Since I started school again, I've had a renewed interest in audiobooks. When I ride my bike to school and back at least once a week, I like to have something to listen to (it's a long ride). I tried music, and it was kind of boring after a while. There's too much room for your mind to wander, which is not really what I need right now. Audiobooks, on the other hand, keep you completely engrossed, but just alert enough to be aware of the cars passing you as you ride down Silver Springs Boulevard. I got a bunch of cds from the library: short stories by Agatha Christie, some works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes, and a Jane Austen classic, Persuasion.
Now, I had always known that this story was my favourite Jane Austen novel- we own two movie versions, I've read it, and I love it more every time. But I didn't know that Anne Elliot was my favourite 18th century novel heroine. Well, she is. As I've listened to the audiobook on my bicycle this week, I've fallen in love with her- the real character, not the modernized girl-power one they show in the most recent movie. The book is kind of tragic at the beginning, everything is hopeless, Anne is twenty-seven and quite sure of her remaining single for the rest of her life. We follow her through a story of doing everything that He's Just Not That Into You warns us against: reading something into every single little action of Captain Wentworth and throwing over Mister Elliot (who is really into her) because of the tiny hope that the Captain might one day change his mind (but it's okay, Mr. Elliot turns out to be a jerk anyways).
But in doing all this, Anne finds that like Gigi in the movie version of He's Just Not That Into You, she too is the exception to the rule. Love can find you after an eight-year hiatus, men can forgive you for breaking their hearts, and they'll even sometimes prefer a twenty-seven year-old with good sense and a kind heart to an eighteen year-old with spunk and good looks.
Anne Elliot is an inspiration to us all.
3 comments:
I don't want to be pedantic, but.. ok, yes I do: technically Jane Austin never wrote any novels in the 18th century, unless you're counting her earlier works, such as Lady Susan (not a novel in the current sense, but more of a series of documents). Since the 18th century ended in 1800, She's pretty firmly a 19th century novelist, as are (I'm assuming) everyone else on your sisters list.
That's probably what she meant. And what I meant. Sometimes it gets so confusing to have the 1800s be the 19th century...
Forget which century she fall under, who care? In the end, Anne Elliott is a wonderful heroine who gets her dream after she has lived for years thinking that she's lost it forever. Would that we all shared her fortune.
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