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It is truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a wide vocabulary and a thirst for knowledge would benefit very much from being deflated from his grand idea of himself. A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz is the journey of an author, academic, all-around smartypants.
In Deresiewicz's late 20s, he was in graduate school at Yale. Even with a high-level upbringing thanks to an engineer father and Ivy League education, he couldn't sustain a meaningful relationship, lived in student squalor and could barely manage to piece together a meal that didn't involve ramen noodles. It wasn't until he came across the work of Jane Austen that he embarked on a genuine education.
A Jane Austen Education chronicles Deresiewicz’s transformation from smart boy into educated man. The memoir's infrastructure shepherds the reader through a thorough dissection of the plot and discussion of Austen's life, summing everything in context and in concert with his own life. Once the author realizes the intricacies in the rural happenings, he is able to dive into the literary details and emerge to lightly frame his own personal life in light of his findings. And isn't that what literature is meant to do? We find ourselves in the stories of others, connect to characters and symbolism until we emerge, broken or better or even more lost in a world that might have taken place many years ago, but holds a story that could be ours today.
A Jane Austen Education isn't a completely dry dissertation of what a Norman Mailer fanboy thinks about an 18th-century female writing. He admits that these rural tales lack the sexual charge of the male writers he had been reading. Emma Woodhouse is not Norman Mailer's creation; she is Jane Austen's. He cannot identify with any of the women and is perplexed by the men. But it doesn't end there, where many men and women who felt this was merely chick lit, silly stories about women's feelings simply close the book and move on.
The particulars of Austen's books were far different than what he had been reading previously -- like walking into a garden party after you've finished a devilish weekend in Vegas. He deftly raises his assumptions about the literature and what changes when he commits to understanding the characters and applies these lessons to his own life.
In detailing Pride and Prejudice, the author talks about what is stereotypically a female territory -- the heart. His love for Elizabeth Bennett is instant and all encompassing. He had spoken early on about how women had to cross-identify with male heroes because that's all they are offered but men are never asked to identify with women. So when he identified and became captivated by this plucky, headstrong woman, I was expecting more of a heart song and less of an academic paper. There were moments when some powerful descriptions would have rounded out his theories as posited by Austen, executed by Deresiewicz.
The book's format of presenting literary theory, Austen history and then Deresiewicz's personal life seems more purposeful in the beginning, but as the memoir goes on, it becomes formulaic. I wanted the author to become more introspective, offering more about his heart than a declarative statement of women he was dating or what his professor had said. I was drawn to the details about his family life and what his brilliant father instilled in him. Though it was a great primer on Austen's works and illustrated that there are few more perfect canons as powerful and transformative as what she had written, it left me wanting to know more about the author himself. When he considers marrying a girlfriend, the encounter sounds like an announcement and lacks the true heart and romantic electricity: “We even mentioned the M-word... I couldn’t believe how grown up I was being. It felt like all that Austen was paying off, and that now I was ready for a mature adult romance.” And in less than a three paragraphs later, the relationship ends, chalked up to fighting.
The book is definitely an education for anyone interested in Jane Austen and what has kept people buying her work, but I didn't learn much about Deresiewicz. There is no question that he is intelligent, but does he have heart? I didn't find that answer. While this is what happens when an academic learns to read, I still wanted to have the emotional component; the heartfelt fanfare that said this is more than a smart man reading about female characters, this is a man who opens himself up to the wonder, steps upon a platform above the waves of English country trifles, rustic merriment, and love spats and dives in.
