Jane Austen really said ‘I respect the “I can fix him” movement but that’s just not me. He’ll fix himself if knows what’s good for him’ and that’s why her works are still calling the shots today.
1. Her first major novel (Northanger Abbey) was written solely because she was so salty about how dramatic and cliche and formula Gothic novels were. You know what I mean. Every castle is foreboding. Every villain is awful but can’t bring himself to kill the heroine because she’s Too Pure. Every middle-aged female companion wants to do the heroine in. The heroine is Pure and Perfect and Is Good At Everything Young Women Should Be and recites quotes and/or the Bible whenever she’s in danger and that makes everything better. All butlers are evil. Jane Austen wrote a book specifically to go “THIS is how NORMAL people react to things!!!”
2. “She never changed her opinion about books or men”
3. “As a girl she wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances” and you know what that means. Jane Austen started off writing smut fanfiction. If that’s not writing reassurement that you can be great no matter what you choose to write, I don’t know what is.
(Both quotes from the Penguin Classics version of Northanger Abbey)
If you try to imagine what life was like for a woman in the early 19th century, Jane Austen’s world of complex yet delightful social relationships may come to mind. But in her work there are only hints of the major artistic movement that was at its peak in that moment in Britain. Romanticism had entered the world by the late 18th century and had been influenced by the individualistic ideals of the French Revolution; its followers regarded nature as sacred in a rapidly industrialized world and placed its interest in the past, especially the medieval period.
These themes may not have much to do with Austen at first glance, but we can certainly appreciate a dynamic between her enlightened 18th century mind and the Romantic emotion in her work. The concept of wild, untamed nature and the sublime is key to understanding the Romantics’ view of how humans should experience the world. They rejected the 18th century idea that human reason should be used to tame and perfect nature. Instead, the greatness radiating from astonishing landscapes kept intact would be taken as an endless source of inspiration.
What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we do return, it shall not be like other travelers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We will know where we have gone—we will recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let our first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travelers.
These words spoken by Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice not only depict the heroine deeply enjoying the kind of landscape we have mentioned (she is referring to the Lake District, home to such poets as Wordsworth and Coleridge, who featured this area’s beauty, untouched beyond imagination, in their work) but also her desire to make her experience purely individual—another central idea of Romanticism.
Read Full Article here: Venturing into the Countryside – Enchanted Living Magazine https://bit.ly/3504COT
I just want to wander a thorn-covered castle by candlelight, write you love letters as a storm thunders outside, and drink red wine as I read poetry by the fire.
I love the last sentence of this bit from chapter 25 of Northanger Abbey, where Catherine is speaking to Henry and Eleanor Tilney (emphasis mine):
“I do not believe Isabella has any fortune at all: but that will not signify in your family. Your father is so very liberal! He told me the other day that he only valued money as it allowed him to promote the happiness of his children.” The brother and sister looked at each other.
darcy’s first proposal he’s like “hello woman who is half an inch away from snapping my neck, i have something to tell you and you have to hear this right now, i musttell you how i feel, sit there and listen as i monologue” and then when he delivers the letter he’s like “i’ll just leave this here, you don’t have to reply if you don’t want to, sorry for bothering you” and then his second proposal he’s like “if you’re still not into it, i promise i will never bring it up again, i’m only here darkening your doorstep because i heard from my aunt that you maybe don’t hate me anymore but if i’m wrong, just say so and i’ll dip, sorry for bothering you again”
ladies, you ever reject a man so hard he learns boundaries for the first time in his life?
I’m at the part where Liz and Darcy are dancing at Netherfield and omg I haven’t noticed before that if Liz wasn’t totally determined to hate Darcy she would see
