Oh yeah!

[averygoodun42]

Now I remember what it was I was going to write about! Jane Austen.

I recently read Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. I thought I had read two of them (S&S and MP) before, but if I had, I had completely forgotten them.


S&S I enjoyed quite a bit, of course. I didn't think it was as good as P&P, but only because I found Marianne to be a terribly embarrassing character. Since she was one of the main characters -- one could argue the main character -- it made the book a bit harder to read for pure enjoyment. THe plotting and pacing was better than P&P, though, I thought, with fuller, more real characters. As much as I love Elizabeth Bennet, I do think she is a bit of a Sue. The other half of Jane's Mary.

Mansfield Park... I didn't like. Her writing was excellent, if punctuationally obscure as always, but I hated ALL the characters. Fanny most especially, although Edmund came in at a close second. By the end of the book I felt the most sympathy for Henry. If Fanny had unbent a little, just a little, and considered and examined Henry's feelings rationally, she might have found that he was in fact in love with her, and he was trying to become a better person for her. It seems very possible to me that had Fanny accepted him, he might have turned out to be a respectable person under her daily (overtly) moral influence.

But she couldn't unbend. She had the larger end of the same stick that was stuck up Edmund's bum... yeah.

Edmund I didn't like because he was a pill. A hypocritical pill. His falling in love with Fanny at the end was terribly convenient, as well. Although, I must say, that having that same stick in common would make marital felicity a bit easier. They know each others feelings quite well.

The rest of the family? I actually felt a bit sorry for Maria, as well. Henry really was a cad to her, but then again, if she had used an ounce of sense, she would have seen him for the player that he was.

Julia probably got the best deal. Not only did she get a husband who wanted to improve, but he had a bit of a sense of humor as well. No acting abilities, though.

I could go on, but I won't. Except to say that I think Mrs. Norris was more vile a character than even Madam Defarge, and I think that's saying something. It would have been interesting to see Austen take on revolutionary propaganda like Dickens did.

At this point in my reading I had gained the opinion that Austen didn't think much of mothers. All the women characters who made motherhood their profession were silly, dimwitted or otherwise inferior. That irks me somewhat. That one of the most popular, widely read female authors was actively denigrating a HUGE part of womens' lives (past and present) is... a shame. Yes, I know the times were very different, but Austen seemed (without knowing a bit of the history, or even her biography) to be a forward thinking, rational person. She obviously could put more than two thoughts together without taxing herself in the slightest, and yet she reiterated the men's party line?

Yes, women would inevitably be mothers, but only the women who put their kids into their governesses care so that they could apply themselves to improving their education in rational thought were worth respect. The business of motherhood itself was not worth a rational woman's time. Unless the mother does the respectable thing and dies young. Then she has the redeeming quality of leaving her children motherless, and therefore earns the sentimental vote of a fond memory.

ahem.

Anyway, as for Persuasion, I really enjoyed it. I'm glad I read it after Mansfield Park as it was a nice relief from unlikable characters.

Anne was delightful. She was everything Fanny should have been. Yes, I know that their circumstances were different, but not terribly. The only (crucial) difference was that Anne had a mother's love for the first 11 (?) years of her life, and was raised the entire time in wealth and privilage. Oh, and there was the presence of Mrs. Norris in Fanny's life. The Baronet and Elizabeth's indifference did not equal the malice of Mrs. Norris.

I started reading Persuasion a while ago, but got bored, or I was read-out or something. Maybe I was basing it on the movie which, IMO, is not very good. Not bad, just boring.

I think I'll like the movie a lot more now.

There were an awful lot of convenient plot twists, but, well, I liked Anne enough that I could overlook them. I was really routing for her. She deserved Captain Wentworth, Worthington... Whatshisname, just for being sensible and loving and likeable. He deserved Anne just because he was likable, charming and good. At the end of that story it was all as it should be, and what higher praise can be given to a fairytale of that sort?

I might read Northanger Abbey sometime this week, although without a good background on Gothic lit, I know I won't get most of the jokes.

Ah well. My being a mother doesn't stop me from enjoying P&P or S&S... ;-j

Comments

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Mansfield Park & Northanger Abby are both considered "problem novels." I'd never thought about all the bad mothers in Austen, but I suppose you're right. On the other hand, there are almost always some other redeeming nice relative, like an aunt, on hand to guide the young characters where the mothers could not. (Like the Admiral's wife in Persuasion.) You must remember that Austen was never a mother herself, and that childbearing is not rewarding for everyone who does it, and that married women had very little choice about the matter in Austen's time.

Have you read Weldon's Letters to Alice upon Reading Jane Austen, yet?

I have to say Persuasion is my favorite for the reasons you mention, and because of the plausibility that two nice people, without regard to unhappy situations, and a lengthy span of time, can still end up loving and respecting eachother.

Regarding your objections to Mansfield Park, Fanny's choice not to get with Henry is in fact the more rational choice that would lead to greater happiness. Fanny is right to mistrust Henry's sudden change. Romance's most prolific author Barbara Cartright in saying, "There is only one plot. You need a girl who knows she is underestimated, in love with a difficult, problematical, or wicked hero who recognizes her worth. She will cure him, she is sure, but the story must end with the wedding, before she discovers that no, she will not change him." Mansfield Park recognizes that Fanny will not change Henry, a real mood killer.

Did you read my post on Lessing's Time Bites, which goes on at some length about an essay Lessing wrote on the legacy of humanism in Jane Austen? I hid it for a long time because I was embarrassed I'd gotten so worked up about the whole thing.

http://zalena.livejournal.com/441965.html

[averygoodun.livejournal.com]

Even the mothers who have sense tend to be portrayed as somewhat silly. Granted that most people are somewhat silly, but the sensible heroines never are. One of the reasons I liked Persuasion was because of the lack of truly silly characters. Yes there were charicatures, but they were (for the most part) more subdued than in the other books. All of the characters, with maybe the exception of Anne's sisters, were quite well rounded.

It's obvious that Austen was never a mother. Otherwise she might have written about it slightly differently, even if it hadn't been a rewarding experience. (And the less rewarding it is, the more it shows how difficult a profession it really is, hence more respectable.) The fact that married women had little choice in the matter is to me an argument against Austen's attitude being just or reasonable. Only her time gives her leeway.

As for Fanny's choice... I will say I'm prejudiced because of my beliefs. I believe that if a person wants to change, then with determination and support they can. It seems to me that Henry was sincere in his affection for Fanny. How I read it was that his act was just that at the beginning, but then he fell in love with her and it stopped being an act. He wanted to win her and was willing to change to win her.

Undoubtedly it was a better choice for her happiness not to choose him, seeing as she was (so pathetically) in love with Edmund (reminded me of a stray animal starving for affection, which, really, she was. However, because of that, she would have eventually fallen in love with Henry had he been constant because the affection was a novelty. Another reason I didn't like the book.)

As for your post, that is one of the things that every woman (of sense) should get worked up about! Relationships are serious business, much more serious than most people realize. And just because the financial restraints have been lifted (to a degree, I won't get into society's degredation of women and family through wages here) doesn't make the issue any less serious.

I did choose to marry because of the security it offered, though it was more emotional security than financial. To look at it very cynically, I wanted to protect my emotional investment in G, and I knew he would pay bigger dividends if we married. More romantically speaking, I married him because I knew it would make him happier, and since I do love him, I wanted to make him happy the way he made me happy. I'm still not sure marriage is a good fit for me, though. It is unequal even with the best of men and most selfish of women. *clears throat*

I really do need to expand my literary horizons. I haven't read any Lessing and only a couple of Weldon's. I was saving Letters till after I had read Austen, and by the time I got around to P&P, I had forgotten about it. Ah well. Eventually. Right now I'm busy being a silly mother. ;-)

[kismet0116.livejournal.com]

I love Northanger Abbey. I think it's my second favorite Austen novel after P&P. And, on the mother side of things, Mrs. Moreland (sp?) in Northanger Abbey is a decent, caring and sensible mother of numerous (9 maybe) children.

[averygoodun.livejournal.com]

I've only read the first chapter so far. If it remains as enjoyable throughout, I'll have no problem.

There are a couple of decent mothers in Austen's books, but the majority are not. They, for the most part, are selfish, silly beings easily overcome by flights of fancy. Not all, though. Persuasion had at least one very decent mother.

And Mrs. Whatshername had ten kids, if I remember the intro correctly. Yeesh.

[keladry_lupin]

Still haven't read MP yet (the DVD arrived yesterday, though), but I agree with you about Anne. I finished Persuasion for the first time last night, and I sort of think Captain Wentworth went through an epiphany like Elizabeth Bennet did. Louisa's imbecilic behavior, coupled with Anne's levelheadedness, made it apparent which woman was truly worthy of esteem, and which woman was just plain silly.

[averygoodun.livejournal.com]

My MP DVD arrived today! Whee! I do like the movie quite a lot. Funny, that. I guess because the movie's Fanny is a mix of Fanny and Jane Austen, it makes for a character closer to Anne, so she's more likeable. Edmund is a bit more well rounded as well. But I shouldn't put you off reading MP. The writing is excellent as always, although, now that I think about it, the plot is a little thin. *shrug* I'm just determined not to like that book, I guess! :-D

Definitely there was an epiphany of EB's sort. It makes me want to read P&P through Darcy's eyes.

[keladry_lupin]

That's probably the only legal fanfiction out there, the books I've read from Darcy's point of view or what-comes-after P&P. (That sort of thing.) I have more than one P&P supplement, so to speak: two volumes of Letters from Pemberley and one novel from Darcy's PoV; I forget the title of it.

[averygoodun.livejournal.com]

Have you read The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys? It's Jane Eyre from the wife's POV. Very styized and creepy. I think now that I'm older and have read a few other things from that time period (Rhys's), I'll have to read it again.

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

Austen wasn't attacking motherhood, but the infantlisim of women in general. Women had no power to make decisions about the rearing of their children - that was all up to the father.

[averygoodun.livejournal.com]

The little I know of that time period (very little) I know that women had virtually no rights at all. Another friend reminded me that marrying for love was a revolutionary concept at the time, which I had conveniently forgotten. I really am lacking in knowledge or education where Austen's time is concerned. The smigeon I know is mostly from her books.

Knowing that, I think though Austen might not have been attacking motherhood, she was attacking the women who chose to limit themselves to getting their sense of accomplishments from that role. She probably did see the futility of motherhood, seeing as the men did have all the power in their family, and therefore gave it up as a lost cause, which is a rather silly way of going about things.

As I see it, the way she wrote her characters, she believed that children were better off being raised by their fathers rather than their mothers. Take the Bennets, for example. Mr. Bennet basically handed off the younger girls to their mother (or their own resources, as it turned out), and the results were that Jane and Elizabeth had sense whereas the younger girls didn't.

Mother figures don't count in my equation. All the sensible mother figures who guided the young folk in their parents' absence were childless. Hence her argument that having children equals a loss of sense.

Or something. ;-)

[shiv5468.livejournal.com]

I don't think any of the fathers are held up to be good either. Mr Bennet is a failure and a profligate who fails to provide for his family. The father of the hero in Northanger Abbey is a prat and a pillock... it's much more broadly distributed satire than you think.

I don't think that Austen would have been aware of the possibility of being anything other than a wife and a mother. That was the definition of success, and there would have been people who pitited her for not having achieved it, even if she was a successful novellist. The fact that she got engaged, even if it was for a day, suggests that she felt that deeply.

She was described by her contemporaries as a pretty, affected, husband-hunting butterfly.

[averygoodun.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do recognize that! Honest I do! Everyone, but everyone is silly at one point in time, including the great Elizabeth Bennet. But even with Mr. Bennet as their parent, Lizzy and Jane still end up better off. Of course, then there's the Bertrams, none of whom benefitted from their father's influence. And then in Persuasion... No, fathers don't get a good rap. No one does, really.

I do recognize the satire of the whole. I just think her bitterness about not being successful on the husband/motherhood front crept into her novels. Or, maybe, just maybe, I'm being overly sensitive to the issue. ;-D