foo
dirtysweet
Oh ho ho, yes, very good Donna. Austen's right up your street - all that sneering
totally!
Pride & Predudice crap/not crap
- Thread starter The Groke
- Start date
totally!
Gavin Bl
terrible awful baaad
I enjoyed P&P, she very good getting inside peoples hearts - but its true that 90% of the population are utterly invisible in her books, but presumably novels were written at the time by people who had the leisure and education to do so, same for the readers. Its not like working class or poor people are overrepresented amongst authors today.
Trying to think about novelists who portrayed the 'lower orders' as functioning human beings at the centre of the story - is it fair to say Thomas Hardy is really the first to do that?
Trying to think about novelists who portrayed the 'lower orders' as functioning human beings at the centre of the story - is it fair to say Thomas Hardy is really the first to do that?
Stigmata
sexual tyrannosaurus
Well quite, aside from the odd Booker Prize miseryfest.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
No it isn't. It's wit and social observation of the higest order. It is, however, not unsubtle.
If I did, have I seen anything on this thread to convince me otherwise?
You won't be in the market for
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!
Actually, I'm strongly tempted to seek that out...
Oh, and Fanny Price could use a damn good slap. Even though her sister Susan hardly appears, she's a far more attractive character.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
RubyToogood
RubyTwobikes
I do also think that accusing any 19th C author of having predictable plotlines is just pointless, because that's the definition of a 19th century novel. I've always seen plot in these sort of books as just a framework to hang the real meat of the book on. And I don't see why a book HAS to be about the political stuff that is going on at the time. Why can't a book be about the subtle stuff that happens between people, and how we all rub along with each other and get on each other's nerves?
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
That's fine, it's all down to personal choice at the end of the day.
But it's just irritating when you see someone moaning at Austin for portraying a shallow overview of the middle classes with no political themes, when they have actually missed the massive subtext. It's fine if they're aware of that and still don't like her, but it would be nice for them not to make their main argument around a point that doesn't actually stand.It's more irritating than Fanny Price.
Kaka Tim
Half Arsed and Slapdash till I Die
That's fine, it's all down to personal choice at the end of the day.
It's more irritating than Fanny Price.
What political themes?
Theres vaugue nods to a world outside the land of lords and ladies, but it doesn't impinge on the actions of the characters or the narrative drive.
Austen observes the social mores, the subtle power plays and games of status and courtship amongst wealthy regency society. That is the world she knew - and its a world pretty much cut off from the revolutions, famine, radicalism and social ferment of the time.
Yes she observes it all with skill, subtlety and insight into her charcters. But that society and the people that inhabit her world are the ruling class and thsoe aspiring and conspiring to join them. Such a world is want that - quite frankly - makes me want to vomit.
Her books would be immesurably improved if a mob of pike wielding peasants descended on the whichever stately home is the setting for the novel's 'action' and burnt it to the ground - preferably with the inhabitants still inside.
Contemporary writers of the time - Byron, Keats, Wordsworth - were vey much engaged with their times and explored it in their work. Some might argue that Austens gender and relatively modest social status was an obstacle to her exploring such issues - but Mary Wolstencroft was hardly privilliged gentry and was one of the most radical voices of the age (or any age).
No - Austen stayed very much within the comfort zone of her narrow little world.
The other problem with Austen is that her enduring popularity is part of the whole fetishisation of the ruling class - stately homes, fancy frocks, the balls and - oh - the glittering chandeliers. Its escapism. A regency Sex in the City with a similar target audience. Its become a finely dressed and - yes - 'perfectly observed' - romantic fantasy for ladies longing to swept off their feet by Mr Darcy. And it can be become this cosy bubble of fantasy precisely becasue her work is so cut off from the reality of the time.
I always find it interesting to compare her with the Brontes - more humble in origin and living an even more isolated existance in a howarth parsonage - yet their work is full of fervant passions, wild imaginings, peril, courage and a striaghtforward, unblinking honesty in its depiction of humanity that is markedly - and refreshingly - diferent from Autens detached, cynical dissection. The Brontes world is one that is thorioughly engaged with its times - hardship, hunger, religious fervour, wild country side, cruelty, and passion drive and smash into the protagonists. No arch quips or sardonic, ironic asides. Not finely crafted, perfectly balanced and nuanced novels - but humanity red in tooth and claw.
Donna Ferentes
jubliado
In fact the Bennets are not really wealthy. Not only are they significantly less well off than a number of the other leading characters - which is a source of tension in the novel - but one of the central themes of the plot is that they have their home only as long as Mr Bennet lives, it is not to be inherited. The Bennets are of the middle class, for sure, but no higher.
As was Shakespeare's for instance.
Don't let us stop you if you think it will impress anybody.
Because that was the world in which she and many of her readers lived. Their world revolved around social occasions and marriage plans because that was what they had. Elizabeth finds this desperately constricting which is among the reasons why she is unwillingly attracted to Darcy, who has a brain on him and whose lack of tact makes him express openly about these silly balls and parties what she thinks secretly about them.
Except she is not swept off her feet, is she? If anything the opposite is true, that it is Darcy who is knocked dead by Elizabeth, precisely because she is not a bubblehead and because she won't make it easy for him.
Pride and Prejudice is about an intelligent woman. It's perhaps for this reason above all that it's appealed particularly to women for two hundred years. These women, also being intelligent, are quite able to appreciate that Elizabeth Bennet's life was not like theirs in every particular, or like those of women from other social classes. They are also intelligent enough, as you are not, to realise that this actually isn't the important thing about the novel, or about any other novel. What's important about it is its wit, its acuity, its humour, its intelligence and its understanding and depiction of human character. In combination these make it one of the greatest novels in the language, perhaps all the more so precisely because it is basically about gossip and parties. It is a phenomenal work. Do people want that - or do they want some poseur ranting on about how he wants to be sick because a novel isn't about the peasants or the proletariat?
Chairman Meow
Perth, WA
Austen is fantastic, anyone who says its all Mr Darcy's balls has completely missed the point. I fucking hate period dramas though, I couldn't even sit through the BBC Colin Firth one, so can see why people might be put off, or get the wrong idea about it all.
I fucking hate period dramas though, I couldn't even sit through the BBC Colin Firth one, so can see why people might be put off, or get the wrong idea about it all.
Crispy
The following psytrance is baṉned: All
*Agent Sparrow posting*
How about early feminism? Or is writing about the inequality of women being financially at the mercy of what men decide to have them not political enough for you?
Lurdan
old wave
The Hollywood adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies' (referred to above hence the thread resurrection) is due for release next February.
Most 'high concept' horror flavoured parodies are more fun to read about (or even just imagine) than actually watch. This one might be no exception but in the meantime they give exceedingly good trailer.
Most 'high concept' horror flavoured parodies are more fun to read about (or even just imagine) than actually watch. This one might be no exception but in the meantime they give exceedingly good trailer.
A380
How do I change this 'custom title' thing then?
booking my ticket now.
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