Plain Jane

Interesting Kinsley piece in Slate about how today's Jane Austens are the HBO shows about show biz. The argument is strained, but fascinating. (He also puts down The Sopranos, which I didn't see coming.)

But I want to talk about Kinsley on Jane Austen, not on HBO. At least Kinsley seems to like her (compared to others). Nevertheless, here's what he says about the opening line of her masterpiece, Pride And Prejudice:

Jane Austen's famous opening sentence ("It is a truth universally acknowledged... [, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife]") is intended to flatter the reader with feelings of worldly superiority to the claustrophobic society she writes about.

I'm no Austen expert, but that's not how I read it. I think Kinsley is missing the irony and humor. The "universal truth" has nothing to do with what is being openly stated, nor are we supposed to feel too superior.

The next sentence makes the joke even clearer:

"However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."

Austen's point is not that rich single men all want a wife, but that young women and the familes that can't wait to marry them off feel it's their duty to convince every rich bachelor that he must get married, usually to someone in particular, and before he knows what hit him. And I'm not so sure, as Kinsley is, that times have changed so much.