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Jane Austen's abilities as a writer evince themselves in her astute social observations, her ear for dialogue, her delight in small ironies.
But her brilliance manifests in the fact she was even able to write at all.
She had no privacy. She wrote in the drawing room.
In her classic essay A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf spends a great deal of time marveling over this: "'How she was able to effect all this', her nephew writes in his Memoir, 'is surprising, for she had no separate study to repair to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions."
Elsewhere in the essay, Woolf describes these interruptions, "Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down."
The title of Woolf's essay has become synonymous with a kind of platonic feminist ideal: the space to think one's own thoughts which depends, of course, upon the concession – however grudging – that these thoughts are worth being thought.
This is where class and money enter into the equation. Things have improved a bit for rich and middle class women, but poor and working class women don't have the leisure to entertain their own thoughts and for the most part – never having had it – they don't miss it; in fact, they welcome prepackaged thoughts into their heads rather the same way they welcome frozen pizzas into their refrigerators: it's less work for them. Hence the preoccupation with entertainment franchises and celebrity misdoings. Prepackaged life.
This is why I like to read women's journals – okay, call them blogs if you must – online.
These women are taking the time to stake out the territory inside their own heads. I'm moved by that impulse if not always by their words.
(Of course, the women on my particular LJ flist are all jewels with very interesting thoughts.)
I've written innumerable nonfiction pieces, a handful of short stories and one novel in my lifetime. Oh, and about 50 billion pages of this ongoing journal. Maybe I'll never write anything else. I don't share Jane Austen's brilliance; I can't compartmentalize. It's hard for me to keep the faith with my imagined universes when there are so many things calling for my immediate attention.
Maybe some day I'll learn to. Or maybe some day I'll have that room of my own.
White walls. A view of the ocean. Not much to ask for.
Except maybe it is...
But her brilliance manifests in the fact she was even able to write at all.
She had no privacy. She wrote in the drawing room.
In her classic essay A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf spends a great deal of time marveling over this: "'How she was able to effect all this', her nephew writes in his Memoir, 'is surprising, for she had no separate study to repair to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions."
Elsewhere in the essay, Woolf describes these interruptions, "Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down."
The title of Woolf's essay has become synonymous with a kind of platonic feminist ideal: the space to think one's own thoughts which depends, of course, upon the concession – however grudging – that these thoughts are worth being thought.
This is where class and money enter into the equation. Things have improved a bit for rich and middle class women, but poor and working class women don't have the leisure to entertain their own thoughts and for the most part – never having had it – they don't miss it; in fact, they welcome prepackaged thoughts into their heads rather the same way they welcome frozen pizzas into their refrigerators: it's less work for them. Hence the preoccupation with entertainment franchises and celebrity misdoings. Prepackaged life.
This is why I like to read women's journals – okay, call them blogs if you must – online.
These women are taking the time to stake out the territory inside their own heads. I'm moved by that impulse if not always by their words.
(Of course, the women on my particular LJ flist are all jewels with very interesting thoughts.)
I've written innumerable nonfiction pieces, a handful of short stories and one novel in my lifetime. Oh, and about 50 billion pages of this ongoing journal. Maybe I'll never write anything else. I don't share Jane Austen's brilliance; I can't compartmentalize. It's hard for me to keep the faith with my imagined universes when there are so many things calling for my immediate attention.
Maybe some day I'll learn to. Or maybe some day I'll have that room of my own.
White walls. A view of the ocean. Not much to ask for.
Except maybe it is...
