"It will be a good thing over; for they say every body is in love once in their lives, and I shall have been let off easily." - Emma Woodhouse continuing to be Fucking Relatable
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Rating Austen’s first lines (this is a rating of the lines, not the books) (rated based on my thoughts of when I read them for the first time, unaware of what happens later)
1. Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. — Emma
Iconic. Makes you wanna be her in just one paragraph.
2. No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine. — Northanger Abbey
I love this one, I don’t know why
3. A gentleman and a lady travelling from Tunbridge towards that part of the Sussex coast which lies between Hastings and Eastbourne, being induced by business to quit the high road and attempt a very rough lane, were overturned in toiling up its long ascent, half rock, half sand. — Sanditon
Pulls you right in.
4. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. — Pride & Prejudice
It’s a classic.
5. The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. — Sense & Sensibility
Straight to the point.
6. The first winter assembly in the town of D. in Surrey was to be held on Tuesday, October 13th and it was generally expected to be a very good one. — The Watsons
I hope it was.
7. About thirty years ago Miss Maria Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. — Mansfield Park
Good for her.
8. My dear brother,—I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of profiting by your kind invitation when we last parted of spending some weeks with you at Churchhill, and, therefore, if quite convenient to you and Mrs. Vernon to receive me at present, I shall hope within a few days to be introduced to a sister whom I have so long desired to be acquainted with. — Lady Susan
Not the worst.
9. Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somerset, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. — Persuasion
Didn’t ask about Sir Walter Elliot’s passion for monarchy.
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Recommendation from a character! #4
~Sara Levine
Sara recommends Emma by Jane Austen
Read the book or watch the iconic movie adaptation of Austen's work!
What I like most about reading Emma is that it teaches the importance of reflection, honesty, and humility. Through her disastrous matchmaking and belief that she knows best, Emma Woodhouse comes to understand how little she really knows and uses those failures to become a better daughter, neighbor, lover, and friend.
The story reminds me of a spiderweb: countless gossamer strings woven inextricably together. Severing any one of them affects the whole, just as it does with our own relationships—something Emma learns as she considers herself the premiere matchmaker in her village.
The witty dialogue pops off the page, and the characters—good and bad—feel as real as the people you meet every day. It’s a true work of art which remains as relevant today as when it was published over 200 years ago.
And if you can’t handle all the old period language? Just watch Clueless! Clothes and language may change, but the wisdom of Austen is eternal.
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Who are the greatest characters in all of literature?
(Sub-questions: Best characters in Shakespeare? Do you agree with Bloom's sextet of Hamlet and Falstaff first equal, followed by Macbeth, Rosalind, Cleopatra, and Iago?)
It's an interesting question, because there essentially are no "characters" exactly before Shakespeare. People act scandalized by Bloom's "invented the human" line, but he's transparent about deriving it from Hegel, and it's not that different from the academically respectable New Historicist thesis on "Renaissance self-fashioning."
Before Shakespeare—and then after Shakespeare but only in popular fiction—there are myths and archetypes to whom a few stable characteristics attach but who are available for reinvention and recirculation, an infinitely malleable legendary surface without inherent psychological depth: Prometheus or Odysseus, Arthur or Roland, Count Dracula or Sherlock Holmes.
On the other hand, the type of modernity inaugurated by Shakespeare—and then passing from him into Romanticism, realism, and modernism—gives us the character of bottomless, labyrinthine depth rather than an iconic or archetypal but flat figure: tragic heroes like Hamlet, Milton's Satan, Goethe's Faust, Captain Ahab, and the Brothers Karamazov, or more strictly novelistic figures like Emmas Woodhouse and Bovary, Hester Prynne, Anna Karenina, Isabel Archer, Clarissa Dalloway. And then, reuniting the novel to the epic, the character to the archetype, perhaps the 20th century's greatest literary character: Leopold Bloom.
(Honorable mention for accomplishing the same synthesis as Joyce but from the other direction: Ursula Brangwen. If Joyce tailors a Homeric hero to Flaubertian proportions, Lawrence turn an Austen heroine into a Biblical prophetess.)
Best characters in Shakespeare: I do mostly agree with Bloom (Harold, not Leopold). I love Falstaff less than he does, though; there's a meanness or squalor in Falstaff he doesn't seem to see. I would also replace the bewildered Macbeth with the raging Lear, and I might add Prospero to our roll call, since he is (I fancy) the closest thing we have to a Shakespearean self-portrait.
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