Welcome to Friday Debate, a feature on cup of tea with that book, please, where every Friday a question will be posted that tantalize the brain and expands our horizons. For this week’s question: This past Wednesday was the 201st anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. Austen, in my opinion, was an amazing writer and graced the world with six completed novels, one novella, two uncompleted works and her juvenilia.
Of course, as you all know, Pride and Prejudice is my favourite Jane Austen novel. But I want to know what yours is if you have one.
So without any fighting, for this week’s debate question, I am asking you:
Please post any comments you have below.
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I love Pride and Prejudice, of course, but overall, I’m partial to Emma. I love her arrogance and the way that she’s eventually humbled. Yes, Emma discovers things about the people in her life, but the most important thing she learns is really about her own fallibility. At the same time, those around her also reveal themselves to be more complex than we’d realized because we’d seen them through Emma’s eyes. When Emma thought of them as life-sized dolls that she could play with, they seemed more like caricatures: the dotty old lady, the know it all brother in law, the annoyingly perfect rival, etc. But as Emma becomes aware her own faults, she also begins to see the other characters as the complex human beings that they are, and the reader gains that new appreciation for them as well. I don’t know how well I expressed that!