REFLECTIONS

Contemplating Jane Austen’s ability to make the good girl more compelling than the bad, I see the real reason our modern age keeps bringing out new Jane Austen movies every decade.  That the bad girl dominates our age is so obvious I am not even going to bother providing evidence.   Where else can you find good girls that command the attention and even the respect of bad girls but in Jane Austen?  Certainly not in the world of American politics, where the bad girls rule and the good girls stay in Alaska.

Let us take the Caroline Kennedy uproar.  Caroline Kennedy is the only Kennedy without a rap sheet or a dead body to hide and she is being torn to bits.  Yes she isn’t qualified for her office, but neither was Ted, or Joe Jr. or Patrick or JKF for that matter.   In fact Caroline Kennedy is as qualified to be Senator as Barack Obama is qualified to be President.    But some of the same folks whose lips are usually pressed to Kennedy behinds are aghast that Caroline is treating a Senate seat like a birthright.  Kennedy’s have been doing this for decades of course, but it is only when a Kennedy who is not a serial adulterer or a murdering drunk driver tries it that anyone gets upset.  Caroline Kennedy may not have much of a grasp of the English language and may think voting is a too much trouble, but in Kennedy land she is pure as the driven snow.  And that is why some in the press have abandoned the Princess Caroline meme and even some liberals are saying she shouldn’t be Senator.  Plenty of readers have condemned Fanny Price as being so good she is boring and thus it is with the non-sex or drug addicted Kennedy. 

Then there is Hilary Clinton whose resemblance to Madame Defarge is so exact it’s eerie.  Just as unqualified as Caroline Kennedy she not only got the Senate seat; only our nation’s obsession with racial reparations kept her from the Oval Office.  Bad girl triumphant!

So the only place modern readers can find the triumphant good girl is in those 6 novels.  On the other hand the left may have more to fear from Gov. Palin than previously suspected.  I am suddenly struck by the Governor’s resemblance to Elizabeth Bennet.  And you can’t keep a good Austen girl down.