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Writing about a Jane Austen novel, here on this blog, is like spitting into the Atlantic Ocean. There are Austen fans, Austen die-hards, Austen-scholars, Austen Societies, Austen-spawned novels and movies and anything one could imagine. However, what I take from Austen novels - I haven't read many - is that the society they lived in was not much different from other societies. In Persuasion (Penguin Classics, 1965 (FP: 1818); 264)*, as in the other two novels of hers I have read - Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice - the theme is marriage and society's rules, obligations, and expectations surrounding that institution. Right from the beginning of this book, Austen - with her keen insight into life and the dynamics family life - exposed the biases and patriarchy of the society of the time; a society that ranked individuals of the two genders differently and further ranked people within each gender group according to their wealth, occupation, family status, name, ma...

I went into Northanger Abbey  (Premier Classics, 1818; 241) with so much expectation coming from the back of my enjoyment of her novel Pride and Prejudice . However, I think I was somewhat let down. This disappointment could be the fault of my own poor predisposition towards the reading , especially my poor mental preparedness going into an English a typical classical whose language is overly refine and too 'polite'. Or it could be the subject matter, which wasn't agreeable to my constitution. Whatever it is, I left this book with a feeling of having let down Jane Austen though I knew that my singular let down wouldn't add or subtract anything from her fame and following. Having said this, I enjoyed the way Jane Austen presented the issues of marriage and of getting married at the time; how, she, pretending to describe what pertains, mocks the system. This makes her book very sarcastic and a tongue-in-cheek sort of way. Also, when used as the baseline, it shows how...

Since December I have been trying to update my blog daily, though strictly weekends are excluded, and I have enjoyed it. Searching for topics to talk about that would inspire reading has been tasking but also fun. Quotes and Proverbs have become constant features in this effort. Whereas the proverbs are local with translations, the proverbs are from books I have read and reviewed. Today's quotes comes exclusively from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice . It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Mrs. Bennet When a woman have five grown up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty. Mrs. Bennet A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. Mr. Darcy I admire the activity of your benevolence, but every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion ...

Readers of this blog know that I read different novels but promote extensively only African-authored novels. They also know that I have a challenge to read a list of 100 novels  in five years, of which I am only fourteen percent through and in the third year. Consequently, I embarked upon a compulsive book buying some two Saturdays ago . And Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was one of twenty-three books purchased. Let me inform my readers that henceforth most of my readings would be geared towards meeting my challenges . Pride and Prejudice (1813) is my first Austen novel and the second English Classic I have read this year following from Hardy's Jude the Obscure . Pride and Prejudice is a story set in the early nineteenth England in the town of Hertfordshire where five sisters lived, each with a different aspiration and disposition. Jane is servile, humble, quick to agree and forgive and almost never judges. Elizabeth, around whom the majority of the story is told is th...