Wet shirts, Incest and Interminable Monologues: Why Jane Austen is Doomed to the 7th Pit of a Fiery Hell

A man in a sodden ruffled shirt doesn't do much for me. I don't think it ever did. However, for many, it has become the iconic scene of a BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I believe that this is a bit of poetic license on the part of the producers, but I can't know because my mind has blocked all details of Pride and Prejudice from my mind in an attempt to sand-bag my brain from the rot of simpering, marriage obsessed heroines.

Three years ago, I ploughed my way through the inane ramblings of Ms Austen. After all, shouldn't every educated woman list an Austen novel as her favourite book? At first I thought my dislike of the book was a flaw of my own, I wasn't smart enough to appreciate the writing or not romantically-inclined enough to identify with the protagonists. I tried and I tried and I tried to get to grips with Austen. Perhaps it was just Pride and Prejudice that I didn't get on with. So I tried Emma. Just as bad. Sense and Sensibility? Senseless. Mansfield Park? Seriously, incest ain't sexy.

Ah, but it's just a quirk of the time, I hear you say.

Fair enough, but for books taken as the pinnacle of romance, that's a message that makes me vomit a wee bit in my mouth.

And then the writing style... Goodness me there have been telephone books which read better.

But all of this pales in comparison to the realisation I finally came to. There's nothing wrong with me because I don't like Austen, but the societal pressure for young women to like her novels. They aren't very well written and they do go on (and on and on and on and, well you get the picture). But that isn't reason enough to decry Austen - my bug bear is that Austen has become the pinnacle of 'female literature'and their underlying message a stick with which to beat women. Her books have soppy, simpering women devoting ALL of their time to finding a husband, and finding every other woman a husband too, and that is what educated women should aspire to. Women will idealize romance, whilst men can read whatever they want, the very basis of a huge amount of inequality worldwide.

Well screw you Austen, and societal pressure, because you will burn in my imaginary hell.