Jane Austen and the International Women's Day

[avrelia]

I've reread "Persuasion" recently, and was struck with how timely it was on many counts. And how fresh Anne's thoughts feel now, still.

this part of her conversation with Captain Harville struck me especially:

"[...]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."

We are still arguing about importance of telling our own stories. When Jane knew it all along.

Comments

[shadowkat]

Jane Austen was a fascinating writer - she made fun of various things, romance novels of her time, class issues, sexism, and the military. I notice it more now than I did when I originally read her books.

She never married. And devoted her life to writing. Similar to Louisa May Alcott. Both were feminists, and both wrote stories ending in marriage, but often with strong female characters and a kind of tongue firmly in cheek attitude.

[elisi]

I remember nearly cheering out loud when I read that. SO good.

[gwyn]

That was the reason Persuasion was my favorite book for so many years, and still is in my top three, and why I adore Anne so much. Little proto-feminist me, when I first read that as a young 'un, wrote it on everything.

[avrelia]

Anne is just such a marvelous, and a very unusual heroine, and the book feels much deeper than the other Austen's books. Such a pity it was her last finished one.

[avrelia]

it is. I was having a lot of feels about Anne and her constant rearranging her feelings to make everyone comfortable, and then this...

[avrelia]

Jane Austen is such an underappreciated writer. She has devoted readership, but for the bigger part of the reading world she appears a lady writer of romance novels where nothing happens. Which is a shame, of course. She is killing with her precise observations, unflinching honesty and sarcastic wit.