how I hate thee, let me count the ways

So, I tried to read Jane Austen's Persuasion. I really did. I carried it around with me, lovingly protected in my personal book-bag. I dedicated several lunch hours to it. I even tried to read it at home (where usually, it's a book-free zone, unless it's a trashy romance under my duvet). Nothing worked. I don't know what it is about Victorian Literature that sets my teeth on edge. The Brontes, Hardy, Austen, Dickens... I can't stand any of them. So here, once and for all, is my rant against VicLit. After this, I shall let it rest and refer people to this blog instead of raving like a mad Bertha.

/rant

The people in these stories seem to be utterly unlikeable - they're either snobbish or puling, arrogant or simpering. Never can I find a character to whom I may relate - and when I do, they're either spinsters or dead. I wish to be neither. Also, the sheer amount of characters is almost Russian-esque in nature. But, where Dostoevsky and Tolstoy sometimes have seventeen names for one character (I've counted!), these people seem to always use the same name for seventeen characters. For example, Persuasion has like five Elliots (some first name, some last name), a few Walters, a couple of Marys... I wanted to cry. Surely there were other names? And if not, there should be a cast of characters. Even WillyShakes has those, and he is a genius.

Then, of course, there's the writing style itself. Overly wrought, uppity grammar and diction, taking thirty-six words to say something that could be said in five. It all seems so pretentious. I understand it is a sign of the times - hence why I hate VicLit in general and do not hold anything against these authors in specific. I just find it odd that Victorians tended to be more formal than, say, their Renaissance or even Medieval predecessors. And those modern authors who try to emulate them (Woolf, comes to mind) become just as mired in the muck.

Finally, the overall plots leave a bad taste in my mouth. Jane Eyre is an ambitious tart who falls for the semi-abusive Rochester (who, in turn, has locked his mentally-ill wife in the attic); Heathcliff is a psychotic bastard whose obsession with Catherine turns him into a monster of spite and vindictiveness; Emma Woodhouse is someone only a mother could love, which Austen herself set out to do - in fact, most of Austen's work is merely about how to make a good marriage and how without a proper marriage, one couldn't possibly have happiness or social status... gag me; Bathsheba chooses to marry the arrogant Sergeant Troy while spurning the earnest Gabriel Oak, using him until he can't stand her pettiness any longer and finally consents to put the man out of his misery. And don't even get me started on Dickens and his paid-by-the-word style that leaves much to be desired.

...why would I care about any of these people? they all seem so trivial and shallow, thus making the stories themselves trivial and shallow. I get that this must have been ground-breaking stuff when it all came out - but it hasn't really stood the test of time very well. I still laugh at Chaucer's Tales (esp the Miller's Tale), am in awe of Milton's Paradise Lost, get caught up in Beowulf's adventures and, of course, the genius that is Shakespeare keeps me going back to Stratford every year. This stuff? I fall asleep.

I'm done with VicLit. I know this makes me some sort of bad English major or, at least, not a "literary" person - but if being literary means having the stomach to digest some of the driest literature in English history, I hereby announce myself as illiterate. I am a canonical pagan. I revel in my heathen ways. Take that, high society.

/end rant