Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

After starting several books - and being plunged into preparation for marriage and a wedding (in that order), while working two jobs and working on a graduate certificate - I finally finished a book!  My previous Jane Austen reads have been rather light and I confess that's what I was looking for when I started reading Mansfield Park in February.  No to be!  The introduction (I'm a sucker for Oxford World's Classics) begins: "Mansfield Park is Jane Austen's most dramatic and disturbing work."  And so it is - there are quite a few theatrical themes in the novel, and the characters' actions are at times quite disturbing for Regency England.  Sadly, adultery doesn't seem quite as shocking in today's world.

Fanny Price is not your typical Austen heroine.  At the age of ten, Fanny is sent by her working-class family to live with her wealthy relations at Mansfield Park - perhaps a surprising favor for such an unaffectionate family.  She grows up passive, quiet, and modest, downtrodden by her awful Aunt Norris, but protected by her cousin Edmund.  At the same time, the is the only player not wholly deceived by others' true characters.
The novel picks up when fashionable brother and sister Henry and Mary Crawford arrive to visit their sister at the parsonage, and become "intimate" friends with the party at Mansfield Park.  Flirtation and more ensue.

I really grew to enjoy this novel as I got into it.  Its themes are heavier and content more mature than Austen's other novels.  Mansfield Park is not a love story - probably the reason that recent film adaptations (see imdb.com, 1999 and 2007) have been such poor representations of the book.  But it an excellent read, well-written with well-developed and exciting (if often despicable) characters.

King Lear, William Shakespeare

Spoiler Alert: Everybody dies.

Believe it or not, there is a shocking amount of good English major lit out there that I just haven't read. I am remedying this defect, and King Lear is part of my solution.

It is a Shakespearean tragedy, so I came in knowing that pretty much everyone dies. Because it is about a father and his three daughters, most of the characters are related, which makes the disregard and cruelty with which they treat each other even more poignant. I enjoyed the twists that it took to get from the beginning to the point where everyone dies, even if the original premise made the story a little unbelievable. The entire conflict hinges on King Lear's making his three daughters give public speeches about their love for him and his youngest daughter's refusal, despite her deep love for him. Being a tragedy, it goes downhill from there. Being Shakespeare, there are a lot of disguises and tricks thrown into the story, plus a few good storms and failed suicide attempts.

My favorite character was the Fool, who offered an alternately nonsensical and wise counterpoints to the suffering throughout the play, following Lear in his exile. And of course, I loved the language of the play. That's why I read Shakespeare.