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This past Saturday I was Skyping with my friend Vivike, and I mentioned I had just finished Persuasion. Together, we pondered why Pride & Prejudice is the most popular of Jane Austen's work, despite the fact that some of her later efforts, such as Emma and, yes, Persuasion, are manifestly superior. We put on our literary snob hats and monocles and lamented the popular interpretation of Pride & Prejudice as a romance in…
by Jane Austen
Move over, Pride and Prejudice. Emma is my new favourite Jane Austen novel, and while Austen may be better known for Pride and Prejudice, this book is what has earned her acclaim in my eyes. At times plodding and predictable, Emma nonetheless won me over with a complex cast of characters, whose changing relationships are the key to the entire story. Austen's ironic hand makes this book a light but real commentary on…
I've talked smack about Jane Austen before, not so much to discount her ability as a writer—if you question that, then oh, we will throw down—but to compare her unfavourably to George Eliot. What can I say? I was young and stupid two years ago!
Today I would like to apologize to Miss Austen. Since Middlemarch I've come a long way and read a lot more of Austen's works, and while Eliot's novel remains uneclipsed…
Foremost in my mind while reading Sense and Sensibility was how much both society and the English language have changed in the nearly 200 years since this book's publication. Conduct that we would now find unremarkable, perhaps even laudable, earns Jane Austen's characters harsh opprobrium. All of the book's conflict stems from the tangled web of relationships influenced by the mores of early nineteenth century England. Readers who stubbornly persist in interpreting this book on…