Posted by Hil on September 16, 1997 at 22:20:12:
In reply to JA -- a romantic writer? posted by kathleen (elder) on September 14, 1997 at 17:24:37
] Nora raised an interesting point in our discussion of JA's intentions (down the page a bit).
] Nora said:
]
A real romantic author should desire at least satisfaction once a reader is finished, instead of shock and disbelief of what happened in the last forty pages.[emphasis mine]] . . . if JA was a 90's author she would have done something ....
] I have never considered JA as a romanitc writer. I do appreciate, however, the romantic quality of the endings, with each of the heroines married to a man with whom she shares a deep love.
] For me there is so much more in JA's novels than the romance, that I consider the romantic aspects to be secondary (or even tertiary !) to the main theme(s) of the books. Perhaps this difference in reader responses explains some of the differences in reader satisfaction levels with the endings of MP and/or S&S.
________
I agree, Kathleen. JA's work has romance in it, but also makes fun of romance. There is an interesting long discussion of elements of this in Tave's 'Some Words of JA'. He argues that in romance 'the characters don't know where they are. They cannot handle space and time', and there are many examples of those in JA. On the other hand, the 'heroes' of her books do have the capacity, or learn to, to operate within their limits of space and time, and thats what makes them real 'heroes' to us, and the stories less about romance than real life. 'In that limited space one either grows or dies, in a limited time'. Its also a nice explosion of the idea that JA's works were themselves limited to a particular class in a particular era, and can therefore be dismissed. But most of us know that anyway, huh?
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