@sassyredhead: This is only tangentially related, but I currently have a print hanging in my bathroom that depicts two pigeons sitting on a the back of a toilet, and it's titled "Stool Pigeons." It was made for bathroom display.
So, Jane Austen...I always feel like I have a chromosome missing when posts about her come up. I just...well, I just never got into her stuff. She's an excellent writer. But I just...well, I could never get into her novels. I so dearly tried, because I want to be one of you guys. And I wanted to fit in with the other brilliant folk in my english literature major, back in the day.
(But if we're talking about female novelists from way back when, I LOVE Charlotte Bronte. I could read Jane Eyre every day.)
@RodetheTrolleywithStanwyck: I adore the Bronte sisters. I like Austen, but I think the Brontes are more interesting. Jane Eyre is great but Wuthering Heights is my jam!
As far as well-rounded female characters from English literature that aren't from Austen, I like Margaret Hale from Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South and Charles Dickens' Amy Dorrit from Little Dorrit and Estella Havisham from Great Expectations, even though she's mean.
The Marvel Illustrated series has been consistently AWESOME - they tackled one of my favorite books, The Picture of Dorian Gray last year in 6 volumes and knocked it out of the park:
I'm DEFINITELY looking forward to their take on P&P.
So does this mean I'll have to go home to m mother's basement to read it. I imagine at the very least I'll have to sport a beard/corset combo and drink beer from a tea cup.
Is that the actual cover? Because I don't know how I feel about that. I think it's relevant to adapt well-loved stories to appeal to a modern audience, but did they have to make it read like a teen magazine cover? Or is that indicative of how dumbed-down the story will be inside? Jane's plots themselves are really predictable; it's her style that makes me love her novels. If these comic books have lost that, it makes me kind of sad.
That said: Has anyone sort of wondered why Pride and Prejudice is Austen's #1 OMG MOST FAMOUS THING A+++ KTHX out of her entire oeuvre?
I think in terms of character complexity and development, Emma is the one book that stands out to me as being a home-run, just because it annoys the teeth out of me. I want to throw that book across a room every time I read it, just because every single character is so gleefully fucked-up. THAT would be an interesting comic adaptation.
@scarletbegonia: I think the frivolousness is what makes it kind of brilliant. Austen was making a sort of finely calculated, incisive parody/ridicule of what the upper classes thought was important. EVERYTHING WAS DRAMA!!11!omgwtf!11
Austen was snarky. Her critique on rich people with too much time on their hands? Mean as hell. That's why I love Emma: Austen succeeded in making me hate every single character and hate their stupid pissy problems--and kept me reading.
I dunno ... to me, the attraction of Pride and Prejudice isn't the plot itself but the language with which it's told. If you lose that, you lose a lot of the nuance - can this really capture that?
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Since I'm still boycotting Amazon, does anyone else know where I can get these? :/
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(But if we're talking about female novelists from way back when, I LOVE Charlotte Bronte. I could read Jane Eyre every day.)
04/18/09
As far as well-rounded female characters from English literature that aren't from Austen, I like Margaret Hale from Elizabeth Gaskell's North & South and Charles Dickens' Amy Dorrit from Little Dorrit and Estella Havisham from Great Expectations, even though she's mean.
04/18/09
I'm DEFINITELY looking forward to their take on P&P.
P&P&Z - I could NOT get behind.
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That said: Has anyone sort of wondered why Pride and Prejudice is Austen's #1 OMG MOST FAMOUS THING A+++ KTHX out of her entire oeuvre?
I think in terms of character complexity and development, Emma is the one book that stands out to me as being a home-run, just because it annoys the teeth out of me. I want to throw that book across a room every time I read it, just because every single character is so gleefully fucked-up. THAT would be an interesting comic adaptation.
04/18/09
04/18/09
I personally have an unexplainable stigma against Jane Austen, so I have never read her books.
04/18/09
Austen was snarky. Her critique on rich people with too much time on their hands? Mean as hell. That's why I love Emma: Austen succeeded in making me hate every single character and hate their stupid pissy problems--and kept me reading.
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I think the best Austen novel is Persuasion. Both the mid-90's movie and recent miniseries were excellent.
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[www.thebricktestament.com]
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Disclaimer: I adore comic books. Just love 'em.