How I Long for a Ball at Pemberly

So it's no secret that I'm a Jane Austen fan. I read my tattered and worn Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion a few times a year. The spine is cracked for each and the pages are pulling from the binding and no matter how many times I read it I find something new or gain a new perspective on her ideas. She is so incredibly timeless. I think her works speak to so many and are so well written and human because of the sadness she faced in life, which is a recent revelation I've had. Her stories worked out for her what life did not or could not.

Because of this thought (and the fact that I've recently finished P&P, S&S, Emma and am on Persuasion now...) I want to partially reprint one of the best passages (there are many) I believe she's ever written, one of the best love letters from literary history.

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means that are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. ...

-Jane Austen, Persuasion, 1818

Becoming Jane, a movie with Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy covered the details of her life to a fairly accurate degree. It was heartbreaking to see and consider the truth in it. I don't think anyone could have written with feeling the way she did without going through her pain.

That is all. Class dismissed.