Writer Jane Austen must die... again
Boring, unwitty prose should not be included in English curriculum
By: Paul Bowers
Posted: 9/4/07
There are certain works of literature that bring grace and depth to the English language, that bend the reader's mind and probe all the intricate complexities of the human condition. Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" is not one of them.
I recently finished reading this 408-sheet toilet paper roll as an assignment for my English 102 class, and I cannot fathom why we were subjected to it. The entire premise of the story is pedestrian and cliché, following the empty days of a group of upper-crust British socialites as they attempt to gain money and wives.
The events that form the backbone of the plotline are so mundane as to render even the most patient of readers stupefied and indifferent by the second chapter. If I wanted to know about the dull lifestyle of a family of bourgeois snobs, I would have read a biography of the Kennedy family-at least that would be meaningful from a historical standpoint.
The principal characters, most of whom are static and read like cheap sit-down-in-a-booth-at-the-State-Fair-while-a-guy-with-a-mustache-doodles-you caricatures, are driven by so much ennui and self-interest as to render a sympathetic reading impossible.
The writing style is so convoluted that I had to read certain passages no less than seven times in order to determine what the honorable Ms. Austen was attempting to say. Every other sentence is a malformed bastard child of the English language and Ms. Austen's undying Regency snobbery, rife with superfluous semicolons and ambiguous pronoun usage.
Worst of all is the conclusion, wherein Ms. Austen steps in as a sort of deus ex machina to hastily conclude the various subplots-which have been developing for about 400 pages-in about eight pages.
Displaying the literary maturity of a six-year-old, she rewards the nice characters with happy endings and the mean characters with sad endings.
All of this no doubt sounds like embittered ranting-and it is. It takes a considerable measure of spite to insult the merits of a writer who has been dead for nearly 200 years.
But there is a point to be made here. Why was I assigned to read this tedious monstrosity in the first place? Even within Ms. Austen's own canon, there are several similar works of infinitely higher quality.
It could be argued that any of her works is worth reading simply for its context. After all, she helped pioneer and popularize the novel as a literary form. However, like the first wheel, the first novels need not be dwelled upon.
The English department need not dwell on books like Mansfield Park, just as the art department need not invest too much time studying cave drawings.