I won’t fudge it.
Nor will I cautiously qualify it.
The two greatest novels ever written are Pride & Prejudice (P&P) by Jane Austen and Jane Eyre (JE) by Charlotte Bronte.
There. I’ve said it. You critics may howl in protest as much as you want.
These novels are great because they’re perfectly realized, which is extraordinarily rare. By that I mean that all aspect of the novels – style, structure, tone and so on – come together to have the precise effect the authors aimed at.
When you read these books it’s like eating a dish in which all the ingredients blend to perfection. All you can do is rub your belly and sigh blissfully.
The best test of a good novel is whether you re-read it. I have read P&P 41 times and JE 16.
P&P and JE are quite dissimilar in style.
P&P is all controlled irony, dry detachment and delicate but devastating satire. JE, on the other hand, is all controlled passion, vivid language and imagery.
Indeed Bronte decried the lack of passion in Austen’s novels: “Anything like warmth or enthusiasm, anything energetic, poignant, heartfelt, is utterly out of place in commending these works. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement . . . . The passions are perfectly unknown to her . . . what throbs fast and full . . . what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death – this Miss Austen ignores.”
C’mon, Charlotte! I guess that’s the fate of writers of comedy.
Both novels follow a plot formula: boy meets girl; they fall in love; difficulties ensue; they overcome the difficulties, marry and live happily ever after. This probably puts off some modern readers who think plots should be original and lifelike.
JE is a gothic romance; P&P is a comedic romance. They are, of course, so much more than that; but the authors don’t constantly hit you over the head to remind you how clever they are.
Great novelists are like magicians. They delight and amaze us with the sheer beauty of their magic while concealing the skill with which they manipulate us. Unfortunately many modern novelists seem more interested in reminding you art is “merely” an illusion and showing you the cleverness of their sleight of hand, thus missing the whole point of an illusion: it must be maintained.
The two novels are profoundly concerned, in different ways, with love and morality.
Both portray the redemptive power of a woman’s love for a man. In P&P Elizabeth redeems Darcy from being insufferably proud. This only happens when she discovers he’s an emotionally wounded man and begins to love him (women love wounded men; don’t ask me why).
Similarly in JE, Jane’s love redeems Rochester from a life of selfishness and dissolution. But she only gives herself to him when she discovers he’s literally wounded: he’s lost a hand and his sight trying to save his mad wife in the attic from a fire she has set.
Austen elegantly dissects the social pretensions, bad manners and immorality of her characters, especially the members of the landed aristocracy. Bronte assails with passionate language and vivid imagery the wickedness that is inflicted on Jane Eyre by “respectable” members of society from the time she’s a child.
JE is a profoundly religious novel. Bronte depicts the fierce conflict between unbridled selfish libidinal instinct, symbolized by Rochester’s mad wife in the attic, and a morally controlled passion. But Bronte reserves her most scathing condemnation for passionless, puritanical religion that revels in the mortification of the flesh, as symbolized by the Rev. St John Rivers, whose self-righteous, loveless proposal of marriage to Jane, sends her scurrying back to the sinful but passionate Rochester.
Think of Rivers with his grim sense of Christian duty as akin to an overzealous self-flagellating devotee of the ultraconservative Opus Dei religious organization.
Rochester finds redemption through a compassionate, loving God, regains his sight, and he and Jane are united in marriage.
Perfect.
