I came to real admiration of Jane Austen later, rather than sooner, in life. In high school I found her books boring, irrelevant, and impenetrable, and in college I was a Chaucer-and-Shakespeare kind of English major along with getting into modernists like Mary Robison and Raymond Carver, so I really skimmed over the Georgian and Regency periods of English literature.
As was true for many women in the 1990s, it was the seminal A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, along with the lovely film version of Persuasion that came out the same year, which encouraged me to start reading Austen again.
As was true for many women in the 1990s, it was the seminal A&E version of Pride and Prejudice, along with the lovely film version of Persuasion that came out the same year, which encouraged me to start reading Austen again.
I was a
lot more comfortable with the slightly archaic language by then, and I was
pleasantly surprised by Austen’s wit and cleverness. Her six novels are, on one
level, what we might think of as fairly conventional love stories, but as
Austen fans know well, they’re also deeply concerned with an understanding of
the self, the realities of money and class, and the vagaries (both funny and
troubling) of social interaction.
After
rediscovering Austen’s works, I got really curious about her, and launched into a binge-read of Austen biographies. This was
even more eye-opening. And my enjoyment of her work deepened into a powerful
sense of admiration.
