I find my world falls into a slower pace when I jump into the time of Jane Austen. I find myself back in time where great honor, civility, decorum, and all manners of pretty politeness were observed. I also see illustrated an admirable caricature of what I consider to be an ‘extinct gentleman’. Such men who observe the delicate and tender natures of a female, such men who respect them as the weaker creature, yet not in so condescending of a manner, but rather with dignity and honor and richness of character.
Why are men no longer like this? I find very few who are. It seems most all the men in my life have set out on a conquest to belittle women, ridicule them, and defeat their spirits with an almost passionate fire. To exert their superiority while demeaning a woman as inferior, to me, is one of the most wicked and grievous injustices between the contemporary man and woman. And for those rare, gentleman who are left in this modern world, I know that today’s women are not the refined, graceful, elegant creatures of a soft, strong, and gentle spirits like I feel they should be. When I look around my world, I see at almost every turn a visible proof that my world is full of the kitsch, the crude and tasteless, the greed of materialism, and an obsession with instant self-gratification. I know that no time period is perfect, but I like to imagine the slow life back in Austen’s day— where you might find hours of contemplation among peaceful green hills and the sound of birds, instead of crowded, noisy streets of buses and cars—In her time, would you not be reminded more vividly that this is indeed God’s world? Not ours? Oh, if I might escape from such a place. If only someone might rescue me from this modern world without honor!
Sigh.
I feel myself drowning again in sad, deep, old fashioned thoughts. So I should venture to put aside my romantic tragedies and wistful longings and fall back into my readings…
