Pollsuasion: The Works of Jane Austen

Getting a yen to reread one soon. I think it'll be Persuasion, which has my vote. Like the gloom of it, the feeling that it's all going to end really miserably (even when I know what happens).

'emma', i think; the alliterative ones are a little too easily schematized; northanger abbey a little too ha ha rockist; er i can't remember anything at all about mansfield park or persuasion, never mind

i should admit i have started all of these novels and never finished any of them

I enjoyed Emma first time through, but didn't finish it last time I started. I had a lot of other books to read, & found E just too annoying. Something unappealing too about its central action - serious thoughtful older man winning hott young difficult posh girl.

i should admit i have started all of these novels and never finished any of them

why is this not a poll option

Been so long since I read the ones I have (PP, SS, Emma), my recollection is not great. Might have to say PP just for Mr Bennett.

Something unappealing too about its central action - serious thoughtful older man winning hott young difficult posh girl.

But what is the something? Maybe my problem is that it feels like it's rendering too closely a romantic fantasy of serious/bookish men? That things fit together too neatly? I should have finished it.

i should admit i have started all of these novels and never finished any of them

why is this not a poll option

yes ok I admit missing poll options, also ledge's 'i read them a long time ago and have forgotten most of them' (which ok I could vote for) and 'i read them a long time ago and they've sort of half-blurred into two or three things in my head, which are mixed up with some adaptations. I like the one about the sisters, not the one about a girl.'

I voted for P&P, in large part because it's the one I know best. I can barely remember Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. I know I enjoyed Sense & Sensibility, but don't have details to refer to any more. Emma got annoying about halfway through.

Emma the most fun, but Persuasion the strangest. Harold Bloom has a marvelous essay praising Anne Elliot as a marvel of interiority and quiet intelligence.

Hard. Never cared for Emma, mainly because I loathe Emma herself, but I love all the others.

Voted for Mansfield Park mainly for personal reasons. I first picked it up in the library in the last days of studying for finals, intending to browse for a few minutes. I ended up getting totally hooked and finishing it. At one level it felt a silly and self-indulgent thing to do, I had no time to be reading novels - but counter-intuitively it turned out to be a perfect antidote to exam fever.

omg how can anyone hate Emma the character?

Because she's spoiled, narcissistic and controlling?

She's always split opinion. Austen herself described her as a heroine that nobody but herself (ie Austen) would much like.

yeah i don't think austen meant that, though. it's true, she is all of those things.

I always thought Austen hoped she was wrong, but for me she was right. In fact my problem is exactly that: it's not just that I don't like Emma, it's that Austen does. If Emma had a richer comeuppance than she gets, or if there was more sense of authorial disapproval of her sense of entitlement, I'd have liked the book better.

:(

i don't think austen approves of her entitlement, but instead of punishing her (she does get punished a little!) she just shows the reader how insecure the grounds of emma's entitlement are and how emma kind of knows that. there's a reason emma lashes out at miss bates, the dependent spinster.

my line about favorite austen novels is that one day when i become a good person, persuasion will be my favorite but i'm beginning to think that's never going to happen, so i'm voting emma

Can't remember the exact quote, but didn't she say something to the effect of, she thought she had created in Emma an awful character that everyone would dislike, yet most readers loved her, and in Mansfield Park, she thought she had created a good and noble character that everyone would love, and everyone well, thought her a simpering git? (obviously in less florid Regency prose than I have put it.)

Anyway, for me, it's S&S because the hott older man in that is actually more like the fantasy that (for me, anyway) younger women sometimes entertain.

(But I do have to admit that Alan Rickman's portrayal has a lot to do that. Though I read it first at school before I even knew who Rickman was, so I can plead that.)

no, about Emma she said, "i'm going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like" which clearly seems like a challenge to me; it's like, "oh i only work on these two bits of ivory."

i think she was surprised that some people didn't like Fanny Price more, though, yes.

horseshoe killing it on ilx today

i wish i had a couple days handy to sit and read through austen, feel like this could finally be the time

horseshoe killing it on ilx todaylately

I will have to ponder on this poll for a while. I haven't read Austen in a long, long time. Funnily, most people I know are the same. It's almost as if, in my realm, she isn't being read any more, just has been read in the past.

Emma at her manipulative best is her best character. She's a more charming Madame Merle, a smarter Becky Sharp.

okay waht? isabel archer is much more emma than madame merle! i always assumed emma was a major influence on portrait. madame merle is evil!

emma's just kind of an adorable brat.

Emma is a manipulator of people and situations; she has the potential to become Madame Merle.

she's a totally inept manipulator!

also madame merle manipulates out of singleminded self-interest--for survival, basically. emma believes she's helping people (of course she's self-interested, too; she wants to feel virtuous and special, but it's a much more benign self-interest.)

M. Merle thinks she's helping Osmond. You may disagree, but there's evidence that she still feels affection for him.

okay but osmond's evil

Yes.

northanger abbey is her best book imo

but i dont like thinking abt her too much because i feel like i just end up w/ a head full of other ppls ideas abt 'irony' or 'frockcoats' or w/e. prefer to just jam on these as some funny cool stuff that happened in history just w/e gardens and tea and extravagent ballz

of Austen's heroes who has the most extravagant balls?

we should poll

Balls aside...

Voted for Persuasion by a nose over P&P; really love her books, and maybe Northanger Abbey would be a close 3rd, since I really love the piss-takes of all the Gothic melodramas, too many of which I have also read

Never read NA.

northanger abbey was the only one i could get through

horseshoe northanger abbey owns, deal with it

^^ otm

lol it's funny!

cathy m is a delight imo

plus its kinda bitchy i mean i guess theyre all kinda bitchy in their way but northanger abbey just is like, damn, owned.

i like when catherine and henry talk about history, i guess. it's not a real novel to me, though.

they're all totally bitchy btw.

no yeah totally but i think na is bitchy about books? which is more appealing than being bitchy abt upper middle class courting rituals or w/e

ok thats too dismissive but

i will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance

i feel like she was never quite as blunt in later novels as this the poison was more sweetly masked

that is probably true

which is more appealing than being bitchy abt upper middle class courting rituals

this is off-sides by the way but i guess i see what you mean >:[

no thats why i qualified i mean its not really being fair at all

also i had these really nice old editions of all the austen novels and i think i lent a couple to this girl and never she never gave them back, which is shitty largely because i doubt she even read them

i don't know where my super-nice austen eds went either! i got them when i was 16.

i found them at a thrift store but they were p old printings idk

i like emma a lot too fwiw but i think its sorta too cluttered up w/ movies in my mind

have you read the juvenilia? i think you'd like it, it shares that blunt precocious voice with na.

naw ive only read the main 6. i might have a copy of sanditon around but i def havent tried to read it

tbh i read all of them in my late teens so its been a few years thats why i went looking for copy of s+s actually but then its missing

i think i particularly enjoyed NA bc i read it back-to-back with the turn of the screw

i haven't read NA or S&S so i'm not really qualified but i voted for mansfield park because i was stunned how engaged i was by fanny "drip" price, i think the book is a huge compassionate achievement. (anyone can write an entertaining novel around elizabeth bennet.) also mrs. norris is hilar.

thread has inspired me to start persuasion! i really enjoyed P&P and NA, liked S&S and lady susan, didn't like mansfield park, and haven't been able to make any headway into emma coz i find her annoying. for some reason i know nothing about persuasion/forgot it existed so this is a treat!

I'm surprised by the affection for NA! It's often dismissed.

It's just so good

About halfway through Persuasion, having a great time with it - love that slightly depressed fury (it doesn't quite feel like bitterness, maybe because JA knows it isn't everything?) at vanity and snobbery and pride and selfishness and just in general the damaging fuss and confusion created by what can seem minor vices. And so great on the inadequacy of the helpful, dutiful and self-sacrificing life too.

Love how she can do masses with what seems a flick of the wrist - jumping to Wentworth's POV for a coupe of paragraphs unprompted, dropping in that Anne's repeatedly in tears while she's playing piano (¿or harpsichord or something?) during the dances.

Always find it weird that Byron's poetry turns up, but I'm not sure why.

If I were editing Austen, I would change things like:

…Anne, who was nothing to Louisa, while she was her sister, and had the best right to stay in Henrietta's stead!

to this:

…Anne, who was nothing to Louisa, while she was her sister, by which she meant in this case 'sister-in-law', because she's married to Louisa's actual brother remember, and had the best right to stay in Henrietta's stead!

Because it can get confusing at times and I think readers would be grateful.

Enjoying the discussion, but can't really remember bugger all, apart from - didn't like Emma (although perhaps did a bit, secretly), haven't read Persuasion (why?). Generally like and admire Austen's prose - that flick-of-the-wrist thing woof mentioned, sprightly and witty. Need to read more, and refresh what I have read, can't possibly vote as it is.

Voted 'not for me' as although Austen's prose is wonderful, I h8 all the main characters, and don't find the plots engaging. I'd take a Bronte for entertainment, or Gaskell for social commentry, over Austen any day.

xp

Persuasion doesn't get pushed that much I suppose. I mean it's the lit snob contrarian choice, obvs, but I can see why it doesn't get popular love - not much in the way of smart should-be-couples saying smart things to one another. It's mostly interesting characters not saying anything while idiots gabble on.

Persuasion was the first one I read! I think it was course material in about 8th Grade or something. Didn't like it that much at that age, TBH, and kind of turned me off Austen until I read her later when I was about 21 and completely fell in love.

Yeah, I think I would have been pulling faces if I'd had to read Persuasion before I was 20 or so.

As it was I had the violent + traditional young man objections to Austen for a few years (ie shouting something confused and tortuous about class, snobbery and range), until I actually read her.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

It's been too long since I read Austen for me to vote in this. Faded memory not up to the task.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I can live with this.

the two people who don't like clueless are insane

otherwise, yes, nice results

I can't believe I was yhe only vote for S&S. Eli or & Marianne was robbed, by you lot as well as their asshole half brother.

I'm pleased Mansfield Park got another vote - I expected to be the only one. Although I could just as easily have voted for Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice.

i cannot keep any of the characters in 'mansfield park' separate in my head except fanny and edmund, both of whom are total simps

i mean damn jane just give these people proper names or less distinguishing characteristics or s.thing to help me out here

edmund is the fucking worst. that book is kind of a trial by fire, though of course totally good or whatever.

there are a lot of really funnie parts and all but i keep wondering if im recklessly historicizing austen by thinking that shes really secretly sympathetic to the worldly and material miss blandlynamed who has the great riff about how boring going to church is while edmund and fanny quietly seethe especially since she gets shown up like three pages later by the whole 'oh edmund you want to be a reverend heheheh' thing but shes the only character that i like to bad she has no first name and no real physical presence except being pretty but they are all pretty

right at the very start, the line about how there are more pretty well-breed young women in the world than rich baronets to deserve them or w/e has been the high point so far

that's the modern problem with reading mansfield park, you end up wanting mary crawford to be the heroine. she's really really not, though. i think on some level austen felt uncomfortable with the sparkle of pride and prejudice and mansfield park is her return to earth. i think she really believes in mansfield park; it's horribly depressing. but i don't know how much to say if you haven't finished it, not that it's really possible to spoil an austen novel.

it is possible to spoil a jane austen novel

all you have to do is read it

I don't think what I posted made much sense but you get the picture

yes you're hilarious

ilx poster uh oh im having a fantasy what books do you like?

anyway i mean im about a hundred pages in which means i have the basic outline of who is going to end up with who but not a complete grasp of how theyre going to get there but i dont really care about spoilers so w/e

i do have a hard time parsing what 'mansfield park' wants to say about woman and society, if anything, and fanny is such a terrible simp that it seems incredible she wanted to hang a whole novel on her but i feel like i should finish it before i slag it off? idk

I reread the rings of saturn recently that was a pretty amazing experience

I'm not really into plots or characters I'm just picking on horseshoe @ this point

fanny has outsized moral aptitude, which is why she's important to austen, i think. also a total inability to speak up about it, which is why she's so hard for the reader to deal with.

mansfield park is austen's british society is diseased book, also. sort of in opposition to pride and prejudice which is all wealthy english landowners are the greatest people! all the time. which is also hard to take, but in much easier to swallow form.

xp haha i am nothing if not bait-able

i'm going to read some thomas bernhard one day, but then i'll probably like it and not be able to say anything mean on ilx

i wrote my undergraduate thesis on mansfield park btw i don't know if i can ever read it again

i read 'the man without qualities' and 'an ermine in czernopol' and liked them very much so i bought 'vertigo' but i dont like the cover so i havent bothered to start reading it.

mansfield park is austen's british society is diseased book, also

i feel like ive glazed over something important because i can almost but not actually see this

if it was during one those parts about landscaping im sorry

I haven't read an ermine in czernopol thanks for the rec, when I pick it up I'll pick up another jane austen novel and give her a spin again

the landscaping descrips are really important!

xp

i do like the very austen way things happen in this book, the sweetly tart manner in which she explains and gestures, the orderly way she displays and summarizes the mahogany wainscoting and shady lanes. but i still cant grasp the various miss blandlynameds and mr. landscapings they all seem to blur and mix. like i thought the money-minded middle sister's husband had the parsonage @ mansfield park but then those other characters just appeared and i still cant figure out how. i feel complicit in fannys terrible treatment because i cant keep track of anything either, im sorry you spent all day gathering roses, i thought you were still writing some boring letter, oh well.

idk maybe this is a problem that i have now, i tried reading 'underworld' today too and as again could only sort of grasp at small things. and hes working with the whole breathless rococo sweep of history, sliding in to desperation, the lurching btw beauty and artless idiom. like those forceful juxtapositions, its really good writing, one of the characters has a 'slab face and meathooks for hands' but then it gets like, why is frank sinatra here again and whats with the peanuts...

i think im becoming illiterate idk delete all my posts

my experience with mansfield park was that i disliked it, even though i didn't necessarily dislike the experience of reading it. like you said, that "austen way" of things was enjoyable to read, even though fanny & her tedious plights were so difficult to care about.

oh man don't make me dig out my copy, full of embarrassing exclamation pointed notes i wrote in college.

i am wanting to defend fanny price now; this is what talking about this book always does to me