An Incomprehensible Classic?

I finally got a real (vs. a virtual one) of 'Pride and Prejudice,' and with it came a two page synopsis and analysis of what was to come.  Apparently Jane Austen writes entirely of marriage, according to the introduction, and then it goes on briefly trying to reconcile Miss Austen's writings with modern feminist thought, that certainly it was the stultification of her society that thus rendered her stories so abhorrent to modern thinking.  I'm glad I read the intro, for as often as I've read Austen or watched the various films, I never knew what she was trying to say!  Yes, you are detecting a heady dose of Austenian snark in that comment, whereas this writer gets it.  Austen writes about many things, including marriage, but one might as well say she writes of horses or whist by that theory.  Rather, her main topic is ever virtue or its lack.

But in a world where virtue and political correctness are synonymous, what should I expect?  Oh that she had lived to write a satire of our modern societal messiness!  Yet her works live on in popularity even 200 years later though many a modern much celebrated work of literature has flourished for a day and then been forgotten.  For though our technology and our cultural morals may change, at heart, man is ever the same creature.  This is why Miss Austen's works and writings like Ecclesiastes are still viable centuries after their publication.  My only fear is that there are far more Wickhams and Lydias in the world now than in Miss Austen's day, that the Darcys, Elizabeths, Bingleys, and Janes are all but extinct.  But that is like saying one should not have children because the world is such a dark and dangerous place: it has always been so.  The virtuous are rarities, even in Miss Austen's novels and history is a story of darkness for as far back as memory can reach.

And why should I be surprised that critics and academians and the literary elite misunderstand the works of Miss Austen?  Such too is an all too common failing of man: we see in a work only what we wish to see and hear only what we wish to hear.  We must either twist the meaning or dismiss as bunk anything that does not support our own goals or ideals.  But let he who has an ear, hear and he who has eyes to see, behold all that is good and right and true, to enjoy the delightful wit of Miss Austen, and to all who cannot, I am truly sorry for you.