I wanted to start this recap of my Austen Conference Experience with a pithy Jane Austen quote, but found myself struggling to choose one because many of her funniest quips about social events are of a negative bent. Austen was fully unreserved when writing to her sister Cassandra, and her voice is more acerbic in private correspondence than in fiction. (I love it.) However, my experience at what some of my friends lovingly referred to as AustenCon and what I shall properly refer to as the AGM was of a decidedly positive bent. And I didn’t have any orange wine, distasteful or otherwise. (Although I did try a little wine of a different sort and heartily disliked it.) So here we are.

WARNING: this is very long.

As I begin this recap I must explain that in order for me to write it at all, and not procrastinate for another six weeks (whoops), I shall have to do it in a purely stream-of-consciousness fashion, informal as all get-out, and that if a clinically objective and academic review of the JASNA AGM is what you seek, my Substack is probably not going to be a haven of dry erudition for you.

I embarked on this journey with my best friend Melody, and I wrote about my efforts to raise money for the trip under “The Summer of Jane Austen” heading here on Substack. (I won’t recap everything here, but briefly: this special trip happened in large part because of all of YOU, and your kind attention to the things that I write and your generosity in helping to fund my time at the AGM, and I am very grateful for that.) We came from our respective homes via car and plane and spent three days in Cleveland, Ohio at a conference hotel luxurious enough to feel quite decadent and sophisticated, and not quite so luxurious as to have a working toilet in our en suite bathroom. More on that in a moment.

We arrived in Cleveland after an early on-the-road dinner on a Thursday evening in mid-October. Technically the conference did not begin in earnest until the next morning, but early festivities and what the conference calls “special sessions” had started on Wednesday. We managed to secure seats at “She Played and Sang: Austen’s Music” which I had assumed would be a lecture on early nineteenth-century music, but turned out to be a lovely concert of piano and vocal performance. Laura Klein and Gillian Dooley delighted us, but not long enough. I would have gladly listened to more (though if there had been other young ladies who wanted to exhibit I would have liked that too. I am not musical myself but had I ever learnt I am sure I should have been a true proficient. Okay that’s enough.)

Upon returning to our humble abode abovestairs, we set about sewing. I forgot to mention earlier that one of the highlights of this conference is the Saturday night banquet and ball. In true Melody-and-Amy fashion, we had both begun gowns for the festivities and neither had finished. Melody had been sewing in the car as we drove from the airport to the hotel, and I had been frantically finishing bits and pieces at my home before departing that morning. (Then I left my nicely puffed, finished sleeves sitting pretty on my sewing table. BAH HUMBUG. That’s the wrong author for this but I’ll leave it in.) Some of this delay on my part had been due to procrastination, but in fairness to myself a great deal of it was in fact because my children kept getting sick and being wakeful and not letting me have any sewing time &c. &c.

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So there we were, with The Office playing on the TV and the sewing machine humming and the clock ticking the hours away until Dreadfully Late, and then the bathroom toilet overflowed. In the interest of fairness to my bestie, she was not the one who caused it; it was I. I shall spare you any gruesome details but let us just say it was a very perplexing sort of toilet overflow because there was no reason it should have happened, if you catch my drift. There then ensued a perfect storm of calling the front desk and having them send up a couple of janitorial professionals and then those persons having to call their superior to look at this piece of perplexing plumbing, and it all culminated in the toilet finally being “fixed” at midnight, whereupon we went to bed.

(It wasn’t fixed but we didn’t KNOW that yet.)

We did not exactly have shining morning faces as Friday’s sun rose, but no matter. Onward. The conference began in earnest on this day, and we enjoyed a whirlwind day of lectures and presentations. A particular highlight was keynote speaker Susan Allen Ford (editor of the JASNA journal Persuasions), whose address focused on Austen’s own reading material. She mentioned the 1811 novel Self-Control, of which Austen had little opinion (her review for Cassandra was quite withering) but of which she had a nervous anticipation: “I am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever— & of finding my own story & my own people all forestalled.” I believe the contemporary colloquial expression of how this quote made me feel is that the long-deceased Austen has “read me to filth.” I feel CALLED OUT. Someday I will write a novel, but are all the good ones taken already? Food for thought.

Speaking of food, we splurged on Friday for the soup and salad buffet at the hotel restaurant, and I am not exaggerating when I say that the dairy-free cream of cauliflower soup was quite possibly the best soup I’ve ever eaten. I must figure out a way to make it at home. This recipe looks promising.

Brenda Cox led a breakout session on “Jane Austen and the Evangelicals” which we greatly enjoyed. As an Anglican-curious somewhat-evangelical myself, it was a fascinating perspective on Austen’s personal faith and the religious movements of her era. I took a LOT of notes during this talk and look forward to reading Brenda’s book, Fashionable Goodness. (Brenda Cox also wrote a lovely and more organized and less silly recap of the AGM which you can read here.)

In between all the flurry of attending sessions and learning a great deal, we were frantically sewing as quickly as we could. Trying to finish our ball dresses certainly added some stress to the trip, but it also fostered some fun bonding time in the hotel room over our mutual work (and marathon of The Office.) I wonder if Jane Austen ever wrote anything about sewing a gown at the last minute. I feel inspired to go through her letters and find out. I’ll report back.

Anyway, speaking of sewing, we were greatly delighted to attend a talk by Hilary Davidson, author of Dress in the Age of Jane Austen and Jane Austen’s Wardrobe. This is tailor-made Amy-appealing content. (See what I did there? See? See?) I reveled in it. Hilary made a replica of Austen’s silk pelisse which you may observe beside my grinning visage in this image:

After this lecture we saw a splendid fashion show that featured reproductions of gowns spanning Austen’s lifetime, from 1775 to about 1815. (She died in 1817, in case you didn’t know. Well, even if you did know, she still died in 1817. Your knowledge of the fact has no bearing on its existence.) I don’t have permission to publicly share any of my pictures from this event but just take my word for it that these dresses were really lovely and it was great fun to see them side-by-side with (photos of) the original gowns and portraits that inspired them.

This is as good a time as any— that is, wholly irrelevant— to mention that at the same time as the JASNA AGM, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (also in Cleveland) was inducting new honorees and the hotel was buzzing with famous people and rumors of famous people. If reports were true, Cher and Mary J. Blige and Ozzy Osbourne were staying at our hotel. I spied none of these august personages but I did spot a Red Hot Chili Pepper outside the hotel signing autographs. A musician, not a fruit. Autographs would be a tricky thing for a fruit.

The toilet overflowed a few more times and it was most annoying. We are still not sure what caused it. Possibly some other guest had flushed a bar of soap or a washcloth or maybe a bag of gold doubloons or wads of bills or bundles of drugs? Who knows. At any rate the hotel offered us the option of switching rooms but we had all our sewing laid out higgledy-piggledy and so we declined and were just Very Careful with the bathroom. And we did not flush any contraband material.

On Saturday, Patricia A. Matthew gave a plenary lecture on reading Austen on and in the margins; the intersection of race and the Regency and the impact of British women’s sugar boycott on the slave trade. She talked of her visit to Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, and about how “studying history is a way of tending a legacy.” I have not been able to stop thinking about that. I hope we are tending this legacy well.

I had the delightful good fortune of not only attending the breakout session of, but also meeting the lovely Breckyn Wood, who hosts the official JASNA podcast Austen Chat. Breckyn’s breakout session, “Good Tenses Make Good Neighbors” was on Austen’s use of grammar to shape her characterization, and this exceedingly nerdy topic (doubly so!!) spoke to my heart. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It’s splendid to find out how many of them there are in the world.

Speaking of kindred spirits, Austen intersected with another of my favorite authors, Lucy Maud Montgomery, in a breakout session by Sarah Emsley. Sarah spoke on “Stealing Sources and Avoiding Consequences in Jane Austen’s Fiction” in one of those delightful lectures that raises more questions than it answers. (This is a good thing!) Where do we draw the line between “stealing” and borrowing ideas? How much of real life is an author entitled to draw on when writing fiction? Is there really anything new under the sun? (Sarah also spoke on L.M. Montgomery in this session and if you read her blog which I linked above, you’ll find a treasure trove of posts commemorating Montgomery’s 150th birthday.)

I had planned to be as judicious as possible with my funds on this trip, but couldn’t resist purchasing the cutest Pride and Prejudice t-shirt from Jane Austen Treasures. I am saying this of my own free will and not out of any paid partnership (although I’m open to sponsors! Feel free to get in touch!) but they are the perfect online gift shop for the Janeite in your life. My shirt is soft, comfortable, flattering AND nerdy— the perfect quadrafecta. (Is that a word? Let’s make it one.)

Now I come to the most stressful part of the weekend, a title you might reasonably think would be held by the bathroom shenanigans, but you would be incorrect because it was about my confounded dress. It is advisable to all young ladies who wish to be heroines that they complete their gowns BEFORE they attend balls and promenades and the like, and moreover that they check their seam allowances very carefully when working with extremely flimsy fabrics such as lining-weight silks. Do you see where I’m going with this? You probably do. My dress was barely finished in time, and when it was, it was too small across the back but too large across the shoulders, resulting in a much-too-scooped back and buttons that only barely met their buttonholes. Provoking.

This is the sort of time when a Best Friend is called for, and a Best Friend is invaluable, and I cannot thank Melody enough for working her magic with pins and things. I managed to move the buttons enough to get the dress to stay together, and Melody managed to insert some flowers in a way that covered up the worst of my visible stays (horror!) and I managed to actually go to the banquet that preceded the ball, albeit late.

You can see here that it all looked mostly all right from the front (and my Regency underthings did their duty quite nicely too)—

—but the illusion failed a bit in the rear. Oh well. I have learnt some lessons in the making of this dress and I shall try not to repeat them. My hair turned out very nicely at least and for that I’m thankful. I was a little nervous that the feather headdress would be a bit too Caroline-Bingley-esque but in reality it just distracted from the fact that the top of my shift was quite visible. At least it was a fully hand-sewn shift with the most minuscule rolled hem. Come to think of it, perhaps if I had spent less time hand sewing the shift, which is not MEANT to be seen, and more time measuring and trying on my dress as I was making it, I would not have needed to be thankful for the niceness of my underthings. Much to consider.

Melody, as you can see, looked lovely and put-together, because she wisely chose to use an existing dress and simply trim and accessorize it for this occasion. I shall bear that in mind for future festivities. I also figured that since I was letting the whole world see the back of my shift I may as well go the whole way and reveal some ankle as well. Not sure what got into me. Perhaps it was the one (1) disgusting sip of champagne at the banquet, which I did not care for. I am affirmed in my prejudiced belief that alcohol continues to be a waste of time and taste buds.

What can be said about a ball? What can convey the delights of dancing and of live music and of a merry company, to any one who has not actually been there? I did not dance every dance, not because gentlemen were scarce (they certainly were, but no matter; that has never stopped Melody and me in the past) but because I was quite tired and also wanted to talk to people. We did, however, noteworthily dance Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot, which astute readers will know is the dance that Elizabeth dances with Mr. Darcy at the Netherfield ball in Pride and Prejudice 1995— and really astute readers will know is danced anachronistically in that film (the choreography was amended to look better on camera and to throw the two main characters more together). We did the movie version. It was not historical, but it was great fun.

At the ball, I had the privilege of meeting Syrie James, author of The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, as well as Breckyn Wood, host of the Austen Chat podcast and whose breakout session I had so enjoyed the day before. Earlier in the weekend, I chatted with Dr. Inger Brodey because I had unwittingly sat beside her for a special session; at breakfast that morning, Lizzie Dunford, director of Jane Austen’s House in Chawton (!) had sat at our table. I found out later that the last two are people of such note in the Austen community; they were so modest, unassuming, and generally charming that I assumed they must just be run-of-the-mill fans like myself. (Syrie James and Breckyn Wood were wonderful too! But I knew who they were already.) That is one of the things I loved most about this amalgamation of Janeites: the camaraderie and friendliness from the most revered scholars to people like me who just like to read. It’s a wonderful testament to the power of good books.

The next morning was, I fear, a bit of a haze amid lack of sleep. I remember that there was a nice lecture during breakfast on “Jane Austen and the Jurassic,” about Mary Anning’s discovery of fossils at Lyme (which of course has Austen ties due to Persuasion and Jane’s own visits there). But I was very tired and wanted to eat eggs and pastry. (Perhaps this inclination has something to do with the dress debacle. Much to consider.) Next year’s AGM, to be held in Baltimore (so near to me!!) was announced, amid much fanfare. (It was at this time that I discovered Dr. Brodey would be a keynote speaker next year. And since I’ve now listened to her interview in Austen Chat, I’m even more determined to try and go to the 2025 AGM.)

Everything thereafter was a hustle and bustle of packing up and getting the car out of the parking garage and checking out and leaving the (extremely crowded, due to football happenings) city. I managed to have lunch with a wonderful friend from Twitter before we left Ohio (I’m not on Twitter anymore, by the by, but you can find me on Bluesky) and Melody and I spent a lovely five hours driving back to my home and talking it all over. That’s such a vital part of any trip— the talking-over afterward.

Writing all this up for you has been its own kind of talking-over, and I regret that it took me such a long time to do, but such is life! (I anticipate having something very exciting to announce to you all very soon, by the way, which will explain why my writing time has not been as devoted to this post as it ought to have been.) You, my wonderful friends, were the reason I was able to take this dream of a trip. You made it possible and I still can’t quite believe it. Once upon a time when I was a naive sixteen-year-old blogging verbosely about Jane Austen and various period dramas, I don’t think I ever could have imagined that someday I’d be at the AGM for the second time (!) and that it would all be because of the kindred spirits who read my blog today. I’m so very grateful. Thank you.

I shall close this with the perfect closing quote for a rambling personal missive:

“I can recollect nothing more to say at present; perhaps breakfast may assist my ideas. I was deceived — my breakfast supplied only two ideas — that the rolls were good and the butter bad.”
—letter of Jane Austen dated June 19, 1799

When my best friend Melody and I met in person for the first time (we became friends over the internet; thirteen years later neither of us has yet been revealed to be an axe murderer) our visit was fueled by late-night takeout noodles, chocolate, strawberries, a plethora of inside jokes, and Bigelow's Constant Comment tea (a delicious blend of orange peel, spices, and black tea leaves; Bigelow, if by some miracle you're reading this, please consider sponsoring this blog). Those last two coalesced when we referred to the tea as "Miss Bates tea," because if you know anything about Miss Bates, you know she is constantly commenting.

Miss Hetty Bates is a secondary character in Jane Austen’s fourth novel, Emma, the last book to be published while Austen was still alive. Once the daughter of a relatively prosperous clergyman in the town of Highbury, Miss Bates is, as the book opens, a middle-aged spinster caring for her elderly mother on a meager income. She is cheerfully resigned to her lot in life, deriving her small pleasures from frequent visits to her neighbors and friends, sharing goodhearted gossip, and singing the praises of her niece Jane Fairfax. Miss Bates is kind to everyone, appreciative of everything, and her stream of consciousness never ever shuts up; a sampling of her remarks at the Crown Inn Ball (chapter 38) may illustrate—

“So very obliging of you! No rain at all. Nothing to signify. I do not care for myself. Quite thick shoes. And Jane declares—Well! (as soon as she was within the door) Well! This is brilliant indeed! This is admirable!—Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could not have imagined it. So well lighted up. Jane, Jane, look—did you ever see any thing? Oh! Mr. Weston, you must really have had Aladdin’s lamp. Good Mrs. Stokes would not know her own room again. I saw her as I came in; she was standing in the entrance. ‘Oh! Mrs. Stokes,’ said I—but I had not time for more.”—She was now met by Mrs. Weston. “Very well, I thank you, ma’am. I hope you are quite well. Very happy to hear it. So afraid you might have a headache! seeing you pass by so often, and knowing how much trouble you must have. Delighted to hear it indeed. Ah! dear Mrs. Elton, so obliged to you for the carriage! excellent time. Jane and I quite ready. Did not keep the horses a moment. Most comfortable carriage. Oh! and I am sure our thanks are due to you, Mrs. Weston, on that score. Mrs. Elton had most kindly sent Jane a note, or we should have been. But two such offers in one day! Never were such neighbours. I said to my mother, ‘Upon my word, ma’am— .’ Thank you, my mother is remarkably well. Gone to Mr. Woodhouse’s. I made her take her shawl—for the evenings are not warm—her large new shawl—Mrs. Dixon’s wedding present. So kind of her to think of my mother! Bought at Weymouth, you know—Mr. Dixon’s choice. There were three others, Jane says, which they hesitated about some time.”

Emma, the “heroine whom no one but myself will much like,” (as Austen wrote at the time of publication) finds Miss Bates grindingly insufferable. As the lady of the village, heiress to the estate of Hartfield, Emma is “first in consequence… all looked up to [her].” (chapter 1) Noblesse oblige bids her treat Miss Bates with charity and condescension, and through most of the novel Emma listens to Miss Bates’ muddled ramblings with only inward seething. But, under the flirtatious influence of the rapscallion Frank Churchill at the picnic on Box Hill, Emma thoughtlessly insults Miss Bates in front of many friends.

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It is a scenario painfully relatable; Emma and Frank come up with an inane game in which each participant must share “one thing very clever… two things moderately clever, or three things very dull indeed.” (chapter 43) Miss Bates, ever self-deprecating, merrily says that she will have no difficulty in coming up with three things very dull indeed, and Emma, too eager to be a wit and to break the uncomfortable silence of the boring party, claps back with, “ah, ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me, but you will be limited as to number—only three at once.”

Ouch.

Emma immediately regrets her foolish words; Miss Bates is hurt and humiliated; the party soon falls apart. As they prepare to leave the picnic grounds, Emma’s longtime friend (and—spoilers—future husband) Mr. Knightley chastises her for her thoughtless zinger. When Emma attempts to defend herself (citing, in Miss Bates, the blending of “the good and the ridiculous”) Mr. Knightley does not disagree. For Miss Bates is ridiculous, but she is not Emma’s equal.

“Were she a woman of fortune, I would leave every harmless absurdity to take its chance, I would not quarrel with you for any liberties of manner. Were she your equal in situation -- but, Emma, consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed!” (chapter 43)

As we watch Emma reel from this tough-love moment, and resolve to do better in the future and make amends to poor Miss Bates, the message of Austen’s narrative is quietly clear: wit has its place, but that place must point upward.

One criticism people often make about Jane Austen’s novels is that their depictions of a bygone era, of a strict class system and a social structure very foreign to modern life, are no longer relevant to the modern reader. Emma is perhaps the novel that speaks most overtly about class differences— Harriet Smith and Mr. Elton, Miss Bates and everyone else in Highbury, Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston, Robert Martin and Harriet Smith all participate in a complicated dance of high and low, greater and lesser, connected by a common thread of human feeling and capacity for great hurt and great love.

Yet Emma’s hasty speech to Miss Bates, calculated for humor but falling devastatingly far from its mark, is one to which I can relate all too well. Perhaps you can, too. Whomst among us has not tossed off a comment intended to spark laughter but which has instead given offense? Whomst among us has not, at some point, let our true feelings of scorn or impatience slip out from under the veneer of politeness?

Austen’s works are filled with wit and charm; her humor sparkles and glitters through her prose 200 years later. Emma is no exception to her typical sardonic narrative. The sly, subtle sarcasm with which she peppers her descriptions of comings and goings in Highbury, Emma’s snobbery, Mr. Knightley’s self-righteousness, and Frank Churchill’s general useless dirtbagginess is consistent and on the mark. But Austen treats Miss Bates with nothing but unfailing gentle affection. The narrative laughs with Miss Bates, but not at her. The fun Austen pokes is at the society in which Miss Bates moves, and the circumstances that have made her what she is, but not her humanity.

As Emma Woodhouse “feels at her heart” (chapter 43) the brutality and cruelty of what she has done to Miss Bates, she resolves to change her ways. Slowly, her actions shift from attention-seeking smuggery (is that a word? I guess it is) to “gratitude and common kindness.” Seeking Miss Bates’ forgiveness is the turning point in Emma’s heroine’s journey, the catalyst that allows her to begin thinking of others rather than herself. Eventually, it paves the way—spoilers again—for her to find love with Mr. Knightley.

In a way, we are all Miss Bates. (I for one identify strongly with her run-on sentences, parenthetical statements, and whimsical changes of subject.) We have all been the butt of the joke at one time or another. In a way, we are all Emma (though we may not wish to admit it). We have all picked the low-hanging fruit, and at one time or other have chosen to tease or belittle someone with less power and agency than ourselves. It is not genteel behavior. It is not commonly kind behavior. And yet, with the anonymity of the Internet—something the anonymously writing Austen could not have dreamed of—the opportunity for each of us to punch down has increased a hundredfold. We can snipe and snicker and “dunk on” anyone we choose, and feel a quick rush of dopamine when someone likes our quote tweet or YouTube comment at another’s expense.

Handled wisely, humor through satire can of course be a positive force. When we use it to speak truth to power, to point out evil and hypocrisy, or even just to complain with an eye to fixing what’s wrong, it can be used for good. But just as many Christians argue that angry words are fine because, after all, Jesus overturned tables and chased moneychangers out of the temple with a whip (Matthew 21), it is easy to hide behind a weak veneer of comedy and point to a mind as brilliant as Jane Austen when we attempt to justify mockery of anyone who cannot fight back.

The difference between Austen’s satire of the wealthy/arrogant/selfish and Emma’s unkindness to Miss Bates is, of course, that Austen was punching up and Emma was punching down. Miss Bates and her ilk are never the subject of the narrative’s scorn: that punishment is reserved for people like the overbearing Mr. Collins (who chooses to be pompous and ignore others’ feelings), the vain Sir Walter Elliot (whose obsession with his own good looks is greater than his regard for his own daughter), and the blackguard John Willoughby (whose rakish ways get their comeuppance in the end with his unhappy marriage).

Indeed, even these infuriating people do not generally meet Gothic deaths or Romantic ruin—even as Austen writes caustically of their follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, she does so with a merciful hand.

Melody from wrote this, which I love:

“[In reading Austen] I began to see an author's love for her characters. Her writing reminds me that it's not perfect people who deserve love, it's all of us. I'm not even thinking of the happy-ending romantic love, but of love that embraces even with our foibles, mistakes large and small, and our funny little ways. Austen hates none of her characters. She hardly even punishes the worst ones. When the world feels deficient in love to me, Austen reminds me that I can choose to love rather than mock those I don’t like or understand.”

Even in her most biting satire, Austen’s love of people shines through. It would be easy to read in her “quick succession of busy nothings” a cynical view of humanity, but I think that surface-level assumption misses the thread of goodness running through it all. As she skillfully skewers the worst of us— and the worst in us— she is consistently pointing upward to virtue, honor, unselfishness, affection, and generosity. In pointing out the foibles of human nature, she is encouraging us to take note of what we should not emulate, to see ourselves in fiction and to be better.

As I think about my own writing, and my own voice in a world clanging with resentment and division and defensive mudslinging, I want to emulate Jane Austen. A well-placed word to the unwise can certainly be more devastating than the most moody, melodramatic death on a windswept and wuthering English moor (yes, that was a jibe at Emily Bronte, and she’s more of a bestseller than I’ll ever be so it’s fine). A cutting epitaph for a person of more arrogance than intelligence may endure longer than his own legacy of pomposity. But I want to reserve that sort of thing for those whose consequence in life is higher than mine, who have chosen to be the way they are, not those who could be harmed by my words because their circumstances are not their own fault. My quips are for the Elon Musks and Donald Trumps of the world— the John Thorpes and Prince Regents— not the Eliza Williamses and Miss Bateses.

But the Constant Comment tea? I’ll keep the nickname. I relish the memories it evokes in its fragrant steam. And I think Jane Austen would have smiled.

This post is a part of The Summer of Jane Austen, a literary-inspired endeavor to fuel both a journey of the mind and my own journey to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting. More here.

Thank you all so much. I am incredibly grateful.

I do not intend to stop writing about Jane Austen this summer just because I met my goal (I’m having fun with this series, and any royalty monies can still get socked away for my college fund) but as you may have noticed I have slowed down a bit in recent weeks. I just finished a week of volunteering with Vacation Bible School at my church (imagine that meme of Frodo leaving the fires of Mount Doom, if you will) and I recently started a new part-time job; which, though it is only 12-15 hours a week at present, still significantly eats into my available writing time. (For the curious: I am working at the drop-in childcare center at my gym. It’s a good fit for me in this season of life since I can bring my two small children with me and don’t have to pay for childcare for them while I work.)

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In August I shall start up with college classes again, and I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to write during the fall semester. I’ll do my very best to keep up with this newsletter, as it’s

I’ve also been sewing a bit! Here’s a simple party dress I made for my sister Elizabeth, upon the occasion of her second wedding reception (an affair thrown by my parents in July after the actual wedding in January was hit by a blizzard).

I do intend to make a gown for the JASNA AGM’s Saturday evening ball, and shall share more about that in due course. I have the fabric and the pattern already, and just need to find time to figure out underthings and then of course do the actual sewing. Hahahahahaha I’m sure it’ll be fine.

July also marked the 207th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. On that anniversary, I asked the literary folk of Twitter to tell me what it is about Austen that has been enduring and meaningful for them, and received permission to share a few of these answers below.

Though Austen wrote much about virtue, she did not paint people in black and white. “Her characters have depth and breadth. They’re dynamic and change so much in the course of the stories but not in a moralizing way. None of them are idealized.” —Lydia Cubbedge

We are not yet tired of telling and retelling her stories; the number of adaptations and spinoffs still being written is quite staggering. “Her stories and characters are just... that good. I think the number of film/TV adaptations is an indicator of this. The fact that many of those adaptations have been stellar has helped keep the legacy going, particular the 1995 P&P which is one of the best miniseries ever made.” —Jack Brown

As we reread, she gives us something new each time we return (I wrote about this earlier this month). “You get more out of her books with each re-reading. I started reading her as a teenager and as my age advances, so does my appreciation of her genius.” —Ethel Monticue

Though she dealt in wit and humor, her work has a foundation of truth and wisdom; it is not mere fluff; she employed “a deeply humane sensibility and tight plotting undergirding comic genius.” —Scott Thomson

She has something for everyone; the casual reader and the analyst alike. “She holds up to close reading to see multiple layers to many of the narrator’s statements But the plots and heroines are enjoyable even if one is reading without deep analysis in mind.” —Amber Adams

We learn about ourselves as we read about the people she invented. “Trenchant wit. Insight into human nature. Pokes good-natured fun at both characters and readers.” —Prose Haikus

Her humor remains hopeful while sardonic; she gives us “astute observation of human nature that isn’t edged with judgy cynicism.” — Denise Deberry

Charlotte Bronte complained that Austen's characters lived in drawing-rooms and gardens (as opposed to Bronte's own stormy moors and Gothic manors and the fiery passions of the human soul) but many of us relish this focus on quiet, ordinary life. “I like that she wrote about events of personal stakes rather than cities rising and falling and clashes of rulers. Through her it feels like we get a fuller picture of the lives people lived in the past.” —Chad Howard

Perhaps my favorite response of all highlighted Austen’s gently impactful writing in the earliest days of feminist thought: “Austen’s work quietly argues that women's lives matter; that politics, war, and commerce are not the only important subjects. The daily domestic lives of young women—their options, their choices, their challenges—are important, too, including the decision of who to marry.” —Teresa Traver/Anne Rollins

And for myself? A quote from Samuel Johnson (written about Shakespeare, but it applies here) comes to mind: “Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.” It is the realism and the relatable humor in everyday situations that keeps me coming back to her; the feeling of seeing and being seen. (I wrote about this in more depth here.)

What would you add? What does Jane Austen mean to you? Why do you think her works have remained in print for nearly two hundred years? I'd love to hear from you; comments are open to all.

Once more, thank you for reading and for your support. More Austen (and non-Austen) essays coming soon!

This post is a part of The Summer of Jane Austen, a literary-inspired endeavor to fuel both a journey of the mind and my own journey to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting. More here.

I can’t say I ever really got Jane Austen’s most passionate heroine.

I read Sense and Sensibility as an eager ninth-grader, nerdy and awkward and unsure of who I was and where I belonged. In Elinor Dashwood, the older sister and the embodiment of sense — practicality, patience, reserve of feeling — I liked to think I could see myself. But though I sympathized with and rooted for Marianne Dashwood, the tempestuous and clever and unmoderated heroine who brings “sensibility” to life, I couldn’t truly identify with her. I wanted her to have a happy ending, but I felt very little of the “kindred spirit” that Anne Shirley — another literary heroine of great passion and depth — might have called Marianne.

Then I read Hillary Manton Lodge’s modern retelling of Sense and Sensibility, and I found a new appreciation for Marianne’s impulsive warmth and single-minded determination.

Jane of Austin: A Novel of Sweet Tea and Sensibility, an inspirational romance set in the U.S. in the 2010’s — not the English countryside in the 1810's — revamps the original Dashwood sisters (Elinor, Marianne, and the underdeveloped Margaret) as the plucky Woodward girls (Celia, Jane, and much-younger Margot). Uprooted from their comfortable life by their mostly-absent father’s business scandals, the sisters start a tea shop in San Francisco as the two oldest assume guardianship of Margot, the youngest. But in a flash forward that spans a single chapter, the new life in San Francisco comes to an abrupt end with the death of their generous landlord, and the Woodwards are forced to start over again in Austin, Texas, reluctantly relying on the Southern hospitality of their mother’s cousin Ian. As they struggle to get their lives and their business back on track, Celia is quietly coping with the mysterious end of a long-term relationship, and Jane unexpectedly falls for a handsome, flashy musician who helps them out of a tight spot on the side of the road — literally. But if you’ve read the original Sense and Sensibility, you’ll suspect immediately that the charismatic Sean Willis is not at all who he seems…

Here’s the thing.

I don’t tend to care for contemporary Christian fiction (a large percentage of what I’ve tried has been fluffy, boring, and poorly written). I definitely don’t feel a connection with good ol’ boy country-and-Western cowboy boot romance. I’m not a fan of iced sweet tea — I’m one of the some who like it hot. And, as a devoted Jane Austen reader, I often give modern “re-imaginings” of her work a wide berth.

But I picked up Jane of Austin at the library after getting to know the author on social media (and figuring I’d better see what it was about since Hillary Lodge is such a nice person), and boy, am I glad I did.

Jane of Austin gets off to a slightly slow start, but it has a lot to live up to and Lodge takes the original material seriously, particularly where character development and personal growth are concerned. The characters she has created are not simply carbon copies of Austen’s masterpieces (an impossible feat anyway) transplanted to a new time and place, but realistic people who echo the original brilliance while bringing a fresh perspective to the characters I thought I knew.

I’ll be honest — I would have appreciated more depth and development in Celia Woodward, the Elinor Dashwood character. Elinor is near and dear to my heart, but I realize much of that love stems from the fact that Elinor is unquestionably the protagonist of S&S. The majority of the story is told from her perspective, which may contribute to my lack of connection with Marianne, who gets very little POV. Jane of Austin, however, centers on Jane Woodward, the Marianne character, and I found myself grateful for it before many chapters had elapsed.

Jane Woodward is passionate about music and tea — not necessarily together — and it is her grit, energy, and creativity that fuel the Woodward sisters’ Valencia Tea Company. She is a little bit neurotic, in a way that could be annoying (and probably would be to a certain extent, if I knew her in real life) but Lodge writes about her so deftly that she managed to charm me immediately. She has clearly defined ideas about good tea (no microwaving or sugar-scooping allowed!) and good company, and she does not hesitate to make them known. When she dislikes someone, she holds doggedly to that first impression, but when she makes up her mind to like a person, she sees only the best and brightest parts of them.

Of course, this practice of never loving — or loathing — by halves has its downsides. If you’ve read the original novel or seen the 1995 film with Kate Winslet and Alan Rickman, you’ll know that Marianne/Jane’s downfall comes from loving not too wisely and all too well. The man she thinks is a Dreamy McDreamface turns out to be a scoundrel and a cad (translated into a modern setting quite seamlessly with Lodge’s skillful plotting) and his betrayal (which I, smugly, have always assumed that I would have seen coming, were I in her shoes) plunges her into the depths of despair. I knew all this would happen in Lodge’s retelling, but as I read it anew, for the first time I truly felt the pain of Marianne/Jane’s heartbreak and cringed at the knowledge that I might have made similar choices in the same situation. Seeing Marianne brought to life (well, on the page) as Jane in a world I recognized gave me a greater sympathy for a character I thought I already knew.

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This is the power of a story that transcends time, and the power of a writer who knows how to take the best elements of a classic story and transform them into something fresh and unexpected for the readers of a new generation. One of the reasons I sometimes balk at retellings of classic literature is because I resent the implication that the original is somehow lacking for modern readers. A classic is a book that retains its appeal over time, because it tells a story that remains relevant no matter the era. Sense and Sensibility, my favorite Austen novel, is one of these classics that will forever hold my heart — what it has to say about the truth of the human experience will never grow old for me.

Yet I thought my years of re-readings had exhausted what S&S had to say to me. Jane of Austin showed me that that was not the case. This new spin on an old favorite has both delighted me as a first-time reader and given me a reason to return to the cherished original with a renewed perspective — and a greater sympathy for a character whom I didn’t fully understand before.

As I eagerly anticipate the upcoming TV adaptation (had to shoehorn a mention of that in here somewhere!), I shall give Jane of Austin 4.5 stars out of 5. I withhold half a star because of some stilted sections of dialogue, and because one romance did not develop in a way that I felt satisfactory. I don’t wish to spoil anything, however, so if you really want to know what I’m talking about you may request further details in the comments (and if you do not want to know, then refrain from reading the comments). I will throw in a particularly kind word for Nina, who was such a lovable recreation of the nosy, obnoxiously good-hearted Mrs. Jennings that I found myself wishing I could hang out with her in real life.

And I cannot close without a special mention of one of my very favorite dryly humorous lines from S&S —

“How does dear, dear Norland look?” cried Marianne.

“Dear, dear Norland,” said Elinor, “probably looks much as it always does at this time of the year; the woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.”

“Oh,” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensation have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.”

“It is not every one,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.”

-chapter 16

Is this little quip beautifully reborn in a different context in Jane of Austin? I would leave that for you to guess and to find out for yourself — although the mere fact of my bringing it up ought to tell you that yes, it is. And it made me laugh out loud. Perfection. Brilliance. Chef’s kiss.

I only regret that I never actually enjoyed a fragrant cup of loose-leaf tea while reading this enchanting novel. Just another reason for a re-read, I suppose.

This post (originally published at The Book Cafe in 2022) is a part of The Summer of Jane Austen, a literary-inspired endeavor that will (I hope) fuel both a journey of the mind and my own journey to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting. More here.

I am a third of the way there. Whoa-oh! Living on a prayer (and not a lot of sleep these days, hence my cringey and outdated song references).

By “there,” of course, I am referring to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting, known as the AGM to in-the-know Janeites and “the Austen conference” to my longsuffering husband who does not have the brain space for one more acronym. He has enough to keep track of with all my internet friends, some of whom have the same name. (Shout-out to Lauren A and Lauren K, I love you guys.)

At the beginning of this Endeavor I outlined my plan to write as much as I possibly could this summer, both here on Substack and also on Medium, in an attempt to garner enough pecuniary support (via paid Substack subscriptions, Medium reader revenue, and “tips” on Ko-fi) to buy a ticket to the conference and pay for my lodging and travel to go there. I am delighted to announce that after such an overwhelming outpouring of support, I registered for the conference as soon as the online portal opened on June 19th. THANK YOU to everyone who read, shared, contributed, clicked on links, and generally put your metaphorical oar behind my boat. Is that how it works? If not, we’ve coined a phrase.

As aforementioned, the cost of my conference registration is only one-third of what I must earn before I can actually go—I have to factor in gas costs, food, and of course the price of the hotel at which the conference is held. But that first leap was the admission to the event itself, and I am incredibly grateful to have gotten this far with YOUR help. (Because even as you read this, you are helping!) And I intend to go even further, so buckle up for more Austen-related essays and posts through the end of August.

(Housekeeping note: if the “Summer of Jane Austen” posts are not really your thing, but you don’t want to unsubscribe from my Substack entirely, you can visit your subscription Settings and toggle off “Summer of Jane Austen” in order to continue receiving just my not-Austen-related posts.)

As I look back on the only other time I traveled to the AGM, I’m struck by how everything was so very different, and yet the same. My first and latest trip to the AGM was in 2016. In those days I was single, in a nebulously defined “talking” stage with the young man who would later that year become my boyfriend and is now my husband. (Also the father of my children. He wears many hats. Until our one-year-old pulls them off and chews on them.) I am now married and a mother. Back then, I was naïve and opinionated, yet timid and hungry for approval and validation. Now I am a little more experienced, still very opinionated, and a bit more secure in who I am and how I feel. I have a stronger corrective lens prescription, a larger body, a more tired mind, a greater number of distractions that keep me from reading my most favorite author, years of joy and sadness and fear and anxiety and a pandemic and postpartum depression and yet—

And yet Jane Austen has remained an island of constancy.

In eight years I have read a great many books. Perhaps not as many as I could have—certainly not as many as I would like to have read—but a conservative estimate would be around three hundred new-to-me titles. I’ve found some new favorites and revisited some beloveds, but I have not strayed from Austen. I think the reasons for this are threefold.

(I made sure to condense them into three, at any rate, because saying “threefold” sounds a lot more Janeish than saying just two or four or five.)

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1.       As I’ve learned more about literature, I understand her work better (and I still have a long way to go)

I am slowly working on my bachelor’s degree in English with an emphasis on creative writing. Though there is, obviously, a great deal of writing involved in such an undertaking. But it’s the reading that I’ve done in this course of study that has cemented in my mind a) just how much Austen has contributed to the development of the English novel and b) how truly without peer she is amongst other writers of humor, of satire, of social commentary and romance and family life. I’ve read so many good books both in and out of school in these last eight years, and yet no one can touch her. (Did you know she invented the literary style of free indirect discourse? This is when the narrative follows a character’s thoughts without directly transcribing them as if they were unspoken dialogue; it allows an omniscient narrator to get inside multiple heads while also giving us a front-row seat to the action or lack thereof. Also, it’s funny!)

As an early reader of Austen (I read Pride and Prejudice at fourteen, the summer after eighth grade), I was a bit scornful of the idea of themes and symbolism. I wanted to take a lot of her work at face value. I was the proverbial “the curtains are just blue because the author wanted them to be blue!” reader, and did not want to consider just how much effort and revision Jane Austen put into her novels. I shall write about this more at a later date, but suffice it now to say that reading the writings of her contemporaries has given me fresh appreciation for her timelessness.

Learning more about Austen’s life and times, too, has helped me to better understand her writing. Certainly there is something to be said for the idea of the “death of the Author”— that once a text has been published and is available to be read, it belongs to its readers and what they make of it. The intent of the author is more or less irrelevant. (This is an argument made by Roland Barthes and is very popular in a lot of postmodern criticism.) But though I concede that a reasonable critique can be made of any work regardless of authorial intent, so long as it can be supported from the text itself, I do think knowing something of an author’s life and cultural context can inform our understanding of their artistic choices. We do not read Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey in the same way audiences of the Regency period would have, and we are not the target audience for which Austen was writing. Knowing this helps shape our understanding of what she was satirizing and commenting upon.

(By the way, this— “Austen, Annotated”— is the theme of this year’s AGM! )

2.       Her characters and situations are still relevant because she wrote so clearly and honestly—her wit is also timeless.

Austen’s characters are finely drawn, her dialogue sharp and witty, her situations wholly relatable and her observations of human nature are rivaled by few. Charles Dickens, another social commentator and writer of biting satire, is often cited as a incisive observer of humanity, but Dickens’ characters of every description often devolve into caricatures and his drawing of female characters leaves much to be desired. Jane Austen, however, wrote of women as whole human beings, “rational creatures” with rich inner lives, complicated motivations, and valuable insights on life and love. Her heroes, too, are seen through a female gaze and not simply men living in a man’s world.

As I wrote in this piece, Mr. Bennet is one of those complex characters— likable on the surface, a cautionary tale beneath. It would be easy enough for a story of social satire (as Pride and Prejudice unmistakably is) to showcase archetypes rather than full formed people. But real life is not so black and white, and neither are the people who populate P&P.

The humor that fills her books—even the generally stolid Mansfield Park—has also endured even as societal conventions and cultural mores have shifted. Whomst among us has not met a person of such insufferable and un-self-aware hypochondria as Mary Musgrove? a wild youth with no prudence or caution like Lydia Bennet? a man obsessed with his own dubious driving skills as John Thorpe?

And, of course, Austen is not perfect! Edmund Bertram is still a nincompoop, and Mr. Knightley did not need to hold Emma when she was a BABY, and the second proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice is not wholly satisfactory. Here I stand.

3.       As I have matured, I’ve come to appreciate a lot more about her that may have gone over my head—or at least did not stick there—as a young adult.

I suppose I am still what may be considered a young adult, being just a year older than Mr. Darcy (from whose speech in chapter 58 of Pride and Prejudice the title of this post is lifted and altered) but I have toted around enough small children for enough time that my lower back is beginning to feel Elderly.

The romance and witticisms drew me in as a teenager; the sometimes-caustic observations and thought-provoking critique of established norms have driven my own writing as an adult. As I’ve passed Charlotte Lucas and Anne Elliot’s ages, I’ve realized afresh the panic a woman of that era would feel in an absence of a husband (even as I, a liberated woman of the 21st century, am happily married and a mother). As I’ve budgeted and pinched pennies and cried over the cost of living, I’ve thought of Elinor Dashwood struggling to keep her family afloat with even less agency. As I’ve grieved the death of beloved family members, I’ve come back to Austen’s poignancy in capturing feelings of loss and longing in Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. Miss Bates has ceased to be an object of amusement and has garnered my pity, much as Emma’s own coming-of-age moment produced.

I’ve also realized that the wearing of an “ironic” t-shirt (as you may see in the cover image) simply perpetuates myths about out-of-context Jane Austen quotes and does not have the effect I would have liked, at 21. (“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” is a quote from Caroline Bingley, who is The Worst. A lot of people think it is a serious quip by Austen herself, and it’s not. Even if you like reading yourself—and are more sincere than Caroline—it’s not a great choice for a t-shirt. Quotes need context.)

As I read and reread Austen, from her Juvenilia to her more measured posthumously-published work, from her personal letters to her “own darling child” (P&P, of course) I am drawn back to her prose like a younger Bennet sister to a haberdashery. There is always something new, always something appealing, always something I cannot resist. I have her quotes taped up above my kitchen sink, her silhouette on a pin adorning my bookbag, her books (multiple copies!) scattered around my harum-scarum home. Even as my life continues and hers stands still, I shall never outgrow Jane Austen, and I never want to.

This post is a part of The Summer of Jane Austen, a literary-inspired endeavor that will (I hope) fuel both a journey of the mind and my own journey to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting. More here.

Yes, this is a picture of Donald Sutherland as Mr. Bennet in the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (P&P). It is no secret that I do not care for this film. I have nothing against Donald Sutherland as an actor— indeed, the same may be said for most of the talented cast—but the character he portrayed (and portrayed well!) was not the Mr. Bennet of the book. And in the wake of Donald Sutherland’s passing, my admittedly Austen-biased social media feeds have exploded with fond tributes to his portrayal of Mr. Bennet.

Except, unfortunately , Mr. Bennet sucks. Here’s why, in no particular order.

He is selfish and indolent, more interested in his man cave than his daughters.

Mr. Bennet can usually be found in his library— “not to be disturbed” as he says in the 1995 miniseries. What is he doing in there, exactly? Just reading, it turns out. He is not conducting business, nor writing anything of value, nor making provisions for his family in the event of his death (whereupon they will be unceremoniously kicked out of Longbourn estate so Mr. Collins can set up beekeeping, or grow rutabagas, or breed llamas, or do whatever strikes his fancy and garners the approval of the noble Lady Catherine de Bourgh).

Listen, I am all for reading. I have heard it said that extensive reading improves a lady’s mind, and one can hope it might be prevailed upon to do the same for a gentleman (privileged and self-centered as he may be). But it has not improved upon Mr. Bennet’s talents as a father. He spends little to no time with his children, has not cared enough about their upbringing to secure a good governess for them (or to ensure that his wife does so), calls them “silly and ignorant, like other girls” (chapter 1) and is only driven to stir his rear end out of his winged armchair to go call on Mr. Bingley with the incentive of being able to troll his wife about said call. Which brings me to…

He mocks Mrs. Bennet in front of their children. Not cool.

Look, a teasing relationship is all well and good. I feel quite certain Darcy and Lizzy will have that! (More on them later.) But the fun Mr. Bennet has at Mrs. Bennet’s expense is not mutual. She is annoying, to be sure. But he also chose to marry her. He was blinded by a pretty face in his youth and made a hasty choice (which he had far more agency to make than she did, by the way!) and now they’ve been stuck together over 20 years, but them’s the breaks in a patriarchal society, Mr. B. You’ve buttered your bread, now lie in it.

He has made no worldly provision for his daughters despite having at least fifteen years to get his act together.

We are not talking about some sort of Bronson Alcott type who believes God has called him to the ascetic life and he’s going to raise his family in dire poverty and live on fruit and seeds. No. Mr. Bennet has a nice house with a nice library in a nice neighborhood and yet he is fully aware that when he kicks the bucket, Collins the clergyman and his bees (maybe rutabagas, llamas, and Lady Catherine) will zoom in and take his place. Mr. Bennet has five daughters who by British entailment law, which I do not pretend to understand and will not waste time attempting to explain, cannot inherit the Longbourn estate because they do not wear breeches. Great system. Totally fair for everyone. Jane Austen was definitely saying this was a good idea and everyone should keep doing it.

/sarcasm

(You have to insert these disclaimers on the internet these days. The AI-ification of the world wide web is destroying reading comprehension, I do believe.)

Now, if the Bennets had had a son, the responsibility of caring for his mother and many sisters would have fallen to that guy. (Let us hope he would not have been another John Dashwood.) But they didn't! Lydia, their last baby, is fifteen going on sixteen (not exactly innocent as a rose). Mr. Bennet has had a decade and a half to get used to the idea that his girls are going to be destitute, and he has done diddly-squat about it.

He makes no attempt to corral the behavior of his younger daughters when it matters, and only steps in where no material benefit can be gained

Lydia’s wild behavior, raucous obnoxiousness, and underage drinking get a pass, but Mary sitting down at the Netherfield pianoforte is what prompts the Father Knows Best remonstrance? My good sir. Priorities.

Elizabeth is openly Mr. Bennet’s favorite, and Jane never seems to garner any of his snarky remarks, and Lydia and Kitty completely ignore his quips, but poor Mary is the one he chooses to blatantly make fun of. “What say you, Mary?” he teases her, “For you are a young lady of deep reflection, I know, and read great books and make extracts.” (chapter 2) Heaven forbid Mr. Bennet appreciate that one of his daughters wants to read big books and be a bluestocking! Heaven forbid he actually throw her a crumb of approval. And when Mary “obliges” the company by playing and singing at the Netherfield ball, heaven forbid he just let her do her thing. (To be fair, Elizabeth is the one who urges her father to stop Mary. But then she feels bad, because Elizabeth has a conscience and a sense of justice.)

Mary's powers were by no means fitted for such a display: her voice was weak, and her manner affected. -- Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at Jane, to see how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to Bingley. She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs of derision at each other, and at Darcy, who continued, however, impenetrably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his interference, lest Mary should be singing all night. He took the hint, and when Mary had finished her second song, said aloud, "That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit."

   Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted; and Elizabeth, sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, was afraid her anxiety had done no good. Others of the party were now applied to. (chapter 18)

And, of course, when Lydia goes off to Brighton, Mr. Bennet makes no objection. When Elizabeth “represents to him all the improprieties” of Lydia’s behavior in public, Mr. Bennet shrugs off her concerns. “Lydia will never be easy till she has exposed herself in some public place or other,” he says, “and we can never expect her to do it with so little expense or inconvenience to her family as under the present circumstances.” (chapter 41) A great point! Gotta save that money to buy more books for the dude den which Mr. Collins can then throw away to make more space for the collectors’ editions of Fordyce’s Sermons. Good plan. No notes.

/sarcasm again

Mr. Bennet’s comeuppance near the end of the novel does not redeem his bad qualities throughout.

Yes, when Lydia runs away with Wickham, Mr. Bennet is somewhat abashed. He can’t resist getting in a few digs at his wife’s dramatic misery, of course (“It gives such an elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same: I will sit in my library, in my nightcap and powdering gown, and give as much trouble as I can”) but he admits he was wrong to not have protected Lydia. “Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it,” he tells Elizabeth (chapter 48).

But Mr. Bennet is not the one who ultimately finds Lydia, nor the one who pays Wickham off to make her “respectable,” nor the one who presses Aunt Gardiner for details on how it all came about. (He could have asked. I’m just saying. He chose to chill instead.) And though in the 1995 miniseries he says, “I’m heartily ashamed of myself, Lizzy. But don’t despair, it will pass... and no doubt more quickly than it should,” (episode 6) no such self-awareness is present in the novel. Indeed, as Lydia and Wickham return to Longbourn as a married couple, he merely gives them the silent treatment at first, allows himself one eye roll at a particularly indecorous remark of Lydia’s, and then dryly remarks upon Wickham’s “simpers and smirks” (chapter 53) as the dubiously happy couple departs.

I said I was going to do this in no particular order, but this last one is the kicker and that’s why I saved it:

Jane Austen doesn’t want us to like Mr. Bennet. He isn’t meant to be anyone’s favorite.

Austen’s characters are not two-dimensional caricatures. Mr. Bennet is neither mere comic relief nor a beleaguered, well-meaning old man. He is funny, to be sure, and he has a ready wit and a decent appreciation for his cleverest daughter. But he is also all the things I listed above.

In satirizing polite society as she did so deftly in P&P, Jane Austen gave us a portrait of a man who is more complex than he seems on the surface. She also let us see him both through the fretful eyes of his wife (so trying to her poor nerves!) and through the benevolent eyes of his favorite child (“I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to any one less worthy” he says upon hearing of Mr. Darcy’s proposal in chapter 59. Jane pretty much just gets a pat on the head). Elizabeth is eager for her father’s approval and amused by his “diversions,” but please remember that Elizabeth is not exactly a model of accurate intuition and good character judgment. (Let me present exhibit A: Mr. Wickham. Let me present exhibit B: Mr. Darcy.)

Elizabeth is prejudiced in favor of Mr. Bennet because in many ways she is a lot like him. She has a quick wit, a sharp tongue, and a tendency to “delight in anything ridiculous.” But Elizabeth grows and matures throughout the novel, and Mr. Bennet falls back into his old ways of sarcasm and solitude as soon as the wedding bells chime. Mr. Bennet’s head was turned by a pretty face, and he married without respect or affection; Elizabeth, whose fine eyes caught the attention of a good man who had (still has!) his own maturing to do, married someone she can appreciate as an equal. Teasing and laughing as their relationship may be, Elizabeth and Darcy will ultimately be very happy.

Don’t be a Mr. Bennet, Jane Austen is telling us. He has only his books for comfort. His mind—his understanding, his affections, his perception of human nature—have not been improved by his extensive reading. He lives only to make sport for his neighbors, and to laugh at them in his turn.

Elizabeth Bennet—and you—deserve better.

Okay, your turn! Tell me what I missed about Mr. Bennet. Do you feel he deserves a second chance? Or is he even worse than I have made him out to be? Leave a comment and I will read and respond with pleasure! If you choose to share this post on social media, I shall be excessively gratified. (Do tag me, please, so I can respond!)

This post is a part of The Summer of Jane Austen, a literary-inspired endeavor that will (I hope) fuel both a journey of the mind and my own journey to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting. More here.

(I cannot possibly be accused of burying the lede this time.)

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.” Thus speaks Isabella Thorpe in chapter six of Northanger Abbey, convincing the impressionable but lovable Catherine that she– the two-timing and shallow Isabella– really is a good friend. SPOILER ALERT, she is not. The words sound good, but the intent underneath is only to scheme and manipulate.

Why, then, is Isabella so frequently quoted as if her veneered little quip about her ostensible loyalty was a thoughtful aphorism Jane Austen wrote in a sermon to young ladies? 

Well, the short answer is of course that media literacy is dying and people like to quote famous dead authors without actually reading them. But as Virginia Woolf once said**, “The problem with quotes taken out of context is that though technically the person quoted might have put those words to paper at some point in their life, it does not follow that the lifting of them from a fictional character’s mouth represents any part of the author’s own opinions.”

The problem with attaching this quote to Jane Austen’s name is twofold.

1. It implies the words are meant to be taken seriously (they’re not!) and

2. It implies that the sentiment reflects the opinions of Jane Austen, thoughtful and incisive author, rather than the opinions (that is, stated opinions) of Isabella Thorpe, airheaded and disloyal fictional character.

If we attributed the idea behind every line spoken by an imaginary person to the real writer who put the words together, we’d have such pithy gems as,

“You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill.”

—C.S. Lewis

and,

“If they had rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

—Charles Dickens

and,

“I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days.”

—William Shakespeare.

Somehow I don’t see any of these quips selling well on a coffee mug or tote bag.

No one attributes lines spoken by the White Witch of Narnia, Ebenezer Scrooge, or Richard III to their authors as if they reflected the authors’ own worldview. (Of course, we spend an awful lot more collective time carefully dissecting the works of male writers and are less likely to dismiss any of these as “chick lit” and relegate their writings to feel-good quotes on gift shop merchandise, but that’s another topic for another day…)

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But when Jane Austen writes sardonically in the voice of a character whom we’re supposed to laugh at and find insufferable? Oh yeah, that’ll preach, as I think the youths say. I don’t know. I’m no longer a youth. I’m a mom reading books that are over 200 years old and getting annoyed when people cite them the wrong way.

Caroline Bingley is another of these insufferable characters, saying something she does not really mean for the purpose of impressing those around her. Well, specifically one person who is barely paying attention to her (Mr. Darcy). Caroline isn’t actually a great reader, but she maintains that she is.

Jane Austen, meanwhile, doesn’t actually tell us in so many words that Caroline is not a “great reader.” In chapter 11 of Pride and Prejudice, whence this line springs, she provides context clues that Caroline’s professed love of books is all talk and no action. Caroline has previously spoken of books in terms of their purchase and how elegant they appear in the library at Pemberley, but mentions none of her favorite titles; now she takes up the second volume of what Mr. Darcy is reading, a choice that cannot be particularly entertaining for someone who, we must infer, has not read the first volume herself; and she is so busy trying to get Mr. Darcy’s attention by inquiring after his reading progress that she finally gives up her own attempt to read altogether, and then declaims a bunch of hogwash about how much she loves to read.

Jane was laughing in her sleeve at Caroline, and you are supposed to do the same. Not by emblazoning her words upon the face of Merch and earnestly claiming them as your own sentiment, but by understanding that Caroline Bingley is a figure of satire and that the study of her character is intended to make you examine your own.

Perhaps, then, we ought to follow the example of Michael Scott in The Office.

It would look something like this:

“There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can be more devoted to home than I am.”

—Mrs. Elton (ugh)

—Emma, volume two, chapter 14 (which contains context describing Mrs. Elton’s various barbarisms and general insincerity and mindless prattle)

—Jane Austen (someone who ironically did indeed spend a lot of time at home and was quite devoted to domestic felicity at Chawton Cottage)

All right, all right, perhaps that’s a bit much but at the very least I am begging people to cite the character they are quoting when a line of fiction is presented as an inspirational motivational poster child. Please?

Let us have context, at least. And let us do the authors we claim to admire the honor of reading said context for ourselves, and neither googling “good quotes from Jane Austen that will make me look smart on the internet” nor baldly attributing fictional thoughts from a fictional mind to the very real genius and psyche of a very real person.

Unless those thoughts are from Henry Tilney. In that case, I do believe Miss Austen’s own sentiments were probably pretty well reflected in his witty repartee.

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

—Henry Tilney, chapter 14 of Northanger Abbey

**no she did not. Don’t be so gullible.

This post is a part of The Summer of Jane Austen, a literary-inspired endeavor that will (I hope) fuel both a journey of the mind and my own journey to the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual General Meeting. More here.

Now, eight years later, life is very different but we want to go to the JASNA AGM again. There is much to be planned — travel to arrange, childcare to arrange and rearrange, PTO to be taken, et cetera and so forth — but we want to make it happen. These last few years have contained a lot of joy, to be sure, but have also had their share of work and worry. (Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery; I quit these odious subjects as soon as I can.) An adventure together to a conference focusing on the writer we both love best seems a splendid way to reconnect, relax, and rekindle our literary efforts. (We both like to write, in case you hadn’t picked up on that on my part at least.)

The problem is that going to this conference costs several hundred dollars, and the travel and accommodations to make the trip happen will cost a good bit too. Sadly, neither of us have a fortune of ten thousand or even five thousand a year. My best friend and her husband are in the throes of graduate school and the costs associated with that worthy endeavor, and my husband and I have a mortgage and two small children who like to eat. We do not have much money to fund this trip, and sadly the Rollings Reliable Baking Powder Company has at the time of this writing STILL not reached out to offer me their financial support in exchange for sponsored melodrama. (That’s an allusion to a different author — L.M. Montgomery — for those playing along at home.)

What I do have, in abundance, is a plethora of opinions about Jane Austen’s novels. (What I do not have in great abundance is time but we’ll figure that one out as we go.) I have a Substack. (You Are Here.) I have an Internet connection. I have a laptop with a working keyboard. So I am going to write essays about Jane Austen to be published free, gratis, and for nothing right here on Something Funny, Something True. (Although I would be quite grateful if you chose to support this work by upgrading to a paid subscription for $5 per month, and I’ll insert a handy little button to do so right here. If you’re one of those who’s already done this, I’m extremely grateful.)

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I am going to submit pieces to paying publications as well, and I am going to publish some of my Substack articles behind the paywall on Medium, and in so doing I hope to earn enough over the course of the summer to pay for the Annual General Meeting.

I hope you will join me.

This endeavor on my part requires nothing from you on your part except to read what I am putting before you now (excellent work thus far; thank you!) and, if you are feeling terribly generous, to share it on the social media platform of your choice. Engaging with my work as a free or a paid member helps to boost my visibility in the mysterious and somewhat spooky Algorithm that chooses whose writing gets read and whose is forgotten, and your likes and comments and subscribes really do mean a lot.

I shall return to this post as I publish each piece, and will link them all here as they are completed.

Good Novels and Intolerable Stupidity

New to Jane Austen? Here’s a Curated Reading List.

Mr. Bennet is a Terrible Dad

“Such I Was From One-and-Twenty to Nine-and-Twenty” (And Continue Still)

We Did It, Jane.

Jane Austen Refuses to Punch Down

In conclusion, I suppose I may butcher a quote from A Lady herself, and say that I write not for Fame, but only with a view to pecuniary Emolument.