written artwork - emma

One of the great things about Jane Austen is that you can pretty much be assured the book will end how you hope it will. These days, it is popular in books, television, and movies to have a more "realistic" approach to story lines. This means that maybe the main character doesn't make it to their mother before she dies, doesn't pull off the big assignment, doesn't get the girl....doesn't live. And I really appreciate these stories. They are what keep us guessing how the story will end. But sometimes....sometimes....I just want to know things will be good when all is said and done. You know, warm and fuzzy stuff. And for this reason, I am thankful for Jane Austen.

Emma follows Austen's normal course of featuring a strong leading lady through her life in culture and romance. For me, it was fairly obvious how the book was going to end, but it was completely enjoying to see how we were going to get there. We get a wonderful dose of interesting second characters that show a bit about life during Emma's time. I could have survived very well with a bit less of the ramblings we endure from this neighbor or that...but that's a small issue.

I recently grew to appreciate Jane Austen's happy endings on a higher level when reading Gone With the Wind. These two books have a similar feel in that the lead characters are both strong women living in a high society and dealing with cultural issues along with ones of a romantic nature. In books such as these, you usually have to trudge through the characters making mistakes before things turn out happy in the end. When I know a good ending is on the way, it helps me continue on and not get frustrated. (Spoiler Alert!) I was expecting one of these endings for Scarlett O'Hara of Gone with the Wind....but was apauled when I realized it wasn't coming! All of that hard work through 824 pages for this? I am usually completely okay with a more somber conclusion, but I can usually tell it is coming. With this book, I really had no idea....and it made me mad.

So this is why I say,

"Thank the good Lord above for Jane Austen!"



A list of what's to come, and what has already been explored.

My Written Artwork Journey Explained

1. Animal Farm - George Orwell
2. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Emma - Jane Austen
4. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
5. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams
6. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
7. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson
8. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
9. The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
10. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
11. Nineteen Eighty-four - George Orwell
    
12. Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
13. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
14. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
15. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
16. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
17. Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
18. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
19. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
20. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
21. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
22. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
23. Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
24. The sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
25. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
26. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
27. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
28. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
29. Little Woman - Louisa Ma Alcott
30. Crime and Punishment - Fedor Dostoyevsky
31. Watership Down - Richard Adams
32. Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
33. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
34. Alls Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
35. Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
36. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
37. The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
38. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
39. Tales - Edgar Allan Poe
40. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories - Nikolai Gogol
41. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
42. A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway
43. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

photo courtesy -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/saucysalad/ / CC BY 2.0