Defending Jane Austen

The stars are aligning too much for me to ignore them any more. I'm on a Jane Austen kick and I can't help it.

I know, I know. Not exactly who you think of first when you hear the word "adventure," but I'm going to make a case for her and you tell me how I did.

I should start this by saying that it took me two times to get through the novel Pride and Prejudice and I pretty much gave up the idea of reading any more Austen once I finished. My not liking it says more about me and my need for action than it does about Austen's talent as a writer, but it wasn't to my taste. I liked the story (or rather the point of the story), but it was so luxuriously paced that I was impatient for something to happen the whole time. Something finally does happen; Austen just takes her time in getting there.

That said, I love Jane Austen movies. I've always liked period films, so in the movies I'm not as antsy during the slow times. I can distract myself with the acting and the sets and just immersing myself in that world with its huge mansions, horse-drawn carriages, and leisurely lifestyles. I can take it all in and appreciate Austen's themes, but I can do it in a two-hour commitment rather than a two-month one (I'm a slow reader).

There are a few reasons she's on my radar lately. First is Masterpiece Classic's "Complete Jane Austen" series. It's introduced me to Persuasion and Northanger Abbey and refamiliarized me with Mansfield Park, which I'd previously seen in this version. Persuasion was good, Northanger Abbey was Awesome, and though I didn't like Masterpiece's version of Mansfield Park as well as the 1999 movie, it did star Billie Piper as Fanny.

I'm looking forward to seeing how they do with Sense and Sensibility, though I can't imagine its not suffering by the absence of Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, and Alan Rickman. And of course there's Pride and Prejudice, but I don't care how good everyone says the Colin Firth version is, I wish it had Keira Knightley in it. Emma, based on my memory of the Gwyneth Paltrow version, is okay, but I'm sure to like it infinitely better starring Kate Beckinsale.

Last night my wife and I watched Masterpiece's Austen biopic Miss Austen Regrets. I've never read a biography of Jane Austen, but I do know a little about her life from Stephanie Barron's Jane Austen Mysteries and I was disappointed. Not because of any historical inaccuracies, because Lord knows Barron takes liberties with Austen's life, but because it takes a woman I've come to admire for her imagination and good-natured non-conformity and it portrays her as a selfish, greedy, bitter person.

It's not the only disappointment I've had with the Masterpiece presentation. I love Gillian Anderson, but as little as I know about Austen I have questions for whomever's writing Anderson's introductions to the episodes. She basically claimed that Austen created Mansfield Park's Mary Crawford as a Mary Sue character. She also said that Austen wrote Northanger Abbey as an homage out of her fondness for gothic romances. My understanding is that Austen thought they were silly and wrote Northanger Abbey as a parody. The Masterpiece version certainly comes off that way.

Northanger Abbey relates to the next reason Austen's been on my mind lately. Even if she didn't like gothic romances, they have a lot of cool elements: old castles, haunted rooms, dark villains, beautiful girls, and swashbuckling heroes. Like Austen, they can get long and tedious though. It took me more than a year to make it through The Mysteries of Udolpho and that was only through sheer stubborness. I've been reading Graphic Classics, Volume 14: Gothic Classics this week though, which includes a comics adaptation of Udolpho as well as Northanger Abbey. Having just seen Northanger Abbey on TV, I'm excited to get to that part of Gothic Classics.

Adding to my Austen pile, The Jane Austen Book Club just came out on DVD and while I'm not excited to see it, I'm curious about it. I'm far more eager to see Becoming Jane, which coincidentally(?) comes out next week. I'm hoping I'll like that one better than Miss Austen Regrets, which is all about the end of Austen's life. Becoming covers the beginning, which is what I'm more familiar with thanks to Stephanie Barron.

And all this is to say that I'm planning on picking up Barron's series again this year. I left off at The Prisoner of Wool House and she's written at least three more since then.

But none of that justifies my connecting Austen with the subject of this blog.

Last night, my wife -- pleased that she's married to the kind of guy who'll watch Jane Austen movies with her -- asked me what the attraction was for me. I had to think about it for a bit, but I finally decided that it has to do with Austen's non-conformity. She and her characters lived in such a formal, regimented society with all its politeness and manners and not really getting to do what you want or say what you think. But she (and her characters) always bucked the system and managed to find happiness in it. In a time where marriages are based on social climbing, Austen's characters find love. In a culture where snottiness and stupidity is perfectly acceptable as long as you have money, Austen's heroines and heroes are kind, funny, and smart. They reject their world and create new ones in its place. In a word: they're adventurous.

Yes, yes, I know it still makes me a girl. It's not sword-fighting and monster-hunting, but it works for me.

Although, in the Stephanie Barron books there is sword-fighting. And murder and pirates and spies. So there.