Saturday, April 23, 2011

"The Forgotten Categories of the Lady and the Gentleman"

Mark T. Mitchell on why we need Jane Austen:

I want to suggest that Austen provides something for which young people—even the jaded ones—secretly long. While the world she depicts is in many ways foreign to us, it is only just different enough to bring our own pathologies into clearer relief. In short, Austen reminds us of the largely forgotten categories of the lady and the gentlemen. It is her genius to make us aspire to these roles even in a world where such notions are strange and often ridiculed.

No comments: