200 years of Austen

This week we celebrated the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” a none-too-auspicious occasion for most people outside the feminist and literary realms. It is a truth universally acknowledged that your true Janeite is as rare as a two-dollar bill. Most people are content with reading about three quarters of the novel, setting it on their bedside table and then letting the impeccable Keira Knightley and the dashing Matthew Macfadyen from Joe Wright’s 2005 film fill them in on the details.

Even more rare than your natural Janeite is your male reader: the one who will peruse Austen unironically and maybe even dispose a compliment now and again. Ever since Mark Twain famously lampooned the English “leisure class” matriarch (the “Huckleberry Finn” author is oft quoted as wanting to “dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone”), disdain for Austen has been a must for anyone who values his man card.

Why? Because every male reader since Mark Twain has been a closeted Janeite, playing the obstinate, headstrong boy so that he can better appreciate the beauty of the coupled Darcy and Elizabeth. We like Austen because she’s a breath of fresh air from all the masculine supercharged books we’re made to act like we enjoy, the bloody mannishness and in-your-face cleverness of Palahniuk and the visceral rape-happy “Millennium” trilogy, among others. I would know because before a dear friend and I exchanged favorite novels, “A Clockwork Orange” for the dreaded “P&P”, I was one of them.

I would like to say that as soon as I read the first chapter I was hooked, gaffed and gutted, but this wasn’t the case. I tried to read “Pride and Prejudice” but found it so intensely boring that I set it down and forgot about it for three years. By the time I picked it up again, I had had my first relationship, my first bite of heartache, and enough sense to read up at least to the Netherfield Ball. I became so suddenly incensed that I didn’t set Austen down until I had finished half her collected novels.  

We may very well be indebted to Austen for giving us the most cleanly built relationships in all of literature. Mutual attraction, good finances, a couple sweet nothings and maybe a ball or two, and you have your marriage. The whole thing is nothing more than a well-handled transaction, which we like because it’s rational and easy to follow.

Miss Bennet and Mr. Darcy don’t need this Twilight sloppy love triangle business and certainly no fetishistic whips to make their affections interesting. They’ve managed quite well by themselves these 200 years. This reader wishes them all the best for their next.