Monday 18 May 2015

Microblog Mondays: Worlds of Letters



I've been reading the collected novels of Jane Austen the past couple of months. It started out as a mission to find an offbeat wedding ceremony reading for a friend, but she turned out to be easier to please than I supposed, and chose one before I had a chance to get through all the books. So now I'm just reading for my own enjoyment. Somehow despite being an avid reader my whole life and studying mainly British literature in university, I never read Jane Austen.

There is a lot to appreciate and enjoy in Jane Austen's novels, as I'm sure many people have personally experienced. One thing I found myself noticing in her books was the role of letters. Specifically, the way letters were written and read reminded me of the blog world. torthúil has been an important part of my life the past two and half years, as have many other blogs I've encountered. At several points I've thought to myself: What did people do before blogs? I have many supportive people around me IRL, but still, the blog has helped a lot through some critical times.

It was interesting to read about people's lives in 1700s England and see parallels that made me think that despite the very recent technology that enabled blogging, it is not entirely unique in the history of personal letters. Here are a couple of things that I noticed:

Some letters were no doubt intended only to be read by one person, but most often in the novels, they are read multiple times, often to several people at once, and discussed.  I have written a few "old fashioned" letters in the past (it was long time ago) and still keep up email correspondence with a few people, though not as much as I used to. But I always wrote those letters and emails with the intention that they'd only be read by one person. To write a letter that you knew would be read by several people would really be more like writing a blog entry than a personal letter, I think.

Of course there is a key difference in that letters weren't ever anonymous, (I don't believe?) and blogs can be. Although in the case of the blogs I regularly follow, I often forget that they are anonymous. Unless the writer makes a point of saying that they are omitting certain details, I don't think about it much at all, other than to acknowledge to myself that I am only ever getting one side of the story (but again that would be true even if you were talking in person). Obviously anonymity does matter for many reasons, but on the other hand every identity is authored in some way. There are people in real life who know my name and vital details but they don't know anywhere near as much about me as the people who read torthúil regularly. So really, which identity is more "anonymous?"

The other piece I found interesting was the rules around correspondence between men and women. One was that it was inappropriate for a man and woman to carry on a private correspondence unless they were engaged. I think (not 100% sure about this one) that it was OK for them to correspond if the letters were going to be shared. But to carry on a "secret" or private correspondence unless you were fiances was not allowed.  And if the engagement was broken, then each party was expected to return all the (love) letters.

I compared the situations described in the books to today's social media and my thought is that the rules were a very good idea. Now I've never really been through a breakup, so I'm not sure what the contemporary etiquette is, though I think people are usually expected to return each other's gifts et cetera (someone weigh in here?) But do we have agreements about what happens to electronic correspondence, photos, etc.? Again I haven't experienced it personally. But I think that would be a very important topic to discuss for anybody dating in the electronic age. We now have video chat, sexting, social media: and all that stuff is a heck of a lot harder to "return" (the word barely applies) than a packet of letters. There are also opportunities to do some deeply nasty things such as sharing intimate photos and information on public websites to shame an ex (there are websites especially dedicated to this kind of humiliation).  Are people setting boundaries around this stuff when they begin a relationship? If not they could learn a few things from Jane Austen!

There you go: a few random observations connecting our world to Jane Austen's! Any other readers of Jane Austen out there? What do you most enjoy? Any other observations connected our technological communication to less technological pasts?

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21 comments:

  1. I've been reading Jane Austen for years! In fact, I decided while stuck in the hospital to reread the lot and see if I could get it done before bubs comes. I knocked off Pride and Prejudice in about a day and am about halfway through Mansfield Park now. My favorite is probably Persuasion though. But I have to admit, I haven't put as much thought into it as you have, so I really can't say much about any observations regarding technology and communication. It is a very interesting idea, and I think you are on to something! I will think about it as I read through the rest!

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    1. I'm glad you have some good books to pass the time! reading was one of the few things I really wanted to do while pregnant. :-) It's nice to read new books but there's something very fulfilling about re-reading a favourite.

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  2. I love this comparison! Can you imagine if you had to return all the electronic correspondence after a breakup? Or not being able to communicate privately? Such a different world. But I like the comparison between blogs and letters. I worry about what will happen to our archives with all this electronic communication. What's left for the archaeologists/anthropologists? Will a flash drive work in technology 100 years in the future? Will people oooh and ahhh over tweets? Doubtful. I should reread some Jane Austen, it's been a long, long time. Thanks for the reminder!

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    1. That's a good point. I tend to assume stuff on the internet will last forever and whatever I put up will be here tomorrow, but that's obviously not true. I have had websites vanish probably forever when servers crashed. (Might still have the files somewhere, but it would be hard to recover them). And then on the other hand some stuff lasts TOO long! I'm not in the dating pool obviously but if I was I would be very wary of digital communication and records. It might not be possible to return records but I would definitely talk about it, set limits on what was shared and definitely no sexting; I think that is the worst idea ever.

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  3. I don't know how I ever lived without my blogs! Posting new things gives me so much joy. But also, my husband and I go back through them all the time. When did we get our dog? Let's check the blog! What did we do last year? Check the blog!

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    1. Yes, I do the same thing! At the time you think you will never forget but you do. I like having the record and it's much more accessible than the personal journals I used to keep, although those are also fascinating for the same reason. I can't imagine being without my blog either!

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  4. Which identity is more anonymous? I have wondered the same thing on many occasions.

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    1. I know, when you start thinking about all the different ways we construct our identities for the world, what we hide and reveal...it really does complicate notions of anonymity and authenticity.

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  5. I read Jane Austen ages ago, and the novels grated on me, but there were things I did appreciate ... and among them, the letters, the gracefulness, the rules of civility, constraining as they were. :) I ought to go back to them ...

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    1. It would be interesting to see if you have a different reaction to the books at this point in your life. if you kept a record somewhere of what you didn't like at the time, that's also fascinating to look back on.

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  6. I loved Austen when I studied Literature. I'm trying to get into the mode of reading classics and contemporary authors again.

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    1. I think if you start you will be hooked again haha! I sometimes have to force myself through the first 50 pages of a book and then I'm addicted (if it's any good at all.)

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  7. My Brit lit is severely lacking. I read Jane Eyre and didn't enjoy it. What does that say about me? I'm more a modernist, I guess. But I love letters, and your analogy is fascinating! I really should write more letters. It's such a wonderful way to communicate.

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    1. An good book is a good book, whatever era it's from! Jane Austen's novels are nothing like Jane Eyre (which is a novel by Charlotte Bronte). Jane Eyre is kind of the prototype romance novel. Austen's books are about people living very conventional middle class lives but what makes them interesting are how she observes character: lots of people like the books for the period detail but the personalities and challenges the characters deal are much the same as people deal with today.

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    2. Oh I know it's Brontë not Austen! I meant it's the only one of the period I've successfully finished and I found it dull. I've never even finished anything by Dickens. I managed to get through my Brit lit class in high school somehow skipping all novels by the Victorians entirely, a feat which I was proud of at the time but now feel a bit guilty about. I read some poetry and read Cecily during our "The Importance of Being Earnest" in-class reading, though? I really should try again. I feel like it's this great gap in my repertoire! ☺

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  8. Jane Austen is definitely a guilty pleasure. I've read a few of her books, but now with your comparison feel a need to take a look with fresh eyes.

    And I wonder if the same rules would apply with others (the Bronte sisters come to mind).

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    1. It's a good question. It's been a while since I read anything by the Brontes so I would have to re-read to figure that out! but it would be fun to read with an eye to how people dealt with the same issues throughout time.

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  9. It's been a while since I've read Jane Austen. Need to re-read :-)

    That's a really interesting idea -- what happens to the digital exchanges after you break up? Are you expected to delete the images, emails, etc? Never share these shareable things?

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    1. I know I would expect that personal and especially sexual emails and texts would be deleted. Preferably with me watching. :-) But it would be impossible to be sure they had been deleted forever. So the advice I would give someone who was dating would be to simply not share intimate photos or texts till the relationship reached a certain stage. Such as engagement. :-) I am pretty conservative of course but any way I look at it that just makes the most sense to me. Photos are another matter. They contain our memories and I would probably not want to delete all photos because of a breakup. So I guess I would repeat the advice a worldly friend once gave me: if you go on a holiday with a boyfriend or girlfriend, make sure you get photos of yourself alone as well as with your SO so that in case of a breakup you have some without him/her.

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  10. "Which identity is more anonymous?" This is such a good question. It reminds me of the comment of an internet friend, who simply said that we got to know each other "inside out."

    I really love your observations on letters and blogging too. I was an excellent letter-writer, and miss having that correspondence. A lot of people I used to write to just rely on Fb now, and it's much more superficial.

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    1. Facebook is much more superficial, if also more flexible in terms of photo sharing and sharing with multiple people (but those things can also lead to privacy concerns). Some of my most treasured possessions are the letters that I received from a close friend in my early 20s. He typed them on a typewriter. Nothing I share on Facebook is anywhere as meaningful, but I use it because most (not all) other people do and it's ubiquitous in our society.

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