A visit to a country house and a guided tour of the rooms provides a turning point in this, the most famous of Jane Austen novels.
The owner, the haughty Mr Darcy, has excellent taste it seems, cares for the environment and is a benevolent master. Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of the book, behaves like a typical museum visitor.
There “were many good paintings; but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art… and… turned to look at some drawings of Miss Darcy’s… whose subjects were usually more interesting, and also more intelligible.”
Like many of us, she is drawn to, and draws meanings from, the familiar and easy to grasp. One hopes that in time she will move on to the good stuff!
Pride and Prejudice has been on my bookshelf, read and re-read, since I was 15 years old. Now I work in the house where the novel received its final revisions and from where it was published.
It is justifiably a classic for all the well-known reasons. But Austen’s insights, as shown above, are often surprising and relevant to a modern readership, and each re-reading reveals further, previously unrealised, treasures.
It is what makes it such an honour and a privilege to be curator of the house museum that was once her home and the place in which her literary talent came to fruition.
Louise West is the curator at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. The 17th-century house tells the story of Austen and her family
The owner, the haughty Mr Darcy, has excellent taste it seems, cares for the environment and is a benevolent master. Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of the book, behaves like a typical museum visitor.
There “were many good paintings; but Elizabeth knew nothing of the art… and… turned to look at some drawings of Miss Darcy’s… whose subjects were usually more interesting, and also more intelligible.”
Like many of us, she is drawn to, and draws meanings from, the familiar and easy to grasp. One hopes that in time she will move on to the good stuff!
Pride and Prejudice has been on my bookshelf, read and re-read, since I was 15 years old. Now I work in the house where the novel received its final revisions and from where it was published.
It is justifiably a classic for all the well-known reasons. But Austen’s insights, as shown above, are often surprising and relevant to a modern readership, and each re-reading reveals further, previously unrealised, treasures.
It is what makes it such an honour and a privilege to be curator of the house museum that was once her home and the place in which her literary talent came to fruition.
Louise West is the curator at Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. The 17th-century house tells the story of Austen and her family
