JUNE AND JANE

First Week of June, 2008

Jane Austen in Geekatopia

Guilty admission: this former English major never read Jane Austen. Years studying the Regency and Romantic writers and not once was I tempted to explore the reputed charms of dashing Mr. Darcy or mentally stroll the manicured gardens with winsome Emma. My reluctance might have had something to do with the fact that Annabella Milbank, Lord Byron’s unlamented Lady, was a Jane Austen fan. Well, if not a “fan” (The only thing Lady Byron was a fanatic about was bashing Lord Byron.) but she reputedly enjoyed reading Austen - clearly Jane was her kind of gal, all those posh balls, frilly gowns and girlish vapors. And being in her husband’s camp, I of course could not allow myself to fraternize with the enemy.

Recently when dramatizations of Austen’s novels were flooding prime time I gave the whole series a miss (past my bedtime, don’t you know.). But it got me thinking that perhaps my own pride and prejudice was preventing me from completing an otherwise well rounded education. So, I decided to get over it, suck up and dive into a volume of the complete novels of Jane Austen, promising myself I would not surface until I had read every one from start to finish! A nice little Summer read, thought I, until the book arrived from Amazon.com. The book is roughly the size of a microwave oven and weighs more than my corpulent cat. Summer not being a long enough season to do Miss Austen justice, I have therefore started reading while the rosy dogwood is still in first flush - otherwise the Christmas pudding would be fading into distant memory ere I reach “Northanger Abbey”.

Progress so far: have succeeded in conquering the slippery slopes of “Sense and Sensibility” and am now gamely grappling with “Pride and Prejudice”. Question: when do we get to something even remotely resembling what I think of as a PLOT? The breakneck pace of life in Geekatopia has obviously ruined me for sitting primly in a parlor listening to polite chitchat on the relative merits of possible dancing partners. I keep wanting to yell at the book “Who the heck cares???!!!” (or language to that effect).


That I am not settling comfortably into Jane’s world is my fault alone - dear Jane is doing her damnedest to be hospitable. Curiously I am right at home in Lord Byron’s Regency England yet have difficulties with Austen who was, though his elder, roughly a contemporary. Her “Sense and Sensibility” come out mere months before his lordship’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” hit the market (catapulting the poet into superstardom, I might add). Austen died the year after Byron left England for the last time.

No, I shouldn’t be having this much trouble fitting in - I think that what I am experiencing is a kind of culture shock. I am an independent 21st Century woman visiting a world where a woman, in order to survive, essentially sells herself to the highest bidder on the marriage market. No ready buyer before you are twenty-five? Sorry kid, you are doomed to dependence on married siblings or generous cousins - if you are lucky. Taking that into consideration I answer my earlier question of who cares about the relative merits possible dancing partners - EVERYONE, when the results of a sweaty spin around a ballroom floor might determine the entire course of your life - whether you will have children, whether you will have food, clothing, shelter, whether you will enjoy pleasant associations - or die like a dog in the gutter.

Poor old spinster Auntie Jane, left behind to paint watercolors and scribble novels! I have my own amusements - found myself composing silly ditties while I explored the landscapes of Austen’s mind. Forgive me for irreverence as I share a few of them with you:

No one Jane Austen knew
sported a tattoo.
Nor did any of the country house crowd
belch aloud.
No person rode to hounds
in distressed denim gown.
In gentle company it was not done
to text while chewing gum . . .

Well, it’s an ongoing composition of dubious merit - but fun. By the way, the photos on this week’s post were taken in Salisbury, England a few years ago - a wonderful town you should visit if you are in the neighborhood of Stonehenge. My English ancestors called that ‘hood home for thousands of years and when you see how lovely the countryside is you’ll understand why people settled there!