the Wednesday reading post, now actually on Wednesday

[kindkit]

Currently reading: In a sudden leap of genre and period, I'm now re-reading Jane Austen. I'm currently most of the way through Emma, which I used to love. I'm finding myself impatient this time around both with the length--about 50 pages of Miss Bates's and Mrs. Elton's dialogue longer than it needs to be--and with Emma herself. She's such a snob! And the narrative completely affirms her snobbery and only criticizes her for not being snobbish enough in certain instances. In her very strong sense of her own high position, she reminds me of Lady Catherine de Bourgh.


Just finished: Pride and Prejudice, hence my comparison of Emma to Lady Catherine. My favorite Austen, in part because Elizabeth is rewarded for her wit and intelligence. Unlike Emma, she's not shown to be in need of a man's moral tutelage, and unlike Eleanor in Sense and Sensibility, she's not an exemplar of more traditionally female virtues like patience and self-sacrifice.


What I'm reading next: Sense and Sensibility, probably. Maybe Northanger Abbey after that, although I'm not hugely keen on it. The one time I read Mansfield Park I loathed it, so that'll probably be the end of my Austen re-read.

I don't know the literature of Austen'a era very well--does anyone have recommendations for roughly contemporary (to Austen) novels? I'm especially interested in those that, like Austen's, show the culture of the time. And is there such a thing as a Jane Austen of men's lives? That is, a writer who explores men's social and domestic world, focusing on private concerns and emotions rather than on fantastic adventures? I should note that I'm only interested in literature from the period, not later reimaginings such as Wuthering Heights, and certainly not modern historical novels. (No offense to historical novels, they're just not what I want to read right now.)

Comments

[oursin]

Thackeray might fit the bill for men's social and domestic world of the period - not so much Vanity Fair, possibly Pendennis.

I have heard good things about Maria Edgeworth, though it is a long time since I actually read anything by her and it has faded.

I could, if necessary, make a case for George Eliot being extremely good on men in their social world and their domestic concerns.

As you may have noticed, I love Charlotte Yonge's contemporary-setting novels set somewhat later in the C19th than Austen, but possibly not everybody's cuppa? (Much more religion than in Austen, but she does do very good characterisation.)

[legionseagle]

I re-read Maria Edgeworth's Patronage quite recently. It's got both the men in the domestic sphere and the interesting domestic women characters, but it's one of those frustrating novels where you've got the wit and the liveliness ("To hear you talk, one would think you had an argosy of lovers at sea, uninsured" a brother says unsympathetically to his sister, who's doing a bit of a Marianne) but then it gets a bit bogged down with the schematic plot and the didactism. The other Edgeworths Belinda and Helen are a bit less worthy, I think (and then there's her Irish novels The Absentee and Castle Rackrent; I quite like The Absentee apart from the hero's determination to not ask the sensible questions which would solve everything until things are almost disaster central.)

There's Susan Ferrier ("the Scottish Jane Austen") whom I enjoyed a great deal at one point, and Emily Eden (The Semi-Attached Couple is about 15 years after Austen; The Semi-Detached House is a good bit later). Someone once described The Semi-Attached Couple as P&P, but focussing on the Pemberley family and that's probably fairly accurate: it's based around a whoppingly wealthy man who marries a very young, very beautiful woman on a very slight acquaintance, with both their family and society's massive approval and about how that works out afterwards. It's quite political (Eden was acting Vicereine of India for her brother the Viceroy at one point) in a sort of proto-Trollopian way, but focussing on the electioneering efforts of the women attached to both candidates and stuffed full of social comedy.

There's Mary Brunton's Self-Control (Austen I think thought the Canadian canoe scene in this hysterically funny)

[kindkit]

Ooh, thanks for all the suggestions! They all sound very interesting.

[kindkit]

Thanks!

I've read Eliot and I've read Vanity Fair, but maybe I'll give Pendennis a try. It is a bit late, though. My (very inexpert) sense is that 1815 is a lot more like 1780 than it is like 1850. Still, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I want to read some Regency or at least early 19th century novels about male characters that are written by men, rather than by women. The sexes were so much more segregated then that I think women may have had a poor idea of men's emotional lives, and vice versa.

likeadeuce discusses Edgeworth's Belinda in a comment above--there are cross-dressed women fighting duels and it sounds altogether delightful.

Yonge is probably not my cuppa, though. I don't even like Austen when she gets religious, hence Mansfield Park being a novel I don't want to re-read.

[oursin]

I forgot R S Surtees, who might fit the bill. Also, tell you someone else who might, Bulwer-Lytton - made his name with contemporary novels before doing historicals and sf. Disraeli? - for an acute outsidery perspective perhaps.