J A N E T I L I T Y

For more than a hundred fifty years after her death, the canon of Jane Austen inspired a memoir, a few works of literary criticism and a a quarter shelf-full of sequels and adaptations of her work, but in the past fifteen years or so, Jane Austen has become a literary star, generating everything from critiques and biographies to annotated editions, sequels, adaptations, character spinoffs, modern takes, graphic novels, and mashups.  Jane Austen has outlasted popular contemporaries like Mary Brunton, Sydney Owenson and Eaton Stannard Barrett, and touched off a market for derivative work comparable only to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and with a considerably smaller canon – talk about the six that keep on giving!

If you are thinking about writing a sequel, adaptation, or new novel featuring a minor Austen character as Austen might have done, it helps to decipher how Austen writes. It is more than a matter of knowing the period – in fact, knowing the period may be least important component. After all, Jane Austen did not write historical novels, she wrote contemporary novels, so it really is not important for an adaptive writer to explain how an entail works or the color of someone’s barouche. Writing like someone else can be tricky; if you have ever seen an impressionist, the good ones do more than getting the voice right – they get the inflection, the cadence, the body language. There is a book called What Jane Austen Ate, and What Charles Dickens Knew; to write like Austen, you have to grasp, not merely what Austen ate or knew, but what Austen did, not only regarding setting and  social order, but what techniques she employed as a narrator and wordsmith.

It helps (that is, it helped us in writing Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, and with our current project), to have a few key volumes on the Austen shelf (or shelves) in your home library. A few may be taken for granted – Deirdre LeFaye’s Jane Austen’s Letters, and perhaps something like LeFaye’s  Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. You may pick up an annotated book, or James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen or something fun like So You Think You Know Jane Austen?, and of course you have all of Austen’s fiction. Here are a few more that I think would be excellent additions to the Austen writer’s library.

I would consider Mary Lascelles’ Jane Austen and Her Art (Clarendon Press, 1939) to be an essential. Lascelles begins with a brief bio of Austen and the evolution of her literary taste, and then goes into a very clear study of Austen’s narrative style, with wonderful kernels of observation, such as Austen’s suggesting of her characters’ social variants in syntax and phrasing rather than vocabulary when they speak, or the pithy observation that a literary strategy – “What a young woman needs if she is to become a heroine of fiction is a little neglect and ill usage” – may have been extracted from experience. Of course some rules are meant to be broken and in Lady Vernon we did depart from two of Lascelles’ observations: that the marriage proposal of a lover is never verbally expressed (Mr. Collins doesn’t count; he cannot be considered an authentic lover); and a conversation exclusively between gentlemen (with a lady participating or at least being in the room), does not occur.

I had once remarked to an editor that Austen’s novels come down to two interconnected issues: marriage and money.  Except for Emma Woodhouse, none of Austen’s heroines are so well off or well connected that they can anticipate “marrying up”; a number of siblings, a neglectful or imprudent father, a reversal of fortune threaten to keep many of Austen’s heroines from that “… pleasantest preservative from want” and “…the only honorable provision” for a gentlewoman of modest means, which marriage certainly was. How a marriage was contracted, how a wife, a widow and children were provided for was as inextricably linked to material assets as to personal ones. It’s helpful to understand what Mrs. Bennet means when she exclaims “What pin money…” Lizzy will have, or how Mrs. Jennings comes by her jointure. Amy Louise Erickson’s Woman and Property in Early Modern England (Routledge, 1993) takes the reader only to the early 18^th century, but otherwise is a very clear, and clearly documented, study of women’s rights to ownership of money and property as unmarried women, as wives and as widows, and the precise meaning of terms like “dower” and “settlement”, with some interesting case studies. As a counterpart, Susan Staves’ Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660-1833, studies four categories of women’s property: dower; jointure; separate property and pin money; allowance for maintenance.

A profession common to Austen’s novels was one with which she was personally familiar: the country clergyman. The church may be the profession of choice for the hero – Edmund Bertram, Henry Tilney – or it may be the comfortable resort of the self-important and the ambitious – Mr. Elton or Mr. Collins – or it may be the prospect of securing nothing better than the lowly curacy, which limits the aspirations of a young man like Charles Hayter or Edward Ferrars. If you are writing Austen, it does help to be somewhat familiar with what livings were (and when they provided enough to live on) as well as what a clergyman’s obligations were to his patron and his parish. Irene Collins’ Jane Austen and the Clergy (Hambledon and London, 2002) takes the reader through the education, obligations and living situations of the country clergyman and links what Austen must have observed: that the English clergy represented a variety of individuals, from those who were genuinely called to the vocation to those who did not have the talent or ambition to distinguish themselves in the military or the law. There is even the suggestion that those clergymen who are particularly animated – Mr. Collins and Mr. Elton – may have been so well-drawn because Austen saw them as a more accurate representation of the clergyman’s covetousness for a good living; even in Persuasion, there are schemes to oust poor Dr. Shirley, who has “zealously” discharged his duties for more than forty years, from his post in order to free up the Uppercross parish.

Among my favorite books about Austen’s work is Peter J. Leithart’s Miniatures and Morals; The Christian Novels of Jane Austen (Canon Press, 2004). (Chapter One is titled: Real Men Read Austen. What’s not to love?) Leithart describes the “miniaturist” nature of Austen’s writing, proclaiming that “…she does more with less than any other writer in English.” Like Lascelles, Leithart observes the relationship between syntax and character in Austen’s dialogue. Unlike Lascelles, Leithart defends the theory that Austen’s Christian morality is the underpinning of her narrative style; he even concludes that Austen is “a humorist because she is a moralist”, noting that, like Elizabeth Bennet, Austen “never mocks what is genuinely good.” After the initial introduction to Leithart’s analysis of Austen’s style, a chapter is devoted to each of her major novels in relation to the moral principles that determine not only the content, but literary style: morals and manners in Pride and Prejudice, charity in Emma, restraint in Sense and Sensibility and so on. Beyond Leithart’s cogent, and good-humored, analysis of Austen’s novels, is a well-organized format with each chapter beginning with a synopsis and ending with both “review questions” and “thought questions”. Not only should this be an essential on every Austen writer’s shelf, it would be an excellent text for an upper high school study of Austen’s work.

So, if you’re writing an Austenesque work, what books do you keep on the Austen section of your shelves?

My dear Cassandra

My expectation of having nothing to say to you after my last letter, if not the Truth, is very near it. I can only say that I have nothing that was of interest or pleasure to me, though you, my dear sister, may find some diversion in it.

On Sunday last, as I was leaving from church, I fell prey to the insufferable Digweeds once more, and they would not be at peace until I promised to drink tea with them this evening to watch another of their Programmes. I have found very little of merit in these Programmes, and cannot comprehend those who will sacrifice the better part of an evening to them. The Digweeds, however, would hear no refusal, and cried, “How can you not wish to see the Oscars! You must come to see the Oscars!” in such an insistent fashion, that I gave a hurried before their vociferous demands invited scenes unpleasant to more than myself.

I had, at least, the comfort of knowing that this Proposal would not lead to a weekly summons, as this particular Programme is but an annual Ceremony whereupon those who devise and put up the Playlets, of which I have spoke in my previous letters,all come together to single out some of their Profession for particular Honours. The notion of watching people who have got so accustomed to the praise of the Public coming together to praise each other is of little interest to me, but the Digweeds assured me that it was an excellent opportunity to observe all of the latest fashions, and that there would be the additional diversion of some music.

I arrived promptly at seven to find the Digweeds already assembled before their Device, and believed that I had mistook the time, but they assured me that it would be at least an hour or more before the commencement of the Programme, and that what they were watching was only a Prologue to the Occasion. This Prologue consisted of a Promenade, whereupon the Candidates for the Honours were set upon by a number of fawning Hosts and Hostesses and complimented upon their appearance and quizzed upon their finery, and importuned for the names of their dressmaker and jeweler, to which the long-suffering Candidates reply with admirable forbearance. The ladies, it seems are singled out above the gentlemen for this impertinent teazing; they for the most part, are asked little more than to introduce the mothers and grown-up daughters that they have brought to the Event. Their wives, I suppose, chuse to stay at home where they may watch the proceedings in peace and comfort.

Once all have been ushered into a great Theatre, a Master of Ceremonies appears and attempts to divert those present with a succession of quips and jests, often made at the expense of the anxious Competitors. Occasionally, one might catch a look of displeasure from one of the Objects, yet for the most part, they all affect a show of good-humour and forebearance.

There are a great many of awards to be presented, and it is the custom of the Programme to begin with a presentation to a Performer, who will step forward to triumph over his rivals with a great show of humility and a little speech of thanks to all of his acquaintance. A number of lesser awards are then presented by Performers of some renown to Candidates that nobody cares for, and the sole purpose of this seems to be to liberate Viewers at home so that they may go in quest of some light fare or pour out tea and coffee without any apprehension that something agreeable or diverting will be missed (a quest that is likewise reserved for those episodes of necessary Commerce that disrupt the Programme at frequent intervals).

 As the Digweeds had promised, there was something of music to relieve the tedium of this prolonged Affair, but these were in the form of some dancing, or a chorale or a solo Performer who rendered a great, wailing ballad. When two hours had passed with nothing more remarkable than this parade of Honours and indifferent Music, I attempted to make my excuses, and was shocked to hear from Miss Digweed that the Programme was but half finished. Indeed, only last week, I attended a ball at the Mayhews’, and danced from nine in the evening until four o’clock the next morning, and I declare that I did not feel half as weary as I did after two hours of this Programme.

 Miss Digweed assured me that the most significant Honours and the finest Speeches were saved to the last, and yet does it not display a want of sense or feeling to withhold until the end what a spectator may then be too weary to enjoy? I saw nothing at all to suggest that what was laid out in four hours could not be accomplished in one, unless it is to provide an Occasion for as many Performers as possible to air out their finery and show off their humility, generosity and other amiable qualifications.

As for the name “Oscars” given to the Occasion, I cannot satisfy your curiosity upon this point, unless it is drawn from Lord Byron’s Oscar of Alva as a subtle suggestion that, among the Performers at least, this annual rivalry is taken up in deadly earnest; or, it may be (as I am inclined to think) that it is an allusion to the volume wherein that verse is contained, that is, Hours of Idleness.

Your affectionate sister,

Etc, etc

  Here is a delightful Valentine’s Day poem, published in 1808, from the point of view of a gentleman who was “not handsome enough to tempt” his lady love.

A VALENTINE

 Sent in the name of a Gentleman to a Lady

Who ridiculed his Appearance

By

       Elizabeth Trefusis (1763-1808)

You will wonder, my dearest, how Leonard should dare

Throw his wit and his form at the feet of the fair;

That wit, at whose nod fools and caitiffs all bend,

That form, which love slights, but intenders the friend!

Now, our kind mother Nature no step-mother proves

All her children she chastens, yet all of them loves;

To some, she gives beauty, to some, she gives wealth,

To some, pride of birth, to some, labor and health’

On me, though, health, beauty and riches ne’er smiled

Yet this parent indulgent still gifted her child;

They speak from my lips! Virtue speaks in my heart!

And the world, my dear charmer, full often have said

That the faults of my face were atoned by my head!

Though defective my form, and imperfect my gait

Yet the line from my head to my heart is quite straight,

The line which fair virtue from intellect drew!

The line – O, that line which divides me from you!

From you, the sweet daughter of fashion and whim,

With beautiful bosom and ankle so slim;

With bosom display’d, and with ankle protruded,

With Nature’s allurements too vainly obtruded.

While I, the enchantments of science conceal,

And my soul’s dearest charities shrink to reveal,

Unless by the lash of kind satire I dare

Call the man back to honor, to virtue the fair!

Yet to virtue, my dearest, you never were wanting

Great favors refusing, frivolities granting!

Then check these frivolities, seem what you are,

And the world shall allow that you’re good as you’re fair!

I have heard, and believe it, that opposites prove

The sweetest incitements to friendship and love;

If you then are noble and wealthy and pretty,

Your Leonard is worthy, wise, learned and witty;

Your frolic and sweetness his moments shall cheer

His gentle philippics your conduct shall steer:

Then take him, fair nymph, and let friendship’s warm ray

Greet the sun which enlivens our Valentine’s Day.

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) is mentioned twice in Jane Austen’s letters. In a letter to Cassandra, written in 1813, Austen writes at rather dismissive, “The Clements are at home and are reduced to read. They have got Miss Edgeworth”, but writing to her niece, Anna, the following year, Austen declares that “I have made up my mind to like no novels, really, but Miss Edgeworth’s, yours and my own.”

Had Austen made up her mind to dislike Edgeworth, she would have been in a decided minority. The novels of Maria Edgeworth (who, unlike Austen, did not publish anonymously), were critical, popular and financial successes. Unlike Austen, Edgeworth enjoyed a long career: her first work of fiction (a collection of short stories) was published in 1796, and her last, the novel Orlandino, was published in 1848.

Maria Edgeworth

Edgeworth’s first novel was an immediate success. Castle Rackrent (1800) both satirizes and indicts property neglect and landlord absenteeism, problems that invited the exploitive practice of “rack-renting”, where a middle-man would lease a large tract of estate property from the landlord on reasonable terms and then sub-let it to tenant farmers at exorbitant rates.

Jane Austen

Inspired by the registers of the Edgeworth family’s Irish property, the novel is the narrative of Thady Quirk, the steward of Castle Rackrent for four of its masters. The first master, Sir Patrick is a convivial squanderer who has left his estate in such debt that his creditors seize corpse to hold it hostage until they are paid.

    His successor, the litigious Sir Murtaugh Rackrent, maintains that the insult to Sir Patrick’s body acquits him of the debts, and funds a succession of lawsuits by selling parcels of land and from draconian fines imposed upon his tenants. (The proverbial chicken that crosses the road is guilty of “trespass”). His wife, “…of the family of Skinflints…” provisions her household by claiming “duty fowls and duty turkies and duty geese…eggs – honey – butter …” from by charging a fee to intercede with Sir Murtaugh on behalf of his oppressed tenants.

    Sir Murtaugh is succeeded by his younger brother, the spendthrift Sir Kit, who shows up at the estate only for some hunting and to run up debts, flees to Bath where he carelessly signs off on bills forwarded to him by his agent. Having brought his debts to critical mass, he attempts to remedy the situation by marrying a Jewish heiress, who foils his attempt to get hold of her fortune by converting it, before their marriage, into inalienable property in the form of a diamond necklace. (Edgeworth, received a letter from a Jewish-American reader who rebuked her for her stereotypical treatment of Jews; she attempted to make amends in a later novel, Harrington).

    The last heir, the distant relation, Sir Condy, is a free-spending schemer; having squandered his money, he elopes with an heiress whose family promptly disinherits her. Debts mount to the point of Sir Condy’s arrest, a disgrace postponed by his election to Parliament. At the end of his debt-ridden stint as an MP, Sir Condy returns to a neglected Castle Rackrent that has fallen into disrepair, is abandoned by his wife, swindled out of the remains of his estate by Quirk’s conniving son, Jason, and dies poor and friendless.

    Edgeworth’s observations on the potential for ruin and disgrace brought on by neglect were renewed in her later novel The Absentee (1812), and appear to have been views that Austen shared. Embedded in all of Austen’s novels is some example of the consequence of the interrelated neglect of duty, family and property.

    On an income of two thousand a year, Mr. Bennet might have easily set aside a comfortable provision for his widow and daughters; neglecting to do so potentially consigns six women to poverty upon his death, unless some of the girls marry well. Unfortunately, he does not even do what he can to make them attractive marriage prospects: their education was inconsistent, left to the inclination of “…such of us as wished to learn”, while “Those who chose to be idle certainly might”, and his own antipathy toward London keeps his daughters from the sphere where many good matches were secured. Even Elizabeth’s immediate conclusion that a commotion at Hunsford was the result of the pigs raiding the garden hints at a familiarity with this occurrence that does not speak well for the maintenance of Longbourn’s fences.

    Sir Walter Elliott, while scrupulous about the state of his property, placed himself “dreadfully in debt” because his vanity has determined that his income is “…not equal to…the state required in its possessor”. To his credit, Sir Walter refuses to sell off an alienable portion of Kellynch – he will mortgage it only – out of a commitment to pass an undivided property to the heir. Unfortunately, the heir could not be less deserving of the effort; William Elliot neglects the family connection in favor of immediate gratification. He is both so greedy and so disconnected from obligation (or both) that while he mocks the Elliot name and title, he is willing to elevate a butcher’s granddaughter to the rank of Lady Elliot. One wouldn’t blame Sir Walter if he retaliated by disposing of the saleable tract of land.

    Both Sir Thomas Bertram and General Tilney fall into a similar neglect of their households, Sir Thomas by “teaching [his children] to repress their spirits in his presence”, while General Tilney was “always a check upon his children’s’ spirits”. In the former case, Sir Thomas neglects his duty by providing education without principled example; he “sacrificed the right to the expedient”, and in doing so, allows his children to fall in with associates who lead the heir into debt and near death, the eldest daughter to disgrace, while the younger elopes to avoid the “greater severity and restraint” that Sir Thomas might impose upon her following Maria’s scandalous conduct. It appears that only the prudence of one parent can counteract the faults in the other; one wonders if Henry and Elinor Tilney would have turned out so well if they had been left to the apathetic Lady Bertram and the enabling Mrs. Norris, or whether, under the influence of Mrs. Tilney, Maria and Julia might have turned out better.

    And while one criticizes Darcy at risk, the reader is told, rather than impressed with, his attention to Pemberley. While he “…cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these”, a remark that Caroline endorses with, “I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of that noble place”, he is pretty much an absentee landlord. A wealthy gentleman might visit somewhere for the shooting in the fall, and pass a couple months in town in the winter; Darcy, on the other hand, comes from London with Bingley’s family in September, stays until the end of November, returns with the Bingleys to town until he visits Rosings in the spring. While, according to Mrs. Reynolds, Darcy spends “half his time” at Pemberley, it doesn’t appear that he finally shows up until he encounters the Gardiners and Elizabeth in July; nearly eleven months pass without his spending any substantial amount of time at “that noble place”.

    Perhaps if Darcy had been more attentive to household matters, he would not have been so “unhappily deceived” in Mrs. Younge’s character, nor would his sister’s honor and happiness been salvaged by his premature arrival at Ramsgate.

Members of the publishing community have stepped up in support of the families of Sandy Hook, CT by donating their services to an online auction at Publishing Hearts Connecticut (http://pubheartsconn.blogspot.com). Since the agency where Caitlen works has recently opened submissions to young adult and middle grade fiction, Caitlen will be offering a full manuscript critique for a YA or MG novel, with a minimum of two pages of notes. To bid on this, or any of the other wonderful publishing industry services, go to the Publishing Hearts Connecticut site.

Caitlen’s auction ends today, 12/21 at midnight!

          One engaging feature of Austen’s novels is her technique of aligning character traits with their natural (as in nature) affinities or aversions. Elizabeth Bennet’s appreciation for talent and virtue over money and rank is reflected in her reaction to the grounds of Pemberley, i.e., that their “…natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste”; Marianne Dashwood’s propensity for dwelling upon loss is reflected in her musings upon Norland’s dead leaves. Mrs. Elton’s affectation is comically rendered in the running monologue that expresses her eroding zeal for strawberry picking. There is an allusion to Catherine Morland’s maturing in an exchange between her and Tilney; when she says that she has learned to love a hyacinth – the flower symbolizing the juvenile attributes of playfulness and sport – he asks whether she might then learn to love a rose – the flower symbolic of romantic love. The selfishness of Sir Walter Elliot and his eldest daughter corresponds to their reluctance to allow a tenant to enjoy the use of their gardens. Sir Walter is “…not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable [by a tenant]”, and Anne has been dispatched to instruct the gardener in “…which of Elizabeth’s plants are for Lady Russell” – presumably to preserve them from Kellynch’s new occupants.

Sylvestra Le Touzel, as Fanny Price

          In Mansfield Park, when Fanny Price and Mary Crawford stroll the parsonage grounds, their conversation expresses Fanny’s appreciation of nature and Mary’s indifference to it, but the particular object of Fanny’s admiration are the evergreens. “The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!” Even while Mansfield Park is symbolically channeled through Fanny – her musing on how the same soil can nurture such variety of plants represents the disparate characters who occupy or pass through the Bertram estate – it is the unchanging evergreen, the manifestation of permanence, fidelity, immutability and self-renewal that embodies the character of Fanny Price.

Frances O’Connor, as Fanny Price

          Yet, every so often, Austen readers will encounter an article or a speaker whose topic is something on the order of “In Defense of Fanny Price”; “defense” implying that Fanny Price is deficient when compared to Austen’s other heroines, and therefore requires vindication. Even C. S. Lewis, in “A Note on Jane Austen” maintained that Fanny had “…nothing but rectitude of mind; neither passion, nor physical courage, nor wit, nor resource.” True, she is not as witty as Elizabeth Bennet, nor as passionate as Marianne Dashwood, and her resources are not tested in the manner that Catherine Morland’s are; moreover, Fanny is not as beautiful as Jane Bennet, nor as accomplished as Jane Fairfax; she does not even provide the comic intervals that the reader enjoys by way of Mrs. Bennet or Mrs. Elton.

Billie Piper, as Fanny Price

          Fanny Price is the only Austen heroine who is defined by intrinsic virtue and moral integrity, rather than her failures of character and objectivity. Elizabeth Bennet is susceptible to prejudice, Marianne Dashwood is emotionally indulgent, Emma is self-important and manipulative, Catherine Morland’s limited intellect is warped by popular novels and self-serving acquaintances, Anne Elliot abdicates her natural good judgment in favor of well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) relations and friends. As their tales advance, the mechanics of plot are linked to the flawed heroine’s self-realization and eventual contrition. “These recollections will not do at all,” concludes Elizabeth Bennet. “I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed [of her language].” Marianne states that, “Whenever I look towards the past I saw some duty neglected or some failing indulged.” Emma comes to hope that “…every future winter of her life…would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.” When Catherine understands how far her imagination has offended Henry Tilney, it “…opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies”. Even while the long-suffering Anne justifies her deference to Lady Russell, she concedes that “…for myself, I certainly never should in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice.”

          In contrast, Fanny is always correct. Her affection is never misplaced, her character assessments are borne out in a plot that, rather than exposing her errors of judgment, reveals where the judgment of the others has gone awry.

            Fanny experiences unhappiness, but no moral regret, unless you count those “…feelings so near akin to envy as to make her hate herself for having them.” Her uncomplaining submission to the indolence of Lady Bertram and the tyranny of Mrs. Norris may aggravate the reader; her steadiness, when compared to the spirited repartee of Elizabeth Bennet or the resolute folly of Emma or Catherine, may appear static and colorless. If Fanny does not possess the buoyancy and wit of Austen’s other heroines, she does have – without the accompanying advantages of wealth, status, accomplishment or even physical stamina – a moral intuition that is as intriguing (considering the households in which she was raised) as cleverness and charm.

          Fanny may not, as Lewis observes, have “physical courage” (though I think the same may be said for most of Austen’s heroines), but she does have to draw upon emotional reserves in a way that other heroines (with the possible exception of Elinor Dashwood) do not; Elizabeth, Anne, Catherine, Emma may face an obstacle to romance, but the obstacle does not materialize in the form of a competitor. Darcy is not attached to Anne deBourgh, nor would Knightley ever marry Harriet Smith; Wentworth dallies with Louisa and Henrietta without being serious about either, and Tilney is not in love with anyone else. Even Willoughby’s choice is a matter of fortune rather than affection. But Fanny does have a rival for Edmund’s affection in the beautiful and accomplished Mary Crawford. Unlike Darcy, Tilney, Knightley, or even Edward Ferrars or Willoughby, Edmund Bertram is the one Austen hero who falls in love with someone other than the heroine. Unlike Fanny’s response to Henry Crawford, Edmund rationalizes Mary’s impropriety, and continues to hope that she will overlook the fact that he is a second son and a clergyman, until her sentiments prove to be so corrupt that Edmund cannot continue to justify them. Fanny, on the other hand, is able to witness Henry’s newly-expressed gentleness and consideration, without weakening, and views it as sign that he may just enough of a changed character that he will “not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her”. She can appreciate the improvement in his conduct, but her opinion of him as a potential husband is not swayed.

          Perhaps in an era where undeserving “celebrities” reap undeserved attention there are those who consider “rectitude of mind” to be “nothing”. But Austen readers should know better.

     I have always thought that the original manuscript of Sense and Sensibility – an epistolary novel called Elinor and Marianne – would be a significant literary “get”. It would have been of particular interest to us in converting the epistolary novella Lady Susan to a narrative novel, Lady Vernon and Her Daughter but beyond that, it would have given readers another view of a transitional work, one that bridged Austen’s juvenilia and her mature work. Did Elinor and Marianne have the same raciness as Lady Susan? Was it as 18th century in its execution? How radically different was it in style, as well as form, from Sense and Sensibility?

     In a letter dated January, 1801, many years after Austen wrote Lady Susan, she wrote to her sister, “I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth.” Letters, in Austen’s opinion, were conversation; like conversation, these letters deliver information, explanations, news. Moreover, the letters in Austen’s novels always bear the distinct conversational style of the writer. Lydia Bennet’s “Let us talk and laugh all the way home…Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any flirting?” conveys the same high spirited tone as her written, “You will laugh when you know where I am gone and I cannot help laughing myself.” Lucy Steele’s parting shot in her farewell letter to Edward, “Please to destroy my scrawls, but the ring with my hair you are very welcome to keep”, delivers the same sort of saccharine jab as her remark to Elinor: “Your regard for me, next to Edward’s love, is the greatest comfort I have.” Mary Musgrove whines in her letters – “I am always out of the way when anything desirable is going on” –  and she whines in her conversation: “So you and I are to be left to shift by ourselves with this poor sick child – this is always my luck.” And when Mrs. Bennet anxiously anticipates being left a widow, Mr. Bennet’s dry, “Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor”, is not unlike his pithy written advice to Mr. Collins, to “…stand by the nephew [Mr. Darcy]; he has more to give.”

    Another conversational quality of the letters in Austen’s novels is that, while personal, they are seldom secretive. Letters are routinely shared: Elizabeth reveals much of Darcy’s letter to Jane; the Westons disclose the contents of Frank Churchill’s letter to Emma; Catherine Morland allows Tilney to read her unhappy letter from James. What is disclosed in the letters inevitably becomes more widely known. There is, in fact, only one letter in Austen’s major novels that conveys secret feelings which the writer would not want shared with the world at large. In Persuasion, Mr. Elliot’s letter to Mr. Smith has been preserved by Smith’s widow. “Give me joy,” writes Elliot, “I have got rid of Sir Walter and Miss [Elizabeth Elliot]…he is worse than last year…I wish I had any name but Elliot, I am sick of it.” Still, it does not vary from his prior conversational style, as we know from Mrs. Smith that “I have often heard him declare that if baronetcies were saleable, anybody should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto, name and livery included.” Even Mary Crawford, who brazenly imagines the upshot of Tom Bertram’s demise; i.e., that his wealth and consequence could fall into no better hands than that of his younger brother, writes that she would say the same to anyone “..with a fearless face and bold voice.”

      Austen’s gift for creating a distinct conversational style, and extending it to a character’s letters is all the more impressive when you view it in contrast to what passes for correspondence today. A typical “how r u 2day” text could come from any number of senders, without distinction, identity, style or, emoticon notwithstanding, personality.

Caitlen (Rubino-Bradway) will be signing copies of ORDINARY MAGIC  (and distributing her stash of Charms Lollipops) on Saturday, Oct 27th from noon to 5 PM at Level Up Entertainment in the Hamilton Mall, Mays Landing, NJ.

1) Kevin Chapman (aka, the shady cop Lionel) only reads his scenes in any given script, though he does go back and read the whole thing after he’s done filming.  It’s a trick he picked up after working with a director (I forget who), who only gave his actors their scenes, never the entire script.

2) Chapman said this in response to the moderator asking how he and Taraji P. Henson (aka, straight arrow cop Carter) dealt with the fact that they, as actors, knew what was going to happen in the episode but that their characters did not.  Neither Chapman nor Henson reenacted the scene from extras with Ian McKellen.

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The NY Comic Con is here, and despite me living in NYC for some time now, this is the first year that I’ve actually attended.  Which, now that I’ve gone, makes me rather regretful.  This thing is so much fun.

It’s also long and exhausting and hungry, so bring snacks and don’t think that the shoes you wore to your friend’s wedding last month that held up really well are going to stand the test of Comic Con because they are not.  Trail mix and comfortable shoes — write it down.  Also a sweater or jacket, cause the Javits Center is a bit drafty in some areas.

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