Books and brains

I was just watching Sense and Sensibility, and that combined with just finishing Persuasion, I finally realized why Jane Austen is a timeless author for women.

Her novels may not be exciting by today's standards, or easily relatable because they focus on England's rich society, but damn does she know how to write persevering love. In her books the men behave so chivalrously that its irresistable, and if they ever falter for any reason in their devotion, it turns out to be for an even better and heroic reason that we could have imagined to begin with. Of course I realized, superficially, that Jane Austen is supposed to be the original genius of writing men we can fall in love with but today it just hit me on a personal level. Maybe its becaue my LI is barely even aware that I'm alive, let alone, you know, willing to ride his horse all day and all night in the rain to fetch my mother for me if I'm sick. The fact that he has not a horse, but a subaru, is not the point. For Jane Austen's men, no gesture is too big to display his love and dedication. When the men in her novels fall in love, they fall in love for life. Just look at Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, he agonized over Anne for eight years, only to meet her again and only fall in love with her even further. {sigh}

Here's the best part though. The men in Austen's novels fall in love with women who have brains (except for Fanny, who didn't really seem to). Brains! What a radical notion. Just look at the collective wittiness of Elizabeth, Elinor, Emma, and Anne. Smart girls, those ones. Hell, Anne even speaks Italian. This could be another reason why Austen's books are timeless. Just look at the heroines we have in today's literature. Smart is not exactly the first word I would use to describe most of them. Bridget Jones? Lovable to the extreme, but not exactly bright. And how about that awful shopaholic bitch. Don't even get me started on her intellectual shortcomings. Where have all the smart women in literature gone? To the fringes. We have Claire from Outlander, but who has ever heard of the Outlander?

How much can we value intelligence in ourselves as women, when our heroes don't even posess it?