![]() Her first-person narrators aren't rebels, but women whose emotional labor is bent toward maintaining the social order and staving off the disastrous consequences of slipping off track. The author of four previous novels, Sittenfeld has a solid track record with high-stakes dramas of social conformity. The first three entries were not overwhelming successes, and many "Janeites" have been holding their breath, waiting for Curtis Sittenfeld's "Pride and Prejudice" retelling to rescue the series. ![]() To recreate those high stakes and subtle subversions in a modern romantic comedy is the unenviable task of any Austen update, including the six commissioned from popular and critically lauded novelists a few years back by the Austen Project. ![]() The insistence that he not even bore her? That's downright subversive. ![]() For an Austen heroine who can't inherit property and has no safe or legal means of earning money, the quest for financial security with a partner who won't either beat or betray her is nothing less than a survival story. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen's novels, insofar as they concern women's efforts to find rich, witty, handsome husbands, are "chick lit." Fair enough, but as an excuse for not reading Austen (and I've heard 'em all, usually from men), total bunk. ![]()
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