What Would Jane Do?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen is always right. She just is. Analysing people’s behaviour in society, she becomes an astute observer of individual desires, beliefs, kinks. Once you start reading Austen, you’ll never be able to shake her off. You won’t want to shake her off. Only give her time.

Anti-Pamelism

I’ve often witnessed people throw their hands up in horror when I’ve casually mentioned that over the course of this semester I’ve read Samuel Richardson’s Pamela for the literary seminar I signed up for. Admittedly, before I started reading it, my apprehensions before reading it had been slowly but steadily building. I expected it to be the most insipid story ever written, describing the hysterical fears of a girl that’s virtuous to the point of being kinky. And somehow that’s a pretty apt description of Richardson’s novel. And somehow not quite. What’s certain, though, is that I’ve got a problem with it.

BIBLIOPHILIC (UN)SAINTLINESS

Picture drawn from
http://www.cartoonstudio.co.uk/StressCartoons.html

Generally speaking, I love all the people who use the library. Generally speaking. But ever since Bill Bryson we know that this is “always a dangerous thing to do, generally speaking”. True enough, most library users are really nice people. Yet, there are also those that turn even angelic me into a raving termagant. In the past two years I’ve accumulated enough experience to be able to divide these weirdoes into the following groups:

                                                   

Group 1. The pseudo-intellectuals.

Group 2. The complicated.

Group 3. The know-it-alls.