Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Winter Solstice, Happy New Year, etc, etc! Have a treat of your choice on us! The lovely ladies of Austenacious will be joining the Gardiners in their sojourn to Longbourne for the next two weeks. We thought about taking a trip to the Musgroves’s, but it’s true: there’s only so much noisy-children-by-the-fire you can take. And the family politics at Hartfield—! Well, let’s just say it’s not that relaxing. Besides, we’re worried about Lizzie. Do you think she could be serious about Mr. Wickham?
Your regularly scheduled programming will resume in 2010. See you then!
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I know. We is a terrible Jane Austen blog because we did not post on Jane Austen’s birthday! Miss Austen, ladies and gentlemen, please forgive us! But maybe on her 234th bday, Miss Austen wouldn’t see being a day or two late as being very late at all? . . . No, you’re right, I’m sure she was a stickler about that sort of thing. Anyway, Happy Belated Birthday, Miss Austen!
Mystery author P.D. James has a new book out, Talking About Detective Fiction, and this book contains, I think, a birthday present for Jane Austen. P.D. calls Emma “the most interesting example of a mainstream novel which is also a detective story.” What is the secret in the novel? Of course it is the “unrecognized relationships” between characters caught up in Emma’s romantic machinations, says Lady James, adding: “The story is confined to a closed society in a rural setting, which was to become common in detective fiction, and Jane Austen deceives us with cleverly constructed clues.” I’ve read mystery stories my whole life, and I’d never thought of that. At last, a fresh voice in Austen debate! (Unless this is well-known in academic circles, and I just missed it?) And it’s true. Critics are usually so caught up in hating Emma to bits that they don’t talk about the craft that Jane Austen uses to give us these situations that can be read in a number of ways. And she plays fair—if you know, you can see the significance of Frank Churchill’s going to get his hair cut and Mr. Elton’s giving the poem to Emma instead of Harriet. But, and this is the mark of a good detective story, the first time around, I completely misread those clues! I totally bought Emma’s reasoning about Mr. Elton and missed all Jane Fairfax’s telltale blushes. How about you? Are the Emma-haters so angry because they were deceived by her too?
Interestingly, there’s also a mystery in Northanger Abbey, at least in Catherine’s mind: the mystery of Mrs. Tilney’s death. But this mystery, Jane Austen’s avatar Henry Tilney tells us, is ridiculous—it’s too like a Gothic novel to believe that a wife could be killed under the eyes of a physician, or locked up without anyone’s protesting! Miss Brontë and we think differently, and the long lineage of detective and Gothic/horror stories certainly has something to do with that. But Jane Austen sympathizes a lot more with Emma’s self-deception than she does with Catherine’s.
It’s too like a Gothic novel. . . Jane Austen liked those, but she thought they were silly (hence Northanger Abbey). She followed the old adage about writing what you know about, and not about long ago and far away with monstrous creations wreaking havoc. She appreciated girls trapped by monstrous men in exotic Italian castles hundreds of years ago, so I think she would understand our fascination with girls trapped by werewolves in exotic English country houses two hundred years ago. But there’s no doubt she’d think it and us more than a bit silly. I wish she were here to tell us how much. But at least now someone is appreciating her real sense of mystery.
Listen to this man.
I’m writing today from the South, the land of delights from mustard-based barbecue sauce (!) to the world capital of mini-golf to sixty-degree (F) weather the week before Christmas, among others. My arc through this portion of the States, along with nine-hour days of driving, is full of meditations on the richness of Southern language and literature—particularly, today, the words of a fine craftsman from another time. Say, the 90s. The 1990s (around here, best to clarify). By this, I mean—wait for it—the “You might be a redneck” joke, popularized by the word wizard Jeff Foxworthy.
I don’t actually know much about ways in which I might be or become a redneck,—I’m not sure whether this makes me more likely or less likely to unwittingly be one—but I do know a fair amount about ways in which I might be or become a character in Jane Austen novel. To wit:
If your strategy for husband-hunting in your own family includes the tenet “the closer, the better,”….you might be in a Jane Austen novel.
If flannel says, to you, neither “I cut down trees for a living” nor “I live in Seattle in 1993,” but rather “I am forty going on Dick Clark,”…you might be in a Jane Austen novel.
If you love a man with good taste in hat-ribbons…you might be in a Jane Austen novel.
If you’re destined to find that your charming new man-friend is actually an enormous cad and may or may not have debauched the honor of several young ladies previously…you might be in a Jane Austen novel.
If your best friend is your sister, and your sister is your best friend…you might be in a Jane Austen novel.
If you use your own respiratory distress as revenge on others’ sanity…you might be in a Jane Austen novel.
What do you think, readers? For future reference (and in case of some serious Thursday Next-stye hijinks), how might you know you’re in a Jane Austen novel?
(I’ll find a new comedian when I get to Texas, promise. That’s, like, two days of highway. I just need time to think.)
“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.” – Mansfield Park
I feel like we could all use some simple refreshment. So we’ll save talking about Mansfield Park or Jane Austen’s musings on nature until another day, OK?
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Gracechurch Street, London
Miss Hale asks: What is with the ____shire business in Austen novels? When they redacted the name?
Mrs. Fitzpatrick answers: Miss Hale, there’s not very much, if any, solid information on this point, though plenty of idle speculation. A similar question about Jane Eyre on Askville came up with the ideas that it was done to protect people’s privacy, or to protect the author from looking silly by people saying “There’s no Blankshire Street in Fayetteville!”, which you know they would. One Wessex resident posited that her island was so small that people would know where any town or factory was or wasn’t. Actually, I think that’s more likely a problem today with Ye Olde Worlde Wide Webbe than it was in days when people didn’t get about so much.
Cliff Notes (yes, yes) speculates that by using blank spaces, Jane Austen’s readers could add whatever names they wanted for a personalized story, but apart from the very un-Austen-like quality of this idea, a quick flip through the Austen novels shows that Jane was actually pretty specific about her places. She gives real counties where her action takes place, and uses real cities and towns like London, Exeter, and Bath. She’ll even say things like “the village was 16 miles from London,” and the street the Gardiners live on in Pride and Prejudice, Gracechurch Street, is a real street. (See above.) I’ve always assumed the villages themselves where her heroines live are made up, and a quick search on Google Maps doesn’t give any likely results.
The only names she blanked, as far as I can tell—feel free to correct me, alert readers!—were the names of towns where people changed horses on journeys and the names of regiments in the army. I can see blanking the names of pit stops as an I-don’t-know-and-I-don’t-care measure. (Quick! If you’re traveling by bus from Washington, DC, to San Francisco, where are your stopovers? No Internet allowed!) As for the names of regiments, that was likely to make sure she wasn’t accusing the fine gentlemen of any particular regiment of misconduct. But it’s also a historic and still-used way of referring to British regiments. In this context I would just like to point out that if you want to design a website for the Blankshires, here is your assignment. (Fans of Blackadder will especially appreciate this link, and I think it’s for real.) These days Blankshire seems to be a common way to refer to a generic county, similar to “Main Street, USA.”
So, Miss Hale, there you have it. Miss Austen didn’t do nearly as much blanking as other people did back then, though she did make stuff up. There’s even one real name I’ve always been amused that she used, and that’s Churchill. In Emma she describes Frank Churchill as coming from “a great Yorkshire family.” I wonder if she knew about the Churchills of Blenheim Palace, who were important in her day, though they didn’t come from Yorkshire. She couldn’t have known about Sir Winston Churchill, of course, and I like to speculate that he’s a descendant of Frank Churchill and Jane Fairfax. You never know.
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I’ve come to a realization, lately, about Jane. Or, rather, about myself and Jane, and about myself and Jane’s works. This winter, I think it’s time for me to venture off the trodden path of the usual Austen brain-space and explore the parts of her oeuvre that I don’t know much–some might say anything–about. This is my brand of winter adventure: like telemarking for the brain! Like snow-cave camping minus the frostbite! I am extreme!
By which I mean: I really need to read Lady Susan.
It was A Woman’s Wit that got me in the mood: their description of Lady Susan and its wily, worldly heroine (or “heroine”?) struck me in the moment, and has attached itself to my brain. How does Lady Susan–her personality and her situation–fit into the Austen canon? Or does she fit in at all?
Here’s what interests me: as much as Jane’s other protagonists differ in status, personality, and degree of pleasantness, they’re all Misses. They’re young, relatively innocent, and looking for love the first time around; we’re supposed to root for them because they are heroines and because they have their whole adult lives ahead of them, to be filled with a satisfying, loving marriage and a bountiful life–or not. And that’s what I don’t know about Lady Susan: if Lady Susan herself is a social cruiser, a ladder-climber, how does Jane present her? Is she sympathetic? Is she desperate? A party-crasher with a heart of gold? Scamming for a husband, but with honorable intentions? Or is this the Caroline Bingley novel? Social “sharks” are so often despised in Jane’s work that I can’t quite grasp how things look when she chooses to feature one as her protagonist.
So, coming up, Lady Susan and, I hope, a little foray into unknown territory. Hot chocolate and crampons (hee, crampons) optional.
Also known as, what we want for Christmas, part 2.
Freeverse says we want a game for our iPhone “featuring a Jane Austen character in a lacy dress who karate-chops her way through hordes of advancing zombies.” (Not out yet. Coming soon.) Do we? I can only imagine this would be followed by an underwater version fighting off sea monsters, and (cue eyeroll) Emma and the Werewolves.
Reactions
- Lizzie would not wear lace to kick zombie ass. Entirely inappropriate. Long sleeves, maybe?
- Well, I hope Seth is getting some royalties off this. Then when he dies I hope Jane takes them off him. With sharp words.
- On iPhone? Wouldn’t Wii be lots more fun?
- Do you think Lizzie will just kick ass like every other game heroine? How about the really difficult moves, like managing a train? At least Jane didn’t have to sit down in a hoop-skirt. FUN, I tell you. Ooh, can I watch people jump around trying to kickbox in a corset? With a fan and soft slippers and a train tripping them up?
- Don’t we all think Lady Susan is much more the Lara Croft/Aeon Flux type than Eliza Bennet?
- Pretty soon, if not already, there’ll be a World of Warcraft: Jane Austen Edition. I know my GM friends would be ever so grateful if you zombie hunters would mind your manners on the Quest to Lady Catherine’s, OK? No whining in the ha-ha. No hacking with scripts to get Darcy to propose to Lizzie every 2 seconds until she beats him over the head with her slipper.
- A friend of mine has already rebuilt Pemberley in Second Life. I don’t even want to know what goes on there!
- Hey! To my friends at Zynga: why not combine Mafia Wars and Farmville, and have a Build Your Own Fighting Regency Estate? Stick with me here a minute. You build up the family fortunes: add a living and you get a crazy aunt or maybe a hero (luck of the draw!). Attract heroines with spacious grounds and/or ruined abbeys! Once you have a heroine, you can build up suitors, and then use your army or navy to totally beat up the other estates and steal their heroines! Not so hot an idea? Oh well, if it sells, I still expect royalties. I know where you live, guys!
- When are all you entertainment types going to get creative and explore the clone angle? I believe we at Austenacious were the first to propose this, no, with our special Halloween header? If I don’t see The Matrix: Jane Austen Reloaded with thousands of simply but elegantly attired Eliza Bennets fountaining up in the Netherfield ball/fight scene within the year, I shall be severely disappointed. (Yo, Wachowskis: they have corsets built in! Bondage for all!)
- But seriously now, and brushing aside this tomfoolery: it’s my birthday next Saturday, and then Christmas two weeks later. May I not expect to see at least one first edition Jane Austen novel peeping out of my stocking?
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So, all these Austen sequels/modernizations/alternate versions that are flying off the shelves: it seems to me they’re all going for the wrong genre. Romance is dead! Chick lit is…well, it’s absurdly popular, but let’s just say there’s a bit of formula involved. And I think we all know how many more vampire knockoffs we need. No, they’re missing the obvious next step: the medical drama (Sick House, starring Jenna Elfman! Thursdays at 9 on CBS!).
After all, Jane herself is the center of a long and dramatic conflict (if by “conflict” you mean “academic slap-fight”) over her own cause of death: her own letters describe the symptoms of her final illness, but, understandably (time travel having not yet been invented), no modern diagnosis. Since 1964, Sir Zachary Cope’s proposal of Addison’s disease has been widely accepted, along with various other possibilities such as lymphoma, suggested in 1997 by Austen biographer Claire Tomalin. However, this week Addison’s expert Katherine White posits that Jane died not of Addison’s, but of invective tuberculosis acquired by drinking unpasteurized milk (Favorite headline so far: “Cows killed Jane Austen”). Cue furied and ultimately inconclusive medical discussion!
So, what really killed Jane Austen? The experts say…
Katherine White: Tuberculosis!
Zachary Cope: Addison’s disease!
Claire Tomalin: Lymphoma!
White: Hey, man, my analysis of Jane’s anecdotal symptoms make more sense than your analysis of Jane’s anecdotal symptoms!
Cope: Um, I don’t hear any coughing coming from those letters. Or have you not seen Bright Star?
White: Well, I don’t know where you get off suggesting mental confusion in one of the greatest and most perceptive writers of our time. You know mental confusion comes with Addison’s disease, right?
Cope: No fair! Consumption gets all the famous people!
White: Okay, everybody knows you get prettier when you have consumption.
Tomalin: Hey guys! Lymphoma!
White: Brighter eyes, rosier cheeks.
Cope: Did you hear something?
White: It’s not our fault everybody wants to die beautiful. What did you say?
Tomalin: Hantavirus!
Cope: I thought I heard the faint whisper of a third argument.
White: What? No. Maybe it’s your mental confusion.
Cope: Shut up.
White: I’m just saying, it was the milk.
Cope: Jane Austen was not killed by milk.
White: She could have been. They didn’t pasteurize anything.
Tomalin: Mad cow!
Cope: Well, if it was the milk, it could have been anything. Undercooked pork! E. coli! Killer mushrooms! Bad sushi! You don’t know!
White: Sushi?
Cope: She should have smelled it first.
White: Now you’re just making things up.
Tomalin: SARS!
White: I’m taking my symptom list and my fame in the press and going home.
Cope: I hope you don’t drink any unpasteurized milk and accidentally die of tuberculosis.
White: Well, if I do, I’ll only become more beautiful…AND MORE POWERFUL.
Cope: Yeah, in bed. I mean, because…you’ll be wasting away, so.
White: You know what? You can have your Addison’s diagnosis and your nonsensical interpretation of the symptoms. I’m going to go talk to my agent about the talk-show circuit.
Cope: Fine.
White: Fine!
Cope: Do it, then!
White: I will!
Tomalin: Walking pneumonia! The boogie-woogie flu!
Tomalin: Guys?
Tomalin: ….
Tomalin: Guys?
Tomalin: ….
Tomalin: Final verdict: It was Mr. Wickham. Guess I win!
What can we learn about Jane Austen from her things, from the physical objects surrounding her and created by her? How much of her is contained in her handwriting, in the straight and even lines of her letters, and how much is contained in her work? If any writer’s soul is in her novels, what is there to be gained in discovering her personal artifacts? If anything calls for a field trip, these questions call for a field trip—and I love a good field trip. Last weekend, I visited New York’s Morgan Library and Museum (the sacrifices I do make!) to check out their new exhibit A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.
The exhibit is much as Jane might have liked: a clean, well-lighted place for books filled with her letters (mostly to her sister, Cassandra), hand-written manuscripts, and artifacts of other pertinent writers and artists, as well as a darkened corner featuring the short film The Divine Jane. (There’s also one very zealous security guard who does not appreciate back-talk, or, uh, so I hear. What? I don’t know what you’re implying.)
Over a third of Jane’s surviving letters are in the Morgan’s possession and on display in the exhibit. In a sense, it’s frustrating not to be able to handle the letters—in Jane’s scrawl, written horizontally and then vertically and mounted for viewing, they aren’t exactly readable in the way that they might be if we were left to, say, hold them close, squint a bit, and follow the rabbit trail of beginnings and endings. The museum plaques accompanying each letter transcribe bits and pieces, but viewing them is not the same as reading them. My recommendation? For full appreciation, read a published version of Jane’s letters beforehand, bring it along, and pick out your favorites among the collection.
The same goes for the manuscripts—it’s lovely to see them, to read the interpretive plaques, and to admire the straightness of Jane’s writing and think of her pen scritch-scratching away, but the soul of them comes in the reading of them. On the other hand, the Morgan’s description of Lady Susan sold me instantly—a romantic black comedy! A “cruising shark in her social goldfish pond”! Delicious!
One of my favorite parts of the exhibit wasn’t by Jane at all, but by the illustrators willing to take on the challenge of her work over the years. There’s a sense that these are the pre-broadcasting version of the BBC miniseries, visual representations of Jane’s works according to the times, including notions of fashion and beauty—one Victorian illustrator, for example, had transposed the look of Pride and Prejudice into the key of his or her own style sensibilities. I was especially taken by the illustrations of Isabel Bishop (1902 – 1988), who dressed Elizabeth Bennet just as Jane would have, but struck me as particularly beautiful (though, of course, not made in the Regency style at all, if Cassandra Austen’s sketches of her sister are any indication). Lovely.
So where is the person of Jane Austen in all of this? In knowing the lace pattern of her new cloak (which she’s written out in one of her letters) or in finding her penchant for writing backwards to her young niece, do we know her any better than we did before? Can we see any more of her in the things that she called her own than we can simply by reading her works? I think the answer is yes—but only if we have read her works. Alone, they’re objects. Taken in tandem, they’re shading details on a picture we already know—a picture of wit, of humor, and of order. Jane’s spirit isn’t in her things, and her things aren’t the place to get to know her. But they may just be the place to appreciate the woman behind the work.
A Woman’s Wit: The Life and Legacy of Jane Austen appears at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City through March 14, 2010.
