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Originally Posted by issybird
I think there are a lot of apples and oranges as well as kiwis and kumquats in all this. One’s life is going to jog along exactly the same without Ellery Queen (whom I personally can enjoy) or even Rex Stout (ditto), but not knowing Austen would be a loss. Or Shakespeare, because of Merchant of Venice and Taming of the Shrew. On the other hand, you can’t read everything anyway. I also think it become harder to accept the offensive the more recent it becomes, i.e., people should have known better and unless the author’s making a point, nuh-uh. Austen’s one thing, but Star Trek is another thing entirely.
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Indeed. I would be a far poorer person if I'd eschewed Shakespeare, even though my first exposure to TTOTS left me appalled, even as a dumb teenager. I think I read it after seeing that John Wayne movie, with Maureen O'Hara, where she's "tamed" too (McLintock?) and either my Dad or Mum told me to read TTOTS. I'm glad I did and learned to enjoy it--in its own way.
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In Trollope’s last novel, there was a minor character, a father of five daughters all unmarried and in their thirties, who lived well within his income so as to provide for them after his death. Heh.
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Indeedy.
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Mr. Bennet is not a good person; it always surprises me when readers don’t get that. As stupid, vulgar and irritating as she is, Mrs. Bennet is morally superior. So it was the business of her life to get her daughters married? What were their other options?
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Well, if Mr. Bennet had been a good person and a smart person, it's hard to feature that he'd have married Mrs. Bennet, really. She is truly appalling and just...abhorrent. Yuck. I always thought that Aiison Steadman and the writers did a
remarkable job of portraying her as such in the 1990's A&E/BBC P&P.
Less of an admirable job in making it clear just how much of a loser Mr. Bennet is, though. I'm not sure he's...repugnant. He's not very smart, he's lazy and he procrastinates, thus creating all these various and sundry issues through which the Bennet girls must navigate. I mean, who wouldn't or couldn't see that Lydia was headed for trouble? He tried to avoid conflict. I always thought that he overspent his means, (thus preventing him from providing for the girls) not only out of procrastination and silly optimistic belief that Mrs. B would provide a son, but to prevent conflict with Mrs. B and her daft desire to keep up with the Joneses.
(not
really relevant, and completely OT here, but OMG, Barbara Leigh-Hunt as LCdB, was amazing!)
But then again, I'm not Austen, so who knows what she was really thinking?
I just feel that...it's a bit like reading actual history, isn't it? If you read Sayers and Christie, et al, you get a feeling for what society was actually like, at the time. Not through the eyes of a trained historian; not "filtered" for 20th- and 21st-century eyes; not cleaned up, etc., but reflective of what was what, at the time. I prefer that to selective information. It may not always agree with what I think is right or moral...but then again, in a hundred years, readers then may think that what I believe, NOW, is corrupt or wrong or insupportable. I think it's...silly or fatuous to believe that what we think now is going to be impregnable, perfect and unassailable in 100 years. We'll be just as blithely dismissed, then, as Sayers (etc.) are now.
BUT, that's just my $.02.
Hitch