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?

     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 has been able to squeeze three more local dates into her Ordinary Magic tour.

When: Friday, July 27 @ 4 PM

What:  Caitlen will discuss her middle grade fantasy, Ordinary Magic, and writing for publication.

Where: Ocean City Free Public Library,  17^th Street and Simpson Avenue, Ocean City, NJ

When:  Saturday, August 4^th  11 AM – 1 PM

What:   Caitlen will be signing copies of Ordinary Magic.

Where: Sun Rose Words and Music, 756 Asbury Avenue, Ocean City, NJ

When:   Friday, August 17^th @ 7 PM

What:    Discussion and book signing for Ordinary Magic

Where:  Bogart’s Book Store and Café, 210 N. High Street, Millville, NJ

The Avalon Free Public Library, Avalon (“Cooler By A Mile!”) NJ will be our host on June 28th, for a lecture and book signing. We will be giving a talk on converting Jane Austen’s Lady Susan to Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, and on writing for publication. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, and as an added benefit, Caitlen will be bringing a small stock of her newly-released middle grade fantasy Ordinary Magic to the signing.

The event is free and open to the public.

Where and When: Avalon Free Public Library, 235  32nd Street, Avalon, NJ  08202  -  Thursday June, 28 @ 7 PM

And check the library’s web site for their roster of summer events, workshops and classes http://www.avalonfreelibrary.org/

“[Tom Lefroy] has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove – it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same colored clothes, I imagine which he did when he was wounded.”

This observation, noted in a letter written by 20-year-old Jane Austen to her sister, suggests that Austen, as well as Lefroy, were familiar with Henry Fielding’s novel. It is she, after all, who infers that Lefroy’s morning coat is an homage to the garment worn by a wounded Tom Jones, who had been wounded in a dispute over a lady’s reputation.

There are a few references to Lefroy in Austen’s letters that were written in the early part of 1796. From Steventon, she writes of their “profligate and shocking” flirting, and that she found him to be “gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant”. Several days later, she looks forward “with great impatience to a ball at which “I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.” It is interesting that she writes with the same blithe self-confidence of Lady Susan Vernon, the focus of her recent novella, announcing that she “bequeaths” all of her beaux to a friend, “as I mean to confine my future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care a sixpence” – yet, she cares enough that “my tears flow as I write” at the thought of his imminent departure.

Tom Lefroy

Jane Austen

There is a gap in 1797, before her correspondence resumes the following year; this is the period in which she converted her epistolary Elinor and Marianne to Sense and Sensibility, which provokes some interesting speculation about what may have influenced the character of Willoughby. There are certainly points where Lefroy’s hero and Austen’s most complex scoundrel intersect.

Tom Jones and John Willoughby both have expectations that are kept at bay, to a different degree, by the course of their own conduct. In the end, both are rewarded – again, to a different degree. Jones gets the lady and his claim to fortune; Willoughby gets a lady, who comes with a fortune. Tom Lefroy, who lived in the real world, could not hope for the serendipitous good luck of fiction. It is unlikely that the great-uncle who funded Lefroy’s education would have behaved as Jones’ benefactor who “…threatened [Tom Jones] with the entire loss of his favor”, or that Lefroy would have forfeited his uncle’s good will by the sort of conduct that had Willoughby, “…formally dismissed from [his relative’s] favor”; still, Austen’s poverty would have been viewed as an impediment, by Lefroy’s relations, to their marriage.

Jones and Willoughby have similar encounters with the charming heroine. Marianne Dashwood injures herself in a fall, and winds up in the arms of Willoughby. Sophia Western is tossed from her unruly horse into the arms of Tom Jones. When the ladies receive their farewell letters, Sophia laments that, “I have thrown away my heart on a man who hath forsaken me…He hath taken his leave of me forever in that letter”, while Marianne wails, “Willoughby, where was your heart, when you wrote those words?” In both works there is a somewhat satirical contrast between the natural and the conventional, expressed, to varying degrees, in the manner in which illegitimacy affects the course of romance.

Still, in literature and life, Austen must accept the “mortifying conviction that handsome young men must have something to live on, as well as the plain”, and her novels’ marriages do not take place until that “something to live on” is certain. Yet, in Sense and Sensibility, chronologically closest to the brief Austen/Lefroy relationship, Austen is able to propose an ideal resolution through her fiction: Willougby – as dissolute as Tom Jones and as good-looking and pleasant as Tom Lefroy – is  reinstated by the rich cousin upon whom he is dependent, not by marrying the woman he had wronged, or by marrying a wealthy woman, but by marrying a woman of good character – a rapprochement that, ironically, he might have effected by marrying Marianne.  Did Austen secretly hope that Lefroy might count on the same benevolence?

Certainly, there was no engagement between Austen and Lefroy, and she cannot claim to have been jilted, but he was not forgotten. (Perhaps this was what enabled her to write so feelingly, in her next effort, of the effect of Bingley’s absence on Jane Bennet). Two years after Lefroy’s departure, Austen writes of a visit from his aunt, that, “…of her nephew she said nothing at all…She did not once mention the name of [Lefroy] to me, and I was too proud to make any enquiries.” Only weeks later, in early 1799, Jane writes of a cold and its effect on her eyes, and describes a ball with little enthusiasm. “I do not think I was very much in request. People were rather apt not to ask me till they could not help it. One’s consequence you know, varies so much at times without any particular reason.” Yet, she retained enough consequence to be solicited – and to decline – “Lord Bolton’s eldest son” for a partner. Perhaps her “indifferent” vision is the result of tears, shed upon learning of the engagement of Tom Lefroy, who was married in March of 1799.  When she does go on to write “Whenever I fall into misfortune, how many jokes it ought to furnish my acquaintance in general…” she echoes Marianne Dashwood’s lament upon Willoughby’s desertion: “I must feel – I must be wretched – and they are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can.”

Clive Francis as Willoughby (1971)

Greg Wise as Willoughby (1995)

Peter Woodward as Willoughby (1981)

But I will, anyway. On May 8th, Ordinary Magic, by Caitlen Rubino-Bradway will be released. From Amazon’s book description: “In Abby’s world, magic isn’t anything special: it’s a part of everyday life. So when Abby learns that she has zero magical abilities, she’s branded an “Ord”—ordinary, bad luck, and quite possibly a danger to society. The outlook for kids like Abby isn’t bright. Many are cast out by their families, while others are sold to treasure hunters (ordinary kids are impervious to spells and enchantments). Luckily for Abby, her family enrolls her in a school that teaches ordinary kids how to get around in a magical world. But with treasure-hunting kidnappers and carnivorous goblins lurking around every corner, Abby’s biggest problem may not be learning how to be ordinary—it’s whether or not she’s going to survive the school year!”

And what is the book blogiverse saying?

“I definitely recommend this must read book for those who love magical adventures and stories with a twist.”  Ms. Book Queen

“… the author has crafted an allegory that successfully lampoons mindless prejudices...” Kirkus

“…a very frank look at bigotry for a middle grade level…Ordinary Magic was a fun, engaging read.”  The Book Evangelist

“This is a fantastic book and I was totally enchanted by it.”  Books Your Kids Will Love

“Abby, as a truly “normal” heroine is easy to identify with. Unfinished business suggests a sequel in store.” Publishers Weekly

“Caitlen weaves the issue of Ord inequality to be parallels of racism, class systems and ableism.”   Write the Word

“Not only does [Ordinary Magic] twist many of the genre’s convents, but it is filled with well-developed characters and relationships.”  Page in Training

I love, love, love how Caitlen Rubino handled her story. Harry Potter had a very magical sense in the story. Ordinary Magic does to, but also attacks issues, such as prejudice…” Hippies, Beauty and Books, Oh My!

“I LOVE THIS BOOK!”  Yearning To Read

[Ordinary Magic] is just plain fun to read in every way, and that includes fabulous magical action scenes, intense excitement – and simple charm, which it has in spades…This is my very favorite MG fantasy discovery in a very long time.” Stephanie Burgis, Author

    We would like to thank Rosemont College for inviting us to speak about the genesis of Lady Vernon and Her Daughter and the current state of Austen paraliterature, at a lovely afternoon tea held in the Main Building on Rosemont’s campus. Particular thanks go to Professor Mary Ann Macartney and President Sharon Hirsh for making us so welcome, and to the “clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation” who attended the event.

  We will be guests and featured speakers at a Jane Austen High Tea on Sunday, April 22 at 2 PM, given by Rosemont College, 1400 Montgomery Avenue, Rosemont, PA. The public is invited; however, you must submit the RSVP form that you will find by clicking on the link below, so that the organizers may have a head count.

  The event will be hosted by Professor Mary Ann Macartney, to whom Lady Vernon and Her Daughter was dedicated.

http://www.rosemont.edu/calendars/detail.aspx?pageaction=VSIPublicBlock2&LinkID=1192&ModuleID=22:27&StartDate=4/22/2012

“Tomorrow, I shall be just like Camilla in Mr. Dubster’s summer-house; for my Lionel will have taken away the ladder by which I came here, or at least by which I intended to get away and here I must stay till his return.”  So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra in 1796, when her return to Steventon was delayed because none of her brothers were able to escort her. She describes her predicament by alluding to one of the most popular novels of the day, Fanny Burney’s Camilla. In one chapter, the title character and her sister climb a ladder to examine an elevated summer-house; the ladder is removed by their mischievous brother, Lionel, who rides off and leaves them stranded.

Frances "Fanny" Burney

Exclusive of Austen’s reference to Camilla, it may be inferred that Austen was a reader of Burney. Fanny Burney’s first three novels – Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796)– were  “coming of age” novels, which usually involved the heroine’s departure from home and her introduction to a to a society that requires her to make romantic and moral choices. You see this influence in Austen; in all of her novels, save for Emma, significant episodes occur when the heroine leaves the family home. (And, in the case of Emma, this is true of Jane Fairfax). The two authors’ works share a common element: that the vanity, ignorance, prejudices, but also the morality, which had incubated in the family circle are tested against the failings and merits of a broader environment and a new set of acquaintances.

When  Austen wrote her earliest complete works – the work later titled Lady Susan, and Elinor and Marianne, which became Sense and Sensibility - they were written in the epistolary fashion of Evelina . Moreover, when the Reverend Mr. Austen attempted to interest Burney’s publisher in his daughter’s early work (most reports state that the work was First Impressions; an auction notice offering the signed portion of Mr. Austen’s letter suggests that it was Sense and Sensibility), he makes a comparison, in length, to Evelina.

Austen followed up Elinor and Marianne with First Impressions; however, by the time of its publication, there was already a popular novel titled First Impressions, or The Portrait (by Mrs. Margaret Holford), so Austen drew upon the final chapter of Cecilia for her Plan B title, Pride and Prejudice. Cecilia’s plot revolves around a conditional bequest, wherein a young lady’s inheritance depends upon her suitor’s consent to assume her family surname. (Derived, perhaps, from the actual situation of real-life heiress Mary Eleanor Bowes). In bringing the complications to conclusion, the summation, given by the character Lyster, states: “The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE…if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.” (Yes, it is rendered in upper case in the printing).

However, one might wonder whether Austen drew upon the work of another Burney in crafting some of her characters. In 1807, she writes of re-reading the novel Clarentine (1796) by Sarah Burney (Fanny’s step-sister): “We are reading Clarentine and are surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a second reading than the first, and it does not bear a third at all.” And yet, there is something very Marianne Dashwood about Clarentine’s assertion that, “It is equally impossible for me to forget, or not to feel”, and something quite Darcy-like in Sir Edgar’s “…reserve, which frequently cast a gloom over his features…appeared to denote an unsocial and contemptuous disposition in himself [which] had often displeased her extremely and led her, very naturally, to suspect him of a degree of arrogance and pride.”

If Austen’s assessment of Sarah Burney’s contrived plotting is that it is “full of unnatural conduct and forced difficulties, without striking merits of any kind”, she is good-natured enough to take such criticism to task as well in Northanger Abbey, by citing embarrassed novel-readers who confess that, “’It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda’, or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed.”

Rosemont College:  We will be attending a Jane Austen tea at Rosemont College, Rosemont, PA on Sunday, April 22. (Lady Vernon and Her Daughter was dedicated to Rosemont professor, Mary Ann Macartney).

Avalon Public Library: We will be speaking about Jane Austen and Lady Vernon and Her Daughter at the Avalon Public Library, Avalon, NJ on Thursday, June 28.

We will keep everyone updated!