Jane Austen

Two novels I know well,
The most beloved Pride and Prejudice
And the ever delightful Emma.

The other four I have heard, read with a British accent,
As I worked in the kitchen these last two months.
They are not at all similar.

Northanger Abbey is a spoof on Gothic novels,
Beginning with the narrator’s good-natured surprise that
Catherine Morland could be a heroine, as she was never locked in a dungeon.

It is a frothy novel, a coming-of-age,
As the naïf falls in with some nasty social-climbers
And yet finds her way to an intelligent and cheerful young man.

Mansfield Park, lengthy, the only novel named for a house,
With a heroine a bit less likeable than most, weak and shy Fanny Price,
Who nevertheless shows more character than any other,

And avoids seduction by a coxcomb,
And, as with all of Jane Austen’s heroines,
Manages to marry far better than one might expect.

Persuasion, written the year of the author’s death,
Shows Anne Elliot, nearly thirty and unmarried,
Thrown together again with the man she was persuaded to reject

Eight years before. The weight of meaning
In a single glance; the constant dance of social convention:
What a drama around such meager interactions.

And Sense and Sensibility, one I heartily disliked
The one time I read it, with Eleanor Dashwood
Attempting always to act upright,

In a world of incredibly nasty people on all sides.
She seeks to be true to the one she loves,
Even if that means they will not marry.

I am astonished each day by the moral gravity,
The beauty of the language,
The incredible tension in the plots.