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A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz, is in essence a very long book review. Of course this makes sense as Mr. Deresiewicz is book reviewer and former professor of English at Yale.
The book is, as the subtitle clearly states, how the works of Jane Austen taught him about life and how to grow up. He started off in graduate school scoffing at the very idea of reading Austen, he couldn't understand how anyone could find her so interesting when she didn't write books that were exciting. Her books were about the ordinary or about the character of human nature. They weren't full of adventure or romance or passions, or so he thought, until he was forced, literally, to read her.
SPOILERS!
The first book he read was Emma, a book that, honestly, had I read first, would have kept me from ever reading anything else that Jane Austen ever wrote. At first he didn't get it, he still felt it was a book about nothing, about everyday ordinary things with a self-centered heroine. And he was right, but he was wrong. The book is about how the ordinary is so very very important to our lives and how ordinary people are so very very important to us. These are the people and things that we should pay close attention to, these shape us and the way we live our lives. Grand adventure rarely happens in the real world and really, who can live with the constant adrenaline it would provoke? That book basically taught him to stop being such a self-centered jerk and to start being nicer and more interested in everyone. And while he did indeed give me a new appreciation for the actual story and characters, I still find Emma Woodhouse to be insufferable.
The second book he read was Pride and Prejudice, which was the first book of Austen's that I read and he found it, and Elizabeth Bennet, as delightful as I did. This book, he says, really made him "grow up" and mature. It got him to stop being an overgrown kid and start acting like a responsible adult. He was taught to learn from his mistakes and that to truly grow up and mature one has to make mistakes, sometimes the same ones over and over again, and that it's totally alright to do that.
The third book was Northanger Abbey, a riff on the Romantic novels of Jane Austen's day. (And here I will state that I have not read any of the remaining four books but I will soon as Penquin books, when they sent A Jane Austen Education also sent along The Complete Novels! I am so excited by this!) From this book Mr. Deresiewicz found that though you can "know" things, though you can read everything and have a rote knowledge, you aren't actually "learning" anything. You can, however, learn to learn, learn to appreciate. He recants a scene in which the heroine, Catherine Morland, basically misses the forest for the trees. This book taught him new ways to actually teach his students how to think and learn and not just stuff their heads with "answers" and facts.
The fourth book he mentions is Mansfield Park which at first seems utterly useless to him, though he obviously should have learned from his experience with Emma. The heroine in this book is Fanny Price, who is accepted in society but is basically just skirting the edges, not truly a part of what she's observing. He comes to a startling realization that this applies to him in the social circles he was moving in at the time and he learns how to best appreciate that.
The fifth book is Persuasion in which he learns that honesty, total honesty, with your friends is the only way to go. That accepting someone unconditionally, the thing we all think we want, is actually not being a friend at all. Because we all have faults and make mistakes, sometimes glaringly awful ones, and while in the face of that we surely need friends to comfort and support us, we also need those friends to point them out to us so we can confront, accept and mend them, so we can ultimately be better people and better friends.
The final book is Sense and Sensibility, (which is really the next Austen I want to read). This book is not a Romantic novel and yet, it's all about love. Real love. Real frustrating love. Because love is not neat, nor should it be. Love should challenge you to be more than you are, it should make you "want" to be more than you are. It should encourage you to grow up and mature in every sense of the word. How being romantic and impulsive in love might be thrilling but it doesn't usually end in true, steady, real love.
In the end, his Jane Austen education served Deresiewicz very very well. He took all that he had gleaned from the books and applied it quite happily to his real life. And he does give a new appreciation for the books, and in his long review, does entice the reader to read her and to be sure to be open while doing so. Because Jane Austen is very clever in her ordinariness and her educating can sneak up on you. But ultimately it is a very fine education indeed.
