Today, readers, is the big day: the end of the era of Emma! Should we all hug and cry and say we’ll see each other during summer? Shall someone play ”Free Bird” as our class song? I don’t want to make a speech. Someone else should do that. And then in four to six weeks, someone can mail us that all-important piece of paper, to declare that we all read this really long and cringe-inducing novel and came out the other side. Ready?
First, a few minor observations:
- You know, I WANT to be cool about Mr. Knightley and his crush on the junior-high set, because it was a different time and I don’t think Jane meant anything by it (though we’re certainly allowed to be scandalized by Wickham and fifteen-year-old Georgiana Darcy, over in that other universe), and we all know Mr. Knightley is nothing if not an obnoxiously upstanding citizen. But that “saucy looks” comment is totally not helping.
- I do, however, love Mr. Knightley’s comments about the inconvenience of giving a large musical instrument as a gift. Once, a college friend spontaneously gave my roommate and me a betta—Simon the Wonder Fish!—who was beautiful and a source of great joy for about six days, when he died, probably because we were keeping him in a plastic lychee-jelly bucket, which in retrospect was likely full of BPA and other fish-murdering toxins. That was one dramatic fish funeral (in the bathroom, naturally). I feel like a pianoforte at a house that isn’t even your own is probably kind of like an unexpected pet that’s going to die in less than a week.
- And, okay, it makes me so happy that Mr. and Mrs. George Knightley live happily ever after in her home, or rather her father’s home—that Mr. Knightley gives up his estate for the good of goofy old Mr. Woodhouse. Because he is judgy, yes, but sweet! Which I suppose is the conclusion I’ve come to in general. Judgy, but sweet. I think I can live with that.
- As delightful as Paul Rudd is in Clueless—and everything else; let’s be real—I keep trying to insert him into a plain old Regency adaptation of Emma, and failing. I just don’t think he’s stern enough unless he’s talking Clinton-era environmentalism, you know?
Sooo, this is the end of Emma. And…what? We started this read-along primarily because Mrs. F couldn’t hang with Emma herself long enough to get through the book. I guess the question is: do we feel differently now, about her or about the novel?
I think I’m mostly relieved: not because Emma marries Mr. Knightley in the end, though I enjoyed the romance portion about a thousand times more than I remembered, but because she doesn’t stay who she was at the beginning of the novel. (This is my main complaint about Mansfield Park—Fanny Price never learns anything, so what, exactly, is the point?) I don’t know that I hate Early Emma as much as many of you, but can you imagine—nobody points out the horror of her comment to Miss Bates (or anything else), and Emma remains exactly who she is and continues leaving a wake of social and emotional havoc behind her, and maybe she never marries, or maybe she marries somebody like Frank Churchill, who thinks she’s always right. Hartfield and the surrounding area, and eventually Earth and the moon and the sun and the universe, are sucked into a black hole of her self-regard. And that’s the end. And all because Mr. Knightley failed to deliver that key lecture in that benevolently affronted tone of his!
Okay, maybe it’s not quite like that, but…kind of. In any case, Emma is the Austen heroine who most harms other people with her flaws—the rest simply hang themselves with their judginess/lack of self-control/overabundance of self-control/overabundance of imagination—which I think makes her redemption seem extra necessary. When she finally does change, the release of tension is palpable.
I still have my doubts about Frank and Jane Fairfax, but you all already know about that. I just don’t know, you guys.
So. Now that it’s over, how are you and Emma? Lay it on me.
So am I right, or am I right, or am I right: this penultimate section is where Emma gets good.
Because: the strawberry patches of Donwell, and then Box Hill. Ohhhh, Box Hill. What I love about the climax (or whatever the bad version of “climax” is) of the novel is how very Emma it is—just a thoughtless remark, something true but unspeakable, aimed at someone so helpless that it’s like a hawk attacking a baby bird without realizing that it’s a terrible thing to do. Like, maybe it wouldn’t get EATEN so much if it would stop being such a BABY BIRD.
But after the carnage (and Mr. Knightley’s lecture; I don’t know WHAT kind of bird HE is, and maybe this simile is dying anyway) comes what I see as the greatest single moment of character growth for Emma in the whole novel. Of course the best recompense for Emma’s words is the one thing she never wants to give Miss Bates: her time, and therefore her respect. I love this—it’s not an elaborate apology, which would only embarrass Miss Bates further. Emma’s deliberate visit to the Bates house displays the kind of thoughtfulness she’s never been thoughtful enough to realize she was missing. It’s a nice moment, is what I’m saying.
(I forgot to say earlier that I love the part where Mrs. Elton is pleased to see the strawberry patches of Donwell, but would have been just as happy with the cabbage fields, because she really just wants to go somewhere. Anywhere! It gives me such comfort to know I’m not the only one who gets this way, even if it’s me and Mrs. Elton. Usually, it ends with my mom and a spontaneous ice cream cone. So that’s nice.)
And then scandal—scandal!—comes to the Bates-Fairfax home, and you guys, I have such conflicted thoughts about Frank Churchill. On one hand, I think he’s the least of the Austen scoundrels. Can we even call him a scoundrel? How about just a garden-variety tool? So he flirted with the ladies while he was secretly engaged to a nice girl. Because my previous memory of this book was practically nonexistent, I kept waiting for him to have defiled somebody and left her pregnant and alone. But no! He got cranky in the heat, kept his engagement on the DL (by mutual consent, though), and anonymously bought the lady a pianoforte. Gee, that guy’s the worst!
But then I also think: is this the ending we want for sweet, pretty-much-awesome Jane Fairfax? Jane the author presents Jane the character’s happy ending with Frank Churchill as…well, a happy ending. And I just keep thinking that, pianoforte aside, she could do better than that guy. Doesn’t Jane deserve someone noble, who has a good relationship with his mom and doesn’t use his undercover-taken status to hit on girls in front of his fiancee?
Maybe this is just Jane being realistic: the nice girl ends up with the guy who’s kind of a jerk without being actually THAT bad, and likes it. I guess that’s a thing that happens.
Aaaand then we waltz our way into the home stretch of romantic-comedy territory, and seriously, it’s so much fun. Emma loves Mr. Knightley, but oh no, maybe Harriet ALSO loves Mr. Knightley, and Emma’s really trying to stop screwing poor Harriet over, but maybe in this situation it would be worth it, and Harriet thinks MAYBE Emma might be wrong about something, but anyway it’s all okay because Mr. Knightley loves Emma too. And only since she was thirteen! So THAT’s a relief.
“…If he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he would have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.” IS THAT A JOKE ABOUT MR. KNIGHTLEY? (This is like that one time in Jane Eyre where there’s a joke, and it throws me off every time.) Not a natural comedian, and not really a graceful subject of humor, that George Knightley—he’s too busy being noble. But I guess in his moment of romantic bliss, Jane gets away with it.
What do you think, readers?
Congratulations, Team Emma Read-Along! You’ve made it halfway, and you haven’t even thrown your copy of the novel into the fire in disgust. (At least, I assume you haven’t, or at least that you bought a new copy and continued. We’re not quitters here.) In this section, things are starting to get REAL around Highbury, like so:
“Oh, Miss Woodhouse,” says Frank Churchill, “Why are you always so right?” Aaaaand here we are at the crux of the issue, man-wise. No wonder Emma likes him! And no wonder Mr. Knightley wants to throttle him 100% of the time! Seriously, though: Churchill, you are not helping. As much as I complain about Mr. Knightley, I think it’s refreshing that Emma’s choice is less about the manly attributes of her suitors and more about who she is around them. (I suppose this halfway answers my earlier question about whether Mr. Knightley changes at all over the course of the novel—maybe he doesn’t, but since the novel isn’t called Mr. Knightley, maybe he doesn’t need to. I find this slightly unsatisfying, but I get it.)
In other news, I hope that I am supposed to be enjoying Mrs. Elton, because she is the worst, and I love her. (I have a long history of liking detestable characters—Pete Campbell on Mad Men, I’m looking at you—but Mrs. Elton isn’t even bad for a reason. She’s just terrible for the sake of being terrible, and it is GREAT.) Just an endless stream of awful from Mrs. August Elton, and I never get tired of it, either.
So, do we think Maple Grove is next door to Rosings Park, or just around the block? (But also, oh gosh, Mrs. Elton and Lady Catherine! I would pay some body parts to see THAT dinner party.)
Sooo, here’s the part where Mrs. Elton & Jane Fairfax compare being a governess to being a slave—an actual, literal slave—which sounds tremendously tone-deaf (at best) to modern ears. However! Emma takes place right in the middle of the British abolitionist movement—and so this strikes me as a small but fascinating insight into the social environment of Jane’s time, and a rare glance outside the immediate situation of the novel.
I loved the part at the ball where Emma realizes how hot Knightley is. (Can I call him “Knightley,” or does that make me the worst?) His “tall, firm, upright figure”! His “gentlemanlike manner” and “natural grace”! Because here’s the thing: it takes something for a man to impress Emma Woodhouse, and here we see the once-over of realization, pretty much in real time and pretty much for the first time.
And then he dances with Harriet, and I die. This is what does it for me and Knightley: the kindness of his dancing with Harriet, who’s already in an awkward situation and probably steaming in her own embarrassment at being partnerless, well, FINE, JANE, THE JUDGMENTAL GUY IS AWESOME. (Never mind that it causes Harriet strife later. She gets her happy ending! IT’S A GESTURE.)
Readers? What do you think? Lay it on me.
Here we are in early-to-middling Emma, otherwise known as “the introduction section.” Jane Fairfax! Mrs. Augusta Elton! The Campbells, the Dixons, and the Coles, and one mysterious pianoforte! Some of these people are important and some of them are not, and one of them is an inanimate object, but Jane wishes you to remember them all. (It’s okay if you have to page back to remember about the Dixons. Not that I would do that. But you, my friends, are perfectly allowed.)
Moving on!
Harriet, sweet Harriet. (Anybody? Anybody?) In this section, the true suckitude of Harriet’s situation comes into focus—for the reader if not for Emma. She’s running into her ex at the store! Her not-really-ex is showing up with his new wife! Whether Harriet herself sees the ways in which Emma’s screwed her over is anybody’s guess.
(I’ve been thinking more about Emma and what she does to Harriet, and I love how Jane makes her so totally confident in the bull-in-Royal-Doulton-outlet effect she’s having on Harriet’s life. Not a doubt to be seen! I read recently that the key to writing a good villain is creating a character who believes 100% that he or she is in the right; I don’t think Austen meant for Emma to be a villain, exactly, but I don’t think “heroine” is quite the word at this juncture, either.)
Aaaand here we meet Jane Fairfax, a character I cycle between half-forgetting (“…Jane. Right. The orphan. Yes. I knew that.”) and not knowing what to make of. And I suppose that’s what Jane/Emma/Mr. Knightley means by “one cannot love a reserved person”—we’re continually told how lovely this beautiful and accomplished orphan-and-governess-to-be is, but we never get a grasp on her, even when things get, ahem, REAL. This sensation intensifies towards the end of the novel (wink wink, nudge nudge, all of you who’ve read this before), and maybe it’s a story for a later post, but for now let’s just say: frustrating and fascinating and also kind of a ghost. WHO ARE YOU, JANE FAIRFAX?
Hee, Frank Churchill goes sixteen miles each way ON HORSEBACK to get his hair cut. Emma thinks this is kind of dumb. There’s “an air of foppery and nonsense in it which she could not approve,” and if you think I won’t be working the words “an air of foppery” into casual conversation this week, well, we must not know each other very well.
And finally, Emma condescends to have dinner with the Coles, who are “only moderately genteel,” and now you know what I’m getting embroidered onto satin jackets for my immediate family this Christmas. The Coles probably eat squeeze cheese on Triscuits during the Super Bowl, too. Finally, I’ve found my people in the Jane Austen universe!
Readers? Thoughts?
Aha!
Did we surprise you? Did you think we’d abandoned our Emma readalong in a fit of pique? Did you put the novel down, or finish it without us? Might you be stuck in the middle of what is turning out to be a surprisingly long book? No matter what the situation, we do hope you’ll come back and read with us: Mrs. Fitzpatrick is indeed taking a brief holiday from posting, on account of the Emma-rage-induced coma she’s currently experiencing (not really), but I’ll be taking over and continuing our stroll through the novel. Probably with Mr. Knightley. The man loves a good walk almost as much as he despises a graceless lady. Or so I hear.
If you’re questioning my credentials as Emma readalong ringmistress, let me tell you: I may not have Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s existential malaise about it, and about Emma in particular, but I do have my own complete lack of opinion, which surely must be just as good? It’s been so long since I’ve encountered Miss Woodhouse that I’m practically, as they say, experiencing it again for the very first time.
Even better, my own mental landscape for Emma is the weirdest possible mishmash: since I barely remember the novel, my brain is like some kind of crazy Regency Surrealist painting, mostly of Clueless and the most recent BBC adaptation. It’s Romola Garai and Michael Gambon (pterodactyl arms and all) and Breckin Meyer and everything else, and let me tell you, it’s super strange and entertaining.
But let’s get down to business.
So, it’s not exactly that I have a problem with Mr. Knightley in the broad sense—there’s some stuff later that’s downright delightful—but I sometimes think he’s my least favorite Austen love interest (though that may have been before I met Edmund Bertram). Here is why I have a hard time with Mr. Knightley: “Hey, let’s be friends and make up,” he says, three seconds after calling her a spoiled child who’s always wrong. To her face! I guess we’re supposed to think that because he’s kind of right, he must not also be kind of a jerk. I just, I don’t know, think those things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Which brings me to something else: Does Mr. Knightley learn anything over the course of the novel? Does he change at all, or is it only Emma who needs to get in touch with her better self? (I suppose in a book called Emma, the onus of personal growth might lie with, well, EMMA. But he can be awfully judgy.)
So, there’s half an inch of snow on the ground, and Isabella’s freaking out about getting home. Which I would mock if I hadn’t once made Miss Osborne drive us through Rocky Mountain National Park in exactly this same situation. Snow is scary, people! It will make your car slide off the road, and nobody will ever find you, and if you fall asleep, you’ll freeze to death (or so my fourth-grade reading book told me) and be one of those people who’s uncovered six months later, at the thaw. Or, you know, after the half-inch of snow melts. I’m from California! What do you want from me?
Anyway, Jane calls Isabella Knightley “the good-hearted Mrs. John Knightley,” which I’ve now decided is the Regency version of “she has a good personality.” Well, bless her heart.
Every once in awhile, it kills me that Jane lived and wrote before the heyday of the screwball comedy film. The part with Mr. Woodhouse and the new maid and the perfect consistency of gruel? You guys, that is a bit, and neither Laurel and Hardy nor Lorelai Gilmore could do any better.
On the other hand, neither Laurel and Hardy nor Lorelai Gilmore had the endurance to write an entire chapter of Miss Bates (Chapter 19, or Volume 2, Chapter 1, if you’re using my weird library copy). Nor did, I must say, I have the fortitude of heart to read it all in one sitting. Or, like, five sittings. That woman makes my everything glaze over, AND SHE ISN’T EVEN REAL.
So what do you say, Austen Nation? Another ten chapters? See you soon; same bat time, same bat channel. Same bat judgmental dude out for a walk.
Hey, Emma fans! Did you get through Emma’s snobbery and manipulative jerkiness, part 1? Good job! I really do hate this part of the book. . . That’s why we’re a little behind posting, but I’ll try to make up lost time.
Chapters 6–10, Scheming: Emma decides Harriet should marry Mr. Elton and not Robert Martin. So she makes Harriet fall in love will Mr. Elton and reject Mr. Martin, and she convinces herself that Mr. Elton loves Harriet.
OK, let’s cut to the chase. Emma, WTF are you doing to Harriet? Why do you make her reject this guy that she really seems to like? Emma seems diabolical here—Machiavellian, evil. It is so off-putting that I spend a lot of time finding excuses for her behavior.
- It’s interesting, I think, that Miss Woodhouse could never visit Mrs. Robert Martin. Snobby and weird to us, but everyone agrees about that. Mr. Knightley, everyone. So it’d be sort of like convincing one of your friends that she shouldn’t take a job 3,000 miles away. Your friend kind of likes it there, but also likes it here. You don’t have many friends and you’d be lonely without her. You also think you can get her a better job here. This is selfish of you, sure. But more understandable than convincing her not to take a job 3 miles away.
- It would be less evil if Emma just said these things. But Emma isn’t really a straightforward person. And Harriet really is pretty clueless! So Emma gives us a lesson in Machiavellian tactics and misdirection. There’s no excuse for that.
- Also interesting that Mr. Knightley thinks Mr. Martin is Emma’s inferior in society just as much as Emma does. The difference is that Mr. Knightley thinks Harriet is socially inferior too. It’s purely Emma’s imaginings about Harriet’s background that make Emma think Harriet is not inferior to her.
- And, my favorite argument about this: Mr. Darcy does exactly the same thing to Mr. Bingley! And boasts about it to Colonel Fitzwilliam! Yet we don’t hold it against him, dislike him for it, as we do Emma. Maybe if we heard how Mr. Darcy dissuades Mr. Bingley, and how Mr. Bingley responded, we would think about it more. It’s so off-camera that it’s easy to ignore. We can imagine them acting in the best possible way—we don’t have to hear Mr. Darcy manipulating Mr. Bingley explicitly.
OK, enough of that. Here are some other scenic points along the way:
- I’m fascinated by the description of Emma’s natural talent and lack of application when they’re talking about her portraits in Chapter 6. She is like the quintessential slacker gifted kid. I can relate.
- Check out the conversation on What Men Want between Emma and Mr. Knightley in Chapter 8. Emma says (playfully), men like pretty girls better than smart ones. But Mr. Knightley says, “Men of sense . . . do not want silly wives.” I love Austen and her women-respecting heroes! Mr. Knightley acknowledges Emma has “reason”—rational thought. No surprise to us now, but this was a debate that went back and forth at the time. Could women think rationally or were they entirely governed by emotion. Emma’s a flawed person, but she is intelligent. I’d love to know how readers of the time viewed that—I know they didn’t like her, but was her “reason,” her brain, a thing people doubted?
- Mr. Elton is the Justin Bieber of Highbury—everybody’s crush! So popular! So beautiful!
- Mr. Woodhouse is almost a caricature of old people in general – anything new or any change is terrible! But Emma is like her father in supposing what’s good or bad for her is good or bad for everyone. Jane makes fun of Mr. Woodhouse explicitly: “his spirits [were] affected by his daughter’s attachment to her husband.”
- It’s interesting that we see Emma’s charity to the poor family—maybe Austen felt like she needed to show us that Emma is objectively a good person. Also, Harriet is the complete yes-woman!
- I like the John Knightleys—I like the inclusion of the kids, I like the character of John Knightley as being good but not perfect—considerate and kindly, but no nonsense
But I am glad Emma’s mistreatment of Harriet is almost over. She doesn’t do her best by Jane Fairfax, but it’s all much more understandable. I guess our lesson here is, don’t make a friend of someone who worships you. No good will come of it!
Hi, Emma fans. Alas, yes, this post is almost a week later than I promised, and I also read only half as much! What can I say? Life has been too medical around here (nothing life-threatening or picturesque, just time-consuming.) Plus, I underestimated my Emma Resistance Level.
Also, I underestimated the length of the book—I figured with 55 chapters, we’d better keep moving, but I forgot how long they are, so we’re now doing 5 chapters/week until roughly Easter. So, yes, if you’re just now joining us, grab a copy of Emma and snark away in the comments!
Chapters 1–5: The Exposition. In which we meet most of the main characters. Emma adopts the beautiful but dim Harriet Smith as her friend project, and is concerned that Harriet’s crush is beneath her.
- I can’t get over the first few lines. Jane, you want us to hate Emma, don’t you? You are deliberately setting her up to be unsympathetic—I see where this is going!
Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
- Interesting that Emma’s mom died “too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses.” Apparently that did not distress or vex her?—or maybe it was too common to be a big deal? In the recent BBC version (Romola Garai) they did this emotional intro about all the kids losing their mothers. Clearly trying to thwart Miss Austen’s plans for how we view Emma.
- I know I’ve got to get past the first page, but Jane makes this big thing about Emma being sad over Miss Taylor’s marriage, and I can’t decide if we’re supposed to think she’s being selfish or what? Or just has complex emotions like a normal person!
- Oh Mr. Woodhouse! I do love Mr. Woodhouse! I do love that I don’t have to live with him, because I’d go crazy. I’m remembering now how much chitchat there is in this book—how vividly Jane gets people talking on and on about the most trivial things. (That never happens in real life of course.)
- Jane really has Views on schools, doesn’t she? “not any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality upon new principles and new systems…” She doesn’t usually get this worked up, does she? (BTW, I work in education, and unfortunately this is still very pertinent!)
- And so it begins—the Harriet Smith trauma. Ouch ouch ouch, this gets so hard to read! I do love how Harriet is struck Mr. Martin’s birthday being “just a fortnight and a day’s difference! which is very odd!”
Poor little Harriet! - Also, I am always struck by “the real good-will of a mind delighted with its own ideas.” When you are happy, you do more good in the world. Very true, I think, but so debated!
- Emma attacks Mr. Martin for having no “air,” not being “genteel,” and compares the air and manners of the other men in the book. I’ve read this a dozen times, but I realized I don’t really know quite what this means! I certainly can’t put it into words. Can anyone explain what she means by this? We know it isn’t that Mr. Martin is rude…
- And then, when Mr. Knightley says, “I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good.” Ooh, the first time I read that, I was so mad! (I had never been in love myself, and was always in control.) Now I don’t know what I think. It still seems kind of callous—the sort of thing that’s easy to joke about, but hard to experience yourself… I don’t know.
What did you think of Chapters 1–5?
I am not looking forward to Chapters 6–10 (AKA Emma the Manipulative B-word), but I promise to forge ahead!
Hi. My name is Mrs. Fitzpatrick. I am a co-founder of Austenacious, and I have trouble reading Emma.
There! I said it!
I’ve read Pride and Prejudice roughly 42 times, and I read all Austen’s novels about once a year. I can read Persuasion in one sitting. But Emma . . . I keep putting it down and not picking it back up. I originally tried to read it three times before I got to the end—this is unprecedented.
Why do I stop? Well, I think it’s mainly because it’s too good. (“Gah! So brilliant! So true to life! Ooh, I just want to shake that girl . . . Am I like her? Hmm . . .”) I have to share, and going into rants about the Eltons leaves most people just befuddled.
So! Join us for our Emma Read-along! Starting next week (January 21–25) we’ll be reading 10 chapters a week. Grab a copy and read with us, and you too can complain about barouche-landaus like a boss.
The great ebook wars started innocently enough in June, 2012. A single alert blogger, Philip Howard, noticed that the Barnes & Noble version of War and Peace had erased all instances of the word Kindle—an competitor at the time—with their own brand-name, Nook. (“It was as if a light had been Nookd in a carved and painted lantern….”) One or two blogs picked it up, the people lol’ed, case closed.
An simple mistake with search-and-replace, but it started people thinking. . . hackers had already inserted zombies into Pride and Prejudice in the careless spirit of the 2000s, so why not make some money by selling product placement in the books? Anyone can publish e-versions of books no longer in copyright. Starbucks was first on the bandwagon in late 2012, with their special Frappuccino Editions of the classics (Frappuccino was a curious coffee-like drink). These editions merely replaced all coffee and tea, coffeehouses and tea shops in the classics, with Starbucks. The changes to the coffee shop scene in Persuasion did cause some comment on the primitive “social networks” of the time, but marketers and companies eagerly lined up to have their products inserted in some edition, any edition of a classic, and by 2015 generic ebooks were becoming rare and collectible.
The sudden rebirth of the bowdlerizers, and their tireless campaign to find and replace smut where ordinary dirty-minded citizens couldn’t even see it, spun off into its own crusade. Of course, the main target in Austen was “intercourse.” The mere thought of Emma and Miss Bates having “a regular and steady intercourse” caused President Sarah Palin to mandate bowdlerized versions of all classics in 2020.
The fall of America into chaos, the rise of the underground movement for Pure Classics, and the petty in-fighting of the various Jane factions (Austen, Eyre, Bennet, and Cobb), need not be gone into. Every schoolchild knows that in 2072, the Pure Classics broke away from the Altered Versions, and the two empires have been fighting ever since. It has been a long and terrible history. But on this, the 1,000th anniversary of the first shot of this massive war, let us stop and remember that it need never have happened.
. . .
Ok, so this could also be called Leo Tolstoy Hates Your Search-and-Replace. But, you know, once you start down the Dark Side, forever will it guide your destiny! So, beware!
Is it just me, or are people diving into the holidays with extra gusto this year? More than one of my friends confessed, with a definite air of asking for forgiveness, to breaking out the tinsel and Bing Crosby before Thanksgiving. (They shall remain nameless…FOR NOW.) My day-job officemates hung lights before I even arrived at work on Monday, and keep them lit despite the specter of blowing various circuits in our electrically dubious building. I even realized earlier this week that, if I don’t cool it, I might be sick of my favorite Andy Williams rendition of “Do You Hear What I Hear?” before it’s actually time to hear what Andy hears. What is going on here? Is it because Nordstrom wouldn’t decorate early? Whatever it is, apparently we all need a little Christmas, right this very minute. (If the New Christy Minstrels just popped, fully formed, into your head…well, you’re welcome.)
If you’re feeling the Christmas spirit this first day of December, well, you’re in luck: get to know this pile of classic Austenacious Christmas cheer! And if you’re not yet in the groove, what are you waiting for? Pull your Action Jane off the shelf, turn up your preferred version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and consider the month ahead. After all, you only have twenty-five days to explode from holiday-induced stress/joy. Better get on it.
- Looking for the perfect gift for the Austenite in your life? Check out our 2011 Jane Austen gift guide! Still looking for some inspiration and maybe some Etsy stores to peruse? See previous gift guides here and here.
- Everything you can do, Jane can do better: Action Jane’s Christmas!
- There’s no combination like Jane, classic holiday ballet, and a short-story contest: Jane and Mrs. Fitzpatrick take on The Nutcracker.
- Looking for a Christmas craft with a Jane twist, or just need something to put on top of the tree? Make your Action Jane into a Christmas tree topper!
- For your holiday cheer and possibly a nice outing for the fire extinguisher: How to make plum pudding!
- From the English countryside to the north pole: Play the Letters to Santa game, Jane Austen style!
