I’m reading “Pride and prejudice” and I’m strangely enjoying it. I like the characters and the story, I’m really hooked with the book, but I don’t really know why it is so interesting and how Austen makes me feel interested in a book that, maybe just in the surface, is so mundane.
In the past, I also read “Sense and sensibility” for University and I also enjoyed it very much.
How do you think Austen makes this? How does she make a realistic and simple book so interesting in its story and its characters?
Idk if this answers your question exactly, but regarding why her stories have remained very popular for women, it’s because she writes about female situations in a way that females can relate to.
Elizabeth is generally well-liked, but is also criticized for having too much attitude (the biggest critics we see in the story are the Bingley posse and her mom, but she prob faces this elsewhere as well).
Jane is quiet and polite, generally thought of as the nicest girl in the neighborhood, but Darcy calls her out for sometimes seeming unemotional. (Which I guess shows his type and insecurities. His best friend and love interest are both lively people. He is very introverted but hates that about himself).
I could go on about every Bennet sister, but the bottom line is that there is no Madonna/Whore dichotomy. Even Lydia, who is the literal whore of the story, is portrayed as a foolish child who doesn’t know what she’s doing. She isn’t 100% a victim, because she’s going for exactly what she wants. BUT she isn’t a seductress that can ruin men either, as her father plainly pointed out to Elizabeth. She’s just naive and stubborn, albeit at the near-cost of her family’s network.
I would delve into Sense and Sensibility, because I just finished it. But, admittedly, I didn’t like it as much and skimmed a good portion of it. Maybe that’s because I saw the abridged movie version with Alan Rickman first (🥵🥵🥵), but I couldn’t stand the middle portion where Elinor just has conversations nonstop with all the side characters while Marianne cries and sleeps through colds. I suppose the one thing this novel does that the others don’t do as much is actually show a girl turn into a woman. Marriane is barely an adult, so she still has childish beliefs about love and marriage. When she realizes she was wrong about how love works, she marries a man who loves her (yay!) and just learns to love him after marriage while he adores the quasi-reincarnation of his dead teen sweetheart (… yay?). This is different from Emma and Elizabeth, who are both adults that learn how to be better adults.
As well as writing relatable portrayals of females, her stories revolve around themes that concern females in a timeless sense: marrying for love or money; being “too talkative and rude” or whatever bc you’re not passive and quiet; wanting to be loved by a man who respects you, even if you’re a massive fuckup (like Emma). You know how in high school, you read Shakespeare bc “the things he wrote about are timeless”? Austen is just like that.
Idk I hope I gave something good in all this 😭