Let us now praise karen, for she recommended this book. Realistic Jane Austen was a perfect description. Delightfully surprised by the book. Folded more than my fair share of page corners.
My middle sister was excused from this month's selection because
1. tiny print
2. French phrases
3. no smut
4. she had a baby
My youngest sister liked the book, but not as much as Jane Austen. "Jane Austen is more polite and has more dialogue"
And, as for me, I liked the book-liked that Alice was plain, smart, and logical. She didn't believe in God, she managed to make a living from writing, and she knew how to keep a secret when one of her friends took off one too many petticoats, or wrappers, or liners, or whatever the heck it was under there. And, big one, she didn't happen to end up with the richest man that every gal wanted. Take that, Jane!
"Alice watched the ceremony of Mass, and the falseness of it jarred upon her terribly. The mumbled Latin, the by-play with the wine and water, the mumming of the uplifted hands...passing by, without scorn, the belief that the white wafer the priest held above his head, in this lonely Irish chapel, was the Creator of the twenty millions of suns in the Milky Way....then Alice felt, more calmly than she had ever done before, that what she was now witnessing was but the dust of an old-world faith, the sweeping away of which had only been delayed because a man is idle, and 'loves to lie abed in the unclean straw of his intellectual habits.'"
"Alice! How can you talk so? Are you not afraid that something awful might happen to you for talking of the Creator of all things in that way?"
"Why should I be afraid, and why should that Being, if he exists, be angry with me for my sincerity? If he is all-powerful, it rests with Himself to make me believe."
This book had the dresses, the balls, but also included the descriptions of the small, dirty, and bedraggled unfortunates who could only press their faces against the thin panes of glass that divided them from the privileged world alight with satin and candlelight.
"I do not know that I found the world so very different from what I expected to find it. Of course there is evil- and a great deal of evil; and if you will fix your eyes upon it, and brood over it, of course life seems to you only a black and hideous thing; but there is much good-yes, there is good even in things evil; and if we only think of the goodness we become happier even if we do not become better; and I cannot but think that the best and the most feasible mode of life is to try to live up to the ordinary and simple laws of nature of which we are but a part."
Well said, Alice. And Mr. Darcy has nothing on your sensible, kind, and hard working man.