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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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Date: 2005-02-04 09:33 am (UTC)I love Austen for her cultural precision, but what also surprises me is how culturally transportable she is. Wuthering Heights is transportable, but because it uses broad juxtapositions (Wuthering Heights/Thrushcross Grange). Things like P&P and Emma are so concerned with miniutiae, and express miniutiae so well, and yet - they exist precisely on the cusp of the moment for me, even as an early 21st century reader.
In a tutorial on Austen once a girl complained that she was having trouble reading her 'Because all the gossip was a bit too much to take'. Very pretentious, I thought, but it also made me realise - of everything I've read, Austen best describes certain parts of my life, of what it is like to be a young gay guy in a country town in Australia at the beginning of the 21st century.
I think I will re-read her again (or read something of hers I haven't encountered yet for the first time) soon, now that I won't be worrying about dealing with it academically - it will be relaxing.
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Date: 2005-02-04 10:28 am (UTC)I think Austen has universal truth. Being young and unsure of yourself feels the same in any culture.
Like you I can so identify with her heroines- especially (perhaps) poor, mousey, downtrodden Fanny in Mansfield Park.
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Date: 2005-02-04 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-04 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-05 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-05 06:27 am (UTC)The one I've not been able to get my hands on is Persuasion. I saw a production of it on A&E, I think...with Ciaran Hinds.