Another reread from the collected minor works of Austen. I won’t do a proper post on Sanditon and The Watsons since they are unfinished, but I rather liked their beginning especially Sanditon’s when I read them three years ago.

These are just two of the juvenilia that I have read from Austen which features unpublished works she wrote as a youth primarily for her family.

Austen wrote this story when she was fourteen. Like most of her works, this is epistolary, and yet again, the right length. I think one early criticism of eighteenth century epistolary novels are that they are too long. I always like the length of Austen’s works; she’s actually concise for her time and I often wish her stories were longer.

This story is almost a fairy tale or a fable. The whole point of it is to mock sensibility and that trend of her time. There is a flair for the melodramatic in this work as the main characters are silly idiots. There is a lot of fainting.

Jane Austen’s predilection for sense in romance is one of the things I like most about her novels. I like that her heroes and heroines fall in love, but the females don’t go around acting hysterical or dramatic about it.

The History of England

This was rather amusing if you love history like I do. If you know British history, more the better. Very tongue in cheek and witty retelling of some kings and queens of England and Scotland from Henry III to George II’s beheading.

It’s a satire on standard history books. It mocks historians and their so-called objectivity. I rather liked her literary references and tone. It’s the kind of work young historians would appreciate and it does make it more interesting to learn.

Austen wrote this when she was fifteen. Goodness, I wish I had a slither of how much talent she had as a youth. I did find both works amusing in their own way and different than her novels of course except I still clearly saw Austen through it. I like her tongue in cheek humor and style of writing, her ability to not take things too serious, and her social commentary.

I recommend the juvenilia to see more shades of Austen

In 2009, I read Sanditon, The Watsons, Lady Susan, and the juvenilia from the Everyman’s Classics compilation so this is technically a reread. I enjoyed the book, but I don’t think I remember much of it so I may as well reread and review this one for Austen in August and the Classics Club.

This features Austen’s attempt at writing a villain and an antihero for the protagonist. This is a short epistolary novella so it’s not first person, but you get to see several characters through the letters. Epistolary works are best in short forms such as this because the format is limiting. Many early English novels are in letter form, but it can drag. This novella had the right length.

Lady Susan is not a good woman. She is deceitful, spiteful, manipulative, vain, not a good mother and yet amusing to read about. Personally, I don’t alway need to like characters in books, movies and film or even feel sympathetic to them, but they must be interesting. I found Lady Susan interesting or at least good to dislike. Like many selfish people, she has this weird logic about the way of world. With her letters, you can really tell she cannot help but think like this. She is just that amoral.

This was a nice, easy read that also had a lot of classic Austen touches, but it really showed another side to Austen. Weirdly enough, it reminded me of all the Georgette Heyer Regency novels I’ve been reading. Heyer has more characters who are scandalous and coquettish. I would recommend Heyer for those Austen readers who like the tone of Lady Susan.

Read on the Kindle August 7-8th 2012.

Mansfield Park is the only major novel of Jane Austen I hadn’t read yet. I have seen a couple of adaptations of it so I knew the story.

In a reply comment in the Austen in August post, Roof Beam Reader commented that many people seem to leave Mansfield Park last or that it ends up being their ‘last’ of the Austen books. I think there are couple of reasons for this.

First, Mansfield Park is known as the most serious of Austen’s works. It has the most social commentary, and it has a slightly darker tone about socio-economics in Austen’s times. While Austen has social commentary in all her books, MP has the one which involves a greater inequality between the characters both financially and morally. While this doesn’t necessarily dissuade readers, it is probably the most realistic of Austen’s novels. It is definitely the most somber.

Secondly, Fanny Price seems to have a reputation among the Austen heroines. In the Austen choose your own adventure book Lost in Austen by Emma Campbell, there is one alternative ending which the reader is trapped forever with Fanny in an attic (the horror!). That was amusing, but not surprising to me. I have touched my toe in the waters of Austen fandom online and Fanny doesn’t seem to be many people’s favourite Austen heroine (Austeroine?). While Lizzie has wit, Elinor has sense, Emma has schemes, Anne has maturity, and Catherine has curiosity, Fanny has…? She has relatively less to recommend her. In fact, some find her “insipid” including Austen’s own mother.

I wrote the above even before starting the book. I went in to the book with an open mind and tried not to find Fanny Price annoying. A lot of Fanny’s personality is due in part to her upbringing. She is neglected and made to feel low by all her relations except Edmund. She is shy to begin with but her snobby relations don’t treat her like a person, more like a charity case or property. Only Edmund seems to care about her so I understand how Fanny would be someone without much bravery or self-esteem. Actually without Edmund to protect her, Fanny is abused like a slave girl to her aunts. She takes it all because she is brought up to take it all. Another reason is that her personality type is probably not something in which modern readers can appreciate since her primary traits are frailty, passivity, and morality. Being a forthright female was not something conventional in Austen’s time.

Continue reading →

Another classic children’s book I missed out when I was younger. I knew of this book as a child, but I wasn’t very interested in this genre at that time. I had a proclivity to mythology and fantasy then. I know I would have liked these books since I really liked the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

I wish i had read these when i was younger; it is quite easy to attach to these girls. On an interesting note, I read Geraldine Brooks’s March a couple years ago and enjoyed that. Coming into this book, I had her vision of Father March which was definitely more layered than Alcott portrays in this book.

My favourite of the sisters in order is Beth, Jo, Meg and then Amy. I felt the latter two actually developed the most from beginning to end which is always a testament to the writer’s ability for characterization. I do not have siblings so I can’t relate to how the girls were to each other, but it was lovely.

I had some teary eyed reactions to certain scenes in this novel. The older I get, the more easily I cry or tear up when I read books or watch movies. As a child, this rarely happened. This is such a touching novel where all the characters develop but aren’t perfect, and it really emphasizes how there is always something in one’s life to be grateful for and people that care and love for you. It’s a very human novel.

The story made me a tad sleepy, and I mean that in a good way. It is very relaxing to read and well suited to bedtime reading to children. All the chapters end neatly and with optimism.

The whole novel ends without any loose ends. I do feel Laurie and his wife end up together as if thrown together. There wasn’t that much foreshadowing for them. Similarly, that Jo would end up with who she did too. Alcott wrote it in well and did surprise the characters

I know this is the first in a trilogy, but I don’t feel inclined to read further. The ending left everyone happy and content. I admit to liking part one slightly more than part two. Alcott had actually published them as two volumes which is why this book does feel like two books in some ways.

Read on Kindle July 27th to August 1st, 2012.

My first Anne Bronte work. I had to resist reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for just a bit longer since I had this already on the Kindle and knew it to be Anne’s first novel.

This novel is somewhat autobiographical in nature, it’s not Roman à clef, but when reading this novel, it felt like a lot of the scenes were nonfiction and had actually happened to Anne Bronte. It is a novel about a governess and what it is like to live in that nebulous social position in a household where you are a lady, but also a servant; a caretaker, but not a mother who can discipline. A lot of the scenes felt sadly real and frustrating.

The writing is mature, advanced, and modern. I was aware of Anne’s style being more realistic and forthright than that of Charlotte or Emily. This is why I think she will become my favourite Bronte. There is a sense of modernism in her works. While the tone is still very Victorian, there are moments that could be in any novel after the 1900s. While I really liked Jane Eyre, and I have read Wuthering Heights, neither of those books are particularly realistic in terms of their plot. This one is the opposite. Though, I like Jane Eyre because Jane was so relateable as Agnes is in this book.

A nice passage which builds Agnes’s character, having arrived after a long journey to her second job:

I sat down beside the small, smoldering fire, and amused myself with a hearty fit of crying; after which, I said my prayers, and then, feeling considerably relieved, began to prepare for bed

I love that line, “a hearty fit of crying”; I’ve certainly done that.

Some parts of the novel were difficult to read because it was frustrating for Agnes and for the reader. She really suffered in her jobs, especially her first. She was patronized, neglected, ignored, and had to content with little sociopaths and insufferable spoiled snobs. It was evidently demoralising for Agnes and for Anne Bronte as well. There were a couple of instances of coyness and sense of humor in the writing that once again shows how forward and engaging a writer Anne is.

Religion has more of a presence in this novel than in the other Bronte novels I have read. Anne is allegedly the most religious of the Bronte sisters. I do think the writing shows that she has a strong sense of what is right and wrong. While I do not think the book is moralistic or heavily religious, I was less interested in biblical discussions in the book, but there are only a couple. They act as a good showcase for the time and from a character point of view, you can see how Agnes (and probably Anne in real life) endured her work and life owing much to her faith.

I liked this novel. I think it has a lot of pathos and realism. For a first novel, it is very good, and I look forward to more of her writing.

Read on Kindle from July 23-26th 2012.