Persuasion and Pleasure

Over the weekend I reread Jane Austen's Persuasion. The direct reason, of course, was that a student is doing her senior project on the novel, and she asked me to be the first reader for the paper. But I thoroughly enjoyed rereading it.

Austen's novels have been relentlessly adapted these past couple of decades. Around the time I was in college the now famous Colin Firth version of Pride and Prejudice came out, and that seems to have either created, or have been a part of, a tremendous revival of interest in the works of the regency-era novelist. Upon teaching her novels in a couple of different classes, I have usually tried to ask my students why all this interest; why do they seek out these films, and even, in some cases, actually read the novels? The students--usually overwhelmingly female in these cases--have responded that in these novels the men simply treat women as women. The men are kind, considerate, and even romantic. My students are not (or at least not all) naive conservatives. They do not, apparently, want to lose the right to own property, vote, and appear in public without a chaperon. They also, apparently, appreciate the benefits of modern plumbing and medicine, but perhaps that goes without saying. Jane Austen almost seems to function for them the way that porn does for others; it's a fantasy that that the person having the fantasy can recognize as unrealistic, perhaps even undesirable, but that meets some deep-seated need.

I like Persuasion because--at twenty-eight--the heroine is today's equivalent of a woman in her mid-forties. There's something sweet about the idea of this rather shy, kind woman finally getting the man that she lost when she was younger, and more powerless. I also simply enjoy the prose; Austen writes with a clarity and precision that was unusual then, and is completely gone now.

On a side note: the TV show Reading Rainbow has been canceled. I'm not sure what I can add that some other people haven't already said. I particularly liked what the 19th floor guy had to say. I haven't watched the show in years; I'm not even sure that the PBS affiliates I have been living around even carried the show, and of course I have no children that would have caused me to look it up. But I have very fond memories of watching that show on idle summer mornings growing up. It remains one of the few shows--that I remember--dedicated to the sheer pleasure of reading. So much of our society is about the utilitarianism of capitalism; everything must be justified in terms of its productivity. Yes, kids who are strong readers do better in school, are more likely to go to Harvard, make a six-figure salary. For me, the show reminded me that--even as I was growing out of the level of books promoted on the show--that reading was as much fun as Bugs Bunny and chocolate milk. It was pleasure, not homework.