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Becky Parker
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 11:36am \| IP Logged

Are there any Jane Austen books my dd (15yo) shouldn't read? She's read Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility and would now like to read Emma and others by Austen. Unfortunately, I don't know about the other books she has written

so I can't advise my dd.

As this dd is getting older I wish, oh how I wish, I had grown up with a more literary education! No matter how hard I try at this time I just can't keep up with all the books my kids are reading. My 3 oldest are voracious readers, which I love!, but there's no way I can check out every book they want to read! (sigh)

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pumpkinmom
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 11:58am \| IP Logged

I have nothing to offer you to help. Emma is my favorite as a movie.

I'm just starting to read them myself. I read part of Emma, but I didn't get it finished and the book is gone. I got Pride and Prejudice on my Nook this week. I think I've watched too many as movies as I keep getting confused reading the book because I'm mixing it up with the wrong movie.

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CrunchyMom
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 12:30pm \| IP Logged

There is nothing in any of the novels I would have problems with a 15 year old reading.

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organiclilac
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 12:33pm \| IP Logged

The only thing I can think of is that in Mansfield Park, one of the women marries one man and later runs off with another. It is written about in a similar way to the Lydia Situation in P&P, so if you were okay with that, I don't think it will be a problem.

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Kristie 4
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 2:31pm \| IP Logged

One of the movies, Mansfield Park, has two VERY inappropriate scenes for a teenager (I found them difficult too!). The movie (the newest one on Netflix) is so well done and then out of nowhere you get the full goods, leaving nothing out! Another scene shows pictures which are also very disturbing. We like the movie and know when to fast forward...

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Becky Parker
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 7:03pm \| IP Logged

Thanks everyone, and for the heads up Kristie! I think I'll preview if we ever get the movie. Happily, she hasn't asked to see the movies. Maybe I just wont mention them!

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Marie
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 7:26pm \| IP Logged

CrunchyMom wrote:

There is nothing in any of the novels I would have problems with a 15 year old reading.

I agree. Persuasion is my favourite book :)

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SallyT
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 8:04pm \| IP Logged

Ditto -- I love Persuasion! And I would have no problem with a younger child than 15 reading any of these novels, though film adaptations may be something else again. I really really didn't like the most recent BBC Northanger Abbey, either.

Sally

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KellyB
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Posted: June 03 2014 at 9:34pm \| IP Logged

The novels are excellent and would make great reading for your daughter! As for the movie version of Mansfield Park, if you go with the older BBC version, there is nothing inappropriate in there as far as nudity goes. It's an excellent adaptation! (And for that matter, many of the older BBC adaptations of her novels are tastefully done!)

Kelly

Becky Parker
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Posted: June 04 2014 at 6:12am \| IP Logged

Thanks again everyone! She just told me she thinks she can get Persuasion free on her Kindle. Glad to hear it gets good reviews!

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Pilgrim
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Posted: June 04 2014 at 7:42am \| IP Logged

This is very timely, as dh was just asking me the other day if these novels were okay for dd 13, as he saw them on a list of audiobooks from Libravox and knew they were girlish books. So, would they be appropriate for a very innocent 13 year old? We are pretty sheltered even in what we watch, no TV, just videos/movies. TIA!

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pumpkinmom
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Posted: June 04 2014 at 7:51am \| IP Logged

Becky Parker wrote:

Thanks again everyone! She just told me she thinks she can get Persuasion free on her Kindle. Glad to hear it gets good reviews!

I'm pretty sure they all should be free since they are classic books. Classics are free, at least I think so.

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stefoodie
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Posted: June 04 2014 at 8:48am \| IP Logged

Agree, Mansfield Park would be the only one I'd have problems with. The Lydia situation in P&P is problematic (but not explicit) but it's clear that the behavior is unacceptable.

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CrunchyMom
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Posted: June 04 2014 at 8:54am \| IP Logged

Pilgrim wrote:

There is scandal in the books, but I don't think it is done in a way that would scandalize the reader, even at 13. There are plotlines where the characters run away together, but it isn't graphic, the emphasis being on how their actions affect the family left behind and touched by the scandal of it all. Even descriptions of inappropriate behavior is not expressed explicitly.

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CrunchyMom
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Posted: June 04 2014 at 8:56am \| IP Logged

And really, Mansfield Park with its possibly problematic content (though I think it is likely fine) is probably the least interesting Austen novel anyway, so there is no reason to start with it

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organiclilac
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Posted: June 04 2014 at 10:24am \| IP Logged

pumpkinmom wrote:

Becky Parker wrote:

Thanks again everyone! She just told me she thinks she can get Persuasion free on her Kindle. Glad to hear it gets good reviews!

I'm pretty sure they all should be free since they are classic books. Classics are free, at least I think so.

Yes, they are all old enough to be in the public domain, although there may be versions with foot- or endnotes or other commentary that cost money. Depends on if you find that sort of thing helpful. I do like my print versions that have notes on that time period.

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SallyT
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Posted: June 05 2014 at 9:23am \| IP Logged

I just finished rereading Mansfield Park. It was always my least favorite Austen novel (Fanny a more insipid, "flat" heroine than Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse), but I'm really inclined to admire it a lot more now.

Austen's novels are always moral tales, founded on the idea that things and people need to fall into their intended, created order in order for happiness to result. Marriage is generally the figure for order -- what resolves a narrative is always a good marriage: between a woman who (usually) has undergone a process of gaining insight about herself (and also humility), and the man whose love (and sometimes frankness) is the instrument of that self-knowledge. That's certainly the model of both Pride and Prejudice and Emma.

In both Persuasion and Mansfield Park, the situation is that a virtuous (but possibly weak, as in the young Anne Eliot, who is talked out of marrying the man she loves by influential but misguided people in her life) woman waits for the man she loves to wake up and realize what virtue and love really are.

In Mansfield Park the virtuous woman (Fanny Price, the adopted "poor relation" of a wealthy aristocratic family) is surrounded by young women and men whose characters have been poorly formed, either by indulgence (distant parents; an aunt who thinks they can do no wrong and encourages them to think themselves superior) or by exposure to bad influences. The man Fanny loves (her cousin Edmund, the younger son of the wealthy family) is good but too inclined to think well of other people, especially pretty girls, to have the clear judgment that would make him absolutely virtuous.

His head is turned by a girl who is beautiful and charming but of poor/corrupted character, and the novel is basically about how Fanny endures this and hangs onto her own moral compass, which includes conquering her own jealousy, in the face of everyone else's insanity. This insanity includes Edmund's oldest sister's engagement (in her father's absence and with the encouragement of the indulgent aunt) and marriage to a foolish man whom she doesn't love; and her concurrent love for the brother of the beautiful girl whom Edmund loves, who is just as bad a character as she is. The sister does run off with the bad guy, but in the end she's living in seclusion with the indulgent aunt, who's really a totally intolerable figure, and they deserve each other completely. Meanwhile, Edmund wakes up and realizes that the wife he really wants has been living in his house all the time, and everyone lives just as happily ever after as their deeds throughout the novel merit them to live.

So, really, her novels are all about the acquisition and recognition of virtue, on which happy resolutions depend. The only way in which I'd think a reader would be too young would be in just not being able to keep track of the plots, which are sometimes kind of complex, or being too young to be invested in the characters and the problems they confront. Anything really scandalous is only obliquely hinted at -- I mean, you know that a woman runs off with a man whom she isn't married to, and this is obviously a scandal, but there certainly aren't "scenes" to avoid, as there are in some of the film adaptations.

Of course, I'm an extremist here -- my oldest daughter was reminiscing just the other day about how I tried to read Pride and Prejudice to her when she was about 7. She says she spent most of the novel wondering why Lizzie wouldn't want to marry Mr. Collins, since he seemed like a perfectly nice guy.

So being old enough to appreciate irony and the nuances of comic characters and situations is really kind of key. :)

Persuasion is probably my enduring favorite Austen novel -- I'm due to reread it. But again, I'm much more a fan of Mansfield Park than I had been formerly.

Here's an interesting article on Jane Austen as a theological writer, with a focus on Mansfield Park. Peter J. Leithart isn't a Catholic, but I like his writing a lot.

Sally

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stefoodie
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Posted: June 05 2014 at 12:50pm \| IP Logged

Thanks for writing this analysis, Sally! Very true.

My favorite is Emma, who also grows in virtue under the watchful eye and guidance of Mr. Knightley -- closer to my own life story -- and Persuasion a close second.

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Posted: June 05 2014 at 4:52pm \| IP Logged

Thank you for the analysis, Sally.

I like Mansfield, I just don't find it as entertaining to read, meaning I've read it 3 times instead of 6,

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SallyT
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Posted: June 06 2014 at 8:47am \| IP Logged

Yeah, it's still not my favorite, either. But it does interest me more and more. As I was reading around for "that thing about Mansfield Park that I know I saw on First Things one time in the course of my whole life," I ran across a First Links item that linked to a blog post entitled, "Why Mansfield Park is Jane Austen's Best Novel."

Interestingly, it was followed by a "Why Mansfield Park is Jane Austen's Worst Novel" post (main reason: Fanny is a prig). But the guy's "Best Novel" reasons were really fascinating. In a nutshell, his point was that of all Austen's novels, MP is the most grounded in physical detail. "Pride and Prejudice is full of characters talking about each other," he writes (or something like that) -- MP, by contrast, is full of concrete details about gardens, houses, and what's left on people's plates after breakfast (after Fanny's brother William has been to visit Fanny at Mansfield, and he and Henry Crawford have just left for William to return to his ship), and those details are evocative and resonant. It's a comedy of manners, but it's also a novel, more or less unusual for Austen, in which the physical world plays an expressive role in that comedy.

He also notes that while most people (including me, above) tend to label Fanny as insipid, really it's Lady Bertram who's the embodiment of insipid -- she's so unimaginative that she can't think of a better name for her pug than "Pug." How many times have I read that novel and never really been struck by that observation! It's hilarious and true.

On rereading what I wrote earlier, I wanted to amend what I said about resolution just a little -- I think the men, as well as the women, generally also have to gain humility, self-knowledge, and insight before the good marriage can take place. The exception maybe is Mr. Knightley, who just waits for Emma to have her little self-epiphany (after having more or less been the catalyst for it). But certainly that's true for Mr. Darcy, and for Edmund in MP -- they have to learn to see clearly and wisely, to temper their principles with charity OR their charity with principle, as the case may be. In Persuasion, Captain Wentworth has to let go of his anger and resentment, to see Anne clearly in the light of forgiveness and charity. Either way, I think the key to happiness in an Austen novel is to be the kind of character who is open to being changed by love.

Anywaaaaaay . . . fun stuff. I'm going to find Persuasion right now and start it.

Sally

PS: FWIW, I never read any of these novels as any part of my education, at any level. I started putting myself through them when my oldest daughter was a newborn, and I was nursing on the couch all day. Best course of study I ever did!

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