What To Read Instead #3 -- Garbo

Week 3, and I continue to be happy,  to be doing these shorter blog posts. Easier on the reader, and this mode frees up some of my time and energy for other projects. 

Today, I recommend skipping a book by Jane Austen. 

It's not that I don't like Austen. Actually, I was an early adopter of her work, writing an honors thesis about Mansfield Park back in 1986. But these days the popular author gets a lot of attention, and I really think readers might really enjoy going just bit further afield.

So I suggest choosing between these two novels instead of reading both: 

Why?  

It seems to me that both Pride and Prejudice and Emma have similar story arcs. Both books are about young women alternately helping each other and competing with each other in courtship. P & P and Emma aren't identical books in terms of character or plot, but for my money, the two are close enough to justify skipping one of them. I chose Emma rather than Sense and Sensibility as one of the skippable options because although the latter's title has a parallel form to Pride and Prejudice,  S & S, in my view, is more a book about the benefits of female mentoring throughout life. Younger women see how older women live, and the knowledge is instructive.

The Mill on the Floss by Mary Ann Evans, writing as George Eliot

Why:  

This book, I'll admit, has a rather dull title (the Floss is a river and the Tulliver family's mill is at the center of the action), but the story is actually full of excitement, romance, and danger, as well as philosophical considerations, family drama, forgiveness and reconciliation. Many cover designs for this novel are marketed to attract readers of romance, but the designs are often a bit vague about who the young man is. 

But don't worry; if one reads Austen for the romantic bits, this suggested substitute book won't disappoint.  Our heroine, Maggie Tulliver (that's her in the image at the top of this post) has two suitors, and one of them -- gasp -- is considered to be engaged to Maggie's cousin Lucy. Maggie's young and trying out all her options, much to the consternation of others. There are long walks in the woods involving Maggie and a young man, and rumors spread far and wide. And there's tension about family finances and the possible loss of land, home, and income.  Sounds a bit like an Austen novel, right?

The time period of the story is way far off from that in Jane Austen's novels. It's true that Mary Ann Evans, who wrote as George Eliot, wasn't born until two years after Austen's death. But Austen died young, at age 41. And though Evans/Eliot lived until 1880, the events in The Mill on the Floss are set fifty years before that. 

As for the setting:  The mill is obviously not in London, but out in the countryside, up in Lincolnshire. The country near Lincoln, north of Hartfordshire, is a bit father away from London than some of the rural places in which events in Pride and Prejudice happen. But overall, in Eliot's novel there's an Austen-like sense of village life, and Lincolnshire is a unique place with a lot of history in itself. 

One last thing: I'm hoping people who start with The Mill on the Floss might find their way to Eliot's most-famous novel, Middlemarch.  Virginia Woolf once called Middlemarch the best novel ever written, and while i'm not sure I am ready to be convinced of that, it's an excellent book and is brighter and more hopeful than The Mill on the Floss. There are some appealing  cover designs for this one. 

                                         READING TIMES COMPARED:

Pride and Prejudice   7 hours

Emma     9.5 hours

The Mill on the Floss   12 hours 

Disclaimer:  I suggest skipping books, but there's always a substitute offering in these posts. I never suggest skipping a book and playing more video games or spending more time doomscrolling. And I am not banning, condemning, harming, or trashing the books I recommend skipping. There's nothing wrong with the titles I suggest skipping; it's just a matter of making choices with limited time to read in a busy, busy world. 

Garbo