathing than is my intention. So I would like to finish, even at the risk of repeating myself, by saying that I find her work delightful, hilarious, intelligent, witty and fascinating.
Jane Austen is an author which I am more than happy to return to. Her use of the English language is always a delight, her wit legendary and laughing-out-loud. Her novels (in the genre known as novel of manners) offer the reader an intimate peek into the private world of the English gentry in the British countryside of the early 19th Century. And this is another reason I find them fascinating.
But I must confess that I now regret having chosen this book for the book club. Even though nobody else is reading these posts, I know that there are a lot of nobodies out there that are extremely passionate about Jane Austen. I am just scared of writing nothing at all they may find extremely offensive. Thus I am trembling with fear and more than willing to censor my opinion in order to avoid being scalped or lynched. But what is the point of doing so? So here I go...
I do not like her novels for any of the reasons most Janeites do. I find her narrators and characters shallow, petty and often mean. I also find most of her male "heroes" to be close to non-characters, in the sense we know next to nothing about them. They are handsome, polite and proper, and they are rich and love the heroine, that is it. My only explanation for Janeites worship of these characters is that, since we know nothing of certain about them, not even the colour of their hair, each reader can create her own image.
About Persuasion in particular, I am afraid it is hard to say anything specific to this novel. It is fair to say that every Austen's novel is a variation on the same theme. There is a family belonging to the gentry, there is one or more unmarried young women in this family, there is the importance of making a good marriage at a time when women did not inherit from their fathers or husbands and marriage was, as a consequence, much more than an affair of the heart, there is a happy ending which involves one or more of the aforementioned young women being engaged and married. Anything else is details and I will avoid giving those away. If you have read the book, you already know, if you have not, it is easy enough to read a synopsis somewhere else.
My general opinion of Austen's work in general and this book in particular is better described in the second paragraph of this post. But I am afraid the tone of what follows may sound a lot more scathing than is my intention. So I would like to finish, even at the risk of repeating myself, by saying that I find her work delightful, hilarious, intelligent, witty and fascinating.
Next book: on a more sombre tone, "Disgrace" by J. M. Coetzee.
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