January meme: Jane Austen

[sophia_sol]

osprey_archer asked:

Jane Austen! Anything about Jane Austen.

THIS IS NOT HARD. Except for the difficulty of WHAT TO CHOOSE because there's so much to say about Jane Austen? Okay, let me tell the story of my introduction to her!

I first tried to read Austen when I was… oh, probably about 13. At that time I would have just recently read Jane Eyre and loved it to bits. And I knew that Jane Austen was famous and highly-regarded, and I was an enrichment student and very aware of my own intelligence, and I was like I SHOULD READ ME SOME OF THAT. So I rustled up a copy of Pride & Prejudice, as her most famous book, and got a hundred pages in before I gave up in sheer boredom. I could not understand why anybody would like such an unutterably dull book!

So I decided to try Sense & Sensibility instead, but noped out of that one within like 10 pages because I was just so confused about who all the characters were and how they were related to each other.

Later I decided I really needed to try again, because I wanted to damn well make it through an Austen to prove I could. So I threw myself at Pride & Prejudice again, struggling through the boredom, and this time made it all the way to the end. I still thought it was pretty boring but could kind of see the appeal.

Then for some unknowable reason, possibly having to do with my occasional (....OCCASIONAL, RIGHT) stubbornness, I decided to try it again. And this time I LOVED it.

And that, as they say, was that.

(these days: I have read all of Austen's completed works except Emma, because HOLY HECK HELLO EMBARRASSMENT SQUICK, and loved all of them - but Persuasion is my very favourite.)

(There are still open days in the calendar so please feel free to suggest topics!)