Today's topic is Jane Austen. Why? Because I'm taking a course at Uni! That's right, we have the possibility of attending classes on Miss Austen. It was recommended we read at least two of her books beforehand - though it turned out that we only needed to read one after all - but I've read almost all of them. For some reason my brain doesn't like the idea of having to read Mansfield Park, so that one is still unopened.
My first touch with Austen was when I was 13 years old and we watched Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility in class. Back then my reasons for liking it were simple: the relationships between people and Alan Rickman. (Not that these reasons have much changed in seven years.) I wanted to see it again and again, and when I told my dad I'd seen it and liked it, he gave me a stack of videos. On those videos my mum had recorded to whole Pride and Prejudice when it was on TV. I remember very little of my first reactions to this classical version of PandP, but it must have been good because I now have it on DVD and watch it once or twice a year.
For a long while PandP and SandS were the only ones I knew about. Finally in 2008 there was a lot of new Austen on TV. Northanger Abbey, Emma (with Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong), Persuasion, Mansfield Park... All the lot. I was thrilled, but still hadn't picked up the books as I thought them too hard for me. 2009 there was more new Austen, Sense and Sensibility in four parts. In 2010 I got myself the version of Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam (and Ewan McGregor, even though he really isn't too good in it) and saw the new 4-part version. I also saw the 1980's version of it, as well as Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park.
Also, in the spring of 2010, I read my first Austen. I liked Northanger Abbey, even though the style it's written in felt heavy and I made slow progress. In the summer I read Emma, but after that had a few months' break before a friend at the University demanded I read Pride and Prejudice. Now it's 2011, and I've read Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey (minus the five last chapters) in the matter of couple of weeks.
So that's my history of Austen. Now about the course I'm taking. Our teacher specialises in Austen, so he really knows what he's talking about. In order to complete the course we need to write an approximately 2000 word essay on the book of our choosing and have a class talk. Of the latter I was a little nervous about, since I'm a terrible public speaker, but when I heard what it'll be about, I got excited. One of the options for this 15-20 minute speech is ballroom etiquette, which I've been searching just for fun lately. I intend to get that topic. It would be good for my performance, to be genuinely interested in what I'm talking about.
In short, I'm already in love with the course, even though there's been just one class thus far. I even put a little more effort to my homework than was strictly necessary - we are all supposed to find out what certain words meant in Miss Austen's time. My word is 'fortune'. ^^
Now I need to get on with cleaning.
Love, Wilzo
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