Why I love Jane Austen
I finally convinced my particular friend Lee that she should watch the1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. My selling job went something like this:
“You’ll love it. It has romance — sort of. Well, you’ll probably hate him like she does for most of the book — uh, movie.”
“Who’s he?” she asked, sounding very doubtful.
“Colin Firth.”
“Who?”
“You know, Colin Firth.” Here I’m scratching my head because Lee does not follow popular culture. For instance, until 2005 she had never heard of Doctor Who until I convinced her that she should watch the new series.
“He was in Bridget Jones’ Diary. And Love, Actually.” She continued with her uncomprehending stare, occasionally blinking. I’m getting desperate and I blurted out, “He was in Mamma Mia!”
“Oh, I saw that. Which one was he?”
“The one who wasn’t Pierce Brosnan.”
“Oh yeah, he was cute. So what’s the movie about?”
“About a guy with five daughters and one of the one daughters, Elizabeth, meets this stuck up guy, Darcy, and they don’t get along, and she keeps looking out of the corner of her eye, and the mom’s like Miss Piggy, and … uh … there are horses.”
She’s mad about horses and does three-day eventing, so I hoped this might appeal to her.
“When’s it take place?” she asks, and I know I have a real challenge here.
“The early 1800s. During the Napoleonic Wars, which has almost nothing to do with the story.”
Now Lee and I usually prefer movies with car chases and explosions and alien motherships. And she’s finding it very odd that I should be trying to get her to watch a period romance.
“Why is this good?”
At this point I’m unsure what to say, other than “Just wait for the part when he comes out of the pond soaking wet.”
So I did get her to watch it, although it took two months of her groaning: “It’s four hours! When do I have time to watch four hours of TV.”
And she did enjoy it thanks to her watching it while putting up Christmas decorations. And she did get the e-book for her Kindle.
But the struggle to get her to watch it certainly made me wonder why I like Jane Austen, and specifically Pride and Prejudice. There is no action, not even compared to a book like Jane Eyre. It’s even a stretch to call it a romance because Elizabeth Bennet is so level headed, even if her judgments about Darcy and Wickham are so very wrong.
And despite her desire not to marry for advantage or convenience, you know it’s her first glimpse of Pemberley that decides her. My husband put it quite well, that it reminds him of Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, when he tells Bridget O’Shaughnessy why he’s turning her over to the police: maybe he loves her and maybe she loves him and that’s all on one side of the equation. And you can see Elizabeth thinking: he’s an arrogant, prideful man who ruined my sister’s chance at happiness, but on the other side of the equation he is rather good looking and, oh yeah, Pemberley.
So I was reluctant to tell my friend Lee that Jane Austen wrote romances, especially considering that most of her heroines are so sober minded and like myself (and Lee) not inclined to fancy. But I guess this is what appeals to me most. I like the hard-working Anne Elliots and sensible Elinor Dashwoods. In Emma Thompson’s portrayal of Elinor, her breakdown when she learns that Edward has not married always gets me crying as well. Unlike Marianne, she’s suffered her love quietly and resignedly and it’s all the more satisfying when it is finally requited.
However, all this aside, I still don’t know why I enjoy Jane Austen so much. But I hope I can get Lee to read Pride and Prejudice because my next task is to get her to watch Lost in Austen. “Four hours, when do I have time to watch four hours of TV!”