Tags
Charlotte Bronte, Darcy, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Mr Rochester, Mrs Elton, Patricia Beer
Something of the excitement goes out of Christmas shopping as we get older, but in a bookshop the familiar magic returns. Whole afternoons can be spent blissfully browsing and choosing. There are so many wonderful new books on display that you find yourself thinking there’s a lot to be said for giving everyone a book this Christmas and not going into any other shops at all…
One of my best Christmas presents ever was given to me forty years ago. It was a book called Reader, I Married Him, by the poet Patricia Beer. It’s a study of the women characters, their position in society and how they relate to men, in the work of four novelists: Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot.
This isn’t dry literary criticism or feminist writing, but an immensely pleasurable and easy read, spiced with a sharp and witty intelligence. It’s like enjoying the novels in the company of an acutely perceptive and sympathetic friend – and is very funny indeed about our old friends Mrs Elton, Mr Rochester and Darcy.
You’d be unlikely to find Reader, I Married Him in most bookshops now, but for those who love these four women novelists (or any one of them) a copy is likely to bring the same continuing delight it brought me back in 1975.
