Happy birthday, Pride and Prejudice

Two hundred years ago today, a little novel called Pride and Prejudice rolled off the presses for the very first time.

Here we are, still talking about it. We’re still thinking about it. We’re still getting new things from it.

In Pride and Prejudice, we have humor and romance. We have family life, and a much-beloved set of nerves. We have walks in the countryside, and a marriage based on genuine love and mutual respect. We have muddy hems and fine eyes. We have two nice people falling in love. We have accomplished ladies who improve their minds by extensive reading. We have Mary Bennet and Mr. Collins, Missed Connection extraordinaire. We have Charlotte Lucas, who does what she has to do. We have Lydia. We have Kitty, who turns out okay, we think. We have Bridget Jones. We have Colin Firth as two good men named Darcy. We have Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and all the rest. We have you—we have this community of funny, thoughtful people.

Thanks, Jane.

He did the Jane-ster Mash; it was a graveyard smash

Let’s face it: the range of Austenian Halloween costumes for ladies is not that great. Like, congratulations! You have a lovely empire-waist gown and a spencer! You are…one of any number of unidentifiable Regency characters? No clever object costumes, either—bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, as I imagine the Sound of Music folks would do, assuming there are in fact Sound of Music folks out there (who aren’t also attending the sing-along)—which brings up a whole thing about the relative unimportance of objects, symbolic or otherwise, in Jane’s work, but we’re not here to talk about objects symbolic or otherwise. We’re here to talk about Halloween.

(Somewhat ironically for a writer whose works are so generally female-centric, more recognizable male-oriented costumes spring to mind. Wear a pink cloak and be Mr. Rushworth! And of course, all glory, laud, and honor to any man who has the foresight to wear wet breeches and a soaked shirt and call himself Mr. Darcy.)

In any case, may we offer a few last-minute costume ideas for the Regency-attired?

– Action Jane

White dress, green spencer, plastic face—or at the very least, painted-on smile. Arms that bend only in unnatural ways. Photo album of all your adventures?

– Kitty Bennet

Be as suggestible as possible. Cough.

– Fanny Price

Sit on a bench somewhere, preferably near a locked gate. Disapprove.

– Marianne Dashwood

Tumble down a hill; if nobody handsome appears, lather, rinse, repeat. (Liability? What liability?)

I feel like I’m missing someone. Who am I missing?

(Also, we might judge you just a skosh for adding “slutty” to any of these costumes…but then, you don’t have to tell us.)

 

 

 

The Flashback Episode

This Thursday it will be a year since my beloved Mr. Fitzpatrick died. I am finding myself in much the same position Austen was when her family moved to Bath and her father died: just not in the mood to write. So, I give you instead Mr. Fitzpatrick’s favorite Austenacious post, originally published last May.

Pop quiz

You are in a car going @#&%$* mph on Interstate 5 towards Los Angeles. An officer pulls you over and asks, “What’s the reason for your speed today, miss?” What do you say?

Mrs. Bennet: Mr. Bingley is come! He is indeed! Officer, hurry up, can’t you?

Mr. Bingley: My ideas flow so rapidly that they make me drive very very fast.

Mr. Bennet: I thought I saw Mr. Collins in my rear-view mirror. And don’t call me “miss.”

Mr. Collins: Lady Catherine de Bourgh, my eminent patroness, most urgently desired me to find a wife, and I have heard there are many fine young ladies in Los Angeles.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh: Sir! How dare you question me! I shall make sure you NEVER find a wife!

Mr. Darcy: I saw Mr. Wickham tailgating a young lady, and was about to perform a citizen’s arrest. Or make him marry her, if necessary.

Mr. Wickham: I thought I saw Mr. Darcy in my rear-view mirror.

Lydia and Kitty Bennet: We were in search of officers! And it looks like we found one! 😉

Elizabeth Bennet: I do apologize, officer. My sisters just don’t stop making trouble. I have to run after them all the time.

Photo credit: ©2009 Heather Dever. All rights reserved.

42nd Reading of Pride and Prejudice

Thanks, Miss Ball, for stepping up to the tea-plate with your New Year’s Resolutions. They made me realize that I had . . . not read Pride and Prejudice since we started Austenacious! Oh, the horror!

I have now remedied the omission. And really I think the break was good. I knew P&P too well, you know? 42 is the approximate number of times I’ve read it (twice a year since seventh grade), and I can practically recite the thing—just ask Miss Ball and Miss Osborne! I’m sure you all know the feeling, or, she says darkly, you will . . .

Now, after writing about Jane Austen for over a year, and having quite the eventful year in my own life, I see Pride and Prejudice with fresher eyes.

The family dynamics struck me strongly. Mrs. Bennet is so very realistic! And she gets a lot of . . . I was going to say dialog, but she doesn’t do dialogs, does she? Mrs. Bennet just talks a lot, almost as much as Miss Bates in Emma. More than Jane had an ear for pillow talk, more even than for girlfriend time, she had a pitch-perfect ear for silly women.

“We’re marrying each other, not our entire families” might be called the central debate of the book. In the end Lizzy, Jane, and the boys admit that, but it takes a lot of work for them to get there. I know a lot of people are chilled by Lizzy and Jane throwing off their mother and less savory relations in the end, and I was too. But then I thought, who doesn’t avoid certain relatives as much as possible? Especially if they are as annoying as Mrs. Bennet! The Darcys and Bingleys do see Kitty, who lives with them, and “improve” her. They see Mr. Bennet, and of course the Gardiners. They even see Lydia and Miss Bingley sometimes. It’s just easier to accept your family when they’re not, um, living with you.

On reflection, it was probably P&P that taught me that you are not your family. Everyone has some strange ones stashed away, and you shouldn’t judge people by their relatives.

One other thing: The back cover of my copy of P&P says that “early 19th century English country society . . . is not very different from society today.” Sure, not so surprising, right? But then: “Mothers are determined that their daughters should marry well, daughters are determined to do what they wish, and fathers retire to their studies until the confusion is over and it is time to march down the aisle.” (!) This was my mother’s paperback, and it cost 95¢, and it just reeks of the 50s, doesn’t it? Today we still think Jane Austen reflects truth in society (of course!), but we focus on different things. Jane Austen for all time. It fascinates me.

Poor Kitty

I think, in reading Pride and Prejudice, that one of my favorite characters is also one of the most—if not the most—ignored. Poor Kitty Bennet spends most of the novel as basically an afterthought: she’s not as flighty as Lydia and not as didactic as Mary, and all anybody remembers about her is her (not-on-purpose) cough. (This is true to the point where I had completely forgotten who even plays her in the 2005 version; IMDB reminds me that it is, in fact, a not-yet-famous Carey Mulligan!) It’s a tough life, being Kitty, but I think Jane made it that way on purpose, for two reasons:

I like Kitty because she represents the phases that we all go through—the ways in which we’re susceptible to other people. The truth is, Kitty’s not a very strong personality, and she follows Lydia’s ridiculous example without a fight, or even (and I think this is generous) very much thought. But don’t we all do this (not me, of course; I’m talking about the rest of you!)? Don’t we (I mean you) find, in hindsight, times where we weren’t ourselves, or when we did things that we’d never have thought of on our own—all because somebody else looked like they were having fun? I like that Jane includes this subtle socio-personal detail among all the prideful and prejudicial behavior going on. Not everybody, it seems, is either Elizabeth Bennet-smart or Mrs. Bennet-vapid one hundred percent of the time. I like that Kitty’s a regular girl going through a slightly obnoxious period in her life. Just like 80s bangs and wearing leggings as pants, right? We’ve all been there.

I also like Kitty because she represents the ways in which people can grow up and change—Mary will probably always love a good truism, and Lydia’s unlikely to come to her senses anytime soon, but I always like to think that Kitty’s going to turn out okay. With Lydia gone, even the end of the novel feels like she’s coming out of some sort of fog of silliness (she will, of course, now be left at home with Mary and Mrs. Bennet, but one hopes Mr. Bennet will reach out to his second-youngest daughter as a potential island of sense). In an odd, side-plot kind of way, it’s thrilling! For probably the first time since Lydia arrived on the scene, drama-queening it up ostensibly from the womb, Kitty’s on her own—it’s the end of a small, subtle character arc, but we’re assured that things will continue in a positive manner. That Jane! She sure does know people.

And that is why, although one of the most important novels in the English language is packed with memorable and intelligent (though flawed) characters, I have a soft spot for one slightly obnoxious teenage girl—I hope that one day she’ll become one of them.

Pssst!: Jane Austen’s Guide to Gossip Avoidance

There was an article in yesterday’s Telegraph—an advice column, I think—that, quite simply, erases the entire section of the space-time continuum between the Regency and the twenty-first century. It’s easy: snip-snip, stick-stick, and here we are! The link has disappeared, but some inquiring British mind wanted to know:

How can I stop village gossips from talking about me?

Well.

First of all, you have village gossips? That’s so cool! Man, between Cadbury chocolate and this, England’s kicking our butts, awesome-wise.

Also, based on her experiences with people doing ridiculous things—or not—and then getting talked about, I think Jane might have some suggestions for you:

– If he seems cute and nice, run away. And we don’t mean with him—clearly he’s run off with some fifteen-year-old’s honor, lied about wanting to be a priest (avoid that lightning bolt), is drowning in gambling debts, and is also hitting on your sister.

– If you’re male, be poor. If you can’t be poor, don’t talk about your salary. For, you know, whatever it is you do all day.

– If you have sisters, try to be the least awful one. Do you really ever hear anybody talking about poor Kitty?

– Don’t marry a creep just for the sake of marrying, Charlotte.

– Don’t horn in on a rich old lady’s plans for her studly and equally rich nephew. News does tend to travel.

If these seem unmanageable, well, maybe you deserve a bit of chatter. Or you can just take the opposite tack: do what you want, see what happens, and get somebody to write a timeless novel about you.

That’s gotta shut ’em up.

Make haste, my love, make haste!

Pop quiz

You are in a car going @#&%$* mph on Interstate 5 towards Los Angeles. An officer pulls you over and asks, “What’s the reason for your speed today, miss?” What do you say?

Mrs. Bennet: Mr. Bingley is come! He is indeed! Officer, hurry up, can’t you?

Mr. Bingley: My ideas flow so rapidly that they make me drive very very fast.

Mr. Bennet: I thought I saw Mr. Collins in my rear-view mirror. And don’t call me “miss.”

Mr. Collins: Lady Catherine de Bourgh, my eminent patroness, most urgently desired me to find a wife, and I have heard there are many fine young ladies in Los Angeles.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh: Sir! How dare you question me! I shall make sure you NEVER find a wife!

Mr. Darcy: I saw Mr. Wickham tailgating a young lady, and was about to make a citizen’s arrest. Or make him marry her, if necessary.

Mr. Wickham: I thought I saw Mr. Darcy in my rear-view mirror.

Lydia and Kitty Bennet: We were in search of officers! And it looks like we found one! 😉

Elizabeth Bennet: I do apologize, officer. My sisters just don’t stop making trouble. I have to run after them all the time.

Photo credit: ©2009 Heather Dever. All rights reserved.

Jane Austen Names for Your Baby?

Lauren Miller, posting over at nameberry, a baby names site, sounds like someone we’d like to know: she’s a true Austen enthusiast, and we appreciate her thorough knowledge of and appreciation for the names in Austen’s books. And I appreciate her suggestion of naming your child after the hero or heroine of your favorite book—a friend of mine named her daughter Serenity, and I think there’s nothing wrong with that (though I would not name my child Enterprise.) Yes, your Elizabeths, Janes, Emmas, Annes, bring ’em on!

However, I do think Ms. Miller is a trifle naive in some of her name suggestions. To wit:

Kitty: Ms. Miller realizes you probably don’t want to name your kid Fanny. But naming her anything that can be twisted into the name of another female body part is really not a good idea. Alas, I speak from experience here.

Lydia or Maria: There’s nothing wrong with either of these as names. But do you want to name your progeny in honor of Lydia Bennet or Maria Bertram? Why not call her Scandal and be done with it?

Benwick: “It’s ‘Ben-ick,’ not ‘Ben-wick.’ On second thought, just call me Ben. Ha ha, Icky Ben! Like I haven’t heard that one before.”

Bertram: What ho?

Bingley: Is it my own dirty mind, or is this potential phallic territory? Rhymes with Dingaling, doesn’t it?

Dashwood: Similarly . . . Though we may have to face the possibility that NO name is safe from that sort of thing. But this one really does sound like a porn name. Sorry.

Wickham or Willoughby: See above re Lydia and Maria, plus, I think I’d kill my parents if they named me Wickham. At least Willoughby could be Will.

Darcy: As a girl’s name there’s nothing wrong with it except that it’s so . . . 80s. Isn’t it?

Grey: I know people can get used to virtually anything being someone’s name, and can forget its original meaning. But Grey, especially for a girl? Why not name her Dreary or Grim and be done with it? Also, small point, but Miss Grey in Sense and Sensibility was not exactly a nice person.

Price: LOL, think of the emotional scarring! Poor girl, branded as a prostitute from birth. “The Price is right!” The jokes are really endless.

Tilney: More random than anything else, I guess. But, Tilney? Really?

For the record, Ms. Miller, I love your other suggestions. Isabella: a nickname of mine, actually; Emma: a name I’ve considered for my own (strictly potential) daughter; Georgiana: just plain awesome! And considering some of the actual names people have actually named their actual children, I know it could be worse. But, please, think of the ramifications before you suggest these things! And, we’d love to hang out sometime and talk Jane Austen with you. You can even call me Isabella.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sharynmorrow/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0