The Jane Austen Book Club. Karen Joy Fowler.

The Jane Austen Book Club
Karen Joy Fowler
New York: Penguin Group. 2004.

Why read it? Presents an interesting contrast between the life styles of Jane Austen and the characters in her novels and 21st-century liberated American women. A thoughtful look at the role of women in society--then and now.

Reflections: Novel. The Jane Austen Book Club contrasts the woman of the 21st century with the woman of the 19th. The emphasis in Jane Austen's novels is control of passion, revealing only what would be seemly to be observed by others. The emphasis with the members of the 21st-century book club is on the messy details of their psychological and intimate lives and relationships. You don't have to be very familiar with Austen's novels to understand the contrast. Just the image of the formal and controlled lives of Austen's characters is enough to set forth the emotionally disorganized lives of the members of the book cub.

Fowler shows what Austen didn't and couldn't. She shows the emotional turmoil in the minds of women who both control and do not control their lives in a world still controlled by men.

Fowler has the same ironic sense of humor as Austen. She states the facts plainly in what the book cub's characters say and do, and those facts reveal ironically the reality that they try not to reveal about themselves. With Austen the characters also want to believe they are what they reveal themselves to be, but Austen's ironic commentary shows them for what they really are.

Of course, one contrast between Fowler and Austen is Fowler's revelation of the intimate details of sexual relationships by the members of the book club, which Austen would never discuss. But if she does not feature sex, Austen's view of the reality of marriage is devastating. Many of her couples are individuals who do not belong together, complete mismatches And yet, her mature characters, i.e., Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, see marriage as the ultimate happy ending.

Ironically, Sylvia's marriage to Daniel in The Jane Austen Book Club ends happily after Daniel returns to her from his fling, and Sylvia truly loves him, never stopped loving him. In Austen, marriage consists of almost anything but love. For Austen, marriage is a political relationship in which women try to control their existence within a world controlled by men. What's love got to do with it?

In Austen, everything is seen from the observer's point of view. In the book club, everything is revealed in interior monologues.

One of the differences between Jane Austen's time and 21st-century America is social class status. All the characters in Jane Austen's novels are preoccupied with whether they are below, equal to or above everyone else in society, and they know and accept their places in society. A 21st-century American would have no conception of this preoccupation with social class status in Jane Austen's time. Still, an interesting discussion could be held on how Americans measure their status in society.

In Jane Austen's time, women had only one outlet--marriage. The power of men held women firmly in check. All of the exciting events belonged to men. 21st-century American women have many more opportunities in careers and personal freedom. The result of this freedom, judging by the women in the Jane Austen Book Club, is psychological turmoil. Fowler may be suggesting that all of this turmoil is worth it as women develop themselves in a society still controlled by men, especially as power begins to shift to women.

For both Austen and Fowler, in completely different social circumstances, women seek to control their existence.