not quite feeling up to the challenge

I should be writing my paper on Jane Austen's character, Mr. Bennet, right now. But I can't.

Is it possible to get writer's block when you simply write analytic essays??

I have always hated writing about Jane Austen. The language that she uses in her novels is too beautiful for me to translate. My essays don't do her justice.

I read the blogs on here. Some of the writer are so great at expressing emotion through words; at painting a scene that captures the reader and make her part of it.

I have never been able to do that.

My writing has always been just good enough.

Good enough.


I get A's on most of my critical analysis. I do well in classes. I do the research. I write out the facts clearly. My rhetoric works for that.
It's just so damn functional.
So logical and to the point that I leave no room for creativity.
My essays are boring.

I lack the vocabulary to truly describe things. Anything. Everything.

Jane Austen and George Elliot shame me.


To the point:
I have three pages (ONLY) to write about the purpose of Mr. Bennet treating his wife like the simpleton that she is. My teacher wants us to explore multiple options and also explain why we chose this and why it is relevant.

This is not a hard task.

In fact, it is probably on par with an assignment in a high school literature class.

But that is just the problem. It seems to incredibly frivolous that I can't even comprehend it.

I have read Pride and Prejudice four times. I have discussed this book over and over. There is nothing new in it for me that my teacher would appreciate. The only "new" realization that I had while reading it this time is that Elizabeth is not quite as strong of a female character as I thought. She becomes weak toward the end. And although I had already known this, it just pissed me off more this time. I dislike Austen's conservatism and how she forces it on her heroines. When I said something similar to my teacher, he said that I was being to harsh and judgmental.
The point is, I cannot think of anything within the book that interests me anymore. At least not anything that can be covered in three pages!
This is my senior seminar! I want to learn NEW things, practical things, but more importantly to me--fun and interesting things!

I don't like having a discussion class in which I feel like I cannot express my own opinion without being reprimanded by the professor.
I am sick of being treated like a child simply because I do not have a graduate degree.
I cannot just sit by and let professors be right just because they are the authority. Especially in a class where there is no right and wrong because it is literature... it CAN be interpreted differently.

I just can't wait until we get to George Elliot's Middlemarch and I can talk about the influence of Milton on her ideas for characters :)

And I know my teacher will love for me to express my opinion on a sexist pig of a writer (who was a great writer despite) and my interpretation of the reasons that Elliot uses references to him in light of a specific character.

I almost regret taking this particular seminar. The other options were not much better, they just might have been less reading. I would have loved to have written my senior thesis on Alexander Pope, or John Dryden, or maybe even a social comedy of the seventeenth century. OOO, or Aphra Behn! That would have made me so much happier. It would have been a lot of work to be sure, but it would have at least sparked my interest. I have the hardest time completing tasks that I deem unimportant. Or rather, COMPLETELY insignificant. But, alas, it is not up to me. My degree, my life, lies in the hands of a man that I think has lost too much of his memory to qualify as a teacher of any sort. (How's that for harsh?)