The Clam Rampant

19 Responses to “Hm.”

1. # Jeanon 11 Sep 2008 at 3:30 pm

   Persuasion is my favourite. For one thing, it has the oldest heroine. For another, it deals with aquiring wisdom. Enjoy!

2. # Kiton 11 Sep 2008 at 9:01 pm

   You will LOVE Persuasion! Serious Austenistas call that her best (and possibly most autobiographical) work of all. Let me know what you think!

   (The Amanda Root/Ciaran Hinds movie adaptation is great, too.)

3. # Jillon 11 Sep 2008 at 10:49 pm

   Persuasion is actually my favorite of all of Jane Austen’s novels. It is a great read!
   I also agree that the BBC movie adaptation with Amanda Root is marvelous. Sophie Thompson (Emma Thompson’s sister) plays Anne Elliot’s sister Mary - it’s worth watching just to see her in this role. She’s just wonderful.

4. # Kasiaon 11 Sep 2008 at 10:49 pm

   Ooh, now I’m going to have to place an Amazon order…may as well get Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park while I’m at it…

   I just have trouble believing I could love any book more than Pride and Prejudice, but with such high praise as you two have given it, I am going to have to give it a shot!

5. # Kasiaon 11 Sep 2008 at 10:51 pm

   Oops, you THREE - we cross-posted, Jill!

6. # Kiton 12 Sep 2008 at 10:21 am

   P&P is and always will be my sentimental favorite - I married my Mr. Darcy (except for the rich-with-a-large-estate part…sigh…), but Anne is a more mature, “everywoman” sort that the over-25 set can appreciate.

7. # The Canuckon 12 Sep 2008 at 10:40 am

   Jill,

   Katie compared me to Mr. Darcy a week or two ago (I’m pretty sure it was Mr. Darcy - honey, am I right?). Of course, without the wealth and large estate …

8. # Kasiaon 12 Sep 2008 at 10:51 am

   It was Mr. Darcy, sweetie, but then I found myself waffling about how you were like him in some respects but so different in others (not just the wealth!). Upon re-reading Sense and Sensibility, I’m inclined to say you’re more like Edward Ferrars: shy, sensitive, sweet, a little indecisive, but rock-solid on your word once you’ve given it (even when it’s very inconvenient for you to keep it).

9. # djrakowskion 12 Sep 2008 at 1:05 pm

   I believe I read Northanger Abbey, either in my senior year of high school or an introductory literature class at MSU. And I can’t remember even the slightest detail about it, other than the fact that I wanted it to end almost the second it began. It was a ponderous read, much like Hardy’s Return of the Native (and that opinion on Hardy was shared by everyone in my 10th grade honors English class).

10. # Kasiaon 12 Sep 2008 at 1:06 pm

    DJ, I shared that view of Return of the Native. I absolutely HATED that book.

    Have you read any other Austen?

11. # djrakowskion 12 Sep 2008 at 1:41 pm

    I’ve not been able to force myself to read any more Austen. Aside from the negative experience of reading Northanger Abbey, it’s always struck me as a sophisticated form of chick-lit (forgive me if that’s an insulting term).

    One of my co-workers is a rather ordinary middle-aged woman. She’s from working-class roots, served in this nation’s military (something for which I’ve not thanked her enough), and earned a vocational education in general office/secretarial skills. She’s also a divorced mother of one adult son. Now why do I mention all of this? She has absolutely no ability to relate to the characters in Austen’s novels, whom she views as spoiled elitists who spend their lives pining and scheming for a socially-acceptable man of means. And I pretty much share her view - I simply can’t relate to these types of stories.

12. # djrakowskion 12 Sep 2008 at 1:43 pm

    oops… just caught a rather embarrassing grammatical mistake. I should’ve written:

    She has absolutely no ability to relate to the characters in Austen’s novels, whom she views as spoiled elitists who spend their lives pining and scheming for socially-acceptable men of means.

13. # Kasiaon 12 Sep 2008 at 2:38 pm

    Well, they ARE in some ways chick-lit. They’re also quite an insightful look into Georgian English society, which wasn’t exactly liberating for women of any social stratum.

    With the caveat that I am decidedly middle-class and probably quite spoiled…

    One of the things I love so much about P&P, particularly, is how sharply Austen lampoons some of the social norms of her day. And one of the reasons she does so is that Austen herself was painfully aware that in the society she lived in, marriage was really the only “respectable” path for a woman to take, and as it wasn’t “respectable” for upper-class women to work, they had to be somewhat mercenary about their choice or else depend totally on the generosity of relatives and friends. It was an awkward way to live.

    But Austen herself was a born romantic who couldn’t bear the thought of marrying for security - she only wanted to marry for love (and as it turned out, never did marry); and her disapproval of the options available to women definitely shines through.

    That all said…I can respect your opinion and your co-worker’s both. I just still love the stories.

14. # Jillon 12 Sep 2008 at 2:48 pm

    Hmmm…
    I’ve been thinking about the Mr. Darcy thing, Canuck. I can see some of him in you actually, but also some of Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey.

15. # Joseph Waldmanon 14 Sep 2008 at 10:47 pm

    *shudder* Jane Austen . . .

    Read you some Benjamin Disraeli, woman.

    JW, who resents his middle name

16. # Kasiaon 15 Sep 2008 at 8:38 am

    JW, just because your mother likes Jane Austen doesn’t automatically make her a bad writer. And just because she had the poor judgment to name you after Austen likewise doesn’t make her a bad writer.

    I’ll put Disraeli onto the list, right after Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park…

17. # Joseph Waldmanon 15 Sep 2008 at 5:20 pm

    Every literate person is allowed one or two animosities. Austen is mine.

    Posit that Lord Beaconsfield actually changed the world, by going into politix and engaging his fellow man, rather than wafting away in the country like so many other Victorian nitwits.

18. # Kasiaon 15 Sep 2008 at 7:53 pm

    You’re certainly allowed your animosity. I just think it’s ill-founded. I have my own animosities toward a few writers, which you would be perfectly free to think ill-founded or ill-judged.

    Take Dickens, for instance. Here was a man who came up with perfectly good stories, and then made them at least four times longer than they needed to be. And not even by way of excessive character development! - simply by restating the same thing over and over and over again. How many ways did he say that Marley was dead at the opening of A Christmas Carol?

    Anyway. I do trust that, at least, you will allow that Jane Austen engaged her fellow man (well, probably mostly her fellow woman) to the best of her ability, considering the limitations on women of small means in Georgian society. No way she could have, say, gone into politics - she didn’t even have the right to vote.

19. # Jenn in Moon 17 Sep 2008 at 11:39 pm

    *sigh*

    Just the words “Pride and Prejudice” leave me feeling instantly relaxed. I don’t know if I have gone without sighing at the mentioning of anything Austen for a long time now. Funny, how it can be such an automatic reaction.

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