read all of Jane Austen's novels

This is the last one, although there appears to be an unfinished manuscript that was published posthumously. I am going to look for that, but I’m counting this goal as Done!

“Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion” are done. Only “Lady Susan” left to read.

This is my favorite story so far. In spite of all her matchmaking and her classist attitude, she does improve in the end and all ends nicely.

This story at least had a strong female character, even if her best qualities were listed as being amiable and able to be influenced by those she respected. At least she had a backbone.

It’s interesting that divorce and adultry are mentioned in a story of that time.

I enjoyed “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen a great deal more than “Sense and Sensibility”.

Elizabeth’s sense of humor made her a much more interesting heroine in my opinion. She and her father seemed to enjoy a love for the absurd, although her mother’s behavior did embarrass her. Other than that there are many parallels among the characters in the story: Elizabeth and Elinor, Lydia and Marianne, Jane and Mrs. Dashwood, Wickham and Willoughby.

It still bothers me that all the women think about is finding a husband, that an “accomplished” woman “sang and played all day”, but I have to assume that was the world Jane herself was exposed to at the time.

You know that with a family that size and all those dinner parties, there had to be some people working very hard in that household, but they are barely ever mentioned and then only in brief passing and only in their concern for the family.

Fifty years after these novels were published, we see books such as “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott depicting an American family. In this book the characters are much less one sided. Although some of the girls were still thinking primarily of finding husbands, they had to pitch in and help make the world around them.

Another fifty years later, “Anne of Green Gables” by L. M. Montgomery describes a young Canadian woman from a very different set of cicumstances who puts the romantic side of life into perspective.

Both Jo and Anne are charcters that I would encourage young girls to meet early in life. The Austen women in the books I’ve read so far, although they may be a study of women from a certain subsection of society in England at the time the novels are written, are not ones I’d place before my daughters.

I finished Sense and Sensibility last night. I have to say that I had a very difficult time getting through that book. I find it extremely slow reading on inane subjects. But I am obviously in the minority with that opinion. I expected wonderful stories like Louisa May Alcott’s books, but then maybe I am listening with the wrong “ear”. Maybe I was suppose to listen to the sound of the words like a James Joyce novel. I’ve read a lot of period novels written in that time and place, so it’s not a lack of familiarity. Anyway, on to Pride and Prejudice next.

I’d love to hear other people’s take on this story and what exactly I missed when I read it!

Last year I read “The Jane Austen Book Club” by Karen Joy Fowler. It contained a synopsis of each story that the people in the bookclub read and discussed. I realized that I had never read these books! So I picked up a book that contained all her works “complete and unabridged” and started the first story: “Sense and Sensibility”.