Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > Pride and Prejudice

The Olympus of protagonist focused classic writing

Austen owned her era
The perfection of this novel is amazing and until today it´s difficult to impossible to name another book that has the same character development, hidden social critique, and amazing characters in a classical setting dealing with the grievances of an epoch. So less action and so much suspense just created by the inner perspective of the main protagonists that it´s a pleasure to read and reread. I just can´t get behind how Austen could write like a goddess and what makes each scene, word, setting, and plot twist so smooth and easy-going, while diving so deep under the skin of this bizarre, ancient society.

Insider jokes to avoid the censors of the time
What I love about classics is the background, the society, norms and rules, and how the authors integrated, criticized, and commented on the big topics of their time and avoided censorship. Like Twain, London and a handful of other writers Austen has conserved the spirit of those days for eternity, making it a funny, intense, and unique novel.

Evolution of feminist emancipation
It shows how complex women's roles evolved during history and how the immense stupidity of male-made humanities restricted much freedom and human rights and integrated hilarious, epic monuments of facepalmgasms instead. Just irony and satire in their highest form can be used as a mirror to reflect the impressions of a not so far away past, and to be able to laugh instead of sigh about it. If it just was history everywhere.

So much better than most of the male writers of that time
At a time when great writing could just be powered by talent, perseverance, intelligence, exercise, and passion (because there was no creative writing course just around the next corner or online), avoiding conservative worldviews and dogmas of the time, Austen wrote vivid, cliffhangery, and in perfect length with an inherent instinct for the rules of how to make true art. Not like many, mostly male, others, who praised their stupid beliefs in their racist, intolerant, and bad novels, or became pseudointellectual and impossible to understand for mentally healthy readers without narcissistic tendencies to push their ego (here, gratuitously hyped author, take that Nobel prize for that. Again), she wrote literature at it´s best.

Unfounded criticism of her work
I guess that many critics don´t have the time or interest to invest more effort than just reading it without a bit of researching history and the authors' biography to get the full pleasure of all the hidden easter eggs. Without that, it may really seem much more superficial and less well constructed than with the extra knowledge that enables one to enjoy it in full fan mode.

It aged well
Just as a good wine (I don´t like wine, I´m a beer and vodka guy, it´s just about the allegory) classics need time, have to breathe, have to be consumed mindfully and consciously in certain doses, and a bit of decadent study about where the grapes were grown, what meal applies to it, etc. is never a bad idea. Otherwise, they would be indistinguishable from the mass-produced, blockbuster, media-hyped, disposable clone armies of today's literature. The same cheap booze that was already winepressed in each epoch to meet the expectations of ( then bigoted, now too uncritical) readers, that don´t care about the hangover more sophisticated consumers get from mental intoxication.
That´s of course only true for non favorite genres I´m not (cognitively) biased, and thereby subjectively and emotionally bound, on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Au...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_a...