jane austen and i have a lot in common. at least i think we do. she was born the year that the last german execution for witchcraft took place, i was born at the beginning of a decade when being a witch was hip (if you had enough cocaine and leather to pull it off properly).
jane austin lived in bath. i used to take them frequently. (forgive me. it's true) her father was in the clergy, my father was in insurance. both professions sell people something they already know they want: only slightly overpriced reassurance. She never married, I’m not currently married. (you get the picture.)
this glut of similarities became apparent to me last week, when, on a quiet tuesday night, i was looking for something to make fun of, i mean watch. the objective, at least in my mind, was to find a genre work that i could parody for this site and other writing. when i saw that the latest pride and prejudice adaptation, directed by joe wright and adapted by deborah moggach, was available for my viewing pleasure, i thought that i had found perfect fodder.
of course, fodder is as fodder does,* and i ended up spending more time berating myself than i did criticizing the movie. when all was said and done, most of it with gorgeous costumes and english accents, i was hard pressed to criticize the movie in any way.
despite my best efforts to find faults, i found myself on the edge of my couch, completely riveted. i think my interior monologue actually went something like, “oh, mr. darcy. go to him! he loves you!” of course followed by, “why are you such a chick! eww! gross! stop it already!” then i did the only reasonable thing to do when you’re upset about being too much of a girl. i cried, ate some chocolate, and shopped online for shoes. i’m not sure if ballet flats are a good look for me, but i felt a lot better afterward.
like the flats trend, i had heard that the movie had some problems. various people had mentioned that the film was less than perfect and i’m not afraid to admit that i went in hoping that it would be easily mocked. though admittedly less than perfect, the movie held up well in the face of my critical (read: bitchy) analysis. (in a thumbs up, thumbs down world, it was a reasounding thumbs up. the new york and la times agreed, too.)
which leads me to believe that jane austin, widely regarded as a master of the storyteller’s form, is a winning bet every time. (unlike german witchcraft, which apparently didn't work out well for a number of people.)
in just forty-one short years, austin, whose stories we all know as pointed analyses of the effects of social mores, managed to leave the world with a group of books that have been read by generations. (and in my case re-re-re-reread. or is that something i shouldn’t be admitting to in public?)
pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility, and northanger abbey are some of the most perfectly crafted chick lit novels i have ever laid hand, eye, or (late in plot) tear to. reminding me, that being a girl, while sometimes a hazard to yourself and your chocolate stash, can not only be great, it can get you absorbed into the cannon, remembered for all eternity, and even lauded by hollywood. in the case of last tuesday, being a girl can also get you a cozy movie night and a what i sincerely hope are a really cute pair of flats.
*What does that mean exactly and why am I so amused by it? I imagine it’s because it evokes images of cannons, which somehow makes me think of pirates…or maybe it’s just that Keira Knightly reminds me of pirates. Well, me and all the folks at Disney.
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