why I would fail at being an English major

There be spoilers in this post for Pride and Prejudice. Ignore at your own peril.

Confession: I am thirty-three years old and read constantly and only two weeks ago did I read my first book by Jane Austen and … I did not enjoy the experience.

So I read Pride and Prejudice as the first book I read on my kobo (aside: can I say the thing I like best about my kobo is the chibi loading up screen of the happy faced little kobo?) I don’t understand. Everyone seems so horrible, like actually horrible people pretending to like each other and then gossiping viciously about them behind their backs, for example Jane and Bingley’s sisters or Mrs Bennet and the Lucases. No one seems particularly sympathetic. All the women seem rather frivolous and silly, even the ones that are pointed out as not being frivolous nor silly like Jane and Elizabeth.

Read it as a satire, Geoff said. I think it’s supposed to be a satire on manners not actually masking the horribleness of people. Since Geoff comes from a long line of English majors and professors and writers and people who got in feuds with Evelyn Waugh, I tried to take his advice … and still did not enjoy the experience.

Why are there so many characters? I’m pretty sure Mary said two lines in the whole book. Why does Bingley have two sisters when I’m pretty sure one says nothing at all? What is the difference between Catherine and Lydia other than Lydia runs off with Wickham, and since Catherine does almost nothing, couldn’t she be excised? I thought long and hard on the five sisters problems and settled upon the Bennets needed to be wealthy enough to be part of society but have too many daughters to pay good dowries. Maybe that’s my over-reaching. What do I know, I’m not an English major.

And Lydia’s marriage skeeves me out. Rather her married to a rake and a thief and a liar than have shame befall the family. The horror!

There’s no depth to any characters. Most of them remind me of the puppets Tesfa makes at school – those cut out paper heads pasted to popsicle sticks wiggling around. The romance doesn’t warm the coldness that is my heart of stone. The arrogance and ill-temperedness of everyone involved makes me want to throw my copy across the room (which I won’t, see reading on kobo above).

And I read this book last week and I still am having trouble remembering names and what happened, etc., using this website as a cheat sheet. And I’ve seen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice before too, and still reading the plot doesn’t stick in my head. I must have a gaping hole that stories like this fall down into and get suppressed. What is wrong with me that I do not enjoy the most loved novel in the English language?

Since Jane Austen is dead, it is unlikely that I will get a message from her about my unhappy review, but I’ve probably turned off something like 98% of the literate world with my bafflement of why people like this novel. I’m sorry. There is something clearly amiss in my brain.