“Where is Fanny?”: Memory in Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park is, well, it’s over-looked for the more popular Austen novels. Shame on people who overlook this beautiful work of fiction because the heroine is not your typical heroine. She’s too quiet, reserved, an anti-feminist heroine, in a sense, because she is very submissive to her uncle and other people in general. But she is awesome. I think so anyway, and that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?

Fanny Price is taken from her home at the age of nine in the mistaken belief that it would do her good to be raised in a wealthier family, or so Mrs. Norris berates her with from the second she walks into the door. Mrs. Norris reminds her, without fail, without compunction, “of her wonderful good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good behaviour which it ought to produce,” so when Fanny cries and regrets having to leave her family, it’s now a big deal to her. She sees it as “a wicked thing for her not to be happy.” And that, dear Mrs. Norris, only brings more tears.

Memory is almost a palpable thing in Mansfield Park, and Fanny Price is set up to be the bearer of the brunt of it. She leaves her family at a young age and has only her memories to keep her going. Her cousin, Edmund, however, tells her she “must remember that [she is] with relations and friends.” He’s the cousin she’s closest to, the only one that doesn’t insult her, or in any way intentionally hurt her. When he tells her, though, to remember, it charges her to carry the memories of where she came from and where she is now. She does, and through her, her memories become a means of keeping everyone alive (that’s not the word I want, but I cannot for the life of me figure out which one I do want.).

Mrs. Norris tells Maria and Julia, Fanny’s cousins, “you are blessed with wonderful memories, and your poor cousin probably has none at all.” That’s not true, but she doesn’t know that because to Mrs. Norris growing up in poverty could never produce happy memories for a child. Fanny has happy memories, though, which is why being uprooted from the family and home she loves is so difficult for her to “get over.” While Fanny remembers her siblings with pain, she has another misery coming her way. Mrs. Norris’s husband dies and Sir Thomas expects Fanny to move in with Mrs. Norris now because she would be such a comfort in her widowhood. Fanny detests that idea, absolutely loathes it. When she and Edmund speak about it, she can’t help but say, “I shall remember your goodness, to the last moment of my life.” That’s finality, right there. Of course, living with Mrs. Norris probably would be the end of both her and Mrs. Norris because they hate each other.

Do you know what she will do? She’ll remember Edmund, as she’s remembered everyone else. Everyone wants to be remembered by somebody. It’s a lonely existence if no one remembers you, so Fanny Price remembers everyone and in doing so, keeps them “alive.” But she isn’t always remembered. In what I consider to be a rather melancholy scene, Fanny is waiting for her horse to come back from a ride with Miss Crawford, a ride Fanny never liked in the first place because Edmund was showing interest in Miss Crawford by teaching her how to ride. Miss Crawford’s ride takes too long, leaving Fanny to wait. When they finally come back, Fanny thinks, “If she were forgotten the poor mare should be remembered.” She knows that Edmund and Miss Crawford have forgotten her, but she thinks so little of herself that, though it might hurt her some, she would never admonish them. She will, however, remember the mare and not make her have double duty. It’s kind of sad, right?

But guess what?! Edmund realizes not six pages later that he was at fault. When Fanny is “knocked up” (extremely tired, exhausted, etc., not pregnant) from walking to and from Mrs. Norris’s house twice and picking roses for Edmund’s mother, Lady Bertram, Austen doesn’t let Edmund off the hook: “Vexed as Edmund was with his mother and aunt, he was still more angry with himself. His own forgetfulness of her was worse than anything which they had done.” He forgot her, and she suffered because of it. He knows he can’t forget her because everyone else in the house does. Someone needs to remember Fanny.

In a moment of eloquence and talkativeness for Fanny, she remarks to Miss Crawford that:

There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient—at others, so bewildered and so weak—and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond controul!—We are to be sure a miracle every way—but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting, do seem peculiarly past finding out.

Our memory keeper is now commenting on memory. She has witnessed firsthand what memory can do. She, often enough, has the retentive and serviceable kind, but then again her memory is also tyrannic when she constantly remembers scenes between Edmund and Miss Crawford that cause her pain because she loves Edmund, but he loves another. This recalls to my mind a conversation between Elizabeth and Jane in Pride and Prejudice when Jane says that she remembers Elizabeth always disliking Darcy so how could she marry him now. Elizabeth’s response was, “But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable.” Elizabeth chooses to forget their past in order to make sense of the present and the future.

Henry Crawford, Miss Crawford’s brother, falls in love with Fanny. He says that he will keep Fanny from being “dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten” like she is now. But Mary disagrees, countering with, “Nay, Henry, not by all, not forgotten by all, not friendless or forgotten. Her cousin Edmund never forgets her.” Never forgets her. Maybe not after he did that first time. But he does remember Fanny, and for that, Fanny is grateful. I sometimes wonder if Miss Crawford says that to her brother with a hint of jealousy. Austen doesn’t say it, but maybe Miss Crawford is a little jealous of just how much Edmund remembers Fanny.

In the end, Fanny is remembered and valued by the one person who she wants to remember and value her. She remembered him throughout the length of the novel, and it finally paid off. When Edmund forgot her once, I believe it hurt her more than anything else could have done, and he knew it. Memory, for Fanny, is important, even in its usefulness, oppression, and weakness. All aspects of memory are what make it that interesting to her, and while she remembers, no one in the novel is forgotten, not even Mrs. Norris and her unreasonable demands.

“I’m the man.” “Yes, but *I* am the woman.”: Gender Construction in Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen, herself, professed that Pride and Prejudice was her most romantic work as many a person would agree; although perhaps romantic, it is not my favorite. I am not trying to dislike something because it’s popular. I simply like other novels of hers better. While I might have angered someone, especially after I say that the Keira Knightley movie version of Pride and Prejudice is ridiculous and nowhere near as impressive, nor encompasses as much magnificence as the Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle one, it is still an excellent read. When you consider how one book could become so popular, and perhaps be the only classic a person will ever read, it obviously has its own share of merit. Like perhaps Austen’s take on gender?

Right from the outset we know this is a love story, or at least one about marrying people off as quick, and as financially rewarding, as possible because “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Mrs. Bennet makes it her mission to marry off her girls. The sooner the better. For richer, for poorer; although richer is always preferable. Austen weaves a plot that dances around the issue of love and matrimony, reflecting on society’s expectations of the men and women who dance the dance. Elizabeth and Darcy are in mixed up in it all, pushing, and being pushed, this way and that until they finally meet in the center in a happy conclusion, where everyone is left smiling, except perhaps Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Mrs. Bennet acts as the director, placing her girls in full view of all the eligible bachelors that come into the neighborhood, most especially Bingley and Darcy. But there’s one problem. She can’t begin to direct until her husband, the charming Mr. Bennet, makes the first move. As society dictates (it really always boils down to that, doesn’t it?), Mr. Bennet must visit Bingley as soon as he comes into the neighborhood so that Mrs. Bennet and all other female parties in his family can become acquainted with him. Seeing as how Mr. Bennet enjoys nothing more than to set his wife’s nerves on edge, he remarks, “You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves,” obviously being sarcastic. Mrs. Bennet still interprets it the wrong way and insists on his seeing Bingley. She knows it would be impossible for her to do so on her own, and if she did, goodness knows what anyone would think. She calls him up as “abusing” his own children because he will not visit him. As we all know, Mr. Bennet does indeed visit Bingley and thereby allows Mrs. Bennet to begin her role as director.

Elizabeth “has something more of quickness than her sisters,” which causes her to pride herself on her intelligence, her wittiness. She is a great observer of mankind, including Darcy, and yet she misses clear discrepancies with Wickham, discrepancies that she doesn’t see until Darcy points them out to her. She develops a great dislike for Darcy from the beginning of his rudeness and arrogance and unnecessary pride, while he, in turn, finds himself attracted to her and not realizing how he feels until he is “already in the middle of it.” You could argue that his ability to view her as a possible wife before she can even think of him in a more positive light marks his judgment as perhaps further developed than hers. But she is by no means ignorant; she’s blind by prejudice, not that he is any better in that area either.

Darcy is not immune to Elizabeth’s good qualities, though. Yes, he has an appreciation for her fine eyes, but more than that, she materially changes his attitude and behavior. He even admits it:

What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

After his initial proposal and rejection, he takes it upon himself to prove that he is not all those things she said he was. Consequently, every time they met after, his behavior was so altered she almost didn’t recognize him. Elizabeth also changes because of Darcy. Her eyes are opened to Wickham’s follies, and to her own judgment’s follies. They were made for each other, which Austen makes clear in the give and take of the relationship. Elizabeth can soften his rough edges, teach him how to laugh and enjoy himself, while he can share his knowledge of the ways of the world and what have you to further broaden her mind. Wonderful, isn’t it?

This is my copy. It has lots of post-its that I don’t have the heart to get rid of.

Women rule this world, but their world is possessed by men. For example, Mrs. Bennet moves people around like they’re chess pieces, but every move is dictated by men, who will be where, what will best put the girl at an advantage over the artful Lucases, etc. Lady Catherine de Bourgh may attempt to have such control over Darcy by refusing her consent in his marriage to Elizabeth, but she has no say. As a landed part of the gentry, Darcy is free to do what he chooses, and he does. Women don’t have such freedom. While they feel they have complete control, they’re constantly waiting on the men, as “the period which passed in the drawing-room, before the gentlemen came, was wearisome and dull.” Women may move the chess pieces, but in the end, the men declare “check mate.”

As with anything I review, it’s all subjective. Everyone will interpret a book differently. I love Pride and Prejudice. I think Elizabeth and Darcy are great together. I think the kiss at the end of the Keira Knightley movie is unnecessary and ruins the entire thing for me. I think that Colin Firth plays an excellent Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle, Elizabeth Bennet.  I think that everyone should read this book at least once in their life and decide whether they will be a chess piece or a chess player, but always bear in mind, that the rules and roles may change. If we all work hard enough, maybe we can find our Elizabeth Bennet or Mr. Darcy and participate in a relationship that is mutually beneficial.

And now I’m off for 4 hours of sleep before work.

Anything but Sense or Sensibility in Austen’s Sense and Sensibility

Was my title misleading? Are you thinking: “What? You think that Sense and Sensibility has nothing to do with discussing the propriety and impropriety of one over the other?” Or perhaps: “This woman is crazy. She never makes sense.” I do think that sense and sensibility are discussed in Sense and Sensibility. I wrote an essay on it once. But my title is simply my title because I couldn’t come up with anything else, and I’m going to talk about anything but sense and sensibility. Deep breath, everyone, before we dive into a rabbit hole of my own making, where I try to puzzle out the narrator but only succeed at making you roll your eyes at me.

So I’ve glanced over free indirect speech before, and Sense and Sensibility is riddled with it, but what really interests me is who on earth is the heroine of this novel?? Ok, it’s both Elinor and Marianne, but in a weird way. Within the first three chapters, if not sooner, we’re introduced to Elinor’s love interest, Edward. It’s practically a decided thing. And if you’ve read as much literature from this time period as I have, you’d know that there’s a 99.9% chance that they will live happily ever after. As much as I love Jane Austen and admire everything about her writing, I sometimes wonder why we were told so early about Elinor’s love interest. I finally hit upon an idea reading it this time round and will present it to you for your consideration.

The narrator in Sense and Sensibility is quite confusing to me. The story follows both Elinor and Marianne, but throughout the majority of it, we don’t learn anything new about Elinor. Austen sends us gallivanting with Marianne but in a withdrawn manner. Occasionally, she’ll give us a glimpse into what Marianne is thinking, which is where our good friend, free indirect speech, comes in handy, but the rest of the time it’s filtered through Elinor. She comments left, right, and center on Marianne’s behavior, wondering what’s really going on, or noting the change in her looks etc. Example:

Elinor attempted no more. But Marianne, in her place, would not have done so little. The whole story would have been speedily formed under her active imagination, and everything established in the most melancholy order of disastrous love.

(Maybe this isn’t the best example.) During this scene, Elinor had been talking to Colonel Brandon. He mentioned something mysterious, and she let it pass. As we see here, the narrator takes it upon herself to comment on how Marianne would have reacted in the same situation. So who was saying it? A third-party narrator? Elinor? I don’t know. I think that it’s a third-party narrator, but I still imagine Elinor smirking about it in her head (because it would be improper to make vocal such things).

What about this: “Elinor felt secure of its announcing Willoughby’s approach, and Marianne, starting up, moved towards the door.” We’re told exactly how Elinor feels but are met with a description of Marianne’s movements. Moving towards the door, starting up, all of them point towards a heightened state of nerves, excitement, inability to sit because of who was coming. I may know what Elinor feels, but I appreciate Marianne’s emotions more. I suppose it all boils down to “Show. Don’t tell.” for all you writers out there.  While we learn a lot about Marianne’s life, she’s not the one telling us. We see her actions, can feel her emotions more than Elinor’s, but she’s not the narrator. But is she the heroine?

While this novel brings us both Elinor and Marianne’s stories, I feel closer to Marianne, especially in the beginning. Elinor seems somewhat distant as a character and perhaps it’s all because the narration filters through her without us, necessarily, positive that she’s the one speaking. You could argue it’s because Austen wants to make it perfectly clear that having sense, like Elinor, is better than Marianne’s sensibility. I don’t, however, always prescribe to that straight and narrow interpretation of Sense and Sensibility. More to the point, not only does Elinor filter the story for the readers, but she is also a filter for Willoughby and other characters. In the most straight-forward example of this, “he approache[s], and address[es] himself rather to Elinor than Marianne, as if wishing to avoid [Marianne’s] eye . . .” Are we such fragile creatures that we can’t face the story without Elinor’s kind, dulling of the facts? Marianne is shocked by Willoughby’s ignoring her and so is Elinor. Maybe Elinor would prefer being the narrator of her own story as opposed to her sister’s?

She soon gets the chance. The last few chapters are devoted to her love story with Edward. She finally gets to savor the limelight that Marianne had occupied the whole time. While Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood are relegated to exclaim “in an accent of the utmost amazement,” Elinor gets to “[run] out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy.” In this role-reversal, Elinor is the one we’re close to, the one whose actions tell us how she feels. Marianne is in the background, exclaiming, feeling for her sister but not sharing in it. Elinor is alone on the stage, finally suffering under the weight of suppressed emotions and couldn’t be any happier because she now has Edward.

Marianne’s story is wrapped up by a third-party narrator, one who doesn’t seem to resemble the previous narrator of her story. She is no longer described in action. We’re told what happens to her. Now that Elinor is happily married has she resigned her duties as the filter? Or perhaps it’s only a nice way to wrap their stories up in pretty bows? I don’t know. Maybe this wasn’t so much about who the heroine is, as they each had a share in that role (no matter how small), but rather the narrator. On that note, I’ll release you from my rabbit hole, while I continue to muddle along down here.

“How were people, at that rate, to be understood?”: Duplicity in Northanger Abbey

When I was a senior in high school, I took a class called Great Books. We spent the entire semester reading whatever we wanted. All we had to do was make a plan for ourselves, present it to the teacher for him to sign off on, and then we were let loose. I spent much of the hours in class French braiding my Slovak friend’s hair and making trips to the bathroom as an excuse to visit another friend who had lunch. But guess what? I passed with flying colors, and I think it had everything to do with my chosen topic: Jane Austen. I was an ambitious teenager and came up with this detailed plan to read all of her juvenilia and then books in chronological order, writing an essay after each one. At the end, my final essay would discuss how her writing style matured over the years. Of course, I bit off more than I could chew and never did do that final essay. It was extra anyway so no harm, no foul. And here I am *insert a much larger than desirable number here* years later doing almost the same thing, but perhaps with more insight, or rather, not so much infatuation with the romantic elements of Austen’s novels.

Let me just say this regarding the romance. I love Henry Tilney, our charming hero of Northanger Abbey. Maybe my favorite Austen hero for whatever reason, but my inclination is it’s because he’s playful. Not brooding. Not too serious. Not bitter. Not quiet. Playful. I like playful. (It might also be helpful that JJ Feild played him in the 2007 ITV version, endearing him [and the character] to me even more.)

I mentioned in an earlier post that Northanger Abbey is a parody of Gothic novels at the time, most especially Ann Radcliffe’s. While that is an important aspect and should be considered in its own right, I’d rather focus on the duplicity of characters, the naïveté of others, and the delight-to-instruct of one in particular. Naïveté belongs solely to Catherine Morland, the heroine, whose instructor, Henry Tilney, takes great pleasure in better shaping her view of society. Such instruction leads her to see the duplicity in the other characters, making her remark toward the end of the novel, “How were people, at that rate, to be understood?” after learning that Mr. Tilney’s father said one thing but meant another. To her, the whole act of saying one thing while meaning another is “unaccountable.” So it should be as she wears her heart on her sleeve and believes the best of everyone and cannot possibly think that they could do any wrong.

But they can, and they did. The whole novel is spent contrasting the real world with the fantastical world of Gothic novels, whether outright or indirectly. Catherine starts off believing that kidnappings and locking wives in attics or cellars are thrilling, even going so far as to assume that Henry’s father somehow caused Mrs. Tilney’s death. It is in that moment that she is the most vulnerable. The line between the stories she reads in novels and reality has blurred, and she finds herself inviting the Gothic into the real world. Not for long, though. Henry Tilney pops up at that instant and sets her right with quite the lecture about England and religion. The last line of his: “. . .Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?” forces her to take a step back from the cliff and clear her head of the fantasies she entertained, “and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room.” With that cleared up, she can now focus on learning the more nuanced mannerisms of people.

The biggest blow to her belief in people comes when her brother James informs her that his engagement with her dearest friend Isabella is off because of her behavior, her duplicity. She was engaged to him and flirted with another. Once again her reaction is not what one would expect. It is sadness for her brother, of course, but it is surprise and shock, and perhaps even horror. She says to Henry and Eleanor, “Could you have believed there had been such inconstancy and fickleness, and every thing that is bad in the world?” They can believe it. I can believe it. You can believe it. And now Catherine can believe it. Although “shallow artifice could not impose” upon her anymore, she is by no means jaded. She still has faith in people and continues to let her feelings “[travel] from her heart almost to the tip of her tongue],” but she is no longer as easily deceived. She needed to grow up, and Henry helped her do so.

I could go on for ages talking about this, but I think you get the point. Northanger Abbey may be Austen’s least successful novel as writing style goes, but it is more than a Gothic-novel parody. Austen uses Henry to teach her readers lessons about society, but he is not without his faults. He has embarrassments, mainly in his father, but in his flaws is his humanity. Austen was a great critic of society, an acute and accurate observer, and Northanger Abbey, one of her least-read novels, is no exception. But I believe we could all learn from Catherine Morland and speak what we mean because otherwise how will anyone understand us?

 

Death Sneaks Up Like the Silence: The Darker Side of Austen’s Juvenilia

I don’t have this edition, but I want it so I should probably buy it. Peter Sabor is one of my favorite scholars.

When I first read Austen’s Juvenilia, what struck me the most was death. People die left right and center. Out of nowhere. With no good reason, except to make the heroine more emotional or to add a snide remark on moral behavior. Or just plain because why on earth not? She deals with death in a somewhat trivial manner in that she doesn’t dwell on it. It happens and then it’s over, and we all move on.

In Frederic and Elfrida, one of the players is described as one “whose character was a willingness to oblige every one,” reminiscent of our dear Jane Bennet or Fanny Price perhaps. But there lies a difference between them—the others value life a little more I think. When Charlotte, the character from Frederic and Elfrida, is proposed to by two different men on the same day, she accepts both because of this willingness to please. Having completely forgotten about saying yes to the first man, she had no scruples in saying yes to the second. But our thoughtless character does not remedy her wrong-doing or even bemoan her ill luck; instead, we find that when she “recollected the double engagement she had entered into…the reflection of her past folly operated so strongly on her mind, that she resolved to be guilty of a greater, and to that end threw herself into a deep stream which ran through her aunt’s pleasure grounds in Portland Place.” It’s interesting that she decides to kill herself in a stream in pleasure grounds. She’s dead. She’s engaged to two men at the end of one paragraph and then commits suicide at the end of the second.

Death snuck up quietly and quickly and then the next thing we know is she “floated” down the river and is “picked up and buried.” I liked her choice of the word “floated,” playful, like relaxing on a lazy river at a water park. Charlotte did float, but was it relaxing? Was suicide really the only option for her? Did it relieve her of her worries? I don’t think so. Austen didn’t either, it seems, since she calls it a folly greater than the one when she agreed to marry both men. I believe that this was the first and last time she ever mentions suicide, even if it is offhand, in any of her writing. Correct me if I’m wrong. One good thing came from Charlotte’s death, though. The other characters threw themselves at the feet of the matriarch and begged permission to marry and were granted it.

In another piece, Love and Friendship, she touches on death yet again with slightly more reflection by other characters but only just. One such instance is when Laura maintains that she “yet received some consolation in the reflection of [her] having paid every attention to [Sophia] that could be offered in her illness. I had wept over her every day—had bathed her sweet face with my tears and had pressed her fair hands continually in mine.” Even at a young age, Austen was mocking stereotypical heroine’s behavior (Most likely those from Gothic novels. I can’t wait to get to that series of posts!). It’s obvious she doesn’t consider weeping and bathing a friend’s face with tears efficacious; it’s only the emotional, the sensibility, of a woman. But the Cult of Sensibility is for another time.

There are a couple of instances when someone dies in her novels, but none are dealt with so easily, or without having a deeper meaning. In Sense and Sensibility, Mr. Dashwood dies in the beginning but from that we learn about the inheritance issue—the impetus for all that happens to Elinor and Marianne. While Austen’s work speaks mostly to love, romance, and lighthearted subjects, she wasn’t immune to or afraid of the darker ones but rather chose to use her wit to execute social commentary that practically everyone finds irresistible. Even though her Juvenilia had death, like the Silence, approach and vanish in the blink of an eye, it was met with her characteristic humor, and I found myself laughing and almost spitting my coffee on my book.

These are just two of the stories in her Juvenilia so I suggest picking up a copy at your library or the bookstore and seeing what else she had to say. Maybe you’ll see something I didn’t!

(Did anyone catch the reference to the Silence? Anyone? Anyone at all?)

Jane Austen’s The History of England: A Gratifyingly Imprecise Guide

The full title is The History of England from the reign of Henry the 4^th to the death of Charles the 1^st, already an incomplete history. Austen takes it a step further and clarifies that it’s “by a partial, prejudiced, & ignorant Historian,” and boy is it ever. But you know what? That’s what makes it all the more entertaining. I love this history because “N.B.[1] There will be very few Dates in this History,” and I, as my brother would agree, am awful with numbers.

This is the version I read, which includes an excerpt from Charles Dickens’ version that was used as a textbook in Britain for a while.

I don’t know how much you know about British history, nor how much you care to know, but this 34-page manuscript is worth the read even if it won’t give you accurate information. It will, at the very least, make you giggle if you enjoy reading about various kings, queens, and their antics with Austen’s hallmark witty remarks in tow. There are several gems tucked away in the pages that are prime examples of what was going to come as her writing matured. At the age of sixteen, her writing was beginning to take shape, and much better than mine was at that age. (I recently learned that all I wrote in high school was poetry. Why did I ever consider myself a poet? I’m not a poet. Nope. Not even close.)

The narrator is self-conscious, aware of playing a role, often addressing the reader directly, like “whereupon, the King made a long speech, for which I must refer the Reader to Shakespear’s Plays.” She uses this direct speech to drive her witticisms home, an effective ploy for her satire of Britain’s history. But the wonderful author of some of the most beloved classics will not keep this, rather simple, narrator for her more mature writings. She develops it into free indirect speech, or when the narrator has full access to a character’s thoughts, sometimes making it difficult to know if it’s the narrator or the character speaking. That’s not a very good explanation. Let me try it this way. With an example!

Regular third person: The cold air bit at his skin as he stepped outside. Pulling the scarf tighter around his neck, he wondered if spring would ever come.

Free indirect: The cold air bit at his skin as he stepped outside. He pulled the scarf tighter around his neck. Will it ever be spring?

Did that make sense? Please chime in if you have a better explanation. I wrote this during commercials while watching a Taiwanese drama in the middle of the night so…coherency is low on the list.

Anyway, Austen’s narrative style matures with each novel, which you’ll see as I go through her other works. Can you trust the narrator in The History of England? No, but I think that with that comes a certain danger or risk that humans can’t help but crave from time to time. You’re probably thinking, “Maya, it’s just a sixteen-year-old’s exploration into satire. Those words aren’t dangerous.” My answer? Words can move people so don’t underestimate them. (Although, admittedly, these will only move you to laughter.)

My vote: READ IT!

[1] Lat. nota bene, or note well

Interesting Fact About Jane Austen #2

Chawton House, where most of her novels were composed in the parlor, had a squeaky door that she asked never be oiled. Her writing was a secret to everyone save her immediate family so the squeak was a nice alarm system for her to put away her pages before any unexpected visitor or servant happened upon her mid-scribble.

Interesting Fact About Jane Austen #1

Jane Austen hated Bath; so did Anne Elliot in Persuasion. In Northanger Abbey, a parody of gothic novels, Catherine Morland loved it. Up until a few of the people she met while there made her and her brother’s lives miserable. Hmm.

*Insert clever and witty title about Jane Austen here*

As you can tell from this post’s title, I’m at a loss. What new and profound thing can I offer you about Jane Austen? Probably nothing. With that in mind, I’m going to forge ahead and give you a little background information about her that you might already know. I promise at least to attempt to make it mildly amusing.

Jane Austen, aka Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy’s authoress, was born on 16 December 1775 in Steventon, England, the second daughter to George and Cassandra Austen. Her family was cluttered with boys; she had six brothers. Only imagine how many times she had to fend off worms in her hair! (I have taken issue with worms ever since my brother’s friend tried to put one in my hair when I was three.) As you might guess, Cassandra (her sister, not her mother) and Jane were quite the pair, both remained unmarried, although not without their individual romantic associations with, rumored or otherwise, Thomas Fowle and Tom Lefroy, respectively. Was Austen’s love for Tom Lefroy as strong as Becoming Jane made it out to be? Or was it a passing flirtation? I don’t know. Good question.

From her youngest days, Austen wanted to be a writer and wrote her fair share of juvenilia, several editions of which are readily available for your perusal. She was also an avid reader of Samuel Richardson, Ann Radcliffe, Frances Burney, and others. I mention those three specifically because I will talk about them again in detail one way or another. She parodied Radcliffe and referenced Burney and just plain loved Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison. Side note: When I first caught the reference to Burney’s Camilla, I about died of excitement.

To make a long story short, after all this reading and writing, she finally published a novel—Sense and Sensibility. But of all her novels, the most popular is Pride and Prejudice, even if it’s far from my favorite. She wrote six in total. The seventh, Sanditon, remained unfinished on her death on 18 July 1817 in Winchester, England. Sanditon, however, was later completed by “A Lady,” who wished to remain anonymous, but it is worth a read because she seamlessly transitioned from the end of Austen’s writing to hers.

My book reviews for classics will be more akin to literary analyses than actually giving a rating, because I believe that classics are classics for a reason. For Jane Austen, I’ll be looking at all of her works, beginning with The History of England and working through chronologically to Sanditon.

Coffeehouses

So I’m sitting in a coffee shop failing to wrangle my wandering mind in order to focus on the novel I’m writing, or was writing seeing as how I haven’t worked on it in two weeks. But I can’t. After the worst 200 hundred words of my life (including the three-page-run-on-sentence story I wrote when I was ten), I figured I needed a pick-me-up. What better pick-me-up is there than talking about eighteenth-century Britain? None. I knew you would agree with me.

I’m in a coffee shop so let’s talk briefly about coffeehouses! Too much? C’est la vie. Coffee was introduced to Britain in the mid-17th century. With the increase in its consumption, coffeehouses sprang up. We’re not talking mass chain stores like Starbucks with frappuccinos oozing out of every corner where you’re hard-pressed to even find straight up coffee, obviously. These were places of social gathering, as they still very much are. Only difference? It wasn’t as sanitary. Joke. Sort of.

Coffeehouses were open to everyone, regardless of rank or station etc. They were open to women too, but since the purpose of coffeehouses were to discuss the news, politics, philosophy and other related topics, many believed that women didn’t have a place in them. Women were not mentally equipped for those subjects, or would, biologically (I do mean to use this word), not enjoy discussing them. I am sure not everyone thought this way so don’t go thinking I’m a feminist on a rant because I’m not. This is simply how it was.

Women didn’t sit back and idly watch their men lose themselves to their coffee and political consumption at the coffeehouses, though. They argued that coffeehouses and coffee drinking in general made men impotent and sterile, which I contend is because they spent all their time in them instead of at home. Relationships between men and women never change, do they?

There you have it. In the future, I’ll try to refrain from going into so much detail. This was only supposed to be a paragraph long. Oops?