Quote:
Originally posted by baltassoc
But you continue to prove my point: something about Austen makes her fans feel the need to rabidly defend her, which combined with the fact that a large percent of the population finds her mind-numbingly boring, leads to conflict, and this conflict generally runs along gender lines. Conflict leads to hate , and hate leads to evil.
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I am only defending her so "rabidly" because the criticism of her is so vehement and vituperous (the world's greatest monster?) -- and this from people who have read one book (if that)!
The things that have been said here are: (1) she's the catalyst for male-bashing (which is wholly untrue -- there are the "scoundrel" characters in her works, but certainly there is no overarching "males suck" theme going on -- without some very tortured interpretations along the lines of Chaucer's secret coded message about menses (?!) -- but no scholar of Austen would take that view), (2) her books are boring and (3) she's "evil" and "a monster".
Well, if you find her works boring, so be it -- I just don't understand how that translates into her being a horrible monster or "evil" as I think you called her.
I certainly can understand that her writings do not appeal to everyone, but I do feel the need to defend someone I consider to be a great author (and, no matter what you think of her, you cannot deny that she was groundbreaking in many ways and her works have withstood the test of time) in the face of rabid, knee-jerk, unthinking criticism, especially from those who have not read her works.
In sum, "I find it boring" is unobjectionable, and I certainly have no quarrel with that; but "she's evil" or "she's a monster" is just plain stoopid.
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