Why We Read Jane Austen

Why are we here? No, I mean, why are we here, on this website devoted to Jane Austen?

There are so many other things we might be doing. I’m sure you’ve put off some essential “busy nothings” to be here—work, in short. Or you could be taking a long, exhilarating walk through the countryside, dancing, or gossiping with a good friend. I mean, we could all be out there doing something else; we could all be out there living.

At the very least we could be reading something different than blog posts. Maybe something utilitarian, like a how-to guide. Or something serious, like the news. Or some masterpiece of world literature, like one of Jane Austen’s novels.

But we’re here, reading about Jane Austen. And we’re happy hanging out in this Platonic cave of representational regression. And that at least seems a bit curious, doesn’t it? So…why?

Well, it seems that somehow our connection with Austen, and with others who love Austen, is the very stuff of life.

This doesn’t happen very often, does it, when literature grows at least as great as life itself? Some books are just books. But with Austen it’s different. Sure, she teaches us about life (as Susanna Clarke, Ben Nugent, and Margot Livesey show in their contributions to A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen). And she even teaches about moral life, about the “good life” (as James Collins and Louis Auchincloss show in theirs). But there’s something else going on in her novels besides mere description and conversion. The reading itself is all light and bright and sparkling—it’s all life.

And when we readers connect, whether face to face or in print or in pixels, we experience some of that passion, for in sharing the passion grows greater still.

So, why are we here? Well, of course, to live. The answer really could never be anything other than trite. It’s something the uninitiated might not get, but we Austenites know that the best literature isn’t a break from life. We know that life is what happens when you’re lost in a good book.

For more answers to the perennial question of why we read Jane Austen, check out the contributions to A Truth Universally Acknowledged (Random House; on sale November 10, 2009, www.whyjaneausten.com).