Out with the old; in with the Jane

So, it’s January 4. Have you broken your New Year’s resolution(s) yet?

I mean. HAPPY NEW YEAR, AUSTEN NATION!

But really. Raise your hand if you have, in the past four days, done any of these things: 1) eaten chocolate chips straight from the bag, for lack of better dessert in the house; 2) failed to work out because your hair already looked so good and also you DID walk all the way to the mailbox after work, so there’s that; 3) made risotto entirely because it allowed you to open a bottle of wine, and then what are you going to do, leave it on the fridge door until it turns into vinegar?; or 4) “cleaned the floor” by taping your crawling-age baby to an old t-shirt and turning it loose.

Let’s face it: these things happen.

That may be so, but today, Austen Nation, we are going to play a game! And we believe you can handle it, even if you have not actually organized your scrunchie collection like you promised you were going to. Below, check out the descriptions of failed resolutions. Match them to the appropriate Austen characters. Write your own, if you’d like? And let us hear it all in the comments.

Aaaaand: go.

1. Resolves to practice the power of positive thinking. Is already so thoroughly positive as to succeed just by getting up in the morning. Is impressed by the power of positive thinking.

2. Resolves to run off, experience the world, and achieve self-actualization, possibly becoming a lady-pirate with much cooler younger sister in the process. Fails to account for the medium-sized drop-off, meant to thwart wandering cows, at the edge of the estate.

3.  Resolves to be more in control of her emotions. Is in raptures about how controlled her emotions are going to be, now that she’s resolved. Faints with excitement.

4. Resolves to get out of bed. Is seduced by cuteness of pug face. Stays in bed.

5. Has no resolutions. Life is already perfect: wife supportive of gardening habit; house next to awesomest house in the world.

6. Resolves to be a lady with a grasp on reality. Is pretty sure husband is pushing her towards this resolution in order to lure her into cave of godlessness and drink her blood. But at least she likes her father-in-law.

Whaddaya think?

Happy Jane Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR, AUSTENACIOUS FRIENDS!

So it’s 2012 all of a sudden, and you may be asking yourself: “Self, why make New Year’s resolutions when the world’s going to end in 331 days anyway?” Well, I’ll tell you: constant, grating reminders of our own shortcomings or no, there’s nothing wrong with welcoming another trip around the sun by trying to make things just a little more delightful. Or so we hear. In any case, if you haven’t already filled up your resolution dance card with blah blah blah lose weight and yadda yadda call your mother, we think Jane has some mighty good suggestions:

– Be a nicer person. Make it up with those crazy Bronte girls and their weirdo brother. Stop calling them “those crazy Bronte girls and their weirdo brother.”

– Less pride*; less prejudice; more Pride and Prejudice.

– More muddy hems! Exercise makes for fine eyes, or so we’re told.

– Handsome scoundrel boyfriends permissible ONLY when one is sure there’s a handsome non-scoundrel waiting in the wings.

– More letters to sisters. Or Sisters.

– Take Action Jane everywhere. Send photos.

Surely, readers, you must have additional advice on this front. What shall we do, or attempt, before the sun burns us all up, and just in time for Christmas?

*of the variety that goeth before a fall. Perfectly healthy self-congratulation is, after all, perfectly healthy.

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.

It all began on New Year’s Day

This first day of the year—of the decade!—I’m sure I’m not the only one looking forward to the future, to the person I might be the next time the ball drops. I’m a fair-weather resolution maker, generally—sure, I would like to lose ten pounds, become a better public speaker, find my Darcy/Wentworth/Knightley, and learn to like olives, like a normal person, but let’s be honest. I’ve met myself, and somehow a resolution towards disappointment seems counterproductive. On the other hand, wouldn’t it great to be more awesome in the future than I am now? Such a conflict!

And so, as is so often the case, I’ve got to ask: WWJD?

I’m unsure about Jane’s hypothetical stance on hypothetical New Year’s resolutions. (To be fair, I’m also unsure about the Regency take on January 1, generally. Oh, Mrs. Fitzpatrick?) On one hand, I imagine that Jane was very much in the business of self-improvement, where possible and desirable: both her personal correspondence and the pattern of change in her heroines lead me to believe that personal growth is not against Jane’s credo. Whether learning to be wrong, learning to butt out of other people’s business, or discovering that being the dramatic heroine isn’t always a thrill, the Austen canon points directly towards a healthy respect for Life Lessons, capital L.

On the other hand, I suspect there are a few vices that Jane would have been loathe to part with: what if she had self-improved biting wit right out of her repertoire? What if, heaven forbid, she had resolved to like everybody she met? Is Jane Jane without the bits of herself that make her just slightly less than perfectly nice? Are any of us?

With all this in mind, perhaps January isn’t the time to make sweeping proclamations. Maybe cold-turkey isn’t the way to go. Maybe, as I suspect Jane might say, we change with time and experience, and not by sheer force of will and with the turn of a calendar page—maybe Elizabeth Bennet doesn’t learn to give second chances until she meets Mr. Darcy, and maybe Emma Woodhouse doesn’t learn to mind her own business until she’s caused some havoc around the neighborhood, and maybe Marianne Dashwood doesn’t learn to love a little normalcy until she’s crossed the path of one Mr. Willoughby. Maybe life takes care of our New Year’s resolutions for us, and not only once a year.

At least, that’s what I’m telling myself—my reluctantly out-working, spotlight-avoiding, single, olive-hating self.

Thanks, Jane.

Happy New Year, friends.