Jane Austen

Teresa Edgerton

Teresa Edgerton

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All right, I know you are out there, fans of Jane Austen . . .

So which are your favorites among her books and why?

When I was much younger, first discovering her books, I think it was a tie between Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, because I found those two the most amusing.

When I was a little older, I came to regard Northanger as too slight, and Persuasion became my new co-favorite. I think it has the most emotional truth of all her novels.

Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice still top my list, but Emma is right behind them.
 
Northanger Abbey is very amusing. I think she is taking quite a poke at the popular Gothic novels of the time.
It's hard to say which I like best, a pity she didn't live long enough to write more. Of course she might have "gone off".
 
Persuasion. I read it for A-Level, the last school exams, so I'd have been 17-18, and I immediately loved everything about it. I'd read some Jane Austen before that, though I can't now recall exactly what and when (but I won a school prize when I in the Lower Fifth, a couple of years before that, half of which went to the purchase of Pride and Prejudice) so I knew her wit and irony, which I adored, but somehow Persuasion spoke to me in a way P&P for all its scintillating brilliance didn't. Looking back now, it's perhaps no coincidence that I was also a middle daughter (albeit I had brothers as well), the practical do-what-needs-to-be-done and don't-make-a-fuss one, and with my adult's eye I can see certain resemblances to my sisters in Elizabeth and Mary which I might have picked up emotionally without putting into words. I've never not loved it as a book, though perhaps what appeals to me now is the somewhat elegaic tone, the sense of having to make the best of life, of accepting one has made mistakes but nonetheless continuing to do what is right; being principled without being priggish.

Northanger Abbey I've never fully got on with, probably because I was that bit older when I first came across it, and I saw Catherine as being a bit silly if not actually dim, and knowing nothing of the Gothic horror novels she has devoured I missed a lot of the humour. I think I appreciate Emma more now than I did when I first read it, and I'd put it ahead of Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park, but it's a long way third.
 
I'm not a Jane Austen fan as such but I loved Pride and Prejudice. Mr and Mrs Bennett are amazing characters, full of humour and for me make the book what it is. They are perhaps my favourite characters in literature.

Mary and Charlotte I thought really highlighted how women were treated in the era.
 
For eleven years I hosted a small campus-community reading group. We read all of Austen's completed adult novels except for Northanger Abbey. Her books and Dickens's always went over well.

In a discussion of Emma, I allowed that the heroine certainly would attract me (a man), but my wife said she hated Emma! I wonder if women readers tend not to like Miss Woodhouse -- that novel doesn't seem to be rating very highly here so far; but candid male readers may have to confess that --

Of course, part of the book's great appeal is the very skilful development of Emma's moral awakening (e.g. the realization of her cruelty towards the prosy spinster). Also, I relish Emma's fussy father!

Speaking of fathers, I recommend that readers try a thought experiment next time they read Pride and Prejudice. Rename it Mr. Bennet or, if you like, Fathers and Daughters. Bennet can seem to be a supporting character; but everything that happens relates to his character. It's a pretty devastating portrait, no more so than when he tells Elizabeth, who is trying to comfort him, that, no, he ought to feel bad about how negligent he has been, etc. -- and says that, in any event, the feeling will pass off soon enough (and he will go back to his old ways). Whew. That is actually frightening in its implications. It actually reminds me of Wentworth's damnation in Charles Williams's Descent into Hell.
 
The one I want to reread most right now is Mansfield Park... maybe this summer. It's the one in which Austen determined to write something different from her (superlative) usual, as perhaps was Dickens's case when he wrote Little Dorrit (also one I'd like to revisit), reining in the comic spirit....
 
I read Jane Austen in my teens (who didn't?), not a big fan but liked Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma. Haven't read Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. A heavy book The Complete Novels Of Jane Austen has been sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be opened. No, I must steer away from here for a while, being constantly reminded more and more books to read and reread is exciting but utterly frustrating when you have little time!
 
My top three are Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility. Lizzie Bennet will always be one of my top female characters of all time (followed closely by Virginia Woolf's Lady Orlando), but Anne Elliot is a close second out of Austen's novels.

Emma always annoyed me; I just wanted to reach in and give the girl a good shake. Which I suppose was the point. But the book has led to some great movie adaptations; the Gwyneth Paltrow one is lovely and I thought Clueless with Alicia Silverstone was a blast.
 
Much like with the Beatles and Rolling Stones in a previous era, or Blur/Oasis afterwards, in my day you could be either a Bronte or Austen fan, but not both. Our school was split into two with a big wall down the middle to keep the factions from violence. That didn't stop it outside of school, of course -- gangs of Bronte kids trashed Austin car show-rooms, and Austeneers wrecked anything to do with large herbivorous dinosaurs. Then an Austen girl fell for a Bronte boy, and the tragedy that ensued gave us all a taste for Thomas Hardy instead.
 
Give me Jane Austin's razor wit against the Bronte's purple prose any day.
 
Persuasion, always, though I love Pride and Prejudice, too. Then... probably Mansfield Park or Emma, then um... well, I don't tend to re-read the others that much but probably they're about equal. I can't stand Marianne and Ferrars is a drip but the mc's silliness in Northanger Abbey makes me squirm every time I read it. Hmm.

I didn't read any Austen until I was in my late 20s, and then I read everything I could get my hands on at once. I love the message in Persuasion that you can make mistakes and come back from them. Also the letter. Ahhh.
 
I first read Northanger Abbey in my teens, so that may explain why I liked it so much. But although my opinion of the book has changed over the years, there are some good scenes in it, and I liked the TV adaptation (but that was mainly because I enjoyed her interactions with Henry).

When I first read Persuasion, I was disappointed in the letter. I wanted to see the characters meet face-to-face and express their feelings. It was only later, when I was much older, that I realized that he was able to express himself far more passionately in the letter than he could have realistically done (considering the manners of the period, and the personalities of the two people involved) than he ever could have done under any other circumstances.

Mansfield Park, I regret to say, Hex, is my absolutely least favorite of Austen's finished novels.
I think Edmund is a hypocritical prig, and he will make Fanny's future life absolutely miserable. His "mentor" relationship with Fanny is, I suppose, not that different from the one between Emma and Mr. Knightley, but Mr. Knightley is a sensible man with a greater understanding of human nature. And while he criticizes Emma, I don't think he ever condescends to her. I cannot imagine him being dazzled or attracted to a Mary Crawford. True, he is older and has the advantage of greater maturity than Edmund. Perhaps someday Edmund will grow up, but I doubt he will ever feel the necessity with the adoring Fanny at his side.
 
I must go and read it again.
I think I get so caught up in Fanny's love for Edmund that I can forgive him. I also have a bit of a thing about mentor relationships (I was wondering the other day why I liked Nikita so much...) so perhaps that's part of what I liked as well. I was glad Fanny won out.

I always loved Middlemarch -- well before I was reading Austen -- and a large part of my love for it is that
goodness wins out. Dorothea gets through her mistake of marrying the awful Casaubon and in the end finds love (and I don't think about how that will work out in the long run, just that Ladislaw is beautiful!)

However, I'm not a huge fan of Mansfield Park or Emma, although obviously just in terms of Austen's books -- in general, I like them very much. I'd rather re-read Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice.

(It occurs to me also, that one of the things I like about Mansfield Park is its length -- there's just more of it to love).
 
Oh yes, I like Middlemarch very much. Although that may be because I saw the dramatization before I read it, and visualizing Rufus Sewell as Will does rather influence my enjoyment.


But I did want to strangle Rosamund. And I hated the ending for her and Lydgate. That was a case where goodness did not win out.
 
Oooh, coming to this late because I've been lurking elsewhere (grinding out a draft of the novel), but I have to stick my oar in.

I love all things Austen, but I also like Jane Eyre, @HareBrain, so I would probably have been trampled by both gangs in your school. :(

Who doesn't love Pride and Prejudice? Really? I can read and reread this and still enjoy it just as much, although I will allow that it could be in part because of my dismal memory. I loved Northanger Abbey too, but Mansfield Park is probably my favourite.

Sense and Sensibility irritated me, because it seemed too heavy-handed, and Emma was, in my mind, a prize bitch who really did need a good, sound slap. Perusasion? Depended on my mood. Ann was irritating too, in a different way. She seemed a bit weak-kneed to the bolshy, confident teenage Kerry. I must read her again and see if my views have changed.

Must read them all again.:rolleyes:
 
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