朗读： Love and Courtship by Jane Austin

“SOME literary works are mortal; Jane Austen’s are immortal,” writes Harold Bloom in his foreword to this delightful volume. In it, 33 writers—from Virginia Woolf to Jay McInerney, from Somerset Maugham to Fay Weldon, from Martin Amis to A.S. Byatt—explain the whys and wherefores of our love affair with this provincial spinster, whose six novels have embedded themselves so powerfully in the minds and lives of countless readers over the past two centuries.
 

The breadth of Austen’s appeal is indeed extraordinary. All her works deal with love and courtship, but she is much more adept at reaching a wide audience than other romantic novelists. Young and old, men and women, scholars and those reading solely for pleasure—all find that her writing satisfies again and again. Not only is she one of the most read authors in the canon; she is one of the most reread.

Yet Austen is never merely a comfort blanket, for her novels make readers think as much as they allow them to escape into another world. She may be the greatest propagandist for bourgeois marriage that English literature has produced, yet she is never smug and her happy endings are tempered by wise realism. As for her prose style, even the greatest cynic has to marvel at the control with which she employs her characteristic irony.

Each one of Austen’s novels has its champions, though apart from the author herself, who feared it was rather too sparkling, it would be hard to find anyone who was not captivated by the vibrant wit of “Pride and Prejudice”. “Emma”, too, is universally praised for its extraordinary mastery of narrative form, and for making readers love its flawed, and even unlikeable, heroine; she who attempts to control the lives of those around her but is blinded by her own self-satisfaction. Readers’ favourites, however, often change according to their moods and situations. The autumnal feel of “Persuasion”, in which Anne Elliot gets a second chance at love, tends to appeal to older readers; others may find their sympathies shifting between the characters over time, especially with “Sense and Sensibility” and “Northanger Abbey”.

The least easy for modern readers is “Mansfield Park”. Unlike the confident Elizabeth Bennet or the overconfident Emma Woodhouse, its heroine, Fanny Price, is quiet, timid and moralistically opposed to amateur theatricals. It is only by imagining ourselves into the world of the early 19th century that we can begin to empathise with Fanny’s scruples. Yet if readers accept the historical context they can then appreciate that Austen is actually dealing with the much more universal moral problem of selfishness.

As Susannah Carson writes in her excellent introduction, today’s critics are split between those who emphasise Austen’s timeless understanding of human nature, and those who stress the very real differences between her time and our own. This volume illustrates both, and it shows how, after 200 years, it is still possible to have new insights. Had you ever noticed that silly Mrs Bennet, whom everyone loves to mock, ends up having the last laugh in “Pride and Prejudice”? That her machinations to marry off her daughters all work out? Austen’s irony is so deliciously multilayered that every rereading will yield a fresh perspective. This book offers many such discoveries, and it would make a perfect Christmas present for anyone who loves Austen.