#16 Read a book by Jane Austen

I love to read, mostly romance novels. I can read a 300 page book in one really unproductive, yet awesome, Sunday afternoon. Preferably, it’s raining outside and I’m curled up on the couch under my “sheepy” blanket (a well-loved blanket that’s been in my family since I was little and that I took with me when I moved out…it has sheep on it).

On my list was to read one of Jane Austen’s five classic novels. Nineteenth Century romance novels! Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion. I’ve been watching film and television adaptations of Austen’s works since I was a teenager, but I’d never read one!

So, I chose to read Pride and Prejudice. It was first published in England in 1813. It is about twenty year old Elizabeth Bennett and her family of sisters. Her mother is obsessed with marrying her daughters off to wealthy young men. Elizabeth meets Fitzwilliam Darcy (swoon), and they, due to pride and prejudice on both their parts, take the long way to Happily Ever After.  

Pride and Prejudice is 324 pages long and it took me considerably longer than one Sunday to read! Why did it take so long, you ask? The language! I took a speed reading class in high school with some of my friends (yes, it was voluntary, and yes, we were cool). I often implement my speed reading techniques when reading novels, but not with Jane Austen! Speed reading is all about looking at the words on a page in chunks and letting your brain process them, as opposed to looking at, and reading, each word in a sentence. Well, with Jane, I have to read each word in the sentence! I had to implement some of the reading comprehension strategies that I teach my fourth graders (and I gained empathy for my struggling readers). I have a pretty robust vocabulary, but I’m used to robust words being sprinkled sparingly throughout a page. Jane generously heaps these words into her paragraphs. And she does it beautifully!

At one point in the book, Mr. Darcy proposes marriage (very unexpectedly) to Elizabeth Bennett. Unfortunately, Elizabeth is upset with him for ruining her sister‘s only chance for happiness. Elizabeth’s reply is as follows,

“From the very beginning, from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.”

Mmmmmmhhhhmm….You go, girl! (insert finger snap and head roll). I want to memorize this expert dressing down in the event that a man I detest proposes to me. Such powerful employment of the English language! It makes me grieve for what our society has lost. Our command of language has regressed so drastically over the past two centuries that I fear for the next two. We can’t even be bothered to write, “Oh my gosh” anymore. Instead, we write “OMG” (and by “we“ I mean America in general, but exclude myself as I have yet to resort to using these acronyms). If Jane Austen were to visit our time, she would be horrified. Of course, if Jane had to type a text message on those tiny little phone keyboards she might start to abbreviate, too. If she didn‘t, she would need a very expensive data plan.

Sometimes I wish I could visit Jane’s time. Correction, sometimes I think I should have been born during Jane’s time. My fair complexion and ample curves would have been coveted! Candlelight is very flattering, and the dresses….THE DRESSES! But unless I find a traversable wormhole, I’ll have to settle for being transported by Miss Austen‘s novels. And if I want to consider my self a true “Janeite” (it’s a real term, Google it), I have some more reading to do!

         "I cannot fix on the hour, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”                   
      -Mr. Darcy, on when he fell in love with me…I mean, Elizabeth.