Jane Austen fans tend to read her books repeatedly throughout their lives. In an article in the Guardian UK, Charlotte Higgins describes how her identity with a Jane Austen character changes with age. Here are some of her thoughts:
If you read Jane Austen more or less annually, as I have done since my late teens, you end up marking yourself against the characters. Oh reader, when I first read Pride and Prejudice I was Lydia’s age. I am about to become older than the delightful Mrs Croft in Persuasion. I still hang on to Anne Elliot, though. A tender 27 she may be, but in modern money I reckon you can give her another 10 years.
This is so true. I am starting to identify more with Mrs. Croft and Lady Russell than Anne Elliot. Charlotte Higgins goes on to say:
Persuasion is a very middle-aged novel, with its melancholic flavour and its acknowledgement that yes, you can make a grotesque mess of your life (the romance part I find much less satisfactory than the bleakly comic first three quarters of the book, essentially before one reaches Bath). It is true, however, that you can tell you are middle-aged when you start to empathise with P&P’s Mrs Bennet: with what Sir Walter Elliot would call “the rapid increase of the crow’s foot” comes a sense of sympathy with this character, written off as absurd in one’s heedless youth. At least she is trying to save her daughters from a future of poverty. And she’s certainly not getting any help from that husband of hers.
So true again. Only in recent years have I become impatient with Mr. Bennet and more sympathetic with his silly wife. I have also become more observant of Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility, of how hospitable she is, how she tries to become a matchmaker to all the unmarried ladies, and how her house is open to guest seemingly all the time. Yes, she is a silly and irritating woman, traits I could not stand when I was young (thus I could not appreciate her other than as a comic relief character), but now I rather like her positive qualities, as I do Mrs. Palmer’s. Elinor Dashwood is aware of Mrs. Palmer’s good nature and would tolerate her better if she weren’t such an unflaggingly cheerful airhead all the time.
Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer, Sense and Sensibility
As I get older I see that Lady Catherine de Bourgh is all bluster, and that her authority over Elizabeth Bennet is precisely zero. Young Lizzie is smart enough to know that, but as a 19 year-old reader, I was in awe of Lizzie’s stubborn attitude towards that lady when she stormed to Longbourn to demand Lizzie promise never to marry Mr. Darcy.
Mr. Bennet reading. Image from Jim and Ellen Moody
There are other ways that my attitude towards Jane Austen’s novels is changing. I notice how few happy marriages are portrayed. Right off the bat I can think of only the Crofts, the Gardiners, the John Knightleys, and the Musgroves. These days, I am more on the side of a pragmatic Charlotte Lucas, who has learned long ago not to look at the world through rose colored glasses, than Elizabeth, who waits for love. To be sure, she snagged her Mr. Darcy, but would Charlotte have had such an opportunity? I think not. I also see that Fanny Price’s strength of character and resolve in the face of so much bullying is a trait to admire; and that Mr. Bennet’s extensive library and unwillingness to compromise a cushy lifestyle were acquired at the expense of his family’s future financial security.
As the years roll by, my tastes and preferences for Jane’s novels are changing. Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice are running neck and neck in my favorite category. P&P used to have the field all to itself. While I loathed Mansfield Park the first time I read it, I don’t mind it so much now, and I find Emma less and less interesting and much too long . Perhaps I should lay the book aside for a few years.
Are your tastes and preferences changing towards Jane Austen’s books and characters as time goes on? How? Curious minds want to know.
Jane Austen's World 
I agree, my tastes Jane Austen books have changed a lot over the years. Now Emma doesn’t appeal much at all, while Persuasion is definitely my favorite. And I do sympathize with Mrs. Bennett, while liking Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer a great deal more. I think as you grow older, you see more sides.
Interesting observations, Vic. And, yes, I have noticed such changes in my own assessments of the characters. Of course, I first noticed this unexpected development with the Bronte novel, Wuthering Heights. You would not have been able to convince the young me that I would ever, ever, ever urge Kathy to forget about Heathcliff and to love Edgar. I was astonished! Can’t remember how old I was at the time, but the realization made me feel very old indeed.
Good points, Amina and Jean.
I had not thought of Wuthering Heights, but you are right. I no longer think Heathcliff is romantic. While his childhood is horrendous, nothing can excuse his revengeful ways. And Cathy needed to grow up. (Yet I know people who cling to toxic relationships, as she did.)
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I have to agree with a lot of the sentiments above and in the article. I am about to turn 26 and I am already seeing my taste’s in Austen novels change. I still like P&P, but am starting to sympathize and understand the characters that I had been “taught” in a way to know as silly, stupid, and irksome when I read the novels in high school. A better understanding of cultural and social norms also throws the characters into a different light, and while not always making their motives honorable, makes their actions better understood.
Yes, indeed they are. I am only a recent Jane Austen convert. In the past I had read none of her novels, although I’ve enjoyed each production of “Pride and Prejudice” (beginning with the Laurence Olivier movie–he was Darcy) down to the Kiera Knightly version of recent years. Now, I’ve read the novel each production was based upon and I followed it’s reading with “Sense and Sensibility.” Currently I’m endeavoring to read “Emma.” Compared to P&P and S&S, it IS a hard go. Still looking for “Persuasion,” “Northanger Abbey” and “Mansfield Park.” I admit that every time I think of Jane; I see Anne Hathaway’s face for some reason…I hope people don’t look down on me for it.
I’m seventy-one and I LOVE Emma. I love her as I love children – I can feel indulgent towards her faults and her mistakes and appreciate that deep down she is affectionate and warm-hearted. I think she is a wonderful portrayal. I wonder whether Jane’s niece, Anna, who was a heiress, was the inspiration.
Well, I’m not so sure about teenagers loving Heathcliff. I read WUTHERING HEIGHTS when I was in high school. I had just read JANE EYRE and I loved it, so I would love her sister’s book, too, right? Wrong. I hated the book. I hated Heathcliff and I couldn’t see what Cathy could see in him.
And I always felt sorry for Mrs. Bennet. Everyone took pot shots at her. Being silly is not a crime, and whatever her faults, she did know how her world worked.
Well, Linda, you were a more sensible teenager than I! Less co-dependent, at any rate! And I agree with you about Jane Eyre. It is the best. And entirely different from Wuthering Heights.
I, too, have sympathy for Mrs. Bennet. She’s a little “silly” for my taste in constant companians but has no serious defects that would make me shun her altogether. Knowing how her world worked, she clearly did her best for her daughters.
I agree. Mrs. Bennet is annoying and silly, but as Jane Austen pointed out, Mr. Bennet did nothing to improve his wife. He encouraged her foibles.
I liked Emma more when I was younger, but I have encountered too many bossy people like her. She would be a better role model if she could bother to finish a project or become an expert at something other than telling others what to do. She does appear to be a good hostess, though, so Donwell Abbey will be well taken care of.
This is a fascinating new angle – it had never occurred to me that my view of the characters might have changed over the 50 or so years that I have been (admittedly intermittently) reading the books. Perhaps, though, it might be the other way round: because they are all so real and alive, maybe it is they who have subtly changed and developed, and dull old me that has stayed the same …
Andrew, what a deliciously, delightfully novel idea! Must brew a pot of tea and sit quietly for a while to mull it over.
I also notice that, while I was enchanted by the aloof Mr. Darcy as a young adult, I would now much rather a Mr. Knightley. (Thankfully, I married a Knightley!)
There are some types (Frank Churchill, James Benwick) who are probably not good husband types, either. At nineteen, however, I probably thought they were quite romantic!
I agree, I do have great empathy with Mrs. Bennet now that I am older. As someone who has children who have recently left the nest, I find her comment about parting with one’s children (when Lydia leaves with Wickham) running through my mind as I say goodbye to mine after a visit.
I don’t mind that as much as my occasional rambling on to fill conversational voids. That’s getting too close for comfort!
I appreciate Mrs. Bennet more and more as she really had the best interests of her daughters at the forefront – which is more than can be said of Mr. Bennet!
And Mrs. Jennings – really a good and generous soul without the overwhelming snobbery. Even though the Dashwoods had no money, she still took them under her wing in “Society.”
I agree that as you mature in years (no “growing old” for me), you tastes in and perceptions of JA novels change. P&P used to be my favourite, mostly for how Miss Bennetts snag their rich and eligible bachelors, but now I love Persuasion is easily my favourite not to mention Mansfield Park, which sparkles with Jane’s infinite wisdom.
As far Mrs Bennett/Mrs Jennings go, I could always see their angle, as I have the “fortune” of meeting too many meddlesome match makers like them growing up in India. These were my aunts and cousins, who are very endearing despite their meddlesome nature – they operate on good side of their nature than anything else. Their goodness operrates on a different level than mine did but there was no malice in their thoughts and actions.
As for Heathcliff, while he was not romantic to me when I read WH first, but he did have that attention grabbing personality that tortured souls have on my psyche. I could almost “see” why he snatched Cathy from Edgar and also tortured everbody around. I don’t condone his actions, but it is easy to see cycle of abuse and hurt starting from Hindley and ending in Heathcliff. But WH has markings of a Gothic novel than Jane Eyre or JA’s novels.
In my mid-forties I’m am finally appreciating the true genius of Mansfield Park. A sure sign of middle-age!
Maybe just a little bit. It’s been 25 years since I read my first Jane Austen novel -Persuasion- and what first drawn me into it was the love story combined with the sense of humour, so it was with P&P, my second one. Back then, though I was a teenager, I could not get into the sense of humour of my third one (NA), now it makes me LOL. I almost throw the fourth one towards the wall (MP), but that is one which time and maturity have taught me to appreciate, but unfortunately I am afraid I will never love it as the other ones. And Emma, my last one, in my early twenties, is still a favourite for me.
Talking about works from other authors, you have given a great example, WH, IMHO it is part of the myth created by the 1940’s adaptation, also as a teenager I read it because it was supposed to be a great love story, but in fact it quite shocked me. I still abhorr the plot and most of the characters, but I can see why the narrative technique makes it a masterpiece.
Another sign of change is my opinion of Romeo and Juliet, which is also has its own myth as a great love story. But now, I am not so sure about it.
Over the years I have come to see Mrs. Bennet, behind her silly ways, as a realist just trying to play the cards she’s dealt, unlike Mr. Bennet who seems to want to ignore the fact you have to play the game at all. I actually now find him one of the worst fathers in the Austen repertoire. He’s done badly by his wife and, perhaps even more egregiously, by his daughters.
In a way my admiration of Emma has grown over time. The first time I read the novel in my teens, I could not stand her. Now, at the phase of my life when I have an elderly parent, I can truly admire the patience and affection she has for her very difficult father. (He, on the other hand, still drives me to distraction.) I now think that all of Emma’s faults arise from living too long with a childish father who placed her early on a pedestal, and from a lack of any real occupation. I know Mr. Knightley will be good for her, and I suspect, vice versa.
I agree the Jennings are good souls at heart and don’t get enough credit for their kindnesses and generosity. Everything they do for the Dashwoods is out of good intentions without expectation of anything in return. That is something I never appreciated in my younger reading days.
As for Anne Elliot, I remember feeling angry with her when I first read the novel, for listening to everyone and throwing her happiness away. But after countless re-reads, I have come to admire her steadfastness, her affectionate nature and her dignity, and for a long time now, she is my very favorite Austen “heroine”.
And Fanny Price–while I used to find her almost unbearably good and “weak”, over the years I came to realize that out of all of them in MP, she is the only one who has a true moral compass and the only one who is a good judge of character. Moreover she has the quiet strength to use both. On the other hand, Edmund Bertram I have come to like less and less. He’s the lucky one in that relationship!
My feelings for Fanny Price are mixed. I admire her for not buckling under to Sir Thomas’ demand that she marry Henry Crawford and for sticking to her own moral compass.
However . . . I am rather irritated by her inability to be honest about her true reason for not marrying Henry Crawford. And we all know what that reason was . . . Edmund Bertram. Instead, she used Henry’s own questionable moral compass as an excuse to avoid matrimony with him. I think she could have been a little more honest about all of this.
Your comments are so true. I read all of Jane Austen’s books every year with immense pleasure. I still admire Elizabeth Bennett for her ability to hold on to her judgement and yet admit when she was wrong. Such a great ability in one so young, I never had that at her age. I am starting to appreciate a little of Mrs Jennings, a little silly but with such a good heart.
Interesting article and so relevant for us all! Recently I reread Persuasion and appreciated Anne Elliot even more, and feel there are quite a bit of similarities between AE and FP. One thing though, after years of changes and reading, I still find EB my favorite Austen heroine and P&P most enjoyable of all her novels. Although my admiration for AE increases more and more as years go by. Thanks for a wonderful post.
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I’ve recently turned 21, and that little article really resonated with me.
I grew up with my sister watching the gorgeous 1995 production of P&P, but until I was ‘forced’ to read Emma in highschool (about the age of 15) I hadn’t picked up an Austen.
Since then however I annually read them all, I particularly adore Persuasion.
When I was younger I found I really identified with Lydia, and felt as though I understood her (she’s silly, fun and obsessed with young men..sounded a lot like me at 16) And I still kind of wish Marianne had married Willoughby (despite everything!)
But since then I’ve shifted my focus on the characters closest to my age, Kitty & Mary, Catherine, Fanny, Elinor.. and more recently Emma, Elizabeth and Jane .
But annoyingly (and stupidly, I know) I cannot help comparing my life situation to the heroines in the novels (the majority of them were married/had suitors by my age) I’m clinging to my Woodhouse and Bennet contemporaries..and consoled by the fact that Jane was married after 22..
I predict a deep depression after this however, and cannot quite shake this feeling- despite living in the 21st century and having parents who weren’t married until their mid 30s (I wasn’t even born until both of them were over 40)
Just interesting I suppose.. I can certainly see how my relationship to the novels and their characters has changed, and will continue to evolve as long as a keep reading them.