First of all, in follow up to my rather angsty post from rather (ahem) a while ago, yes, in fact, I have now moved to San Francisco and have been living here yea so many months. If you will permit a gush: it is absolutely lovely. In addition to getting to pretend that you are like Jane Eyre walking out into a bracing onslaught of summer fog every day upon leaving the office (not great for the bangs, but one must compromise), I also feel that I have reached the closest degree that I perhaps ever shall in my life of resembling the heroine of a romantic comedy--or romcom, as my brother Jason, who knows such things, calls them. I submit the following evidence: I am a twenty-something educated woman. I work in editorial (I am delighted to conclude that nearly all romcom heroines work in either newspaper, magazine, or book publishing--consider your favorite films, and prepare to be amazed). I am fairly uptight, another key characteristic to many of these women (I'd like to think charmingly uptight, but won't push it). Clearly nothing is left but for me to start dressing in suspiciously unaffordable designer clothing, get put on a ludicrous writing assignment or get my stiletto stuck in a steam grate, and prepare to be swept off my feet by the man of my dreams who I don't actually like that much at first but ends up irresistably stealing me from my current boyfriend anyways meanwhile all of the subplots with my quirky friends wrap up in similarly satisfactory manner. Not that I've been, you know, thinking about this too much.Ah, the delights and delusions of romance! Which brings me back to perhaps my favorite, dare I say, pioneers of the genre: Miss Jane Austen.
My dear friend Killeen, fellow English major now staggering through the world at large, invited me, roughly a year ago, to join a Jane Austen book club. Who could refuse such an offer? Someone made of stronger stuff than I. It was readily accepted, and six novels and six meetings later, I now delight in telling people that I have read the complete works of Jane Austen. In fact, I slip it into conversation whenever I can. I dare say it feels so good that I may start reading the complete works of other authors, so I can start saying that, too.
Despite feeling a bit like my mother (member of two book clubs), the experience on the whole was pretty top notch. Suffering from some withdrawal from the classroom, it was a delight to whip out the critical editions, start perusing introductions and footnotes, and underline and annotate away. Moreover, the novels themselves are such a pleasure--there is no other word for it--that left me, for one, audibly gasping, giggling, and in general severely annoying my boyfriend, who always wanted to know what had happened and was inevitably disappointed with the results.
"Mr. Elton is 'violently making love to her' in the carriage! Oh my god oh my god oh my god!!"
"Wait--what? I thought they couldn't do that in these books."
"No, no! Don't be an idiot. He picked up Emma's hand and told her that he is madly in love with her!"
"He just picked up her hand?"
And so on.
We chose to take the roughly chronological approach, meaning we began with Northanger Abbey, and proceeded with Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and finally Persuasion. Northanger reads a bit young, although still charming. By S & S, I was sure it had to be my favorite. By P & P, I knew that I had been a complete dunce and clearly this was my favorite. I was a bit shocked to find that my club members preferred Persuasion to Emma (seriously, no contest in my mind), but we were all in accord when it came to Elizabeth Bennet clearly being the most easily imagined as one's best friend, and the outrageously arrogant Darcy reigned among our hearts. Personally, I place the wise Mr. Knightley second.
Reading (and becoming completely entranced with) Austen, I find myself wishing for the same delicacies today, where crossing a room can be a statement, visiting or not visiting a certain person at a certain time a huge affront or unanswerable kindness, and a short note containing but a few words can mean the absolute world. Austen's characters are so measured in what they do and what they speak; every word and phrase and gesture is important. It is a drama of the details, and when I sometimes think about what little care people seem to put into the emails that they write, and in general our comportment towards others, nowadays, it makes me wonder if Austen would share my occasional frustrations. What would Austen think of my friends who don't return phone calls, or make themselves presumptuously difficult over invitations, hm? Her relentless harping on faults of character gives us license to indulge in a critical eye ourselves, although, to be fair, her fascination with improvements of character probably ought to keep us a bit in check, as well. I favor the former over the latter.
Ah, but the pleasures of novel reading! All of these details culminate in such sighs and moans and ecstasy, that if you are one to subscribe to the drama of blushes and loaded glances across drawing rooms, it is a potent combination indeed. There is an unapologetic commitment to pleasure, that I adore in Sense and Sensibility in particular--in the way that Marianne Dashwood cannot be persuaded to stop going on long, moody walks in bad weather, or in my favorite speech performed by the scandalous Mr. Willoughby: "I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Colonel Brandon: he has threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine, he has found fault with the hanging of my curricle, and I cannot persuade him to buy my brown mare." [Sense and Sensibility, p. 53, Penguin Classics 1995]
It is gripping, swoon-worthy stuff, and I hang on every word of Miss Elizabeth Bennet's, as she really lets Darcy have it following his outrageously offensive (first) proposal of marriage:
"From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry." [Pride and Prejudice, p. 188, Peguin Classics 1996]
How wrong she is! How right she is! And then Darcy continues to be awful but you love it and he leaves and she's torn and I crumple into a fit of agony and delight upon the floor.
My dear Miss Austen--forgive us our vulgarities, our indelicacies, our live-in boyfriends. Because we are, ever faithfully,
Yours,
Becky Duffett
Terminal Romantic and Fool in Love
