As of yesterday, I have completed and submitted the thesis for my second master’s.

It was a fun paper to write, seeing that it was about my favorite novel of all time, Pride and Prejudice. I received solid and positive feedback from my mentor regarding the rough draft, and in my opinion, it is the second half of the paper that is the strongest and most interesting. I am excited to see what he thinks of the final draft.

One thing that I especially enjoyed about this paper was how it only reinforced my love for the novel itself. In undergrad, I wrote two different papers on Jane Eyre which, for many years, was my favorite novel. But the process of writing critically about the power dynamics between Jane and Mr. Rochester truly did make me enjoy the novel less. When the main hero of the novel is such an outright piece of shit, it makes the ending where Jane chooses to marry for love that much more problematic. I’ve read the novel only once since undergrad and while I still love the story, I am not especially fond of the outcome.

But with this paper, I have found myself even more in love with the novel and the characters of Pride and Prejudice. For my thesis, I focused on the many different ways that Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet subvert the expectations for their respective genders and how only when taking those subversions together do we really see and understand Austen’s perspectives on the power dynamics between men and women. I think a lot of people wrongly assume that Austen’s primary intentions were to write romances that were clever, but this is, in my opinion, a gross misunderstanding and misrepresentation of her work. Her novels include love and romance, yes, but they are heavily satiric and are much closer to criticisms of marriage as an institution than anything else.

And now, I am one step closer to finishing this program. I have only one class left to finish this semester and I am over halfway done with it, which feels fantastic. I am so ready for this program to be done. There are so many other things I want to read and write and talk about and think about. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed this program, because I have. But I am ready for my time to be my own. I am ready to no longer have homework, especially now that I am working on two different writing projects simultaneously. I’m ready to free up this mental and creative space for the things I am most passionate about right now.

I do love being in school, so it will be an adjustment stepping away. But I am absolutely so excited to have more time to utilize for the books I want to ready and the books I want to write and the movies and tv shows I want to watch.

This door is closing, but I am looking ahead. Like I wrote in my last post, I have big ambitions right now. Big goals that I’m working towards and that I’m keeping my eyes fixed upon. The completion of this program is one step closer to those big goals.

Let’s see how much progress I can make before the end of December!