Jane Austen’s novels preferred to chick lit
We are on record as becoming cranky when Jane Austen’s works are blithely called “chick lit,” usually in order to justify much less interesting works, but really we have nothing against the genre or those who read or write it; we simply find the comparison sloppy and specious. Now it looks like we’re not the only ones.
“Even the term ‘chick lit’ embodies the conflict: happily embraced by students, it grates annoyingly on the sensibilities of feminist professors, who see monikers like ‘chick’ as a way to demean women,” Ferriss and Young note. “As one student told us, her professor refused to use this term without making quotation marks in the air as she said it.”
“As members of an older generation of women ourselves, we do not generally identify with the chick-lit protagonists.”
Perhaps that’s why the comparison makes us cranky. It’s just our dried-up humorless spinsterism rearing its wizened head again. Or perhaps…
Interestingly, the authors find, what the younger readers might be looking for in chick-lit is something feminist writers rarely produce—actual literature. For a sample of feminist literature, try reading some of Sandra Cisneros’ charming poetry about breaking beer bottles over the heads of barflies.
Chick lit, then, will do until genuine literature comes along but when the real thing arrives, Bridget Jones is gone. “In recent courses on classic women’s fiction and chick lit, our students came to a surprising conclusion: they overwhelmingly preferred the classic fiction,” Ferriss and Young conclude. “They weren’t completely certain if that was because of the older novels’ intricate plots, subtle characterizations, memorable language or some other factor.”
“But they were convinced that although chick-lit raises fascinating cultural issues, it can’t compete with the work of Jane Austen, the Brontes, Virginia Woolf, and Zora Neale Hurston.” And most of their achievements predated modern feminism.
Most likely that’s it.
June 8th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Most likely that’s it.
LOL!
June 8th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
What encouraging news. Maybe there is hope for those young folks after all!