Ed. note: over the past 10+ years, I’ve written a lot of blog posts and casual essays about my love of Jane Austen and the intersection of Austen’s work with pop culture, and I recently had the notion of attempting to synthesize all these pieces into a larger project. Whether this project ends up being a real honest-to-goodness book with pages and everything, or whether it’s just a more cohesive series of posts here and on rhondawithabook.com, I thought I’d share the first piece as an introduction to see how I feel. Enjoy!
Many defining moments of my high school years happened in the choir room.
“What are you reading?” I asked my friend Jamie one day (in the choir room). I feel pretty confident, and not at all over dramatic, in saying that that question changed my life.
Now, when I say that my defining moments happened in the choir room, I mean that I was a choir kid. Yes, a choir kid. I was one of those kids who walked through the halls singing Broadway tunes and Schubert art songs alike at the top of my lungs with the other choir kids. One of those kids you probably told to can it, or pushed into a locker, or politely ignored, or even secretly admired, when you were in high school. We weren't trying to be annoying, honestly. In my case, at least, the joys of high school life were just so overwhelming that they often manifested themselves in effusive bursts of song. I couldn't help it.
Something wonderful happens when you sing with a choir, when all the parts come together into one voice, and you can feel the notes and rhythms sliding and swirling around you, and the music fills the room until your breath is vibrating with it. And then, just after the song has ended, it still hangs in the air for a split second, reverberates through the vast space of the universe and back to the closeness of your beating heart, before fading to silence. It's that fraction of a second, that echo that makes it all worth it. There is no thought, no movement, just the lingering remnant of an enchantment just ended.
It is that remnant, I think, that made the choir room such a magical place. And maybe it was because of that magic that I was fated to ask that life-changing question.
“Pride and Prejudice,” Jamie replied.
I’d heard of Pride and Prejudice, and I knew a bit about Jane Austen. I’d even attempted to read Emma at the age of 10 because I loved Clueless, and the 1996 adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow was a favorite of my mom’s. But after reading (mostly skimming, tbh) the first 80 pages or so, I’d given up on Emma (something Mr. Knightley would never do), convinced that “classics” were impenetrable, stuffy, and boring. (The fact that I was 10 could have had something to do with that conclusion, I don’t know. [Though I’m pretty sure I didn’t know the word “impenetrable” at 10, or even at 15, which is the age I was when this story takes place.])
So the fact that Jamie was reading Pride and Prejudice didn’t phase me, though I did wonder why she was so enraptured by a stuffy, boring “classic.” She said that she found it exciting, and actually pretty funny. Hmm, ok. I don’t remember what else we said regarding Pride and Prejudice at that time, but a seed was planted.
A few days later, my friend Julia informed me during lunch that she was going to the school library to check out a copy of Pride and Prejudice because Jamie said it was good. Jamie got to her, too! At this point I think what happened was fate. I went to the library with Julia, we found the Jane Austen books, and there just happened to be two copies of Pride and Prejudice available. Julia took one, I took the other.
I took the book home after school and started to read. I read all through dinner. I read in the living room while my parents watched the news and their favorite sitcoms. I read long after they went to bed, in the light of a single lamp, my legs curled underneath me on the couch, too engrossed to close the book for the few moments it would take to move to my bedroom. I read until my eyes were drooping and I forced myself to shuffle off to bed. Then the next morning, I read in the precious hour I had after I woke up before I had to leave for school.
I sat next to Jamie in choir that day. “I just got to the part where Lydia runs away!” I told her with no preamble.
“Oh my gosh!” She immediately was on the same page (figuratively speaking, of course; literally speaking, she had already finished the book). “It gets so good after that!”
I’d had a few transcendent reading experiences before, but I had never felt so “seen” by an author until now. I connected with the romance of the book quite easily; Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s love story has become a blueprint for so many other romance stories in pop culture that the beats already felt familiar. It was kind of like when I visited a German village that had kept most of its original buildings from the late 17th century and my initial honest-to-goodness thought was, “This feels like Disneyland.” (Hey, I’m American; we don’t often see buildings that have been around for more than 300 years!) I knew the copy, but this was my first time experiencing the original.
This was also the first time I had ever consumed a romance story in a way that made me think of romantic love as a real, human experience, and not just a fantastical notion from a Disney movie. I was a bit of a late bloomer in terms of romance and dating, and at 15 I’d never been on a date, or even seriously thought about it before. Seeing the two people involved in this romance make mistakes and miscommunicate and disagree with each other, but still work through it in the end, allowed me to envision a similar experience for myself in real life.
And of course, there was Elizabeth Bennet. I feel like Mr. Darcy gets all the attention from Pride and Prejudice fans, but we should really be talking about Lizzy Bennet. I mentioned that this was the most “seen” I had ever felt by a novel before, and that was because I was immediately in with Lizzy. The moment she steps on the page, I am with her. She is funny and intelligent and warm; she embodies the best qualities I want to see in myself. She also makes mistakes and has a couple of pretty significant lapses in judgment, which was highly relatable to 15-year-old me (and now-times me, let’s be honest). Most importantly, she stays true to herself, and even while admitting and rectifying her mistakes, does not let anyone intimidate her into accepting less than what she deserves. She turns down Mr. Darcy’s first proposal, a really ballsy move, and insists that he view her as a human with her own thoughts and agency, as an equal. To have such a character to identify with and look up to as a 15-year-old girl was absolutely invaluable to me, and is what ultimately kept me turning those pages.
I finished Pride and Prejudice that afternoon and began Northanger Abbey right away. (I’d anticipated finishing Pride and Prejudice and checked out Northanger Abbey as well as Persuasion from the library that day.) I can’t really say for certain why I chose that for my next Austen, but I did have fond memories of the Wishbone episode (which still has the best casting choice for Henry Tilney, hands down), and I felt an inexplicable kinship with its 17-year-old heroine Catherine Morland, who loved novels and had an overactive imagination. (Ok, maybe that kinship wasn’t so inexplicable.)
In Northanger Abbey I also found the Jane Austen that I would come to think of as My Friend Jane. The narrator of the satirical novel is snarky, but never cruel; witty, but never condescending. She (I always think of the narrator as a she, though I guess technically pronouns are never specified) “breaks the fourth wall,” so to speak, addressing the reader directly often, which was not uncommon for novels of the late 18th century, when Austen first wrote it and the art form was new.
But Northanger’s narrator does it in almost a conspiratorial way; she’s not just explaining things or giving information to the reader, but actually including the reader in the game. Rather than just presenting her Gothic novel parody to us, she invites us to parodize with her, allowing us to see the merits and mechanics of the genre while simultaneously lovingly mocking it (an attitude that feels very similar to the current online Twilight fandom, actually.) I’d even venture to say Austen was dabbling in meta-modernism a century before postmodernism was even a twinkle in Kurt Vonnegut’s eye.
Most of this was far from my mind when I first read Northanger, though. While I did have some context for Gothic fiction–The Secret Garden was one of my favorite books–and vaguely recognized the tropes that Northanger parodies, I wouldn’t gain that deep appreciation for the satirical elements until years later.
When I first read Northanger Abbey at 15, I gained one of my most long-standing fictional crushes in Henry Tilney, and, more importantly, I found My Friend Jane. I read all of her books within a couple of months and then eventually found my way to her juvenilia and letters. Her heroines became my role models. Her humor became part of my personality. She became a friend that I still often turn to for comfort, amusement, and inspiration.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Dear Miss Austen,
I have lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex me, except that I have yet to find one who inspires my deepest affections. All of the young men I meet seem more similar to either Mr. Collins or Mr. Wickham, to varying degrees. I would be satisfied with a Mr. Bingley, but need I despair of ever finding my Mr. Darcy? Does he exist outside of novels?
If you say it is so I will believe it.
Rhonda Watts
My dear Miss Watts,
Never despair! It is true that in novels the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, and the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour conveyed to the world in the best chosen language. Yet it remains that novels are not life, and this intelligence, I gather, is from what your despair would spring. But in this great universe the truest measure of a woman is not of the everyday details of her life, but of her grasp of the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Rhonda, there is a Mr. Darcy. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and friendship exist, and you know that they abound and give your life its greatest happiness. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Mr. Darcy. It would be as dreary as if there were no Miss Wattses. There would be no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. The eternal light with which the hope of young womanhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Mr. Darcy! You might as well not believe in love! You might go one and twenty years in the world searching for him, but even if you did not find him, what would that prove? No woman sees her Mr. Darcy until the time is right. The most real things in the world are those which we cannot see by searching.
You may have your Mr. Collinses and Mr. Wickhams and even your Mr. Bingleys, and hope that they are enough, but there does exist an affection which not the strongest man, or even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside the curtain and lead you to the affection you dream of. Is it all real? Ah, Miss Watts, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Mr. Darcy! Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Rhonda, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of womanhood.
Yours affectionately,
Jane Austen
That was real. I actually wrote that as a 20-year-old dork who thought I was too old to find true love. I mean, like half of Austen’s heroines are married by 20, so I maybe didn’t have the best sample size.
I also made Jane Austen way more sincere and saccharine than she would really be, because I had to fit the tone of the “Dear Virginia” letter. I think if I did meet Jane Austen in real life, she would probably find me annoying. She’d be polite in person, as propriety requires, but then she’d write something really scathing but hilarious about me in a letter to her sister Cassandra, and then probably never think of me again. I love her so much.
(I’d like to note that I tweeted those last three sentences after I wrote them and the tweet got nearly 300 likes in 24 hours, which is a lot for me because I barely have any followers.)
I can’t imagine anyone reading this far who isn’t already an Austen fan, but for anyone who hasn’t read Austen, or has only read a bit, but is interested in more, I thought I’d outline what I like to call a Reading Itinerary. I think the order in which you read an author’s work can have a huge impact on your experience of their work. For example, I constantly forget that Dodie Smith, author of I Capture the Castle, one of my favorite books, is also the author of 101 Dalmatians, which I’ve never read. I’m not even that much of a fan of the movie. And if I’d known that she wrote 101 Dalmatians at the time, I may not have even picked up I Capture the Castle. Fortunately, I was in between Twilight books, but that’s a story for another time.
For this Reading Itinerary I’m going to suggest, we’ll look at the order in which I first read Austen’s work, and then my thoughts and recommendations for anyone new to her work.
My First Reading Order
Emma (attempted; as stated, I was 10, so I gave up early on)
Pride and Prejudice
Northanger Abbey
Emma (for real this time)
Persuasion
Sense and Sensibility
Mansfield Park
“Lady Susan”
Various other Juvenilia and letters
Sanditon (as completed by “Another Lady”)
Was this a good order? I think so. It maybe wasn’t ideal and isn’t what I would recommend to the typical reader who is brand new to Jane Austen, but it was fine. If I could tell my 10-year-old self NOT to attempt to read Emma, I definitely would. I know there are many people who pick up Jane Austen at 10 or 12 and do just fine. I just didn’t, and it put me off reading classics for several years (or at least adult classics–I loooooved Frances Hodgson Burnett and L. M. Montgomery).
But actually, if you’re brand new to classic literature in general, I think Jane Austen is a great entry point, because we all already know her stories from their hefty presence in pop culture, and I personally find her writing really accessible even 200 years later.
My Recommended Order
So if my original reading order wasn’t exactly what I would recommend for new Austen readers, what order would I recommend? This is actually a question that’s discussed with some frequency in Austen-centered online spaces, as we Austen fans are always trying to recruit new converts.
I think a general consensus is that Pride and Prejudice should be read first, as it’s by far the most popular and well-beloved, as well as (arguably) Austen’s most accomplished and/or quintessential work. And this is a good, safe choice that I can completely get behind.
BUT, if you are the type of person who likes to go off the beaten path a little more, I have a couple different ideas for your first Austen novel, or your second if you’ve already read Pride and Prejudice, depending on what type of reader you are.
If you love romance: Persuasion
Persuasion, while not my favorite Austen novel, I believe has the best love story. Anne Elliot is 27 and no longer considered young and marriageable. Eight years earlier, she was in love with Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank, and they were engaged, but Anne’s aunt persuaded her to break off the engagement. Now, Captain Wentworth has come back into Anne’s life, and she still loves him. But does he still love her?
Say what you will about Darcy, Knightley, et. al.–and don’t get me wrong, they’re great–but Wentworth is super romantic, and boy does he know how to write a letter.
If you love humor, or are skeptical of Austen or romance in general: Northanger Abbey
Catherine Morland travels to the city of Bath with family friends the Allens, expecting to encounter adventure just like what she has read in Gothic novels. She meets new friends in the Tilney siblings, Henry and Eleanor, who invite her to their family home, Northanger Abbey. A stay at Northanger, an ancient, crumbling estate that one could easily believe is haunted by ghosts, is everything Catherine’s little Goth heart could dream of, but she finds that confusing fiction with reality is far too easy.
I’d recommend starting with Northanger Abbey to someone who doesn’t think they’re going to like Jane Austen, because it is her outlier. It is still quintessentially Austen, but its tone and sense of humor are different from her other works, because Northanger is a parody of the Gothic fiction novels that were so popular in Jane Austen’s teen years. Plus, it’s my personal favorite, so if you like it, too, we’re instant friends.
What to read next?
Regardless of whether you choose Persuasion or Northanger Abbey, if you don’t read Pride and Prejudice first, then it should be second. After that, it depends on what you read first and liked. If you’re a Persuasion-er, and you liked it, I’d recommend Emma next; if you went with Northanger, then after Pride, I’d go with Sense and Sensibility. At this point, you’re three books in and you have a good feel for Austen’s language and style, so I’d say go for whatever sounds good. Though for those who like to have structured TBRs, I’ve also rounded out my recommended reading orders below.
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
Sense and Sensibility
Mansfield Park
Northanger Abbey
OR
Northanger Abbey
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Emma
Persuasion
Mansfield Park
You’ll notice this is only the six major novels; I didn’t include any of the Juvenilia (her works from her teen years) or any minor or incomplete works.
I think the Sanditon completion by “Another Lady” published in 1975, which is the one I wholeheartedly recommend, can be put into either of these suggested reading orders at any point after Pride and Prejudice, and any of her earlier, satirical short pieces can be read at any point after Northanger Abbey.
And what to do if you’ve already read one Austen novel that was NOT Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, or Persuasion? I don’t fuckin know, man. Just kidding, I do. If what you liked about whatever you read was the romance, then as I noted previously, read Persuasion; if you liked the humor, then read Northanger or Pride and Prejudice, which also has peak Austen humor.
But ultimately, read whatever you want in whatever order you want, because it’s all good, and life is too short to take my suggestions too seriously!
I know I promised thoughts on Jane Austen and pop culture, and that’s coming. When I say that I see Jane Austen everywhere in pop culture, I mean literally almost everywhere. I am constantly looking at most media I consume through an Austen-colored lens. Her work and her sensibility (or my interpretations of such) have so permeated my own perspective that I can’t NOT see her, and the way she captured the human experience, in everything I see.
So I felt it was important to lay this foundation of my own experience of becoming an Austen fan and some baseline thoughts on the works themselves as a whole to give some context first. While I have some dissections of particular media works and genres, I also think we can gain some context from a broader look at Jane Austen’s presence in media and pop culture currently, which is where we will go next.