In yesterday's post about English novels I wrote that I read "Pride and Prejudice" in Junior English at Wayne High School and that I didn't have that much of a reaction to it. Some 45 years later, however, I still remember three things that Mr. Ruffing said about it:
1. In reading the novel you would never know that England was involved in a life and death struggle with Napoleon.
2. Mr. Bennett has little or nothing to do every day.
3. Mr. Bennett's strange comment at the end that of all his young men (his daughter's husbands), Wickham is his favorite.
Not sure what all of that means, but I still remember it.
I had decided to read the novel again as part of my quest to read all of Jane Austen, but couldn't get started in it until a friend of mine's daughter was reading it - again in Junior English. She had to write a journal about it and asked for my help. So over about 10 days, I read it, we talked about it and she wrote her journal. The whole process of asking her questions about how she felt about different characters and events and then encouraging her to write those in journal was very energizing.
It helped me understand why "Pride and Prejudice" is such a timeless work - even with the more stilted class structure of Georgian England, all the issues of relationships, love/marriage etc. can still relate to today. To be honest a large part of what appeals to me about English fiction is just that the relationships and how they work out. During high school I had little success with relationships then embarked on eight years of monastic like existence (all male college, all male graduate school, followed by the army) 10-12 years with very little in the way of relationships.
I think that experience has made me interested in how relationships play out in fiction. Part of it is my desire to see happy endings, but it is also to see which ones work out, which ones don't, what obstacles have to be overcome and if they are. One of the things I found fascinating about "The Duke's Children" was trying to figure out how the equation of two male lead characters and three female characters would work out. There was going to be an unhappy ending for someone, the question was who. Besides being honest, it was more dramatic and kept my attention, almost like waiting to see how a mystery comes out.
In "Pride and Prejudice" all of the endings were either happy or deserved - Wickham and Lydia being an example of the latter. Since we know Jane Austen never had a happy ending perhaps it is understandable that she would write them in her novels. Certainly the same thing happens in "Sense and Sensibility" which I will write about next.
1. In reading the novel you would never know that England was involved in a life and death struggle with Napoleon.
2. Mr. Bennett has little or nothing to do every day.
3. Mr. Bennett's strange comment at the end that of all his young men (his daughter's husbands), Wickham is his favorite.
Not sure what all of that means, but I still remember it.
I had decided to read the novel again as part of my quest to read all of Jane Austen, but couldn't get started in it until a friend of mine's daughter was reading it - again in Junior English. She had to write a journal about it and asked for my help. So over about 10 days, I read it, we talked about it and she wrote her journal. The whole process of asking her questions about how she felt about different characters and events and then encouraging her to write those in journal was very energizing.
It helped me understand why "Pride and Prejudice" is such a timeless work - even with the more stilted class structure of Georgian England, all the issues of relationships, love/marriage etc. can still relate to today. To be honest a large part of what appeals to me about English fiction is just that the relationships and how they work out. During high school I had little success with relationships then embarked on eight years of monastic like existence (all male college, all male graduate school, followed by the army) 10-12 years with very little in the way of relationships.
I think that experience has made me interested in how relationships play out in fiction. Part of it is my desire to see happy endings, but it is also to see which ones work out, which ones don't, what obstacles have to be overcome and if they are. One of the things I found fascinating about "The Duke's Children" was trying to figure out how the equation of two male lead characters and three female characters would work out. There was going to be an unhappy ending for someone, the question was who. Besides being honest, it was more dramatic and kept my attention, almost like waiting to see how a mystery comes out.
In "Pride and Prejudice" all of the endings were either happy or deserved - Wickham and Lydia being an example of the latter. Since we know Jane Austen never had a happy ending perhaps it is understandable that she would write them in her novels. Certainly the same thing happens in "Sense and Sensibility" which I will write about next.
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