Comfort Food, Jane Austen Style

When my son Jesse was a little guy, small enough to sit on my lap to read bedtime stories (and believe me, he's a lot bigger than that now), he had favorite books that we read over and over and over again. In fact, I can still recite the opening pages of Dr. Seuss's ABC's from memory.

Big A, little a, what begins with A?
Aunt Annie's alligator, a, a, a.
Big B, little b, what begins with B?
Barber, baby, bubbles and a bumblebee.

See what I mean?

It took me a while to understand this phenomenon but now I know that it was practice, it was learning. But it was also comfort, the comfort of the familiar. After all, when you open a beloved book to page 37 because you know that's where you'll find a passage you particularly like, you'll find it there on page 37 just where it was last time. And for little ones whose lives are continually buffeted by new experiences because everything is a first for them, the comfort of a book that's the same as yesterday is significant.

I think all readers develop a short list of go-to books that they'll read and re-read for the same reason. The writing in them is good or at least compelling. You know what's going to happen so you don't have to spend a lot of thought following a plot but can sit back, relax, and savor the details of the journey from page first to page last.

I have such a list of beloveds—Winnie the Pooh, Tolkien's trilogy, Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence, George Eliot's Middlemarch—but Jane Austen has long topped my list of books I will re-read.

In other words, Austen is the macaroni and cheese of my reading life.

My husband can always tell when I am significantly stressed because Jane shows up on my reading shelf. Years ago for my birthday, he bought me this wonderful seven-volume set of Jane in hardcover from the University of Oxford Press. I adore these books because they are replicas of the original editions of her work so you can really time travel to the early 1800s, reading them the way they were first seen.

When we were getting close to losing Mom, Jane appeared on my reading table. Of what I consider the four big Austen novels—Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Emma—it is Emma who is my least favorite. And yet I wanted to read her particularly this time.

I'm not sure why exactly except that Emma—who can and is foolish and meddling and sometimes petty and irritating—shows this remarkable love and patience for her father, a man who dwells on his ailments and mourns change in all its forms. Mr. Woodhouse is a sweet guy but peevish and would try the patience of a saint. But young Emma cares and nurtures him in a way that shows a true love for the man and a maturity on her part that bodes well for the adult she becomes during the course of the novel.

In any case, Emma proved a good companion for the past month as I dipped in and out of the book. Ah Jane, thanks for your company.