December 09, 2004
Weird new poll
According to a Radio 4 poll, reports the Guardian, Pride and Prejudice is the book that has "spoken to" women "on a personal level; it may have changed the way" women look at themselves, or simply made us "happy to be a woman." Don't worry: the story presents lots of criticism. Julie Burchill is reported to have said, "I can't see why Pride and Prejudice would make one feel proud to be a woman. If the question was, which book makes you proud to wear an empire line dress, then I could understand it." Touché.
Also rans: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, The Women's Room by Marilyn French, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Good to see so many people remember their English courses.
Burchill is also quoted as saying, "I think if people had been hooked up to lie detectors the winner would have been Jackie Collins."
Scribbled at December 9, 2004 02:20 AM AST | Hmmm? (2) | TrackBack (0) | Link Cosmos | More? books/reading, gender/sexualityMay I say that I feel P&P is my favourite book, my one literary constant and one book I can't wait until my daughters are old enough to appreciate it as I did when I was a young teen.
Scribbled by Ancarett at December 9, 2004 11:17 PM | PermalinkLinda Payne on C18-L wrote at length in much the same vein, very persuasively. I think I was a little flip in my post, but more about the fatuousness of the survey than people's responses, I hope. I love P&P too, though I am less sanguine about convincing my son to read it when he is of an age.
Scribbled by mj at December 10, 2004 07:25 AM | Permalinkhttp://webteam.unb.ca/cgi-bin/MT-2.21/mt-tb.cgi/1160
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