Dear Captain Wentworth,
I recently read a book composed entirely of
letters to Mr. Knightley. Yep, you read that right- ENTIRELY of letters. The
only part of the book that wasn’t a letter was the end, when Mr. Knightley of
the letters became a real person. So, to be just as clever, I decided to direct
my discussion of the book to you in a letter, Captain Wentworth. Unlike many Jane Austen fans, you are my favorite of her male lead characters, “heroes” if you like. You are my
favorite, perhaps mostly because you were lucky enough to be in my favorite
Jane Austen book, Persuasion, and
actually noticed Anne Elliot, the main character in that book, for what she
was, and were smart enough to realize that she was the one you wanted to
accompany you on your adventures on the sea.
The book, by the way, is called Dear
Mr. Knightley. The premise is that a young woman who has spent her teenage
years in foster care receives a grant to go to graduate school (it has to be
journalism, what’s up with that?) and all she has to do is write letters to the
director of the foundation who gave her the grant, and address those letters to
Mr. Knightley. When I bought the book (on sale, thankfully), I didn’t realize
that the WHOLE thing was in the form of letters. I didn’t stay an English
major, but I remember being told that this format was clichéd, contrived, trite,
and overdone. Guess what, Captain Wentworth? It is.
By the time I had read a few of these letters, I was tired of it. It
did get better toward the middle of the book, but it didn’t take long after
that for me to just want her to be quiet.
This book is sickeningly sweet. Now, Captain Wentworth, people who know
me will tell you that I have a huge sweet tooth. But this book isn’t sweet like
that piece of wonderful chocolate that you put in your mouth and savor, let it
melt on your tongue so that the taste of that piece of chocolate floods every
nook and cranny of your mouth, the type of melting and flooding that makes you
think the type of carnal thoughts FAR FAR more carnal than the main character
of this book even knows exists. No, Captain Wentworth, this book is the
aspartame type of sweet: fake, slightly off, weird and odd, and leaves a bad
aftertaste in your mouth. It’s the pickup line “you’re so sweet you make my
teeth ache” which should make any woman with half a brain and not very many
drinks in her walk off.
Don’t get me wrong, dear Captain Wentworth, there are a couple of
amazing sentences in the book. Here they are:
"The way pale yellow should look, like sunshine and butter, mixed with
hope and cream"- from page 76 of the Nook book version, to describe the yellow
walls of her new apartment.
And to describe the Indian food she ate with her boyfriend at the time,
from page 91: "Dinner, time travel, and sunbathing rolled into one culinary
experience."
However, there was a lot of wading through the mud of introspection,
self reflection, and maudlin ramblings in these excruciatingly long (some of
them) letters to find these gems. And
the character herself, Captain Wentworth, could actually be very likeable, whatever
her name is. I was glad when Kyle found a family, and when she did also. I get
that people need to work on forgiveness and relating to other people, and I
especially get the building of walls. In fact, dear Captain Wentworth, if you
were to sail your ship into my walls, your ship would break in pieces before my
walls would even show a tiny hole. And I like
you, Captain Wentworth.
But just give it to me in a story. I can only take so much. I found
myself wanting to bang my head on the wall behind me in frustration way before the
main character does so in the hallway of a hospital when she finds out that
Alex Powell is the Mr. Knightley of the letters. For the first time, I felt in
sync with this character. I would have been incredibly angry at his deception
also. Of course, she promptly forgives him, probably because she’s been working
so hard on relating to others and forgiveness and all that. I still wanted to
bang my head against the wall.
My Jane Austen, my dear
Captain Wentworth, is witty and at times caustic. Have you read her juvenilia, The History of England? Too funny,
Captain Wentworth. Although she does give her female leads neatly arranged
lives romantically in her novels, others do not merit such careful treatment. The character
in Dear Mr. Knightley writes that she
likes Fanny Price (I’m on the fence, personally), so let’s take Mansfield Park as an example. Lady
Bertram and her pug are quite the comic duo, and Maria Bertram and Mrs. Norris
are left sniping at each other at the end of the book as punishment for their
behavior. I picture Jane Austen rolling her eyes (if they did that back then)
and writing a highly satiric letter to her sister Cassandra about this book.
Anyway, Captain Wentworth, thank you for reading my letter. I know you’re
married and have been for centuries, but if you weren’t and lived
now and could sail your ship past my walls,
then it would be
Love,
D.D.
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