I don't remember whether I read Pride and Prejudice when I was a teenager. Probably I did, although I didn't remember a scrap of it. It's equally likely that I read some other Jane Austen book or books, and decided I had no taste for them. And I still don't.
Oh, it's a good enough book, in its way, and I laughed two or three times at some of the jokes. And somehow I actually quite liked Mr. Bennett, despite his being a really unlikeably man. And the romance is all romantic'n'stuff, which is nice, and there's such a lovely escapist Englishness to it all that I could quite forget for chapters at a time that the Darcys' children would quickly be impoverished by trying to keep up Pemberly on only ten thousand a year. I suppose it's in the National Trust now.
It was, I think, Stephen Fry (or perhaps Alton Brown) who said that people are either Dickens people or Austen people. Or I made that up myself. Anyway, I for one missed Dickensian villains, and Dickensian plots, and Dickensian events, and would cheerfully have given up the gentle humor of recognition if only I could have one good monster.
I wonder who reads which. I think Ms. Austen, who is on the whole concerned with the way individuals treat each other within the often absurd constraints placed upon them by Society, is in a way more Modern than Mr. Dickens, although of course Your Humble Blogger has no real way of knowing what Modern means when applied to Litchratchoor. Somebody somewhere recently mentioned the preference for Internal Conflict in creative writing programs, and the disdain for External Conflict. Although both Mr. Dickens and Ms. Austen derive most of their fun from mocking society and Society, the conflict in Dickens is usually real and External, and is eventually defeated, while the conflict in Austen is internal and based on misunderstandings and misrepresentations, and is eventually negated. I prefer Dickens, myself, but different people like different things, and that makes the world interesting and fun.
So, Gentle Reader, Austen or Dickens?
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
I love both Austen and Dickens. The difference in my taste for them is that I seldom re-read Dickens’ novels, but I re-read Austen regularly, especially _Pride and Prejudice_.
That preference may be influenced by the fact that I don’t own copies of what I view as the more re-readable Dickens like _Nick Nick_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_ (shorter, you know).
A more important reason for that preference is that I like romantic comedy as a genre: I never tire of observing people falling in love. Austen is great at romantic comedy. Dickens is not. When I want external conflict, I usually prefer it in a more directly heroic mode than what Dickens provides, so I’ll pick up _The Lord of the Rings_ or some other modern fantasy before I’ll pick up _Bleak House_.
As usual, Chris has said what I would, only more clearly.
Well, sure, romantic comedy is not what Dickens is, which may well be a difference between Austen people and Dickens people. I also expect that Austen is more comforting to re-read than Dickens, on the whole.
I don’t mean that a Dickens person has to disdain Austen, or that an Austen person can’t like Dickens. It’s just that (as with you) a Dickens person tends to read Dickens more or less constantly, while an Austen person tends to reread Austen often (that’s a bit hard to say). People tend not to go back and forth, I think. If you could save five books from your library, it wouldn’t be two of one and three of the other; if one is on your list, the other probably isn’t. Or, of course, I’m making that up.
Thanks,
-V.
If you could save five books from your library, it wouldn’t be two of one and three of the other….
Ah, but I have a single volume with all six Austen novels, so I could go one and four 🙂 But I wouldn’t; I hate what Dickens I’ve read. Y’know, I have absolutely no idea what my five books would be. Maybe I’ll ponder that a bit.
Oddly and unrelatedly, Dickens is the neighborhood mascot here: there’s a large bronze statue of him and Little Nell in Clark Park.