My youngest sister is doing a Jane Austen study for her senior year of high school, so my mother, both my sisters and I have seized the opportunity to all read the books together and hold our own discussion group. So far we are through Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion, and have had a number of fantastic deep discussions on them over afternoon tea.
We have learned, among other things, that when you drink tea out of teacups instead of mugs (and accompanied by real British biscuits), you can easily consume four or five cups almost without being aware that you’ve done it (not to mention consuming the whole box of biscuits).
But to be serious. I think the defining mark of a “great” book is that you can take something fresh away from it every time you re-read it. The book itself doesn’t change, but it has enough depth that when you return to it at different stages of your life, a different aspect of it makes an impression on you each time. Re-reading Jane Austen now, what strikes me most strongly is how much her books are about relationships between people. And not just romantic relationships, either. They explore the dynamics of close-knit families and fractured, distant ones; interactions with friends, neighbors, and difficult relatives, not to mention potential suitors. They highlight the nature of true friendship versus false, and the value of sincerity and honesty as opposed to hypocrisy; the true consideration involved in good manners; and—perhaps more by example than by intention—how propriety and respect for convention carried to extremes, however well-intentioned, can result in a lack of openness that is harmful to relationships.
And all this led me to a further thought. I have a feeling that, ironically, the modern-day popularity of all things Austen has actually obscured the very things that are best about her novels. While I’m very fond of several Austen film adaptations, they’re best as a supplement or companion to the books, not a replacement for them. (The 1995 version of Persuasion, for instance, while a lovely film, handles some subplots in a way that would be utterly confusing to someone who didn’t already have a knowledge of the book’s plot.) When you spend too much time in the atmosphere of Austen adaptations and mugs and coloring-books and t-shirts and paper dolls, you unconsciously get sucked into thinking of her in terms of balls and bonnets and bits of ivory—so that when you simply sit down and open one of the novels, it actually surprises you how strongly and forthrightly her characters think and speak on questions of right and wrong.
So if you want to fully appreciate Jane Austen, don’t just let the movies and the quotations on mugs and prints speak for her. Just sit down and open one of her books and read it. And if you have a cup of tea and a biscuit at hand and a good friend to discuss it with afterwards, so much the better.
photo by myself
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