Jane Austen and Everybody Else

Happy New Year, Austen Nation!

The holidays have passed, and we have risen from the ashes of all the holiday gluttony and sparklitude and are ready for a brand-new year of Janely fun with you all! It’s going to be the official best, just you wait.

To kick things off this year, can we talk about this great piece, Lizzy Bennet vs. Lily Bart vs. The Patriarchy, from The Toast?

I love this for a couple of reasons. First of all, it kind of makes me want to high-five my girl Edith Wharton, though a) when don’t I, and b) intuition tells me E-Whart might not have been a high-five-loving kind of lady. I do love me some House of Mirth, though. It’s all just so complicated: How terrible that Lily ends up the way she does! But also, as the piece says, how darkly inspiring that she never does fall in line with The Man! But Lily is hardly an intentional feminist heroine, spending her life chasing rich (or rich-ish) men as she does. And also, would it kill her to make a reasonable decision, like, once in her life? But even if she did do something right, would it even make a difference? What is happiness for Lily Bart, and is it something she can attain at all?

I’m not saying Wharton is better than Austen, or that Lily is better than Lizzy, or even that unintentional defiance to society/a failure to properly conform is better than a happy and respectful marriage and a fabulous manor house—but I enjoy the comparison.

Second—and, full disclosure, I say this as a Jane fan who doesn’t spend much real-life time other Jane fans in organized settings, and I’m sure your Janeite group is full of lovely and open-minded people—I sort of enjoy the way this plays out in Jane Group. I love Jane; you all know this (or, I hope you know this). But I don’t only love Jane, and I don’t think Jane is the only interesting writer out there, and I think there are so many interesting conversations to be had where Jane is only one part of the equation. And, you know, I’m sure those conversations are happening out there in the wide world. But I’d like to see more of them, and contribute to more of them, and hey, maybe Austenacious is a good place for that in the future. (I know, sweet readers, that you’re out there reading non-Jane lit. It’s okay to say.) So maybe…maybe here’s to more broad-ranging Janely conversation in 2014, and to embracing Jane as a part of something bigger. What do you say?