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"...well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice), "as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you--all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men."
"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."
"But how shall we prove anything?"
"We never shall. We never can expect to prove any thing upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof."
---
So I've finally read Persuasion, which by some chance I'd never read before. It was a delight to read another Jane Austen novel for the first time; the ending wasn't much in doubt, but it's not the destination so much as the journey that I read these things for.
And my goodness, what a sharp and brutal book this is. Austen always has her wit and her wry disdain for people who can't see past themselves and their own desires, but it much more brutal in this novel than I'm used to. The protagonist's family is outright dysfunctional, and even the happier families that she spends time with end up problematic in their own ways.
I always end up wanting to write something angry and revolutionary, after reading Austen. There's a quiet desperation to her protagonists--some more conscious of it than others, and I think Anne of this book more so than most--who are trapped in a privileged, constrained, etiquette-bound position that leaves them almost no room for maneuvering. It's like reading Misery all over again, except instead of literal chains and a wild-eyed woman making demands, it's all the soft, constant, gentle bounds of what people are raised to and told is inherent and natural to them.
Maybe now I'll go write something where heads roll.
"Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything."
"But how shall we prove anything?"
"We never shall. We never can expect to prove any thing upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof."
---
So I've finally read Persuasion, which by some chance I'd never read before. It was a delight to read another Jane Austen novel for the first time; the ending wasn't much in doubt, but it's not the destination so much as the journey that I read these things for.
And my goodness, what a sharp and brutal book this is. Austen always has her wit and her wry disdain for people who can't see past themselves and their own desires, but it much more brutal in this novel than I'm used to. The protagonist's family is outright dysfunctional, and even the happier families that she spends time with end up problematic in their own ways.
I always end up wanting to write something angry and revolutionary, after reading Austen. There's a quiet desperation to her protagonists--some more conscious of it than others, and I think Anne of this book more so than most--who are trapped in a privileged, constrained, etiquette-bound position that leaves them almost no room for maneuvering. It's like reading Misery all over again, except instead of literal chains and a wild-eyed woman making demands, it's all the soft, constant, gentle bounds of what people are raised to and told is inherent and natural to them.
Maybe now I'll go write something where heads roll.
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Especially because a lot of the things you're noticing (about class, about the navy's potential as a meritocracy, about horrid status-seekers, about the role of wives) is stuff I played up even harder in my novel, because, dude, those are the things that caught ME.
I highly recommend the 1995 adaptation of Persuasion, with Amanda Root as Anne and Ciaran Hinds as Wentworth. And also Samuel West as Mr. Elliot, playing an Austen cad as he SHOULD be played - outwardly pretty and pleasant and charming, with the wickedness concealed within. A lot of people really screw up casting Wickham and Willoughby especially -- we shouldn't be able to tell straight off that they're cads!
waaaaaaaaatch iiiiiiiiiiit....
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Not that I'm biased or anything.
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I bought a cheap used copy off Amazon, but my goal is to find my favorite adaptation of every Austen novel and own it. Still undecided on Emma and Mansfield Park. I do NOT recommend the recent Mansfield Park with Billie Piper as Fanny, who seems to constantly be looking for her next line of dialogue in her cleavage.