Thursday, July 8, 2010

Lost in Austen...

So not too long ago I got a movie from Netflix called "Lost in Austen". I watched it and fell in love with it. At the library about a week ago I came across a book called "Lost in Austen". It was a build your own Jane Austen adventure.
It starts out by giving you your mission... "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young Austen heroine must be in want of a husband, and you are no exception." It then tells you how to play the game..."While your choices will determine your journey, your success will also depend on how well you do in the following five categories: your Accomplishments, Intelligence, Confidence, Connections and Fortune...." So I thought why not see where this takes me.
The book begins in Pride and Prejudice and then depending on what you answer or decide may take you into another book. While reading I ended up following Pride and Prejudice pretty closely. At almost the end I came upon something that told me to add up all my intelligence points. If I had below 400 I was to go to page 333. If I have above 400 go to page 336. I had slightly under the 400 and so I turned to page 333 and found my happily ever after to be with Mr. Darcy. Lucky me!
I then got interested in what would have happened if my intelligence points would have been slightly higher... I started reading page 336 and got a surprise. Elizabeth starts to second guess marrying Mr. Darcy... She has a hard time sleeping and so she goes to the library and picks up a book. " skip to the end, to those most treasured passages where the heroine is finally united with the man she loves. He makes her a proposal of marriage, she accepts it and the story ends happily" She then picks up another book and the same thing happens. She notices that after every happy marriage are the words "The End"... She then states, "Is this the fate that awaits me also? If I marry Mr. Darcy, will I, too, face 'The End'?... Apparently there is nothing that can follow the marriage of your favorite heroines-- no story worth telling, no circumstance worth reading. What you stand to gain upon your marriage to Mr. Darcy is great indeed, but what must you sacrifice?? What must be given up for this match to take place? Not just your name, but your very existence as Elizabeth Bennet. Every book that surrounds you seems to be forcing you to the same conclusion, the same distressing realization: that marriage will be the end of the adventure... Never before have you been so distraught, so torn, so at a loss. What is to be your fate? You must make the final choice, the choice of all choices, Are you prepared to sign yourself over to this new life, to disappear from notice, to cease to be of interest, to cease to be Elizabeth Bennet and become, instead, Mrs. Darcy?" In the end she ends up running away and begins a new life as an author...

This ending totally shocked me. I have never thought of my life as being over... the end.... once being married. I had always thought of marriage as a beginning. Anyway this book has really been on my mind. Any suggestions or comments about marriage being the end?

1 comments:

Shauna said...

Marriage is not THE END. It is the beginning of a new and better way of life, if done in the right way with the right person.