Knowing Well
Posted by Cassia on November 14, 1997 at 15:49:52:
In response to Community, written by Arnessa on November 12, 1997 at 19:02:47
] People work, go home, get up and go to work again, hardly ever taking the time to stop and get to know their neighbors, much less invite them over for a bit of socializing.
This is so true. Even when you do vote people over, sometimes people don't accept since they have better things at home! It's really strange since people always say tey want to socialise more but when it comes to it, the comforts of home overrule the desire to get our.
I suppose part of the difference is that they had servants and we do not. But I think a large part of the difference is that we don't value society as much as we do privacy nowadays.
The irony of it all is people spent so much time, effort, money and more to make their houses perfect and then they don't share them. A friend of mine who works at roofing company during summers, tells me that many of the expensive houses he repairs are barely occupied at one extremem, nearly devoid of furnishing at the other. It is so popular to be too busy to socialise. The home perfect is no longer open.
And I think we like JA because she makes us realize the value of society even while exposing its ills. She evidently enjoyed people herself and that comes across in the books.
Having the ability to love people and still hold them accountable for their behaviour is so rare.
] And however awkward it is for our heros and heroines to conduct a courtship in full public view, it seems somehow sweet. All the difficulties and confusions that society, in the guise of the Mrs. Bennets and the Mrs. Jennings, throws into the mix seem quaint, much more quaint than the difficulties and confusions a single woman faces now in trying to determine whether the seeming gentlemen she just met at a bar is a mass murderer.
They got the chance to know one another so much better than we do. Everything may have been in public but it was all up front as well. I always wonder at the friendships. Elizabeth and Charlotte can be friends even though they have seven years between them. Sir John Middleton can make friends with everyone, age, distance don't get in the way.
] Anyway, that's my take. I have to get back to work. More later.
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