Reading Jane Austen as slushy romance

[scifisam]

I think it is classical chick-lit, but then I think that some chick-lit is actually rather good, full of deeper insights and with some inventive and aestheitcally pleasing language. Just because it's by and about women, and focused on romance (though it's not usually only about the romance), doesn't mean it has to be crap; it's a misogynist viewpoint to assume that it is, and the very term chick-lit is designed to put the books and their readers down.

Also, if there weren't people who do appreciate Austen's works on a shallow level, they would never have lasted this long.

 

[rhys gethin]

All of them. They were all written by your favourite authors - who are rubbish

I take it you are pissed? As a critic you come up to our cat's knee. How can anyone - even pissed as a newt - show up his own ignorance and stupidity quite so publicly? You are such an utter clown that you comment on books you have never read on the basis of tv versions of something else?
Go paint your arse blue and swing away home.

 

[jbob]

I think it is classical chick-lit, but then I think that some chick-lit is actually rather good, full of deeper insights and with some inventive and aestheitcally pleasing language. Just because it's by and about women, and focused on romance (though it's not usually only about the romance), doesn't mean it has to be crap; it's a misogynist viewpoint to assume that it is, and the very term chick-lit is designed to put the books and their readers down.

Also, if there weren't people who do appreciate Austen's works on a shallow level, they would never have lasted this long.

I agree with the former sentiment. It's much the same situation with what used to happen with any genre novel you care to mention (with not neccessarily the misogyny) - sci-fi, horror, crime, etc.

As for the latter, I'd contest that slightly because I tend to feel that Austen is a shallow writer, writing for a shallow audience. Her novels are hardly biting satire; they tell us very little about people, or politics of the time, and work on a series of highly contestable universal themes, since their concern is with nothing more than the very top social strata, and their worries about the rise of the bourgeousie (though don't they like their money!).

This is not to take away Austen's great technical strengths - she's a fantastic writer, fully in control of her prose style. But content-wise, she's no Tolstoy, and I tend to think the Bronte sisters (particularly the underated Anne) have more substance to their work, and certainly a much broader social commentary.

I don't have much of a problem with the adaptations that have been made recently, they tend to focus on what is the great concern of her novels - social status/romance. It's not an unfair ideological supposition.

 

[Idaho]

I take it you are pissed? As a critic you come up to our cat's knee. How can anyone - even pissed as a newt - show up his own ignorance and stupidity quite so publicly? You are such an utter clown that you comment on books you have never read on the basis of tv versions of something else?
Go paint your arse blue and swing away home.

Was Jane Austen your mum or something

 

[spanglechick]

the comparison with austen and helen fielding is facile - drawn due to the bridget jones / P&P plot line robbery, possibly.

but fielding is good chick lit - and it doesn't have much to say for itself.

i'd rather compare it to marian keyes - in that keyes' heroines don't go for man-as-salvation always, and the books do speak scathingly of all kinds of sick norms in contemporary (aspirational society) - against a background of daftly eccentric family characters.

but i wouldn't have drawn the comparison myself - for all the similarities there are, there are many more differences.

i think brainaddict's austen reader is taking the books only on the basis of their plots. Maybe that's what she prioritises in her enjoyment of a book - and who's to say she's wrong? - in which case, while she can appreciate the wit (in austen), it doesn't matter to her if it isn't there (india knight - *shudder*).