So this week I've been reading a bit of Jane Austen. See, every now and then I descend into a mood where I just want to lounge on the couch in my underpants and have a good cry, and a few days ago a period drama film seemed like the perfect side dish to complement tears and snot dripping out of my nose.
It's healthy, I promise.
Anyway, I settled on "Mansfield Park," which turned out to be pretty enjoyable. Well, MOST of it turned out to be pretty enjoyable, except the parts that kept awkwardly insisting that the characters address the issue of Britain's role in the slave trade. I hadn't yet read "Mansfield Park," but I had to assume that this was a creative liberty taken by the screenwriter/director, an assumption which inspired me to read the book. Because, even though I'm all about the abolition of slavery, let's just be honest for a second: Jane Austen's books are about who danced with who, who eloped with who, and who violated some kind of code of propriety that you as a modern reader don't fully understand and need to have explained to you by the Internet--I'm not calling these books shallow (and in fact I would agree with those who say that Jane Austen seemed to deeply understand people's characters), I'm just saying that when you try to turn a Jane Austen book into a cinematic commentary on the slave trade, you're just מפגר.
Anyway, my point is that over the past few days I've been reading "Mansfield Park" and loving it. But I have two other points to make:
1) Reading Jane Austen makes me question whether or not I want to have babies.
My brother and my one-year-old niece came to visit for the weekend. And don't get me wrong, I was thrilled to spend time with my niece, and even though she only left a few hours ago I already miss her terribly. It's just that babies are extremely time-consuming. I mean, yes, I hope that before I'm 40 I have a large, happy family and children to teach and goof off with--but I also hope that before I'm 40 I get to finish reading "Mansfield Park," and with even one baby to babysit that doesn't seem likely to happen even within the next five millennia. Between diaper checking/changing, bouncing, playing, cleaning, feeding, making silly faces, and chasing baby away from uncovered electrical sockets, I had time to read about five pages the entire weekend. I mean, I COULD have read more than five pages because you don't HAVE to do any of this, but generally if you don't want a scolding when the parents come home it's recommended not to return the baby covered in its own shit or dead.
Having even one book that I can't wait to finish makes me question not only whether or not I want children but whether or not I would want to get married. Hell, it even makes me want to reconsider my position on plain ol' friendship. Because who the hell wants to chat or gossip or go see a movie with friends when you can sit alone in your room and read about Mr. Darcy romantically proposing or about Emma Woodhouse being a complete dumbass? All I'd be thinking about is when this fucking movie is going to be over so I can get back to reading about the boundaries of propriety.
Using the word "fucking" probably breaches the boundaries of propriety, if I had to guess.
2) Reading Jane Austen makes me wish I lived back then--but not because of why you would guess I would.
Usually when I wish for a bygone era I wish to be transported back to the golden age of "Soul Train," but provided that I had proper medication to prevent coming down all consumptive, I would also be all for living in the same time as Jane Austen. However, I don't wish for the bygone era because I want to sit in a parlo(u)r in a dress cut to make even the skinniest rail look like a pregnant manatee, making witty comments about other people in the room or speaking on their behalf ("Mr. Darcy can't abide by X" or "Miss Price is thoroughly Y") while sort of pretending they can't hear. I don't particularly want snooty men to snub me at dances, nor do I wish to describe people in terms of how "agreeable" or not they are.
What I do wish for, though, is a return to that female assumption that you get the first crack at your brother's friends. I obviously don't mean to suggest that this is universally true of Jane Austen's books or even that it ends successfully in those books that feature this assumption (I'm thinking chiefly of Caroline Bingley and to some extent Mary Crawford), but the theme is strong enough to be worth noticing.
Thanks to the suggestion of Jane Austen, whenever I see my oldest brother's friends, who are now reaching that age where marriage is starting to become a pressing issue for men, I think, "We've known each other since I was 7 and you were 12, and you've been my brother's good friend for all that time. This therefore requires you to at least consider me before anyone else." Unfortunately for me, this rule no longer holds in our society. And frankly, I think society is worse off for it. It's this sort of disintegration of societal rules and norms that led to the riots in London.
Just sayin'.
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