I have just finished reading my very first ever Jane Austen novel.
Shocking, isn’t it? I, an English major, escaped my undergraduate studies without ever once reading anything by Jane Austen. No one even Mentioned her during my course of study at Duke, and I am sure that my modernist tendencies might have pushed her even farther into the peripheries of my reading if it hadn’t been for my friends.
And A&E, of course.
Yes, it was my dear friend Karen who introduced me to A&E’s engrossing production of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. We watched it ten years ago this summer, having just finished our second year of teaching together. I was pregnant Beyond All Reason, and a hot North Carolina summer just begs for air conditioning and cold beverages and hours of Mr. Darcy’s smoldering looks coming at one from across the drawing room.
Still, I did not read the book.
A few years later, my dear Annie presented me with the entire A&E production on video and I watched it. And watched it. And watched it Again.
No reading, however.
Of course, I was encouraged to read. Tworivers said I Absolutely Must read Jane Austen. My dear Annie bought me several Jane Austen books. But I was Up To My Ears in reading for grad school, and Ms. Austen never, it must be said, was terribly aggressive.
And then, this past month, at the last meeting of the Sixty-Six Dogs book club, I– verily, I– proposed that we read Jane Austen together. It wasn’t premeditated. It wasn’t a plan. I just suddenly Really Wanted To. I had had enough of modernism, I thought. I wanted to read something on that list we all have. You know the one I mean: Books I Ought To Read.
“Let’s read Emma!” I said. And they said “Yes.”
And so I have. And I have Really Really enjoyed it. I will admit to you frankly here that there is much about Miss Woodhouse that I find familiar. Despite the fact that she and I do not share match-making tendencies, I found much of her reflection, her pride, and her error to be… shall we say… Close To Home.
As the Sixty-Six Dogs are meeting on Thursday, I will not go into detail now on my reaction to the book. No. I thought instead that I’d quote Ms. Austen in some of her more revelatory moments, in some of those moments which found me feeling right at home.
On silliness: “‘I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.'”
On boredom: “A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see that nothing does not answer.”
On music: “‘What felicity it is to hear a tune again which has made one happy!'”
On dancing: “It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;– but when a beginning is made– when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt– it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.”
On good-byes: “‘Of all horrid things, leave-taking is the worst.'”
On wisdom: “‘I would much rather have been merry than wise.”
On sin: “Oh! my sins, my sins! I deserve to be under a continual blush all the rest of my life!”
On guilt: “The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart!– she sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery– in every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly; that she had been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree; that she had been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying; that she was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of her wretchedness.”
On gratitude: “‘Oh! my dear sir, as my mother says, our friends are only too good to us. If ever there were people who, without having great wealth themselves, had every thing they could wish for, I am sure it is us.'”
