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poliphiloI'm re-reading Pride and Prejudice. It's been a long long time. And my perceptions had become terribly distorted.
Austen is deceptive. She'll write these seemingly naive sentences and you'll think how charming, how quaint, how just like Daisy Ashford and then right at the end there'll be a little flick, like the stab of a scorpion's tail. One of the things the dramatizations tend to miss is that these people of hers are all young and inexperienced- even Darcy. His aloofness is less to do with him being Lord Byron and more because he's awkward and earnest and unsure of himself.
I'd like to see P & P done with really young actors. Kids in their late teens and early 20s. I know the characters are supposed to be older than that, but I
think the rules of early 19th century polite society were designed to delay maturity, so that a 28 year old woman or man in Austenland is no smarter than an 18 year old now.
I love the purity of her style. Short sentences, plain words. An 18th century
style- and vastly preferable to that of any English fiction writer for the next 100 years or more.
Austen is deceptive. She'll write these seemingly naive sentences and you'll think how charming, how quaint, how just like Daisy Ashford and then right at the end there'll be a little flick, like the stab of a scorpion's tail. One of the things the dramatizations tend to miss is that these people of hers are all young and inexperienced- even Darcy. His aloofness is less to do with him being Lord Byron and more because he's awkward and earnest and unsure of himself.
I'd like to see P & P done with really young actors. Kids in their late teens and early 20s. I know the characters are supposed to be older than that, but I
think the rules of early 19th century polite society were designed to delay maturity, so that a 28 year old woman or man in Austenland is no smarter than an 18 year old now.
I love the purity of her style. Short sentences, plain words. An 18th century
style- and vastly preferable to that of any English fiction writer for the next 100 years or more.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 08:07 am (UTC)And likable characters, and I even liked the way she wrote, but--perhaps because I have spent my life trying to not to be impatient--her endless chases after an elusive (and ultimately anticlimatic) truth got me wound up tight!
P&P it is: a shiny new paperback. This afternoon. Just right for carrying around while I walk in the park (it will be 55 and sunny today!)
And Holzer to bed with me, to tell me ghost stories until I'm sleepy.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 08:19 am (UTC)And we can discuss Elizabeth and Darcy
And the wisdom of allowing impressionable young ladies to consort with officers.
I should enjoy that.