why /lit/ hates Austen?
Because all female writers are talentless hacks.
>>8285117
because most of the population here are squeamish teenage eliots who simultaneously hate women and are desperate to find a girlfriend and the only way they can feel any kind of misguided superiority in their worthless lives is by hating popular things made by women
do they
>>8285117
She is literally a shit writer. I try to find good things about every book no matter how bad but I honestly cannot think of a single good thing about Sense and Sensibility. The characters are boring, the plot is that of a soap opera, and the sentences are unnecessarily long just to pad out the fact that what she is writing is awful
/lit/ demographic is angry young men
The comedy of manners about bourgeois matchmaking is not going to be a popular subject here.
>>8285211
>the sentences are unnecessarily long
i think that version of shakespeare plays rewritten as tweets is more your kind of thing matey
I'm halfway trough Pride and Prejudice andd I gotta say I'm digging it. I find myself interested in the characters, they feel so lively and real and I'm enjoying the inner plots of the british high society of that era.
I don't know about her prose, it's my first english novel but I like it, it's funny how she arranges everything from dialogues to descriptions. The chapters are sort enough for you to read at a comfortable pace.
I dunno, I like it.
>>8285211
I second this. Pride and prejudice is the SOAPest opera I've ever read. But I enjoyed it. Never again
>>8285261
have you read Sense and Sensibility? Apparently not because otherwise you would know exactly what I am talking about. At least Shakespeare knows how to write. Also I would like to point out that just because someone doesn't like a book that you do doesn't mean you need to try and belittle their literacy you pseud
>>8285266
Austen is generally considered one of fhe best prose stylists in English. She's the opposite of flashy.
autists gonna Austen
>>8285331
I find it really funny. Is like rediscovering English. Its simple to read yet strangely elegant. It feels cotidian and mundane but elaborated at the same time.
>>8285193
this
the only reason Austen isn't read much is because /lit/ doesn't read British lit as much as they read American lit
I like her.
>>8285266
Did you find the beginning 100 pages or so of Pride and Prejudice boring? I had a really tough time getting through it, but after that point it became pretty enjoyable.
>>8285584
>/lit/ doesn't read British lit as much as they read American lit
american lit sucks
american classics are shit compared to british classics
>>8285308
>have you read Sense and Sensibility?
of course i fucking have. you know it's one of the most popular books ever published, right?
>Also I would like to point out that just because someone doesn't like a book that you do doesn't mean you need to try and belittle their literacy you pseud
cry me a fucking river you goldfish-brained millennial
pic unrelated
>>8285708
wahhh wahhh someone doesn't like a book that i do i'd better call him an idiot that'll show him waah
>>8285743
waahhh wahhh someone likes a book i don't like i'd better call him a pseud that'll show him waaaahh
your turnyou idiot
>>8285749
If you like a book then more power to you. It was the fact that you immediately assumed that because I don't have the same taste as you that i must be a "goldfish-brained millennial". It's just infantile
I dont?
>>8285117
Nothing specifically against her, I just hate women in general and on principle desu
>>8285685
I felt more of a sense of difficulty probably due to th new language and style. The plot was pretty direct since the begining but yeah, after page 80-90 I started reading it a lot faster and fluider. Maybe it's just an adaptation issue.
Oh, and the story became so much more interesting when it started going around Elizabeth, her relation with Mr.Darcy is really interesting.
>>8285859
Fluidly*
Perdón anons.
>>8285859
>Maybe it's just an adaptation issue
This. Once you get used to her she is a very enjoyable read. Pride and Prejudice is one of my all time favs.
>>8285117
She wrote genre fiction trash.
>>8285949
>Because she knows nothing of life and thinks she knows everything
says /lit/
>>8285117
Because she knows nothing of life and thinks she knows everything. Because she invites the reader to feel superior to all her characters, who she resents for having romantic experiences and sex lives. Her books depict the relationship between men and women as imagined by an old maid sitting out every dance. This is mistakenly conflated with their distance in time - her fans think she depicts how decorous things were in her culture, when in fact her perceptions are as much fantasies as theirs. Because she has no spark of the ingredient now thought to be essential to a serious writer - curiosity. She doesn't know how things are in any other part of the world but her own, or want to know. Soldiers are men who socialize in uniform. The only cause for concern is your position on the economic ladder of a tiny band of the landed gentry. She was the sort of woman who wants to hit anything she doesn't understand with her umbrella. Naturally, complacent people adore her - Martin Amis thinks she's a genius. But when you could be reading, to take only British woman writers, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot or Virginia Woolf, or, to take only nineteen-century writers - Dickens, Thackeray, Collins, Hardy - even Stevenson, Trollope or Wells - why read Jane Austen?
>>8285954
Says anyone who's done more in their life than read romantic fiction.
I find her austentatious.
>>8285963
Obviously. Its called an opinion you plebeian
>>8285117
Because she knows nothing of life and thinks she knows everything. Because she invites the reader to feel superior to all her characters, who she resents for having romantic experiences and sex lives. Her books depict the relationship between men and women as imagined by an old maid sitting out every dance. This is mistakenly conflated with their distance in time - her fans think she depicts how decorous things were in her culture, when in fact her perceptions are as much fantasies as theirs. Because she has no spark of the ingredient now thought to be essential to a serious writer - curiosity. She doesn't know how things are in any other part of the world but her own, or want to know. Soldiers are men who socialize in uniform. The only cause for concern is your position on the economic ladder of a tiny band of the landed gentry. She was the sort of woman who wants to hit anything she doesn't understand with her umbrella. Naturally, complacent people adore her - Martin Amis thinks she's a genius. But when you could be reading, to take only British woman writers, the Brontes, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot or Virginia Woolf, or, to take only nineteenth-century writers - Dickens, Thackeray, Collins, Hardy - even Stevenson, Trollope or Wells - why read Jane Austen?
>>8285988
The fact you have an opinion on it makes you a pleb.
>>8286002
Typo in the first posting.
>>8285997
that just doesn't even make sense you retard. You're clutching at straws in an effort to justify your overly aggressive response to someone stating an opinion
>>8286028
>it was just an opinion man!
That's just, like, you're opinion, man.
Plot and characters are for plebs, and you are a pleb, and are unnecessarily butthurt about it, too.
>>8286030
>plot and characters are for plebs
wew lad you might wanna rethink that
>>8286037
I don't think you're a good fit for this board.
>>8286030
>Plot and characters are for plebs
Plot maybe, but characters no
>>8286042
that's pretty ironic considering you just belittled the importance of characters and plots
unless you mean im not a good fit because i actually care about literature, in which case i think you might be right
>>8286043
Characters no?
Who cares about characters, beyond what they are as tools? They don't have to be believable unless that is part of their use. You don't complain about characters in fables, or fairytales, being unbelievable/simplistic, do you?
>>8285266
>british high society
The characters Austen wrote of were all very much the middle class of the period, the social realism of her writing was quite novel in fact.
>>8286120
"Middle Class"? More like the lower fringes of the upper class.
>>8285245
That describes me and my distaste for Austen well.
>>8285762
I'm pretty sure you're arguing with a woman or a faggot, stop wasting your time dog
>>8286164
that certainly seems to be the case
>>8286132
No. Upper Class means titled gentry. As far as I can recall, only Mansfield Park centred on characters who could be described as Upper Class, and even then Fanny was a poor relation with a distinctly lower social status than the Bertrams.
None of Austen's protagonists are upper class.
>>8285995
You've missed the point. Austen doesn't invite her readers to feel superior to her characters. Austen is on one big mission to skewer her readers for all their bullshit. If you didn't understand that most basic point, I don't think you can presume to chat shit about one of the most respected writers in the language.
>>8286053
>Who cares about characters, beyond what they are as tools?
No one aside from fanbois and girls. But their utility of being relatable, or didactic, or whatever an author can make of them is what exactly what makes them not "for plebs". Plot can be entirely superfluous, but characters cannot. A character doesn't necessarily have to be a person either.
>>8286221
Then they're being used as tools.
>>8286241
You sound like a real character.
By which I mean you're a tool.
>>8285211
You're just stupid. You're also the reason we have to take accusations of misogyny whenever we point out an actual female hack like beauvoir or woolf
>>8286213
Of course she isn't. This ludicrous, suburban-puritan notion that writers accuse their readers is from the twentieth century redbrick lecture hall. As the anon said, Austen invites you to laugh at her characters; to think otherwise is to misunderstand how time and culture work.
>>8285245
>comedy of manners about bourgeois matchmaking
So in other words it's 19th century Twilight.
WOW SO DEEP SO PATRICIAN
How stupid do you fuckers have to be to get memed by Jane Austen of all writers? She's a hack, and no it isn't r9k to say so, leftist shills.
I really like Northanger Abbey, it's quite cute.
>>8285117
her books read like a SOL animeI don't mind that
>>8286958
>stating the obvious in response to a point no one made
The point is that if you aren't literally retarded then no amount of verbiage can conceal hackery. Thanks to idiots like you, in 200 years from now people will be inventing reasons why the only way you could possibly hate Twilight is if you were a pleb misogynist who doesn't understand our times.
You're saying that Austen's voice isn't like Meyer's voice, therefore, they're different.
It's exactly the kind of superficial meme analysis that makes /lit/ a pile of shit these days.
>>>/reddit/
>>8286952
Essentially, yes. It became important to pretend she was a better writer than she was after the Second World War, when in order to try to put the women-in-the-workplace genie back in the bottle, male professors wanted to make out that the limited lives of women in past centuries was no obstacle to their achieving things. In fact, yes, quite obviously, Jane Austen was a ninny with zero perspective on or insight into her society beyond what a bitter plain girl who laughs at all her father's jokes can acquire. Quite obviously, you cannot be isolated from all meaningful education and all varieties of instructive experience and emerge a great writer.
>>8287004
>Her writing clearly shows that she is no hack.
You're in a thread arguing about Jane Austen and you've never read Jane Austen. Think about that.
>>8287006
>reading for anything other than prose
kek
>>8287026
>implying Austen's prose is worth reading
kek
>>8287026
I do read for prose, there's nothing else to read for. Where prose is concerned, Austen gives you nothing. The reason it's meaningful to challenge her grasp of society is that social insight is the main plank of the claims made for her.
>>8287040
Have you ever read a female author who was really good at this whole bookwriting lark?
>>8287047
Yes, many, but I assume you don't want recommendations?
>>8287056
Only if they aren't meme-tier or liberal propaganda
>>8286953
My favorite as well. After hearing that the Northanger Horrids were real books I checked out some early gothic: The Castle of Otranto, Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk. Pretty bad, but worth reading, especially the last one.
>>8287062
Try Edith Wharton.
>>8287088
>muh boring bourgeois problems
No thakn you.
>>8287097
Oh right, you're not interested in any literature. Well, this is the literature board.
>>8287115
>t. Alberto Barbosa
>ywn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbQbrSSn9eQ
also Mr. Darcy would totally shitpost on /lit/ right
>>8287088
>Wharton
What do I start with?
>>8285117
>why /lit/ hates Austen?
She writes fiction
>>8287161
GOAT Jane Austen movie tbqh
>>8285117
Wrote shitty soap operas
Generally, British lit post Milton is pretty shitty
>>8285117
I personally enjoy her but maybe that's because I am a woman
>Just finished reading pride and prejudiced.
>Thought it was charming and enjoyable, particularly the lurid writing style. Reminds me of poe.
>Come to lit.
>This thread.
Impotent negativity is the cancer killing criticism.
>>8287506
LONDON
O
N
D
O
N
>>8286936 So let me get this straight. With your sweeping assertions and offhand derisive memes about established critical opinion, you're putting forward the position that... what, that Austen's novels were read so widely by an audience of people who weren't snobs, didn't ever try to marry for social advantage or money rather than love, and valued keen intelligence in women more highly than any other quality except moral sense? Total self-evident nonsense. Austen is a very consistent champion for a certain set of values, and she mostly sets out her stall by satirising their opposites. Those opposites were far more widespread in her society than her own ideas; therefore it goes without saying that a majority of her audience are accused through her writings.
>>8287506
show feet
>>8288309
You're just parrotting Leavisite burble.
> Those opposites were far more widespread in her society than her own ideas
Prove it. Protip: you can't.
>>8287226
The House of Mirth.
>>8286213
>Austen is on one big mission to skewer her readers for all their bullshit
No, she's on a mission to write an enjoyable story which incidentally deals with morality—the fact that actions have consequences.
The point of satire has been oft debated (to what advantage for us readers, I don't know) without being settled; but what I think none would say is that it intends (except in the most Juvenalian forms of satire) to "skewer" its readers. Nor would anyone accuse Austen of being Juvenalian.
Austen does not, in writing the character of Mr. Bennett, set out to demolish her reader, for the simple reason that she cannot know whether her reader is a Mr. Bennett. In writing that character she is concerned to satirize every Mr. Bennett she knows—including the reader if he happens to be one—and to entertain her readers who have met him, as we all have. This is satire yes, but it is satire that can laugh with and love a Mr. Bennett however much it acknowledges his follies. I have read (can't remember where) that some readers attested that they knew a Mr. Bennett and told him so—I can't imagine they would have been so rude as to insult him like that, if it was really an insult.
Though she seldom invites readers to feel superior to her characters, I'm afraid she sometimes does, and that this is a slight deficiency of her style resulting from her own not-perfectly-concealed snobbery. It is no use to pretend that Elizabeth and Mr. Collins are really conceived equally. We can sympathize with Elizabeth's follies, but we can only smile at Mr. Collins in a superior way. Compare it to Scott's more romantic treatment of ridiculous personages and you'll see what I mean.
>>8289779
Great post, thank you!
I've been meaning to start another Austen book since I read Pride and Prejudice a few years ago. Anyone have any recommendations? I'm familiar with most of her stories; I want to know where she really shows off her writing chops.
>>8285117
because she literally writes for plot, they are glorified chick literature which points out the deficiencies in her own life
>>8289981
Emma
>>8289981
Mansfield Park is wonderful, and in my opinion much better than Pride and Prejudice. Some people find the protagonist boring because she is more avowedly moral and is less sarcastic and proud than Elizabeth—she has a lot more in common with Jane. But for anybody who thinks humility is a real virtue, it's a wonderful story that is as romantic as P&P but deals more especially with the difficulties of discipline and gratitude. It is a more mature work and a more moralistic one—I think it's her best.
>>8289981
Harold Bloom worships Persuasion, if his opinion matters to you.
>>8289779
quality post
>>8285211
That's because you're obviously a philistine who reads for ''''''''characters'''''''' and ''''''''plot''''''''
>>8289779
You're right so I won't argue with you, I'll only elaborate that the sense of superiority as well as any possible sympathies stem from Austen's (intuitively brilliant) use of free indirect discourse and the resulting hypocrisies and ironies that then become obvious to the reader, which is also a pitfall because the quasi first-person view offered by this technique also leaves the reader open to the same misreadings as the people in the book, so the satirical transparency offered by free indirect discourse is really no transparency at all, which I guess would constitute another level of satire at the expense of the reader/society.
>>8286120
i dont think the middle class really existed before enclosure.this is actually a theme in several of her novels, if you had bothered to read them
>>8285117
if you're not a woman, you really have to force yourself
like it was your job, and then you get into a groove and "get it", why it's genius
>>8285117
because she is what she complains about. sure, it's funny in small doses, but she's whines more about being beta than eliot rodger. her prose is godawful with her trying to sustain a sense of quippishness in the 50 odd pages between actual quips.
normally it only gets brought up on /lit/ by people who wish they knew good female authors and since they don't, assume austen must be good. it's an indication they have no taste, doubly so if they need to point to nabokov's lectures on her as "support" for their position. her fan club is comprised of sexist idiots with no taste and a habit of self defeating. she's female /r9k/tier, you might as well list my twisted world among your favourites.
misogyny
>>8285117
When I try to determine if the author is good or not, I think of whether or not William Stoner would approve of the author. I'd say no, her prose is alright but the plot is really off-putting.
Also, you're on 4ch. We hate everything and everyone here. I even I hate myself to extend into details.
>>8293192
Plot is no measure of literary merit and becomes pretty much irrelevant past high school-level literary discussion, it belongs in Tolkien/GoT/etc. threads and has very little to do with a writer like Austen
>>8293192
>William Stoner
i read that four times before i worked out it wasn't william shatner. i also read your post in the voice of william shatner three of those times, and imagined william shatner reading austen's works. just letting you know.
i liked, but it's been a while. liked the short one with the aging woman who restarts relationship with a sailor she used to know and the one with the dilettante crew putting on a play. p&p least, s&s ok, emma i feel like i remember the most. never read the gothic spoof. think i read the epistolary early novel but dont remember much.
Gogol is better.
>>8285708
Goldfish are actually fairly intelligent animals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15Xi-IUKj7A
Will my parents think i'm gay if I buy some Jane Austen books?
>>8292101
Nabokov thought she was great
>>8293264
If you as a writer do not care to write well then you shouldn't use it as a pretense to showcase your experimental prose composition. She should have written a textbook on English composition rather than a subpar novel. Don't forget what her books really are, novels.
>>8285968
lol
>>8294370
My point remains. Plot has little to do with writing well, and you can think of Austen's prose what you want, but I think it's great, comparable to what Joyce did with a line like
>Lily, the caretakers daughter, was literally run off her feet
Where there's a shift in register similar to the one in the opening line of Pride and Prejudice, and both Joyce and Austen knew that something like 'plot' is secondary to what you can do with novelistic discourse.
>>8293401
Not if you tell them you're chasing Janeite pussy.
Just finished Pride and Prejudice.
Spoilers alert
The first half of the book felt pretty good, the way she presents every character feels natural and is a show more than tell so it's pretty good. Gotta say I had some troubles remembering the characters because there was so much Ms, Mrs, Miss, etc... I'm not accostumed to it.
So up until Elizabeth finds out about the truth of Mr Darcy, which I saw coming a mile away (I fucking loved Mr. Darcy from the very begining tbqh) thew book is pretty enjoyable. The prose started to get repetitive here, maybe I tried to read too much in one sitting but I started getting tired of the overly complex dialogues and descriptions which are however pretty simple in their vocabulary. From this point I got kinda bored because the pace of the book got really quick and then suddendly stopped. You see Elizabeth laying around with her sister not doing much when so much happened just a couple pages before. The Lydia arch fell completly flat on it's face and besides the "OMG Whickam" shock it was too damn boring. At the end where everything resolves as you expect, you know, everyone is happy, Darcy confesses his love and marries Elizabeth (which made me smile like a fucking idiot not gonna lie) and everyone lives happily ever after, except for Lydia which is a dumb fuck HOW THE FUCK DO YOU MARYR MR WHICKAM ARE YOU FUCKING RET
Overall I give it a 8/10
It was my first english novel and I enjoyed quite a lot but I think it's not my taste. It felt pretty boring at the end and I think that if it were shorter I would have enjoyed it more. Just a matter of taste I suppose. I'm gonna give it some time to settle in but probably the next book I'll read of Austen will be Emma.
