I've Just Donned My Virtual Ranting Bonnet

[gothrockrulz]

Yes, you read that right. B-O-N-N-E-T.

In this ONTD post about disappointing authors, boomstick disses Jane Austen in a way that I really can't wrap my mind around. As a huge Jane Austen fan, I'm seriously displeased. (Virtual cookies for anybody who can tell me which Jane Austen character I just quoted.) I'm not a member of the LJ community, so I can't comment. I'm not too keen on joining, so I'll post my thoughts here instead.



The part relating to Miss Austen begins splendidly.

Let me start by admitting that I'm not a huge Austen fan.

Oh, really? Then how can she disappoint you, if you're next door to indifferent in the first place?

I've always seen her work as tarted up bodice ripper material.

You can't be serious. You just can't. You've got to be kidding or trolling or something.

Name ONE INSTANCE in which a bodice was ripped in a Jane Austen novel. Guess what? THERE ISN'T ONE! How many bodice rippers have you read or watched in which all bodices remained intact throughout the whole story? Honestly, what misleading summary of her novels have you read? Most people, who actually read her work, complain because everything is just too prim and proper for them. (Their loss, by the way.)

Because Austen's smarts crackle through her writing, I honestly believed that her rise to publication glory was as smooth and inexorable as her prose. I imagined her putting pen to paper one morning and delivering the complete draft of Sense and Sensibility to an enraptured publisher, error and revision free, about two weeks later.

Um, have you ever tried to write a flawless novel in two weeks? Have you heard of anyone writing a flawless novel in two weeks? I'm really trying to be civil here, but I have to say, you're either a troll or a complete nutter. I'm thinking troll here.

Austen’s first book - Northanger Abbey – failed spectacularly to make any mark on the reading public. In fact, it was so crap it didn't even make it into print. Intended as a pisstake of the gothic melodramas which were wildly popular at the time, Austen's first work failed to hit either a satirical or a romantic target. She sold Northanger Abbey to a bookseller cum publisher in 1803 where it languished on the slush pile, unpublished, for almost ten years. And there it would probably have stayed if Austen's brother Henry hadn't bought the book back after the death of his sister and brought it out posthumously as part of a series.

Oh, gee, that's just AWFUL. No famous author ever wrote anything that even came close to touching the slush pile. She's a complete disgrace, and I should never read a word of her work again. All because somebody on LJ, whom I'm assuming is NOT a published novelist whose work has been beloved all over the world for over two hundred years, tells me that Jane Austen is disappointing.

Yeah, right.

By the way, Northanger Abbey is probably one of the most brilliant gothic satires out there. Here are snippets from the first chapter, for example.

No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man . . . and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on — lived to have six children more — to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself . . . At present she [Catherine] did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover . . . She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no — not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door — not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

How can anyone read all that delicious tongue-in-cheek description of an unlikely heroine and call it crap? It's long-winded, yes, even after I chopped a few words out here and there--but guess what? That's how everybody with an education wrote back then--even "suppressed" women that weren't permitted to attend colleges and universities. You really can't judge a classic book by modern standards. Just because it's not written in the streamlined, edgy style many writers and publishers favor today doesn't mean it has no worth.

And here I had thought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was maddening . . . Oh, wait! It still is.

Okay, I think it's time to close; I'm getting too worked up over this. I'll tack on an appropriate GIF I found on tumblr and find something productive to do.