Jane Austen For Dummies Read Online Free PDF Page A

hundreds of pages. Can you point to a narrator who’s more lovely and charming than Austen?
    Hearing “Jane, the friend” become the witty, terse narrator
    Sometimes, however, “Jane, the friend” gets a little terse, but never with the reader. Instead, Austen uses her characters as the butts of her jokes. For example, in
Persuasion,
she sets up a conversation between Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft. Mrs. Musgrove exclaims to her new friend, “‘What a great traveler you must have been!’” and Mrs. Croft replies:
    Pretty well, ma’am, in the fifteen years of my marriage. I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been more than once to the East Indies and back again . . . But I never went beyond the Streights — and never was in the West Indies. We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies. (P 1:8)
    Now “Jane,” the narrative voice, enters: “Mrs. Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent;
she
could not accuse herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her life.” So much for Mrs. Musgrove’s knowledge of geography! Although this narrative voice sounds like it has quite a little bite to it, remember that in
Pride and Prejudice,
Mr. Bennet’s delightful sarcasm has to come from someone. And that someone, of course, is Austen.
    The sarcasm that appears in the narrator’s quip about Mrs. Musgrove’s ignorance of geography and throughout Mr. Bennet’s speech first appeared coming from Austen, herself, in the first full publication of her remaining letters in 1932 under the editorship of R. W. Chapman. These letters reveal an Austen who could be cynical, nasty, cruel, and sarcastic. Here are some examples:
    Mrs. Hall, of Sherborne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owing to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband. (October 27, 1798)
    Poor Mr. Hall: He’s now down in history as having such a frightening face that his wife’s glancing at him caused her to immediately bear a premature dead baby.
    She was only 22 when she wrote that. But she didn’t soften with age. Here she is at 32:
    Only think of Mrs. Holder’s being dead! — Poor woman, she has done the only thing in the world she could possibly do to make one cease to abuse her! (October 14, 1813)
    Not only does Austen make jokes about dead babies, but about dead ladies, too! And even in speaking of Mrs. Holder’s death, Austen shows neither kindness nor sympathy for the recently deceased.
    Delivering the Hollywood goods
    The same “Jane, the friend” who attracts armchair travelers to read and imaginatively travel back to “Jolly Olde England,” also attracts filmgoers and television viewers and thus film and TV producers.
    Austen’s novels offer characters and events in lovely English settings with the people dressed in attractive costumes of a previous era. How comforting to get away from life’s daily hassles with such well-dressed characters and charming settings! But her novels provide comfort in another way: by presenting logical stories, where all the loose ends are tied up at the end. Logic is very comforting in an increasingly complex and often irrational world. Logic of this type — where everything is explained — is what makes television criminal investigation shows popular. Think about it: Character relationships on these shows are made secondary to solving the crime through the use of sophisticated scientific apparatus and forensic medical tests that uncover the guilty party. The solution of the crime returns temporary order to a disordered world. This is satisfying to the TV viewer.
    What does a logically-presented story, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, do? It appeals to the natural human desire for answers, for security, for assuredness. And what does an Austen novel do?
Emma,
for example, provides a