It’s Friday, Chaos Demons, and you’ve earned a break. Go ahead and distract yourself. Let yourself get lost on the internet. Nobody’s getting anything done today anyway. If you’re too impatient to read a few paragraphs before you get to the distraction, scroll on down.
I’m a huge Jane Austen fan, for all the usual reasons. Her satirical observations of society manners, her indirect description that show us what she isn’t saying outright, and the fact that her novels are character-driven. There are no epic journeys in her books, no pressing political issues, no pitched battles between good and evil. The heroine simply lives her life amidst her friends and family. Commonplace events within this sphere cause her to reflect upon herself, questioning what she values, who in her life is important to her, and whether she has lived up to her own standards. By the end of the novel she falls in love and marries at the end, but driving force behind this event is always the heroine herself and her growth as a person.
I recently read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. While parts of it were funny, it is a poor interpretation of Austen and here world. Gone are the finely drawn characters and the gentle satire of society manners. There’s a lot of piss, shit, gore, and vomit. I’m generally not a fan of gory violence or gross-out humor, but what bothered me more than that is the contrast to Auten’s writing; she herself was never that explicit about anything. Her gift was to the ability to use indirect, arch description of people and events to show her readers what she isn’t saying outright.
So, without further ado, your distraction: Which Jane Austen Heroine Are You?