With saucy lines like the above, you would think I would be infatuated with Austen contemporary Maria Edgeworth's Belinda.
Alas, sigh, this is not so.
It is just that the writing feels...heavy handed.
Like, I get it, you're being satirical about how men lie to women. Or how the flighty Lady engaged in a duel with another Lady and the butt of the gun hit her in the chest as she fired and she hasn't been to the doctor about it for years and says she is dying. Dude. It is probably a bruise.
Or how everyone is at a masked ball and the young girl, who has a matchmaking aunt, overhears her prospective paramour talking crap about how she is all fluff and secrets and trickery and just out to catch a husband so then she is turned off of him which makes him really like her and he changes his mind, but then the Lady uses the naive girl to get some fancy horses from the paramour and then he is all back to thinking she is a strumpet.
WHATEVER.
I can't take 400 more pages of this.
Austen thought highly of Edgeworth, but I think she should have thought higher of herself.
Back to the library I go.
"Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget."
Maria Edgeworth
Maria Edgeworth
Whoa-- that last quote from Ms. Edgeworth blew my mind. Unfortunate that a book with duelling ladies is unreadable... where is the BBC televised version when you need it?
ReplyDeleteJ - I just didn't care about the characters. Sad because I wanted to REALLY like it. However, maybe that is why I didn't. Unrealistic expectations?
ReplyDeleteI think we are all constantly looking for (and hoping to find) another Austen. Sadly, I guess this is why we've also never heard of Maria Edgeworth.
ReplyDeleteSucks though, I was hoping too.