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

[batdina]

Haven't ever read Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey. I have this habit of picking up Austen novels in airports for cross country flights and those two haven't materialised yet. My favorite reread is Persuasion.

Of course right now, when I read things unaffiliated with school (and then feel guilty for it), they tend to be Dickens. Nicholas Nickleby and Bleak House are warring for my attention right now. I'm wondering if the big bleak book mightn't fit your needs? Not an exact fit, but perhaps ...

Trollope might also. It's been a while since I read the Barchester books but the early ones in particular were pretty domestic if memory serves.

[likeadeuce]

Let me know if you get any good recs for Georgian/Regency writers... Troloppe is maybe the closest to 'male Austen' but he's much later.

I know Fanny Burney is supposed to be the closest forerunner to Austen (I haven't read her, though I have Evelina on my Kindle. . .), and Mrs. Gaskell came after her (though I've only read North & South and thought it suffered by comparison, some of her other novels are more domestic, I think. But I'm not sure who Austen's more precise contemporaries would have been, and how much of their work has survived (though free ebooks for public domain books may make tracking them down easier than it used to be. . .)

[(Anonymous)]

If you like Jane Austen I'd recommend Edith Wharton - she wrote a century later and American, but possibly the closest in terms of detailed social life and domestic politics. My preference would be for the House of Mirth and the Custom of the Country - some complex and flawed female protagonists.

Another author you might enjoy is Collette - her semi-autobiographic Claudine novels are great, starting with a young girl pushing gender and social constraints in a late nineteenth century french school system, lots of girl crushes, ends up in Paris with an older male lover. A rollicking good read!

[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.)

[lilliburlero]

Is Sterne too early for you? A lot of the proto-post-modernist hu-ha around Tristram Shandy's reputation contrives to obscure the fact that it's a novel about men in domestic life, the relationship between two brothers, and between one of those brothers and his manservant. The Sterne novels that focus on Yorick might be a bit less your thing as heterosexual romance is central (though Yorick himself often forgets he's supposed to be swooningly enthralled by Eliza), and in A Sentimental Journey he's frankly a bit of a pest to the female population in general, but there's still a lot of introspection, and more gravitas than you might think.

I think there's quite a bit of Scott that you might enjoy, despite his reputation being as a teller of adventure tales. Redgauntlet is really quite domestic: and I think you would enjoy the friendship between Alan Fairford and Darsie Latimer.