Chapter Two Hundred Twenty: Jane Austen's novels

So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I've spent much of my leisure reading time this winter delving into Jane Austen's six (completed) novels.  I had only ever read Pride and Prejudice before, and I really enjoy it, so I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to get around to reading the rest of her works, but now I'm very glad that I've taken the time to read them all.  While Emma and Sense and Sensibility were my least favorite of the bunch--Emma because the titular character is so obnoxious during most of the novel and Sense and Sensibility because it exposes so much of the casual quotidian cruelty of people--I'm glad to have read them, and will probably read them again in the course of my lifetime.  Mansfield Park, though long and with the icky (to this modern reader, though probably not to Austen's contemporaries) main romance between first cousins, I actually found to be more enjoyable than I'd anticipated, probably because I found the timid and downtrodden but sensible and kind Fanny Price to be such a sympathetic main character, if somewhat frustrating for her passivity.  Northanger Abbey, for its satire and the personal growth of its young heroine, has won a warm spot in my heart, and I liked Persuasion almost as much as Pride and Prejudice--high praise, indeed!  Although I have to admit that, re-reading Pride and Prejudice after I'd read the others for the first time, it's still my favorite, and if you've never read any Austen, I would still suggest starting with Pride and Prejudice.  I so appreciate that Austen's novels combine satire with good endings, cleverness with deep feeling, interiority with plot, and I'd strongly suggest that everyone go and read at least one of them.