Why Read Jane Austen?
I’m indulging in all things Jane Austen in this 250th anniversary of her birth. Why read her?
Jane Austen was a keen observer of the absurdities of human interaction. That’s what makes her books humorous. She must have met her fair share of buffoons, snobs, blockheads and dullards to portray them so accurately in her stories. But she didn’t need to label them for her readers. Her dialogue gave such life to her characters that you can imagine being in the room watching these people with Elizabeth Bennet and sharing the same thoughts on them as she did. Once you’ve read about Lady Catherine de Bourgh in PRIDE AND PREJUDICE you cannot forgot her. These few lines sum her arrogance perfectly: “There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”
The fact that Jane Austen wrote the books more than two hundred years ago and they are still beloved today show that people don’t change much. We readers can recognize someone we know in her panoply of characters. They are an accurate study of human nature. Perhaps if more people read her books, they’d be less gullible and able to recognize when people are not all they pretend to be.
On a more serious note, I think it’s good for people to read these books to see how far women have come in their choices, and how we should hold on to what we have. Elizabeth’s dear friend Charlotte Lucas illustrates this so perfectly when she accepts the proposal of perhaps the most ridiculous man who ever graced the pages of a novel, Mr. Collins. “Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only provision for well-educated young women of small fortune.” We’re also told her brothers are relieved she won’t die an old maid, because they’d be expected to be responsible for her keep if she didn’t marry.
But all this is not to downplay the romance in it. We want Elizabeth and her sisters to have a happy life, and watching the slow buildup of a romance in a time when so much couldn’t be said aloud is a pleasure of anticipation. That’s why avid fans of Jane Austen reread her books. It’s like listening to a symphony over and over. You don’t get tired of it.
