Dianna read and liked Dan's review of Baudolino:

""Sometimes, when what we've sought is almost within our grasp, we make our faith a lie so that we don't have to give up our quest by achieving its goal."

When I finished Thomas Pynchon's V. last month, the sentence above was my e...more "Sometimes, when what we've sought is almost within our grasp, we make our faith a lie so that we don't have to give up our quest by achieving its goal."

When I finished Thomas Pynchon's V. last month, the sentence above was my entire review of it because I felt that was the most important thing I took away from that reading of the book. As I read V. I sensed it possessed a similarity of "aura" with Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Toward the end of Baudolino I recieved V.'s message again from a different perspective. Here the achievement of a goal precipitated the loss of the spirit, drive, and fellowship that were the quest. Most of the time, the journey is far more important than the destination and I love the way books use my heart and mind to talk to each other along my journey. (less) "

Dianna read and liked Kirstie's review of Pride and Prejudice:

"I've been thinking about this one now and then since I read it, First, I thought back to it while reading Nafisi's novel Reading Lolita in Tehran as it is one of the Western books put on trial by the class. Most recently, I considered it while readi...more I've been thinking about this one now and then since I read it, First, I thought back to it while reading Nafisi's novel Reading Lolita in Tehran as it is one of the Western books put on trial by the class. Most recently, I considered it while reading Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own in which she speaks of early female writers.

I had a Major British Writers teacher at university who was easy for me to like immensely. He lived in a world where television was an anathema and where he watched films like Naked and read everything from Coleridge to Irvine Welsh. His one true flaw? He also loved Jane Austen. Over the course of our class, he tried in earnest to get me to realize that Austen was a feminist writer. I disagree wholeheartedly and the only reason why this gets two stars from me is because it was written during a time when it was difficult for women to write especially publicly. I also think that Jane was a fairly keen observer of the high society that was taking place and if I enjoyed frivolous poetry that tends to go nowhere, I'd have a much higher appreciation for the writing of Marcel Proust. Really, it's such a shame Marcel Proust was born a century later and wasn't interested in women anyhow. He and Jane could have made the most boring couple in human history.

One thing I want to be considered here and this is where my main justification lies has to do with women in relation to men. Women have always been seen in terms of this alone. That's why the idea of feminism is still considered rather radical today. The idea of woman as a separate identity existing in a way which she has no consideration for men in terms of how it affects her actions and thoughts is rare. John Berger explores this in (I think) his novel G about the poet Goethe and Woolf explores the idea in A Room of One's Own. In Virginia Woolf, we have some examples of the female entity as separate from the male. None can be found in any Austen I am familiar with. Instead, every function of the female is intended to ensnare a male. While it's true that the female protagonist shows some evidence early in the book of being able to function independently, it all predictably falls apart at the end, doesn't it? And what is the true goal of it all? Well, class rank, fortune, and incredibly shallow views of others. I think Jane Austen is somewhat evil actually because she's perpetuated the subconsciousness of thousands of women that these things (and men) matter more than their own identities. I'd even go so far as to say that they perpetuate the idea that these exact things are what identity is instead of the thought processes, actions, and personal history that may be separate from all of this.


True, Austen was a feminist by being a writer in her time period but I would not describe any of her writing as feminist and would instead label them harmful to humanity in subtle ways of course. If you want to read a better example of early female literature that had more of a feminist tone, I'd suggest Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

(less) "