Well I loved Austen's P&P better than S&S when I was 12/13 when I
first read them in a set of English classics my father had on his
shelf. It was only after I had some ravaging sexual experience at 15
that I realized Elinor could provide a model for me to emulate to keep
myself safe, and it was not wrong to see in Marianne a 1790s version
of an abused teenager or girl in her twenties. Austen has Marianne as
more than a little to blame for her near self-destruction. Years later
I thought Austen was wrong for blaming the victim of the social codes,
and would now say (half-joking) Jane needed to have red Rescuing
Ophelia by Mary Pipher.
I did like Dorothy Sayers in my early 20s. At 10 and 11 I read Nancy
Drew and Judy Bolton mysteries.
Ellen
Ellen
On Sun, Nov 10, 2024 at 7:05?PM Nancy Mayer via groups.io
<regencyresearcher@...> wrote:
Back in 1995 and for the next decade as the Austen adaptation films came
pout, we would have people coming to our local JASNA meetings. Most soon
left when they discovered that we did not sit around extolling the virtues
of Colin Firth or any of the other actors. Some declared they never read
a book; some said Austen was too hard and too intellectual. I refrained
from telling them that P&P was sold in a set with some other classics as
children's Classics. At one time, it was assumed that anyone who had been
in school to about age 14 could read Austen.
I confess that when I read P&P at about that age that I wasn't much
impressed. I was reading mystery stories.
On Sun, Nov 10, 2024 at 2:45?PM Ellen Moody via groups.io <ellen.moody=
[email protected]> wrote:
At the large JASNAs and local groups. it's not been unommon for me to meet
a woman (usually a woman) who has only read Pride and Prejudice and seen
the other books in their movie form -- as if they were the same. So also
people who don't distinguish watching a movie from reading a book. People
taking adult ed courses in Austen who don't think it's necessary the
instructor have read MP -- to me unless you've read MP, you don't know this
author, and since Austen's oeuvre is so small (you can fit the fiction into
one fat volume), there's no excuse not to have read them all -- if you are
presenting yourself as someone who knows Austen.
Ellen
Ellen Moody