Book Review: A Jane Austen Education

It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is one of the English language’s best authors.

I’m not an Austen scholar but I like to pretend to be one.  I read and reread her books (to be honest, mostly Persuasion, P&P, S&S, and Emma), I read biographies and blogs about her.  I’ve joined the Jane Austen Society of North American.  Heck, I’ve got the BBC version of P&P running in the background as I write this.

Here I am in my Pride and Prejudice scarf.  Aren't I cute?

But I’m not actually a literary scholar of any sort.  William Deresiewicz is.   I mean, he’s taught English at Yale and is a PhD (in English) from Columbia.   He wasn’t always such a fan of Austen’s.  It was only in one of his PhD classes that he began to really read and understand her.  His book, A Jane Austen Education:  How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, And The Things That Really Matter, is about his studies of Austen and how he related them to his life. 

Do you think Dr. Deresiewicz has more Austen stuff than I?

Have you been transformed by a book?  Has a work of fiction moved you to examine your life, your goals, your mistakes, even yourself?

Deresiewicz read Austen quite grudgingly when required to by a professor.  He preferred “big” stories with active heroes who developed “big” ideas and thought Austen was light and fluffy.  I mean, aren’t all of her stories just romances where the girl gets the boy?  Don’t they all end with a wedding?

But upon further examination, he began to see that Austen had something to teach him.  His book takes each of her books and explains how they related to his personal development. 

I very much enjoyed this book.  While stories about his seemingly endless stream of girlfriends didn’t hold my interest, I deeply appreciate the theme.  Books can change you, if you let them. 

Dr. Deresiewicz allowed Jane Austen, an author he has previously dismissed, to change his inner life.  He credits her with teaching him about love, friendship, and the things that really matter. 

A Jane Austen Education:  How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship,
And The Things That Really Matter, by William Deresiewicz

I’ve added some excerpt, below, if you care to read more!  If you are interested in buying this book, please consider using my affiliate link at the bottom of this post.  I will receive a small percentage of the sale.  

Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates – the dull old man, the scatterbrained neighbor – were the kind of people I tuned out in real life.  I’d start past them and hurry on my way, or not absentmindedly and think about how I needed to get my library books renewed.  I certainly didn’t want to spend my time reading about them.  The funny thing was, the heroine agreed with me.  If I was bored with Highbury, so was Emma. 

…that was when I finally understood what Austen had been up to all along.  Emma’s cruelty, which I was so quick to criticize, was nothing, I saw, but the mirror image of my own.  The boredom and contempt that the book aroused were not signs of Austen’s ineptitude; they were the exact responses she wanted me to have.  She had incited them, in order to expose them….she was showing me my own ugly face.  I couldn’t deplore Emma’s disdain for Miss Bates, or her boredom with the whole commonplace Highbury world, without simultaneously condemning my own. 

Austen, I realized, had not been writing about everyday things because she couldn’t think of anything else to talk about.  She had been writing about them because she wanted to show how important they really are.  All that trivia hadn’t been marking time until she got to the point.  It was the point.  Austen wasn’t silly and superficial; she was much, much smarter – and much wiser – than I could ever have imagined.

To pay attention to “minute particulars” is to notice your life as it passes, before it passes.  But it is also, I realized, something more.  By talking over their little daily affairs – and not just talking them over, but talking them over and over, again and again… - the characters in Emma were doing nothing less than attaching themselves to life.  They were weaving the web of community, one strand of conversation at a time.  They were creating the world, in the process of talking about it. 

Before she began the novel (Emma), Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like."^[1]   Contrast that with Elizabeth Bennet:

She was the most charming character I had ever met.  Brilliant, witty, full of fun and laughter – the kind of person who makes you feel more alive just by being around…strong and openhearted and brave, the devoted friend who’d protect you like a lioness.

If Emma had taught him to pay attention to the details of others’ lives, what would Pride and Prejudice teach him? 

Emma showed me from the very beginning just how desperately wrong its heroine was.  I couldn’t stand her – until Austen showed me how much I resembled her.  But here I was, halfway through Pride and Prejudice, and not only was I head over heels for Elizabeth, I agreed with everything she said and every judgment she made.  I loved her friends and hated her enemies.  I would have taken her side against the world.           

But then, as if a switch had been flipped, everything got turned upside down. …with a long, coolly argued letter that threw all the events of the first half of the novel into a completely different light.  She read it once and rejected its claims.  She read it again – and suddenly saw she’d been utterly wrong all along. 

But of course, if Elizabeth had been wrong about everything, then so had I.

Elizabeth’s errors were not accidents she could have avoided; they were expressions of her character – in fact, of the very best parts of her character, that quickness and confidence for which I loved her so.  You don’t “fix” your mistakes, Austen was telling me, as if they somehow existed outside you, and you can’t prevent them from happening, either.  You aren’t born perfect and only need to develop the self-confidence and self-esteem with which to express your wondrous perfection.  You are born with a whole novel’s worth of errors ahead of you. 

Being right, Austen taught me, might get you a pat on the head, but being wrong could bring you something more valuable.  It could help you find out who you are.   

Austen…knew that our stories are what makes us human, and that listening to someone else’s stories – entering into their feelings, validating their experiences – is the highest way of acknowledging their humanity, the sweetest form of usefulness. 

Thinking can’t stop us from feeling, but it can stop us from acting.  It can prevent us from being taken in by our feelings. 

People’s stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing you can do for them.

For her (Austen), being happy means becoming a better person, and becoming a better person means having your mistakes pointed out to you in a way that you can’t ignore.  Yes, the true friend wants you to be happy, but being happy and feeling good about yourself are not the same things.  In fact, they can sometimes be diametrically opposed.  True friends do not shield you from your mistakes, they tell you about them:  even at the risk of losing your friendship –which means, even at the risk of being unhappy themselves. 

True love takes you by surprise, Austen was telling us, and if it’s really worth something, it continues to take you by surprise….  True love, for Austen, means a never-ending clash of opinions and perspectives.  If your lover’s already just like you, then neither one of you has anywhere to go.  Their character matters not only because you’re going to have to live with it, but because it’s going to shape the person you become.

Not only does you happiness depend upon your choice of mate, you very self depends upon it – your character, your soul.  Love is more than just good feelings….  Committing yourself to someone doesn’t have to limit your growth; it can be the door to perpetual growth. 

Footnotes:

All quotes from A Jane Austen Education:  How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, And The Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz (2011) unless otherwise noted.

^[1]   Austen-Leigh, James Edward (1967) [1926]. A Memoir of Jane Austen (R. W. Chapman ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 157.

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