Reading Wednesday

[brigdh]

What did you just finish?
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I'd read this before, but decided to reread it this week on the spur on the moment. It's my favorite of Austen's novels; I used to like Emma best, but when I reread it recently, I was too bothered by the classism to enjoy it as much as I once had. (Not that any of Austen's novels are free of classism, of course, but in Mansfield Park it's a quiet background noise compared to the CENTRAL FOCUS OF THE PLOT as it is in Emma.) Fanny is timid, unloved, and suffers from some undefined type of chronic illness (I'm pointlessly fascinated by trying to figure out what the hell, specifically, it is, since it can apparently only be treated by riding horses), and, as in most Austen novels, nearly everyone around her is a terrible human being, of one type or another. She's incredibly sympathetic, at least to me, and I do like how clearly she sees people.

Anyway, here are some people who are more eloquent than me saying interesting things about the book:
A very excellent discussion on FFA about Fanny Price: self-righteous prig or no?
A Telegraph review. I'm not sure I can go as far as the author does with the idea of slavery being an important underpinning of the book, but it's an intriguing idea, at least.

What are you currently reading?
This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education by José Vilson. A non-fiction book about teaching in NYC's public schools.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Have you seen the Austen trope bingo?

(I don't have much to say about Mansfield Park itself, because it was one of the Austen books I never could get into... though it's been awhile since I've tried, and maybe my tastes will have broadened meanwhile...)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I have not! Unless you mean the How To Tell If You're In a Jane Austen (http://the-toast.net/2014/05/27/tell-jane-austen-novel/) article, which is amazing and I love it.

I'd recommend trying it again, but honestly, it does seem like many, many people never enjoy it, so I might just be an outlier.

[hamsterwoman]

Oh, weird, I thought I'd linked to it, but apparently I flubbed something on the HTML. Looks like it's based on the same Toast article (which is indeed amazing!), which I did not realize, but somebody turned it into a bingo card and then gillo turned it into a writing bingo challenge.

I probably will try it again at some point, but, yeah, I know a lot of people who are huge fans of Austen's other stuff that don't like Mansfield Park, so I'm prepared for that as a possibility.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Ooo, is Emma made of classism? I am intrigued. I have it sitting on my bookshelf right now, but haven't started it yet. I don't have time to read those articles yet, but I am intrigued. Off the top of my head, I'd say Fanny is a (sympathetic) prig, but not self-righteous. She's more prudent than prude, and honestly I find it refreshing to read about a character who isn't sparkly and bold, who plays by the rules because the risk of breaking them is much greater than any reward could be, and who has a clear enough idea of her own principles to be able to stick to them despite also badly wanting to please the people around her.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I mean, you'll have to see how you feel yourself! But the central plot of Emma is Emma trying to play matchmaker to everyone around her, which of course involves a great deal of who is and who is not "suitable" for one another, and class tends to be the thing most emphasized.

And I definitely would also not call Fanny a prude, but every time I tried to write out what I enjoyed about her, I ended up pretty much copying the FFA discussion, so finally I gave up and just linked to that instead. But I do think she's mostly right, and not even so much in the sense of "contemporary ethics that have since changed", but by the simple metric of "respecting people's feelings". And she does struggle, and self-doubt, and her worst thoughts of other people she keeps to herself (even when I wish she might say them!).