The Making of a Gentleman

“The base assumption is gentlemen are born into a role via class and family. What separates them is not education, not their upbringing, but what they choose to do with it. Austen has a higher standard, I argue, for acceptable marriage-material gentlemen. They make life better for those around them,” Thomas said.

This interpretation is, of course, wrong. A couple in Austen are suited for each other not because they make 'life better for those around them', but because each makes the other a better person--where 'better person' means more virtuous according to the deeply religious sentiments and rather Shaftesburian moral philosophy of the author. Austen is more concerned about the state of her characters' souls than their income. This is obvious when one compares the various couples at the end of, say, Pride and Prejudice.

This is among the most-ignored aspects of English literature, right up there with our blindness to Shakespeare's sincere worriment about male chastity.

On the independent recommendations of some friends whose taste I now esteem more lightly, I have started The Name of the Wind. I can say without exaggeration that this book is the worst commercially successful fantasy novel I've ever read--and I've read every Dragonlance novel ever written. The prose is atrocious, the plot non-existent, and the protagonist is the literary equivalent of Lin-Manuel Miranda, possessor of the world's most punchable face. IThe last character I hated as much as Kvothe was Dolores Umbridge. He is Thersites's self-insert Gary Sue.

I will probably blog more about this once I have cleared the taste from my mouth with strong drink.