My experience with Austen

Jane Austen is probably one of the greatest literature writers. Her books are classic and timeless and gives us insight to the society she lived in back then. However, I fail to find her books fascinating.

It started with 'Emma'. I had heard about Austen and her wonders, I knew I should attempt to read some of her books, mainly because I was a bookworm and because my knowledge of Classics was pretty limited. And I had just watched 'Clueless' and I thought it couldn't be that hard. Wrong. The book failed to grip me. I found it a chore to read it...half the reason I picked up the book was because I felt I had to, in order to advance my reading status. Nevertheless, I eventually gave up on it.

'Pride and Prejudice' came along and it was actually worse than 'Emma'. I first started reading it, but I got so frustrated with the mindset of these women! All they talked about was getting married! And their money!! Was this all they did? Probably... maybe I shouldn't judge their lifestyle and actually try and appreciate what I was learning from this. It didn't happen. I gave up.

Eventually the movie came up (the latest version with Kiera Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen in it) so I decided to watch this. I did watch the whole movie and feeling somewhat inspired by this, I thought I would start to read the book again. To this day, I still cannot remember whether I actually finished reading that book.

I am now ploughing my way through 'Sense and Sensibility'. I have also, in the meantime, finished about reading three other books (I have a habit of reading a couple of books at the same time) and I still haven't managed to get through 'Sense and Sensibility'. To make it worse, one of my friends compared me to Marianne Dashwood! Apparently, I remind her of this character who is this lovelorn girl. I wasn't happy. Similar to 'Pride and Prejudice', if not worse, I still find the talk about their fortunes, yearly earnings and getting their daughters hitched off to some gentlemen unsettling and quite boring.

I loved the writings of the Bronte sisters, couldn't put down Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Wives and Daughters' and Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Grey' fascinated to me. Jane Austen doesn't. Despite my perseverance with her books, I still haven't finished reading any.
I might have luck with 'Sense and Sensibility' yet...