Why Jane Austen matters

Reader Rick R. sends along this piece from a South Carolina high school teacher talking about why Jane Austen's novels speak to her public school students. Excerpt:

Jane Austen's characters have lives circumscribed by the social conventions of a rigid class system. Elinor Dashwood and Elizabeth Bennet are acutely aware that their lack of rank and money are insurmountable handicaps as they look for happy endings - or would be if they weren't just characters in Austen novels. As women, they are financially and socially dependent on men in their lives. In the ways that matter, they have little or no control over what happens to them.

Most of the students in this general level English class are circumscribed by the limits of class and money, too. The majority eat free or reduced-price lunches. They depend on the school bus for transportation. After high school they will go straight to work or the military, few of them able to pursue higher education. At least the English department's insistence that they read every day in class has turned many of them into voracious readers.

At some level they seem to know that their modern lives of easy entertainment and frank sexuality are unworthy compromises in the search for romance and love, that Austen's women have richer lives than their own. When impetuous Marianne Dashwood finally had a soft word for Colonel Brandon after rejecting him throughout "Sense and Sensibility," the class gave an audible sigh of satisfaction. When I told the class we only had about 10 more minutes of "Pride and Prejudice" to watch so I would just tell them the ending instead, they screamed.

The author of this piece, Kay McSpadden, has written a book about her teaching experiences, "Notes From a Classroom." Check it out.