If you are familiar with the creative part of the internet then you would know that fantasy is huge now especially one with a side plot of romance. It seems like everywhere we turn, we are trying to escape our reality so we create elaborate worlds with elaborate systems and disappear into them. But as someone who does not read or watch fantasy, I would like to provide an alternative.
There is beauty in simplicity. I enjoy happy ever afters and love stories but I enjoy them more when they are grounded in the reality I live in. I suppose you could say my escape is that I create a different outcome in my imagination but there is a deeper reason why I enjoy contemporary stories. It is because I enjoy the mundane.
My favourite author is Jane Austen and there is a goodreads review of one of her books that Austenites (those who love Austen) refer to jokingly. The person gave it a 1 star then said it was ‘just a bunch of people going to each others’ houses.’ The truth is that nothing really happens in her books, there are no high stakes, no murders to solve, no textbook villains, no psychological drama; they are simply stories about common people and their daily lives. The simplicity of the mundane.
Yet, when we examine the mundane, we confront our own selves. The frailties of the human condition, the contradictions of our ideals and values. Who of us has not blinded themselves to reality to pursue their own interests like Emma? (We call it delulu now) Who of us has not made a decision they later regretted like Anne? And who of us has not misjudged someone because they seemingly wronged us the first time we met them like Lizzy? Or maybe like Darcy, you have attended a social gathering with a bad attitude and insulted someone to their face? In the quiet of the mundane, our own biases come into focus and we are forced to confront them.
The complexity of the mundane is also in its simplicity. It is real so the horrors are almost impossible to ignore. I am not advocating for a banishment of the fantastical or the gothic. I return again and again to the bold and self confident young woman who refuses to marry a man with a mad wife in Jane Eyre, and the naive woman who is haunted by her husband’s bolder first wife in Rebecca but I am only advocating that you also take the time to enjoy the mundane. It is okay to read a book about a bunch of people visiting each others’ houses. Perhaps if you sit with it, you might like me find a kindred spirit in the protagonist who cannot read between the lines or you might find yourself asking if you could ever be as patient as Elinor in Sense and Sensibility. You might not discover a lot but you might find joy in the simplicity of a story in which nothing happens but it feels like everything happened. That is its complexity.
Join me in the exciting world of the mundane, there is so much to learn here.
Keep on creating, reflecting, being.
- Ayo
