It's About Time


Wherein Our Heroine Looks Back on a Different Heroine.
I am a bit of a compulsive re-reader. I come by my compulsions honestly - according to the lore, my mom used to read Jane Eyre every spring for years. Once I thought that re-reading was completely normal, but I have since met people who think it is bizarre in the extreme. I don't really differentiate re-reading from listening to a CD or watching a movie more than once. You notice different things, you remember scenes you had forgotten. You revisit places and people you have grown to love.

In some ways, re-reading also reminds me of the various other points in my life when I read the same book. Lately I have felt that it is time to revisit Jane Austen. If I were doing one of those "desert island" quizzes, Jane Austen's six completed novels would probably suffice as my only entertainment. In fact, the first time I read Pride and Prejudice was 1991 on the desert portion of the island of Cuba, in Guantanamo Bay.

I do not remember if it occurred to me at the time that reading an iconic English novel in warmth of the Caribbean midwinter sun was a bit odd. I do remember that I had finished all of the books I had brought with me, and had turned to my aunt and uncle's bookshelf of leatherbound classic editions. Lying in the heat, I did not bring my full attention to the book until the scene at the first country assembly where Darcy snubs Elizabeth. Suddenly, my attention was properly caught. "This is funny!" I thought. (Ed. Hindsight: DUH!) I started the book from the beginning again, giving my full attention to the plight of the 20-year-old heroine, and being able to escape for a bit from my own 21-year-old plight of having recently graduated from college and having no idea what I would do next.

It is midwinter again, fourteen years later. We are at war in the Middle East again. I feel the need to read Elizabeth Bennet's story again. I am no longer in my 20's, but I still don't know what I will do next.
Posted: Tuesday - March 01, 2005 at 08:15 AM         | |

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