There’s a quotation in Pride and Prejudice that always gets me—it’s the kind that keeps me up at night.
It’s right at the end, when Bingley’s finally gotten everything straightened out and made an honest woman of Jane:
“‘I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!’ cried Jane. ‘Oh! Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed above them all! If I could but see you as happy! If there were but such another man for you!’”
To which Lizzy replies:
“‘If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness.’”
Readers, put me out of my misery: Is this true? Is goodness a precursor for happiness?
To be clear, I don’t think Jane is telling us that Lizzy and Darcy won’t be happy. Of course they’ll be happy; they love each other and they respect each other and they’re going to go off to Pemberley and be dazzlingly content in their wealth and unnecessary virtue. I get that she’s talking about Jane and Bingley’s ability to be content, and about their ability to not pick fights with life, and about the way that they will be eternally relieved to have actually ended up together (no thanks to you, Darcy).
But no, really. Do we—and by we I mean I—have to be good to be happy?
Let’s look at Lydia, who is pretty definitely Not Good in the context of the novel. Is Lydia happy? She certainly gets what she wants. The last we see of her, she’s all bouncy and obnoxious and rubbing her sisters’ noses in her traipsing off with Wickham—and of course we’re meant to believe that what Lydia has isn’t real (no matter what she thinks in the moment), and that it won’t last, and that she’ll end up disgraced and alone, a washed-up groupie either for the military or, slightly less likely, Phish.
It’s true that, in Jane’s novels, the virtuous and the sweet-tempered generally end up winners; the snobs, the weak-minded, and the mean-spirited, not so much. (I wouldn’t call Lizzy mean-spirited; more like mildly and wonderfully acidic. I don’t think Jane would mind.) Outside of Jane’s novels, I’m not sure: I think there are plenty of happy people who aren’t necessarily good—but are they as happy as they could be?
Shed some light, readers?
We here at Austenacious HQ confess to a new crush: Isaiah Mustafa, also know as the Old Spice Guy. I swear, until I saw this man, I thought quite enough Pride and Prejudice remakes have been done. Now, I want a new one: I want to see Isaiah Mustafa as Mr. Darcy! Who’s with me? And furthermore, who could possibly play opposite him as Elizabeth Bennet? (“Me!” I hear Miss Osborne crying, waving her hand in the air.) Who on Earth has what it takes? I am stumped, but we may as well start looking. You know the studios are.
Here Mr. Mustafa speaks up on behalf of libraries, thus clearly proving he is one of us. Even Jane Austen might be impressed with his precise logic. I say no more.
If you don’t see the video, click here.
We here at Austenacious like to reminisce about the good old days when we were young(er). Men had billowy shirts, women had “om-peer” waists (thanks to Stacy London) and lots of cleavage, fans were often employed in flirtation. Good times for all! But, I have to tell you, the old days were not all about wet shirts and boobs. Other people can talk about Napoleon and the lack of arm movement in old dresses; I am here to tell you that the Regency HAD NO COOKIES! No wonder Mr. Darcy was so pissy.
Or, if Jane Austen’s time did have cookies, Miss Osborne’s head is going to roll. One evening she presented her innocent Austenacious sisters with the aptly quoted “cakes” below. Three jaws chomped thoughtfully. Hmm, we said, pleasant flavors of molasses and ginger (and caraway, if you like that kind of thing). But we can’t get no satisfaction. A texture sort of like dried out cookie dough. And no zing, no happiness, no. . . sugar, or salt! Our consensus: They were okay if you’d never had a cookie, but here in the 2000s, why bother?
This caused Mr. Fitzpatrick to think about the future. “What do we eat now that in 200 years they’ll think, well, I guess it was okay if you’d never had a — ?” Any ideas, tasteful readers? Will the futurites be like, “Geez, why were they so afraid of genetically modified food? Life is unthinkable without naturally chocolate bacon!”? Or, much as we think “How could the Elizabethans drink beer at every meal and no water?”, will they think “How could they eat so much sugar? Especially so much corn syrup?!” as they munch their gingerbread “cakes”? Count me out, if so.
Martha’s Gingerbread “Cakes”
(Adapted from The Jane Austen Cookbook by Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye)
Ingredients
1-3/4 cups flour, plus extra for dusting
1/2 Tbsp ground ginger
1/2 Tbsp ground nutmeg
4 Tbsp butter
1 tsp caraway seeds (optional)
1/3 cup molasses
flaked almonds
Instructions
- Set oven to 350°F.
- Sift together flour, ginger, and nutmeg into a bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture is like crumbs. Add the caraway seeds if you are using them.
- Blend molasses into the spiced flour. It will make a soft, sticky dough.
- Dust a work surface lightly with flour, and roll out the dough not less than 1/4 inch thick. Cut dough into rounds, or use simple cookie cutters. Arrange cookies on parchment paper on a baking sheet, and place an almond flake on each cookie.
- Bake for 10 minutes. Cool on the cookie sheet until cold, then store in airtight container.
Makes 14. Eating is optional. However, you might find yourself consuming them without fully being aware of it. They are a little hypnotic that way.
P.S. Miss Osborne had one genuine Scot try the “cakes,” thinking they might be a culturally acquired taste [cough] Vegemite [cough]. Our scientific sample of one’s conclusion: no go. She thought they were as boring as we did. However, we’d be happy to hear from our lovely English/Welsh/Scottish/Irish readers: was this the treat of your childhood? And if so, why?
I’m ambivalent about the declaring of allegiances via t-shirt—I appreciate the straightforward sharing of opinions, but can’t we all just get along?—but I can also think of a number of appropriate venues for breaking out these Team Literary shirts and bags from Fire Petal Books:
- The World Cup: Whether you’re pulling for South American domination, European stick-to-it-iveness, or an African upset, show your cultcha with some gentle, font-based non-nationalist rhetoric. Who knows? Maybe you’ll start an international incident! Break out the vuvuzelas!
- Twilight Eclipse: Confuse the teeny-boppers and show them what it is to be a W-O-M-A-N (or, well, M-A-N, but that doesn’t sound as good and nobody writes songs about it). Practice your “You’ll understand when you’re older” face for your time in line; bonus points for extra condescension. (Also: um.)
- A Conan O’Brien show: He’s tall, awkward, and awesome, but does he race off into the night to save your little sister’s honor? Well, he might, but we haven’t heard about it. Therefore, no t-shirt.
- Brad Pitt’s life circa 2003: You can have it printed on the butt of your sweats, if you want!
It’s a brave new world, people.
Photo credit: © 2010, Fire Petal Books
Today we are giving props to a sister under the skin, namely, Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant. It makes us wish we could draw, it really does.
Here’s Kate’s take on the I ♥ Mr. Darcy crowd, the shippers, the mashups, and of course, fan fiction.
Lest we think Jane alone inspires Ms. Beaton, check out “Dude Watchin’ with the Brontës”.
You know, speaking as someone with $0.02-worth of knowledge about comics, I think the web has been a great thing for literary and nerdy comics. Would you have seen XKCD in the Sunday funnies? No, because it has math in it, and yet it is the most widely quoted comic among people I know. And as for Wondermark? Not even a chance. The way Wondermark pairs antique and modern is far too weird for The Normal Person, though, come to think of it, he’s probably a brother under our skin (ew). Even if he is kind of steampunk and we’re . . . not? But we do love to relate Austen to the earth-shattering concerns of our day!
Would Jane Austen herself have used comics? (Did she, O scholars of juvenilia?) She could pop off some awesome one-liners, and that makes it easy to connect her with the understated elegance of The New Yorker cartoons or the devilry of Charles Addams. (Was Jane the soul-sister of Wednesday Addams? Discuss.) But in end her forte was the subtle precision of words, lots and lots of words. I think she would have found the text-lite format of even the graphic novel to be a trial. Witness the weakness of Pride and Prejudice tweets compared to the original.
Photo credit: ©Hil. Used under Creative Commons licensing.
Mr. Darcy, Mr. Knightley, gentlemen: congratulations on landing the babe of your choice. I have no doubt, birth control being what it is, that you’ll all soon be fathers. As you might guess, the rules of being an awesome Austen dude change a bit with dad-hood. Let’s go over some basics.
- Break off, I repeat, break off any entails your estate is under. I know being a manly man you assume you’ll have a son, but it just might not happen that way. And you don’t want your daughter to have to marry her skanky cousin, now do you?
- You guys have all chosen well, but just in case. . . if your wife doesn’t quite live up to your expectations, don’t ignore her and leave her to her own devices. It doesn’t pay, and the kids might not turn out well.
- Speaking of which, take some interest in your children. Let them know you love them, and don’t leave them under the care of their evil aunts. (Note: Almost all aunts in literature are evil. It’s one of those phenomena.)
- Don’t think about your own looks, and don’t value the kids based on theirs. Keep as few mirrors in your dressing room as possible.
- When making out your will, don’t leave the kids tied to their mother’s purse strings. Let them choose their own careers and destinies. Everyone will be a lot happier.
OK, guys, got that? Fatherhood is tricky territory. So watch your step and one day you too might receive a cravat that looks like a fish.
The good news: as predicted, our Mr. Darcy, beloved of ladies (and—let’s be honest—gentlemen) the world over, has staked his manly and magnetic claim in yet another academic discipline. We are unsurprised, and utter a collective awww, yeah.
The bad news: it’s to do with an ingredient in mouse pee.
Did we say aww, yeah? We meant …yeah.
Researchers at the University of Liverpool have identified a protein in mouse urine that acts as a pheromone—and named it “darcin” after our esteemed Fitzwilliam, presumably because it attracts the ladies. Er, lady mice. But, they say, it might not just be about mice! It might be about actual ladies and what they like! And the people who make AXE Body Spray are totally excited, and preparing to make a lady-slaying army of pheromone-enhanced high school boys!
If they call the human version pattinsonium, we will officially declare that this “interdisciplinary approach” has gone too far.
We Austenites can be a boy-crazy bunch.
We make much of Mr. Darcy diving into a pond in a puffy shirt (which isn’t even in the book!). We divide into camps over, say, Knightley and Wentworth, and then further into sub-camps over Jonny Lee Miller and Jeremy Northam (or Colin Firth and Matthew McFadyen, or Ciaran Hinds and Rupert Penry-Jones). We admire the mutton chops and the fancy dance moves of Austen heroes from Sense and Sensibility all the way up to Persuasion. We objectify the pants off those fictional characters—see what I did there?—and have a fantastic time doing it.
And we’re missing half the story.
In Friday’s Telegraph, “novelist and ladies’ man” (heh) Jay McInerney gave us the other side of the coin: the male perspective on the ladies of Austen. Spoiler alert: It seems the menfolk can’t get enough of the fine eyes and dirty hems of Elizabeth Bennet any more than Darcy could; McInerney also reveals things for Emma Woodhouse and, with a charming note of self-consciousness, Fanny Price.
We don’t get a lot of this perspective around these parts; being primarily female and straight, the Austen community in general tends to spend way more time on what’s underneath Darcy’s breeches than what might be going on with those boobalicious Regency gowns.
McInerney goes on to claim some degree of depth in his Austen attachments—he really does love them for their minds, he says, both as characters and as representations of Jane herself. But what if he didn’t? What if this guy fixated—with an unusual sense of publicity and and odd sort of camaraderie—on the rain-drenched Marianne Dashwood, or on Jane Bennet’s mid-storm arrival at Netherfield? What if he sat around writing fan fiction about Lydia and either Wickham or, because it’s fanfic and he can, Mr. Collins or Charlotte Lucas or (crossover alert!) Hermione Granger or Sirius Black? Or all of the above? Would we react to him differently, and to his way of experiencing the Austen universe? How would we approach him as a man and as an admirer and/or objectifier of the women of Austen?
Readers, what do you think? (And while we’re at it, who’s your biggest Austen crush—of either gender?)
Oh, readers, it’s been so long since we’ve had a good awards show. The Oscars seem so long ago! And the Emmys—the poor, misguided Emmys, still quaintly nominating Diff’rent Strokes or whatever—don’t roll around until August. Oh, my Tivo for an E! red carpet special, especially if there’s a Ryan Seacrest/Joan-and-Melissa Rivers tag-team cage match. What to do about this land of no sequins and fruitless but ardent water-cooler discussion? If only there were another ceremony we could dote over, or a place where the Jane-loving community would make our voices heard via media grandstanding and full-page ads in Variety. Where’s our red carpet?
I mean, really: Lydia Bennet pulls an Adrien Brody with whatever gentleman or gentlemen happen to be within grabbing distance, whether she wins or not. Emma Woodhouse already knows—or thinks she does—who goes home with a statuette, and who goes home with another nominee. Emma Thompson travels through time by the sheer force of her own awesomeness, and gives a smart and hilarious speech, just because. Darcy refuses to show up at all, though Bingley’s happy to rock the eveningwear and accept any honors in his stead.
So, you see, it’s really too bad there aren’t any awards for Regency greatness.
Psych!
The 2010 Jane Austen Awards, sponsored by the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England, are now open for voting—click here through June 30 to share the innermost workings of your soul, or at least your favorite Emma/Knightley pairing and the like. Results come out July 14 in Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine, to which we assume each and every one of you subscribes. Obviously.
Go! Vote!
And if you feel the need to break out that strapless dress in your closet, well, Jane won’t tell.
Oh, Britain. What happened? You’ve done such a wonderful job, lately, of choosing leaders according to their ideals rather than their stunning good looks—sure, we know you thought Tony Blair was fit at the time, but the harsh light of day has dawned on that one, hasn’t it? And, well, there never were many illusions about Gordon Brown. But now…well. We never thought you’d be susceptible to our American brand of Kennedy fever, but it seems we were wrong: apparently Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg looks enough like Colin Firth’s Darcy to be extra-popular with the ladies, and—surprise!—the resemblance didn’t hurt him at the polls.
(To be fair, we call ‘logical error!’ on the assumption that Clegg’s way with the puffy shirt won him a spot in the unlikely coalition government—once the actual Firth involved himself, you see, it was all over. He’s the [hot] man behind the curtain. That‘s some smart party marketing!) (On the other hand, we salute the use of the phrase “bodice-ripping” in reference to an actual activity.)
Surely, though, Clegg isn’t the only world leader with a grain with an Austenian streak, right? To wit:
President Obama entertains the children via an Easter egg roll at his estate, the unspecifically named White House. Some suspect that his good nature does not accompany a discerning business sense, though he’s diplomatic in receiving a visit from a neighbor regarding five unmarried daughters, and attempts to smooth over difficult relations by allowing his rivals to plan balls at will—as long as there’s consensus.
Hillary Clinton, ever practical, settles for the State Department, which seems to know an awful lot about the furnishings at Rosings Park.
Angela Merkel, after dispatching her less accomplished rivals, ends up with the hottie of the neighborhood: Germany. Neighborhood gossips look on for signs of marital distress, but have little to go on—as long as nobody tries to touch her shoulders. Such a lady!
Nicolas Sarkozy lands a lady of great glamor and breeding, and with a lovely voice. And it’s a fine thing that gentlemen’s high heels are in fashion, is it not?
Readers, who are we missing?
And also, an announcement: Due to personal circumstances, Austenacious will be taking a short hiatus. Regular programming will return Thursday, May 27. Until then, drink some good tea and find some neighbors to mock, will you?
