Quite a number of people in this country have an impression that Jane Austen was an early Victorian -- a contemporary of the Bronte sisters. The motion pictures, which have recently shown us Jane Eyre, Catherine Earnshaw and Elizabeth Bennet, all in identical crinolines, must bear some of the blame for this; but not all of it. A vagueness about her date and period exists among people who should know better -- people who have read and admired her books. They know that she was pre-Victorian; the first swallow of a new summer. Actually, in so far as she belonged to any period, she was Georgian. The Victorians did not care for her; she belonged to an age from which they had too recently escaped.
from Jane Austen, by Margaret Kennedy {1950)
Jane Austen, by Margaret Kennedy
Arthur Baker Ltd., 1950
Borrowed from the Boston Athenaeum
4 comments:
I know Claire does! As much as I love Greer Garson, I've never been able to watch that version of Pride and Prejudice.
I had seen it two or three times before I realized that the costumes were totally wrong. :)
I'm sure you're going to enjoy it! Kennedy is very keen on Mansfield Park and really made me reconsider my feelings about it. She didn't convert me into a lover of Fanny Price but I definitely see more of her virtues now.
I do! I was literally just noting down MK's line about how M.P. is Austen's greatest work of art, but that people don't like it as much because they don't want novels to be great works of art. :)
Post a Comment