She is indeed everywhere and in every time
Alert Janeite Lisa sent us a link to an article in an English-language Turkish online newspaper in which the author wonders: could Jane Austen be a Turk?
Bea writes about subjects related to Turkey of interest to foreigners, and she uses as her blog strap-line a quote from the great Jane: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”
I wonder, could Jane Austen have been an expat here in Turkey? Someone who could write such an apt phrase must have understood what it is like to be a foreigner in a different land.
Of course, the thing that makes Jane Austen so popular is that, although her books are set in early 19th century middle-class England, the themes she deals with are universal. “Pride and Prejudice” is the number-one best-selling classic in my bookstore. Every female reader aspires to be intelligent, witty, attractive Lizzy Bennet who finally gets her man, and the book appeals to sensitive male types, too.
As we keep saying, one of the reasons we’re all still reading Jane Austen’s work 200 years later is that it is a marvelous picture of human nature; people don’t change over the years, or across borders.
June 27th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Every female reader aspires to be intelligent, witty, attractive Lizzy Bennet who finally gets her man, and the book appeals to sensitive male types, too.
Uh, okay. I thought, at first, that the guys are going to be left out again. As the good Captain Harville put it, “I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!”
Sadly, in some families, Lydia’s elopement with Mr. Wickham would not have resulted in her mother insisting she took chief place at the table when she returned married, but in a family council passing a death sentence on her.
Ouch. Looking at the bright side, at least Mrs Bennet would then have but four unmarried daughters to worry about.