Let’s Talk About Jane Austen

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July 18 marks 200 years since the beloved novelist’s death—or, as some of our staff superfans like to say, since Austen achieved immortality. In her honor, we’re hosting a bi-Austen-tennial celebration of essays and reader discussion. Come back every day this week for more questions and responses, and check out the rest of our Austen coverage here.

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Annika Neklason

8:00 AM / July 12, 2017

Tell Us: Who’s Your Favorite Jane Austen Character?

C. E. Brock / Hugh Thomson / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

Just before she began writing Emma, Jane Austen called the novel’s young protagonist “a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like.” Emma Woodhouse is privileged, self-involved, often frivolous, and sometimes even (unintentionally) cruel. In her overconfident attempts at matchmaking, she repeatedly misinterprets signals and muddles relationships to the point of catastrophe. She lacks the wise-beyond-her-years insight and the intellectualism of most of Austen’s protagonists. She’s also my favorite of all Austen’s characters.

When I was younger I loved witty, headstrong Lizzy Bennet and the diametrically opposed Dashwood sisters, self-contained Elinor and passionate Marianne. I enjoyed the pompousness of Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh and the sometimes awkward charms of love interests like Mr. Darcy and Colonel Brandon. I watched the 1996 film version of Emma and Clueless, a contemporary adaptation of the novel, but never felt much attachment to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Emma or to Cher, who came off as shallow and lacking in genuine compassion.

It was only when I read Emma for the first time as a freshman in college that Emma Woodhouse really got to me. As Austen wrote her, Emma felt flawed in a way I could relate to: good-hearted and clever, but too wrapped up in her own world and too assured of her own opinions and talents. She felt like people I knew, or maybe even like me—like a fortunate young woman trying, and sometimes failing, to live well.

Annika Neklason

8:00 AM / July 11, 2017

Tell Us: What’s Your Favorite Jane Austen Line?

Africa Studio / Shutterstock / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

I learned Jane Austen’s lines like a second language when I was growing up. My quip-quoting, BBC box-set owning, Austen-loving parents began immersing me in her literary world before I was old enough to comprehend all its nuances and ironic undertones. By the time I picked up Pride and Prejudice to read it myself when I was in middle school, the characters and scenes felt as familiar as memories from my own life—and I already knew my parents’ favorite lines by heart.

As I’ve grown older and read and reread Pride and Prejudice and Austen’s other novels, I’ve become attached to other lines, both satiric—like the ones my parents favor—and more sincere. Professions of love: “You pierce my soul.” Feminist rejoinders: “A woman may not marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.” Descriptions of beloved—and not-so-beloved—characters: “She was a woman who spent her days in sitting nicely dressed on a sofa.” Each time I read one of Austen’s books or watch one of the film adaptations, I’m struck by new moments and new lines, adding to a mental collection much too extensive for this one brief note.

But the lines my parents love are still the ones I know best, and the ones I hold closest to my heart. So when I started listing out my favorites, I reached out to both of them, prompting two enthusiastic text conversations.

My mom is an especial fan of Pride and Prejudice heroine Elizabeth Bennet’s absurd, puffed-up cousin and suitor, Mr. Collins, and Mr. Darcy’s haughty aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh. This, from Lady Catherine, is her “all-time favorite” Austen quote—and also one of mine:

There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.

My dad, on the other hand, is a devotee of Lizzy’s wise-cracking, socially disenchanted father, Mr. Bennet. “The best stand-alone JA quote of all time,” he texted me almost immediately, is this one, spoken by Mr. Bennet to Lizzy:

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?

It’s one of my very favorites, and the first one I thought of, too—because it’s a great line, but also because it always, always reminds me of my dad, and the days we’ve spent watching and discussing and laughing over Pride and Prejudice together.

Now we’d like you to join the discussion. We’ll be talking more about the best Jane Austen lines as part of our celebration of her life and legacy next week, and we’d like to hear your nominations. In this form, please share some of your favorite turns of phrase from her books (and the many adaptations they’ve inspired), and tell us a bit about what makes them your favorites.

Rosa Inocencio Smith

9:50 AM / July 10, 2017

Tell Us: What Was Your Meet-Cute With Jane Austen?

Matt Cardy / Getty / Katie Martin / The Atlantic

If you, like me, are a fan of Jane Austen’s novels, you must acknowledge the crucial importance of a good introduction. And I owe my enduring Austen addiction to my mom—who, with all the best parts of a Mrs. Bennet’s concern for her daughter’s well-being, introduced me to Ang Lee’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility when I was still young enough to play make-believe as Marianne Dashwood. From there I was hooked; we watched Gwyneth Paltrow in Emma and Laurence Olivier in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice, which I mostly appreciated for the hoopskirts. For a few years we made the viewing of the six-hour BBC Pride and Prejudice into an annual ritual, involving homemade cream scones (clipped from the New York Times recipe page), marmalade, English breakfast tea, and (this was the part I found most exciting) sugar cubes. Mom spread out the china and antique doilies she never had an excuse to use, and I’d stitch outfits for my dolls in imitation of the heroines.

At the two- or three-hour mark we’d take a break to clear away the crumbs; my dad, who normally folded laundry in front of a college basketball game, would bring a hamper up from the basement; and in this way my family absorbed Austen into our lexicon of inside jokes. Dad perfected the Mr. Collins wave; Mom adopted “icky Wicky” as an insult; and to this day we tease each other with imitations of Lady Catherine, pronouncing ourselves in haughty falsetto “most seriously displeased.”

I soon outgrew the tea parties, but I haven’t outgrown Jane. Today—200 years after Austen’s death on July 18, 1817—I still turn to her novels and to the many adaptations of them for insight and comfort. Austen’s shaped my interests as a reader, my voice as a writer, and my confidence as a young woman—but all of it traces back to watching those movies when I was a kid. And so, to kick off a reader discussion in Notes about Austen’s legacy, I asked my mom to tell me how she, in turn, was first introduced to Austen. She replied:

I think I must have met Lizzie and Mr. Darcy when I was a teenager, probably on a lazy weekend afternoon when I had time to kill and was flipping through channels on TV. Back then you could always find an old black and white movie, like an Abbott and Costello or an Alfred Hitchcock, on the local station. That’s how I discovered the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. I loved it. It was so campy and lively, with the over the top costumes and stagey acting, and it seemed like the actors were having so much fun. I had never read the book, so I didn’t know that they took so many liberties with the story.

Years later, when I was a mom with two kids and money was tight and time was scarce (no more lazy Saturday afternoons), I heard on Fresh Air that there was a new annotated Pride and Prejudice. By then I owned the book and had read it a few times, but I was excited to get a hold of that annotated version even though I felt guilty spending the money. I wanted to read all the details, the background explanations, get to know them better. I remember sneaking in a trip to Barnes and Noble between errands, and then sitting in the car and opening up that fat volume. The sun was shining outside. I knew I had to get going, get back to work; but for a brief, stolen moment, I was alone with Jane and her lovers.

Do you remember your first meeting with an Austen novel? Have Austen’s characters played a significant role in your life? Fill out this form to tell us your story, and we’ll share some of the responses next week—and follow along on this thread for more Austenian discussion.