A Time to Rage, and a Time to Reflect

When an Author Changes Because We've Changed

There are things we all think of when we think of Jane Austen. We think of witty heroines, of repartee as foreplay, of the prototype of the 90s romcom. Of an aesthetically confusing milieu where any mention of sexuality is verboten, pregnant women are “confined,” and yet—according to film adaptations, at least—young women’s bodices dip as low as the laws of physics will allow.

I read Jane Austen’s books, or most of them, as a teenager, and promptly formed the impressions expressed above. She didn’t interest me, though I loved (and still love) the five-and-a-half hour BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (that of Colin Firth fame and notoriety). As a teen, I thought Jane Austen prim, stiff, and dead. I rolled my eyes at her characters’ tendency, in moments of heightened emotion, to “reflect.” The phrase “comedy of manners” left me cold (and still does).

I didn’t bother to revisit her books. My views were formed, after all. Then October 7^th happened and I retreated to fiction, as I often do when the world is untenable. I felt the need to become immersed in something as low-stakes as possible. Suddenly the drawing room comedies of Austen beckoned for the first time in decades. What the hell, I thought.

I expected to be diverted and entertained. I did not expect to be utterly captivated, as well as to be hit with a reckoning about how we change as we age. And how our ability to appreciate a work can be driven, unnervingly, by the random circumstances of our lives.

As a teen I worshiped at the altar of Charlotte Bronte—she who Matthew Arnold famously accused of having a mind entirely consumed by “hunger, rebellion, and rage.” I read those words and am reminded forcefully of my experience, first as a teen and, later, as a young woman. I was consumed by desires similar to Bronte’s protagonists—for passion, for intellectual achievement—and faced similar restrictions: the limits placed on religious women in my Jerusalem community, as well as the additional piquant possibility of being blown up by a suicide bomber before I could achieve or experience anything. (I was in high school during the Oslo Accords.) Later, there were the years when it seemed that the struggle just to survive would eclipse any chance of doing creative work. And it took a great deal of effort to become, and then to stay, thin, and therefore attract any notice from men at all. The hunger and rage experienced by an economically and societally trapped, plain Bronte protagonist were infinitely relatable. I "saw myself” in her, I suppose.

In contrast, there seemed something insufferably calm, possibly even smug, about Jane Austen. Her protagonists were always pretty, and no one disputed their value in society. I doubted they had any trouble staying thin. I didn’t see myself in them, that’s for sure.

Decades of water under the bridge have wrought a change. In the intervening years, I have known passion—both the doomed, and the soul-healing kind. I’ve published novels. The grip of hunger and rage has loosed its hold. Thus freed, I no longer feel the same need to “see myself” in fiction. I can enjoy the achievements of a writer whose life and temperament were nothing like mine.

Part of the unexpected joy of this process, of rediscovering Austen, is mining the treasures that I failed to see the first time around. Rather than being the goddess of the romcom and the low-cut dress, I found Austen to have more in common with another of my favorite authors, Shirley Hazzard, in terms of her layered, intricate observations of character. There is also a touch of the detective story in her fiction, with the mystery being certain characters’ motivations. If you pay attention, the hints to every character revelation are seeded throughout, as in the best detective stories.

And of course, she is so funny. I admit that I found Sense and Sensibility a bit hard going—which makes sense, as it was her first novel. But Northanger Abbey, which I had heard was her weakest, I found to be absolutely hilarious. The gems, for me, are Pride and Prejudice and Emma; likely a popular opinion, but I haven’t looked them up on JSTOR to confirm. By forming the wrong impression of Austen early in life, I was—perhaps unfairly—rewarded with the pleasure of discovering her later as if on my own. Every impression felt new, even exciting, as if of an unknown author rather than a cultural juggernaut. It’s not an outcome that is a just return for virtue, as some nineteenth century fiction would demand; but perhaps—like one Austen character in particular—I’ve learned a lesson in overcoming prejudice.