“It’s a difficult, romantic thing to be a dreamer” admits
Lori Smith in one of many, many quotes I would love to appropriate and
cross-stitch and frame and hang on my walls as the story of my life.
A Walk with Jane Austen: A journey into Adventure, Love andFaith should rightly be called the Difficult Musings of a Romantic Dreamer for
the book is, at its core, Lori Smith’s relatable reflections as she stumbles through
singlehood, depression and faith.
There are certain books that tug your heart strings and catch
your throat and make you squeal aloud at every moment where you realize that
the author has taken words and thoughts out of your mouth and heart and slapped
them on a page. A Walk with Jane Austen is very much A Walk into Rachel’s Psyche. It is Smith’s blatant and
commendable honesty, her frustratingly poignant stream-of-consciousness and
her willingness to spill her thoughts and pangs like a tipped-over inkpot that
make this story the most poignant caption of a literary infused life I think I
have ever read.
It speaks to those of us who love Austen, certainly, as
Smith weaves her way through the English tapestry: beguiled at Bath, cloistered
in an abbey, bewildered at Lyme as she traces through her beloved’s footsteps.
Mostly, however, this book speaks to a specific type of Austenian: those of us
romantic sorts who are blessed and cursed by a passionate devotion to
Christianity in our single thirties.
Cursed, you ask? Yes. Smith realizes, as so many of us do, that the
limited dating pool and strict moral requirements of what a Christian match
should be can make the odds seemingly impossible. Add to that a passion and heart for romance
and a God-given desire to seek that which is beautiful, fantastical, witty and
light and you are caught with Lori Smith in a modern web: where educated women
feel at a loss--- so likely are they to cherish their post-feminist independence
while guiltily admitting contradiction as they ache for an Austenian match. It’s
a difficult, romantic thing to be a dreamer, yes; but to be cursed as a
Christian with a romantic, dreamer’s mind? Even worse. Like lapping water out of a sinking boat with
a plastic pail.
Readers of this blog know that I was on work leave for 5
months recently with debilitating anxiety.
As someone who has struggled with a mental disorder her entire life ( one
that was only recently given a name), I fell in love with Smith’s vulnerability
as a depression sufferer plagued with a malady that is not christened until
near the end of the novel. Some might
find the dark, smoky edges of this romantic Walk to be a tad over-bearing; but
that is what makes it special. Smith
does not shy away from using her plight as a balm. She admits to being smack in the middle of a
life-long dream ( traipsing through Austen-land) while still admitting moments
of defeat. Just because you are chasing
Darcy-coloured rainbows, doesn’t mean that the curses of real life will fail to
set in. To add to this, Smith writes
eloquently about Christian lamentation: and a modern weakness inducting
believers into a world of radiance and light while scorning natural human
lamentation. From the book of Job to her
flitting, irreplaceable thoughts, Smith guides us through the happy and the
sad: the rainbow-tinted and the melancholia.
Further, she understands the scathing imp at the back of our
minds which brings to forefront our questioning of our path. For a contingent of women taught to pray for
their future husbands and families in children’s church and through youth group
to the same sect of women in their 30s, she understands that making sense of
the nonsensical is part and parcel of the plight. “He’ll be normal”, she hopes, “Someone I
could actually introduce to my non-Christian friends without cringing.” If you are in the datingsphere as a Christian
single woman and you have not thought this; then you are either lying to
yourself or are much more decent at heart than I am. Smith is an automatic ally who understands
how difficult it is to seek God’s path and timing when our impatient human
nature forces us to explore the great world beyond: “Our conversations range
from incisive devotional thoughts to solving poverty to the creepy, ogling
married guys buying us drinks downtown.”
Like she says of Jane Austen, Smith is able to engage with the world
around her. She fully epitomizes the contradictory nature of modern Single
Christian females: those who are cursedly frustrated at God’s ridiculous timing
while steering into moment of secularism in order to discover if there is light
and love and passion available. Those who worry that one does not have the luxury of standards when there are so few male believers left to choose from (many marry young; there are twice as many single Christian males as females in North America). She IS
NORMAL. Further, she muses, on the
seeming unavailability and awkward friendship nature of connections with
Christian men over a certain age: “It is a truth universally acknowledged among
single Christian women that single Christian guys beyond a certain age are
weird.” Harsh, perhaps, and most likely
not universal; but, again, she mirrors Austen-- bringing the peripheral subject of
her thesis to forefront and honestly revealing a thought that actually got
published in the Christian market (God bless you, WaterBrook). “ I still want it so much”, she says of
marriage as her 33 year old self traces Austenian heritage, “And if that sounds
crazy to some, since I’m currently thirty-three and still very marryable, it
may help to know the expectations in the conservative Christian world in which
I was raised. Girls were supposed to grow up, go to college, and get married. “ To put that into further context and to
heighten the stress and significance, I will echo that the first time I had the
thought that I was abnormal for being single and pursuing an education and
wanting a career was at 18. There are
zillions of readers who will not understand
the moments of vacuous inadequacy one feels as an aging single Christian
woman; but they are there. In a world
where we are supposed to be supportive of differences, to seek God’s will and
to find God outside of human expectations, to realize you are someone not quite
like the rest of the flock is a constant sting. Moreover, to be an intelligent
someone out of the flock who seemingly chose education and career outside of
early marriage (I’m talking 18-25 here, the average Christian marrying age),
further removes one from the idealized domestic sphere.
Smith quotes writer Sue Monk Kidd’s talk about the defining
choice every woman makes between love and independence. Smith further investigates its ramifications
and contextualizes it in the Christian sphere. But, as an independent woman on
an independent excursion, she allows room for ruminations on love: realized and
mentally constructed. There are a few major relationships in the book which
make up the “love” component of the subtitle.
One being Jack: the odd, Christian friend-sorta-date who occupies Smith’s
time at Oxford
( and her thoughts long after), one being Smith’s reconciling
her love for herself and God against moments of shadow and Smith’s love for
Austen: what Austen stood for, what she wrote, how she was ahead of her time,
how she provides a metric against which we should all attempt to live and love.
She also speaks to the relationship she longs to have. A beautiful one with
adored looks, not unlike the one Darcy gives to piano-playing Elizabeth during
a scene in the 1995 BBC miniseries.
Smith, like me, believes herself to have been inherently
compliant: to want to please her parents, her God, her church, the expectations
told and untold and with this heavy weight she loses herself, if momentarily,
and often just as reality comes
galloping back in, in the world of Jane Austen. I realize that I spoke far more to the
personal resonances of this book than to the Austen-centric mold of this Walk;
but that is because that is not what hit be so hard about this reading experience. I know a lot about Jane Austen and I have
read dozens of books and studied thoroughly in University so, truth be told, I don’t
need a literary travelogue
( though this one is so much appreciated); but I do
need an author who understands me. I do need someone who is brave enough to
spurt out on page what wrestles so acutely in my heart and mind but has rarely
found a voice. Smith, in the guise of a
beautiful homage to a great female writer, speaks up for those who cannot speak
for themselves and in this case, she speaks up for me and my ilk: we trusty, conflicted
band of Christian single females intelligent and contradictory: wanting love and
independence, sitting over coffee wondering why he said this or who he is or
why we are attracted to guys outside of the fold and what it is to be equally
or unequally yoked and why can’t EVERYONE BE MR.FRAKKIN’ DARCY --- she speaks
for us. And while she is speaking for
us she takes us on a rollicking rural journey through the mind and thoughts
and, yes, heart of the greatest female writer of all time.
4 comments:
Beautifully said, Rachel!
it was so good. read. read read everyone read this now
I'll have to read this. In about a month, when I have plowed through the other 6 books sitting beside my bed.
(WHY, library, must you get in everything I request THE SAME DAY??)
oh charity, this book is SO good! so good! I loved every moment of it.
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