Ylpeys ja ennakkoluulo (1813)

I was completely enthralled by this novel. It is truest wonderful. ( )

Good novel to read ( )

Jane Austen ocupó un lugar preminente en la literatura británica décadas antes de que las mujeres pudiesen disponer de una habitación propia en la que escribir novelas y abrió la senda que recorrerían las hermanas Brontë o V. Woolf. La elegancia estilística de su prosa, su ironía y su perspicacia para el retrato social convierten sus obras en una referencia ineludible de la literatura del siglo XIX. Orgullo y prejuicio, su novela más conocida, narra cómo Elizabeth Bennet y Fitz william Darcy se enfrentan a sus prejuicios movidos por el amor que, contra pronóstico, surge entre ellos.

This is my second read of this novel and I'm left with basically the same opinion, which is this: Jane Austen is okay. Her books are entertaining. But why all the hype?
I can understand saying they are historically important because they were in the first wave of modern novels. She wrote structurally tight novels with great character arcs and interesting subplots that enhance the main plot thread, all in a day when she did not have many other novels to learn from. Books before this were mainly written in letter format (as her own book "Lady Susan" was). She is one of the very first novelists and her influence can not be understated.

So...I can understand being impressed by all that. But what I often see people say is that these books are very feminist, or that they are great social commentary, or that they are great romance.

1) They are not feminist. Jane Austen was not ahead of her time. She is very much a product of her time. But that is fine. It's fine that her female characters are all focused on getting married and don't have any other tangible goals for themselves. That was the time period. I'm not mad about it. But I am irritated that in the postmodern literary scene nobody can enjoy a book unless they're pretending it's got empowered strong Wahman. Austen is not progressive. Some of her characters, like Lizzy, balk at social conventions and gender norms in subtle ways, like how Lizzy only wants to marry for love (unlike her friend who she really looks down on for marrying Mr.Collins). I'd say Austen writes strong female characters, in that they stand up for what they believe in and don't back away from their values. But they believe too much in a patriarchal system to be called 'feminist.' Again, that's fine. And hey, if you actually want some for real feminism from this time period crack open Mary Wollestonecraft's 'Vindication of the Rights of Woman.' Also, Austen's novels always got some girl hate in them. Lizzy Bennet has some real r/notliketheothergirls lines and it's not cute.

2) It's not great social commentary because who gives a fuck about the minutiae of daily life for lower-gentry class women in the Georgian era? Really, who asked for that? If you're actually interested in a novel that is a sociopolitical commentary then Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" is a way better choice. Oh, you say, but the main character is a man. An immigrant man living in abject poverty is somehow below an upper-class woman who soends her days trimming hats in the countryside because SJW logic. Okay, then read 'Beloved.' That's also a sociopolitical commentary, but it's not only an intersection of gender and class, but an intersection of race, gender, and class. So by fruity academic standards of who-is-the-most-oppressed Toni Morrison's characters win by a landslide. In my opinion, they should. But also in my opinion, my man Jurgis should rank way above any Austen female lead in the oppression olympics.
Hey, I wouldn't be going on about all this if the far-left that highjacked higher education wasn't trying to shoehorn Austen into identity politics.
It IS actually possible to enjoy a book without it being important in relation to identity politics. And Austen's books just aren't important in that sphere. At all.

3) There are far better romances. The emotions in this novel (and all other Austen novels) are so repressed, the narrative is so distant, that you can not feel what the character is experiencing. This isn't surprising, considering Austen spends the majority of all her books denigrating female passion and too exhuberant a display of female emotion. Just look at the way Lydia, Kitty, and Mrs. Bennet are treated in this novel. By comparison, Jane and Lizzy are superior because they hide and tamp down their own emotions. They don't succumb to passion as Lydia does or anxiety as Mrs. Bennet does. They hide all of their emotions and deal with their fears and sadness in private. Again, we calling this female empowerment? That's crazy. But anyhow, yeah, a romance with such repressed emotion isn't a decent romance. A far better one is Wuthering Heights. The passion leaks off the pages of that one (and it wasn't written long after Austen's oeuvre).

Guess that's all I got. I look forward to all the r/iamverysmart responses I get to this review. I mean, you are allowed to disagree with me. I'm so fine with that. But if you feel that a work is above criticism simply because it is a classic, then I think you need to reframe your perspective. You're doing yourself a disservice if you think you have to love every work of classic literature in order to be an...(clears throat dramatically!)...intellectual.

Okay, see ya.
( )

Snore. ( )