Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,

I am at a loss to understand why people hold Jane Austen's novels at so high a rate,

which seemed to me without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world.

Never was life so pinched and so narrow. Suicide is more respectable.

And he's not the only stodgy old man who said this kind of idiotic nonsense.

In other circles, Austen is worshipped as a not-so-minor deity.

She has spawned at least hundreds of adaptations,

and people who love Austen are called Janeites,

like their members of a small but mighty Protestant sect.

Regardless of you are an Emerson or a Janeite,

you cannot be an informed reader of English language literature

and avoid having an opinion on Jane Austen,

particularly Pride and Prejudice.

Our podcast is about the power and importance of romance novels.

We therefore had to get here eventually.

Pride and Prejudice is the constitution of romance novels.

It is our founding document.

I happen to love it,

and I think that the stakes of the marriage plot are stakes that matter.

Austen cared about the lives of women, including their inner lives.

She is, to my mind, no doubt a genius.

And yet the overwhelming popularity of this novel alludes me.

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