Hardy is just waaay too depressing for me. Austen has its depressing bits, but it's papered over with the wonderful mild snark. I saw a writer recently claim that from a feminist perspective, Austen is a horror writer (because of the desperate need to marry: Charlotte Lucas being a case in point).

I liked Jane Eyre but Wuthering Heights makes me roll my eyes: they're all such drama queens, and unpleasant people to boot.

I have never read Pilgram at Tinker Creek but I loved Dillard's An American Childhood and The Living was very good indeed, if a bit bleak.

I love Dickens, for both his literature and his societal impact, but my favorite Victorian writer is Elizabeth Gaskell. Her stuff is seriously funny and insightful. And not just because her most noted book is my last name. :)

:: hugs all of my Austen books tightly ::

I also love Wharton (Including Ethan Frome) and the Brontes. Hardy I can take or leave. And of course George Eliot is the queen of 19th century lit.

Okay, now I must know. Why does Charlotte HAVE to marry in the original P&P? I know it's not for the same reason as in the zombie edition.

I enjoy Jane Eyre as an over-the-top black comedy. And I really should try rereading Wuthering Hights with the mindset that it's a psychological horror story, because that might make me hate it less.

Hee. Do we need to whitefont P&P? Also, how far along in the book are you, because I suppose it might spoil the zombie version.

Basically, with Charlotte, marrying Mr. Collins is her only chance to get out of her parents' house and have a family and household of her own. So it's not "had to" in the sense of "or DEATH", but it was that or poverty and spinsterhood.

I don't know if it was a product of going to school in Miami where nothing ever seemed like it was anywhere else, but I never read Austen or Dickens or any of the Brits in high school. Instead we read Hugo, Cervantes, and the Russians my sophomore year. Junior year was American Lit-- Twain, Hawthorne, Steinbeck, Hemingway, AKA Dead White Guys. Senior year was read what you like, so I read Betty Smith (I like Maggie-Now so much better than Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Anne Rivers Siddons, and read a lot of drama-- Neal Simon, Tennesee Williams, Shakespeare.

Didn't really read many Brit authors until I got to college, actually.

Every time I try to read Austen, I doze off. After 20 years of trying, I think I should quit.

I loved Hardy, though.

So many otherwise right-minded people who don't love Austen. You all make me sad.

What Dana said, also she is the example of marrying for practicality rather than love. Austen was very good at showing the limited prospects for women in her society, and I love the irony of the fact that she was writing these novels about romance and finding a husband so that she essentially never had to make the choices her female characters are forced to make.

I might like her with zombies. Just not solo.