MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

DMB · 06-10-2011, 02:45 AM

I first read P&P at the age of 12 at school. We weren't given any guidance on it and were merely asked to write our impressions. At that time I had no real sense of historical perspective and anyway didn't know when P&P was written. I wrote a serious appraisal that was quite appreciative but complained about the author;s "old-fashioned" attachment to carriages rather than cars. Mind you, that wasn't all that long after WW2, when shortage of petrol had driven many civilians in England to revert to horse-drawn vehicles.

About 3 years later I had matured quite a lot and was studying Emma for A-level English. I didn't at that time like Emma all that much, but at least I understood a lot more about the social background and could appreciate some of the subtleties of Austen's writing. I also read Northanger Abbey, which I greatly enjoyed, having also come across The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho, so that I could enjoy the satire. During my teens I read and reread Austen and my respect for her increased, although at that time I found Mansfield Park disappointing. I loved characters such as Mrs Norris, Mr Price and Mr Rushworth, but I did so want Fanny to marry Henry Crawford and Edmund to marry Mary. Although I felt great sympathy for Fanny in her difficult situation, I thought that Fanny and Edmund were a couple of prigs who needed the right partners to lighten them up instead of getting one another and thereby reinforcing their less admirable qualities.

As a teenager, I also felt that Anne Elliott in Persuasion had been very weedy in giving in to the forces that separated her from Captain Wentworth.

Now I am much older, however, I have much more understanding of how very difficult things were for women at the time when Austen was writing. After all, this was a time when a married woman had no legal existence: "Husband and wife are one person, and that person is the husband". A married woman had no property of her own. Men could legally beat their wives. A divorced woman was permanently disgraced and banished from polite society (like Maria Rushworth) and she had no right to even see her children. Among the lower classes women were even bought and sold, as in the famous scene in The Mayor of Casterbridge. There were no proper careers open to women apart from the servitude of being a governess, and you only have to read the Brontes to realise how tough that could be.

So Austen's novels are not the frothy romances they are sometimes taken to be by readers who lack the historical perspective. They are about desperate women struggling to survive and retain integrity in a hostile world.

06-10-2011, 02:45 AM	#25
DMB Old Git Posts: 958 Karma: 1840790 Join Date: Aug 2010 Location: Switzerland (mostly) Device: Two kindle PWs wifi, kindle fire, iPad3 wifi	I first read P&P at the age of 12 at school. We weren't given any guidance on it and were merely asked to write our impressions. At that time I had no real sense of historical perspective and anyway didn't know when P&P was written. I wrote a serious appraisal that was quite appreciative but complained about the author;s "old-fashioned" attachment to carriages rather than cars. Mind you, that wasn't all that long after WW2, when shortage of petrol had driven many civilians in England to revert to horse-drawn vehicles. About 3 years later I had matured quite a lot and was studying Emma for A-level English. I didn't at that time like Emma all that much, but at least I understood a lot more about the social background and could appreciate some of the subtleties of Austen's writing. I also read Northanger Abbey, which I greatly enjoyed, having also come across The Castle of Otranto and The Mysteries of Udolpho, so that I could enjoy the satire. During my teens I read and reread Austen and my respect for her increased, although at that time I found Mansfield Park disappointing. I loved characters such as Mrs Norris, Mr Price and Mr Rushworth, but I did so want Fanny to marry Henry Crawford and Edmund to marry Mary. Although I felt great sympathy for Fanny in her difficult situation, I thought that Fanny and Edmund were a couple of prigs who needed the right partners to lighten them up instead of getting one another and thereby reinforcing their less admirable qualities. As a teenager, I also felt that Anne Elliott in Persuasion had been very weedy in giving in to the forces that separated her from Captain Wentworth. Now I am much older, however, I have much more understanding of how very difficult things were for women at the time when Austen was writing. After all, this was a time when a married woman had no legal existence: "Husband and wife are one person, and that person is the husband". A married woman had no property of her own. Men could legally beat their wives. A divorced woman was permanently disgraced and banished from polite society (like Maria Rushworth) and she had no right to even see her children. Among the lower classes women were even bought and sold, as in the famous scene in The Mayor of Casterbridge. There were no proper careers open to women apart from the servitude of being a governess, and you only have to read the Brontes to realise how tough that could be. So Austen's novels are not the frothy romances they are sometimes taken to be by readers who lack the historical perspective. They are about desperate women struggling to survive and retain integrity in a hostile world.