The flexible Austen
In an article in The Australian about The Jane Austen Book Club author Karen Joy Fowler, Ms. Fowler mentions that the works of Jane Austen had different meanings for her at different times in her life.
Fowler has read Austen repeatedly since her teens and finds her “endlessly renewable”. What she has been “for me in a kind of embarrassingly self-centred way - well, no kind of about it - in a completely embarrassingly self-centred way, is whatever has been my issue at that time: I read her as a young mother, it was all about families; I read her as a teenager, it was all about the romance; I read her as a feminist, it was all about the economic impact on women. Whatever I wanted her to be about, there it is.”
Some reviewers have labelled The Jane Austen Book Club chick-lit, focusing on its preoccupation with relationships and its attention to fashions, furnishings and finger foods. That is to underestimate its complexity. Philosopher A.C. Grayling has similarly pointed out that in terms of plot, Jane Austen resembles Mills&Boon romances, yet in terms of execution they are worlds apart.
Very true; and further examples of how Jane Austen should not be limited by any extreme viewpoints.
