‘In New York there is a debate society.  They meet each week at the place of somebody in the city.  I was at one of these meetings and I wondered:  Why don’t do this in Spain?’, explains the lecturer.

The answer to this offer was both immediate and feminine.  The majority of the emails were sent by the followers of the Facebook of the Spanish Jane Austen Society.  They were mainly students of English Studies, Spanish Studies and Modern Languages, one journalist, and one Art Historian.  They all were women trapped by Jane Austen’s ‘elegant irony’.

There, at the first meeting, we could find people such as Carmen Campo, an enthusiast of Austen ‘since she was twelve or thirteen’.  She is studying the last year of Modern Languages (German), but she is mainly writer. ‘I have always loved the idea of meeting in order to talk about literature’, highlights Campo, very convinced in fact. ‘The most interesting point is to analyse how each of us reads her books.  I think they have a lot of details, which are understood regarding your experience, your life.  Nobody reads a book in the same way that another one does.’

What she writes and how she wrote it is the reason why Campo admires her: ‘She did not sign any of her works; they were signed by other ones. She did not have a room of one’s one to write.   She did not want that people discover that she was writing. She simply sat in her living room with her papers and she hid everything when she heard that somebody was opening the door.  In fact, she asked to not have the door repaired because it made noises when somebody opened it’, tells Campo. ‘This like this, which many women writers did, allow me to freely write now.’

The journalist and the tourist guider Inma Esplugues, 37, also spoke. ‘Everything started with two free tickets to attend the release in València of the last TV version of Pride and Prejudice. The next morning I bought the book, and then I started my Jane Austen’s collection.  I have not only read the books of Jane Austen, but I have also discovered the literary world and the cinema world existing around her, her characters and her time.  How many authors enjoy this situation? In particular, if we take into account that she was very young when she died and that she does not have a wide book production.  Stephen King and John Grisham? Because, after all, some considered her naive and a second-class writer...’ One of the examples that she gives is he film Love and friendship ‘based on a teen book written by a teenager Lady Susan.’

Ragarding this, she ensures that the books of Austen ‘are not films of gender to be watched in channels such as Divinity.  My husband and my brothers did really enjoy Jane Austen films, some of them produced by the BBC.  I do not see her as a romantic woman, but as someone who was really fun at her time.’

Men of Jane Austen

Despite this fact, apart from Miguel Ángel Jordán, no other man attends this reading society for now. ‘I am thinking about writing Men and prejudices, complains the writer, who notices that in the USA the followers of Austen are also a 95% of women. ‘It was disappointing not to find any man at the meeting’, says Inma: ‘I can read books about spies and there is no problem with it, but it seems a discredit that a man reads a book considered feminine literature.’

Together with Inma was Paula Escrig, 18. ‘My link with Jane Austen started when I was studying Universal Literature in the High School.  We had to hand a class project in which I discovered the world of this author.’ What most surprises her about Jane Austen is ‘her capability to describe the characters, in particular, the feminine ones.  For the time she lived in, this simple way of telling stories seems innovative to me.’ Paula came with Ángela Muñoz and Aitana Amorós, who are as well studying Spanish Studies. ‘We hope that the society makes us discover a new world about Jane Austen, it is a good way of widening our knowledge’, underline the three girls.

Beyond Pride and Prejudice

In all, fifteen readers sat around the table in the meeting room of the faculty. ‘It is not a class.  Some days before I announce about what we are going to talk and I tell them some questions, so that they can prepare the session.  My role is to foster the dialogue, I provide many ideas.  The session lasts only one hour’, says the promoter.

At the next meeting, scheduled on the 19th of November, Ana Sánchez will come. She is an Art Historian and she has been a follower of Jane Austen since she watched the film Andy.  ‘I can provide the society with my stylistic research, my knowledge on clothes design in order to recreate her time’s trends.  I am an unconditional follower of the Instagram accounts showing these trends.’

Among the wise readers of the works of Jane Austen or the works inspired in her, the followers of every serial and cinema products related to her and the ones who are taking their first steps in her world, there is something in common:  Pride and Prejudice. It is the novel which they all have read.  That is why in the first two sessions we will focus on aspects of this book.  The next point with which we will deal is Sense and Sensibility and I want that, at the end of the scholar year, we deal with Emma, the first book I coincidentally read and which surprised me because of the original and fun way in which the story is told.  These are my intentions, but they will depend on the decisions of the rest of the members.  We are a reading society’, concludes Miguel Ángel Jordán.