Tag Archives: Jane Austen

Secondary characters

Updated on February 25, 2013 by Janet Mullany

Where would we be without them? Those lovable, annoying, fascinating second-tier characters that pop in and out of the main action, as onlookers, catalysts, or just sheer entertainment. For the writer they have the annoying habit of grabbing the limelight far too often, occasionally getting extremely uppity and demanding a book of their very own.

One of my favorite secondary characters is Miss Bates from Emma, who was so brilliantly portrayed in the movie version by Sophie Thompson (younger sister of Emma), who seems to specialize in annoying characters–her screen credits also include the role of Mary Musgrove in the 1995 Persuasion. Poor Miss Bates, destined for a life of genteel povery and the neverending patronage of Mr. Knightley and his lovely new bride. Have you ever wondered why Miss Bates never married?–other than the fact that her interminable chatter may have frightened suitors off; or is her verbal overflow a defense? She was a vicar’s daughter, after all, and we know there were two eligible men, Mr. Knightley and Mr. Weston in the neighborhood. I think there’s a mystery in Miss Bates’ past. The scary thing, too, is that Mr. Knightley, in his late thirties, is considered a catch, whereas Miss Bates, who may be younger, has catapulted into middle age and hopeless spinsterhood. (Note to self: save topic of aging for another post.)

Then there’s Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins lite, played so sympathetically you almost liked him, portrayed by Tom Hollander in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice. Or David Bamber’s superlatively greasy Mr. Collins in the A&E P&P. I so identified David Bamber with his role that every time he appeared in Rome as Cicero I hoped he’d dance again…

Who are your favorite secondary characters? Who deserves their own book? Do tell!

Posted in Jane Austen, Reading, Writing | Tagged Jane Austen, secondary characters | 5 Replies

Puikybe ir prietarai

Updated on February 25, 2013 by Elena Greene

Don’t worry, this is still Risky Regencies and you have not been transported to some strange country.

Or only a bit strange—they have, at least, heard of Jane Austen. They even quite cleverly translated the title to keep the alliteration. This is Pride and Prejudice, a copy my mother brought back from her twice-annual trip to Lithuania.

Both my parents emigrated from Lithuania as children. Though I was born in the U.S., my first language was Lithuanian. In fact, I went to kindergarten knowing very little English. Perhaps not the smoothest way to integrate a child into a “new” country, but somehow I managed. I know that growing up bilingual has made other languages (perhaps even computer languages) easier. Still, I sometimes wonder if I can blame my occasional awkwardness with word choices and phrasing on this early linguistic confusion. Or maybe not. Maybe I’m just the Queen of Awkward Sentences, doomed to seemingly eternal revisions. 🙂

Anyway, I find this book and its packaging quite interesting. Though the title is clever the cover art is many centuries off. One would think they could have found something more appropriate. At least it’s not Victorian!

I read the back blurb, and was surprised to see that they gave the entire plot in a nutshell, spoilers and all. If, that is, there is such a thing as a spoiler for a book that’s been around since 1813.

Overall, it makes me happy people all over the globe can enjoy Jane’s genius. I wonder how she would feel about seeing her works in so many translations? Have any of you run across any other interesting translations? What have your experiences been with foreign languages? How do they affect your reading and writing?

Elena, hoping someday there will be Lithuanian editions of her own works
www.elenagreene.com
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award nominee

Posted in Jane Austen, Reading, Risky Regencies | Tagged Book covers, foreign translations, Jane Austen | 5 Replies

Fun with Fashion Plates

Updated on February 23, 2013 by Myretta

I love Regency Fashion plates. Who doesn’t? We love our costumes, sometimes flattering, sometimes over-the-top. Going through the extant pages from Ackermann’s Repository or La Belle Assemblée, is not so different from watching the red carpet show before the Academy Awards or going through the best- and worst-dressed photos aver the event. Who gets it right? Who is setting a trend? What would we be wearing if we were there?

When we started on a site redesign at The Republic of Pemberley (Yes. I know, I’m always talking about Pemberley. But, in my defense, I spend a lot of my life there and it’s a major point of reference) in 2011, we decided to try to use era fashion plates as a guiding theme of the new design. In preparing for this, I discovered another wonderful facet of Regency fashion plates: their topicality. Of course, the clothes are the focal point of the illustrations and that’s why they were published, but a closer look reveals wonderful little vignettes in many of them. In general, it was the vignettes I focused on when looking for the appropriate image for each of our discussion boards.

Want to see some?

Emma

Who can forget Emma‘s many half-finished drawings and determination to take Harriett Smith’s likeness.

The sitting was altogether very satisfactory; she was quite enough pleased with the first day’s sketch to wish to go on. There was no want of likeness, she had been fortunate in the attitude, and as she meant to throw in a little improvement to the figure, to give a little more height, and considerably more elegance, she had great confidence of its being in every way a pretty drawing at last, and of its filling its destined place with credit to them both — a standing memorial of the beauty of one, the skill of the other, and the friendship of both; with as many other agreeable associations as Mr. Elton’s very promising attachment was likely to add.

And how lucky to find a plate (albeit French) of one woman drawing another.

Sense & Sensibility

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

“Oh!” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensations 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.”

The fashion plate we found for Sense & Sensibility plays off Marianne’s sensibility, translating her passion for dead leaves into a stormy landscape featuring two women. For what is S&S but a story of the sisters?

Persuasion

Persuasion took us to the seaside as Anne Elliot, the Musgroves and Captain Wentworth traveled to Lyme Regis.

Anne found Captain Benwick again drawing near her. Lord Byron’s “dark blue seas” could not fail of being brought forward by their present view, and she gladly gave him all her attention as long as attention was possible. It was soon drawn, perforce, another way.

What would you take to walk on the cobb and examine the ships coming into port? A telescope, naturally.

Mansfield Park

Speaking of the sea, for Mansfield Park, we thought that we’d place our beloved Fanny Price at Portsmouth, her birthplace and the scene of one of distress and realization.

“I have to inform you, my dearest Fanny, that Henry has been down to Portsmouth to see you; that he had a delightful walk with you to the dockyard last Saturday, and one still more to be dwelt on the next day, on the ramparts; when the balmy air, the sparkling sea, and your sweet looks and conversation were altogether in the most delicious harmony, and afforded sensations which are to raise ecstasy even in retrospect. ..”

Northanger Abbey

For our last two novels, we chose, not vignettes but individuals. Northanger Abbey is Catherine Morland’s novel and the fashion plate we chose, a young woman from the back, makes me think of Catherine during her first visit to the Upper Assembly Rooms.

The company began to disperse when the dancing was over — enough to leave space for the remainder to walk about in some comfort; and now was the time for a heroine, who had not yet played a very distinguished part in the events of the evening, to be noticed and admired. Every five minutes, by removing some of the crowd, gave greater openings for her charms. She was now seen by many young men who had not been near her before. Not one, however, started with rapturous wonder on beholding her, no whisper of eager inquiry ran round the room, nor was she once called a divinity by anybody. Yet Catherine was in very good looks, and had the company only seen her three years before, they would now have thought her exceedingly handsome.

Pride & Prejudice

For Pride & Prejudice, who else but Fitzwilliam Darcy? I dare say that, when Pride & Prejudice is mentioned, not a one of us does not first think of Mr. Darcy. How could it be otherwise?

Mr. Bingley was good-looking and gentlemanlike; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report, which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.

The process of finding the right fashion plates for each of the discussion boards on the Republic of Pemberley site was a lot of fun and revealed things about the novels and about the fashion plates that we might not have noticed before. We also enjoyed finding just the right plate for each of our non-Jane boards.

I imagine we all have different images in our minds for Jane Austen’s settings and characters. What would you picked for each of the novels?

Posted in Jane Austen, Regency | Tagged fashion plates, Jane Austen, The Republic of Pemberley | 7 Replies

Round and about the weather

Updated on February 13, 2013 by Janet Mullany

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Originally this was going to be a post about weather during the Regency weather, something I was determined to blog about before the official arrival of spring, although here (near Washington DC) it’s warm and sunny and daffodils are blooming. I did however do some digressions, some of which turned out to be more interesting.

England in Jane Austen’s time was in the grip of a minor Ice Age that had begun in medieval times and lasted up until the mid-nineteenth century–hence the snowy cold winters of A Christmas Carol and the Pickwick Papers. It was cold enough for the river Thames to freeze over completely, which it did for several months in some particularly cold years. In the sixteenth century Henry VIII traveled from London to Greenwich along the Thames by sleigh. What better opportunity for the enterprising merchants of London to set up shop on the river, thus creating Frost Fairs, the most famous of which (featured in Orlando by Virginia Woolf) was held in 1608.

The Frost Fair of 1814 was the last of its kind, and featured an elephant being led across the ice near Blackfriars Bridge (according to one source I found), donkey rides, and the roasting of a whole sheep on the ice. People had to pay to see the sheep roasted and then pay for a portion of “Lapland Sheep.” Nine printing presses churned out souvenir items. This fair only lasted four days until a thaw set in.

The weather, of course, is always a safe conversation topic–particularly if the man of your dreams has appeared unexpectedly:

But it was then too late, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again and talked of the weather.

That’s Elinor, from Sense and Sensibility, whose keen sense of the appropriate phrase gives her a certain affinity with Jim’s aunt in A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas:

And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim’s Aunt, Miss Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, “Would you like anything to read?”

I have to mention a couple of fascinating sites I came across while trying to find a good Jane Austen quote about the weather (the one I was originally looking for, about a stupendously cold snap in London, is in Emma, I think). There is for your edification, a site with a search function for Sense and Sensibility, and other books too, Tilneys and Trap-doors, and that site also includes the Henry Tilney Fan Site–yes, the man who knows how to wash muslin. Who would’ve thought it.

Any polite comments on the weather, literary examples thereof, or really excellent time wasters online?

Posted in Jane Austen, Regency, Research | Tagged Frost Fairs, Jane Austen, weather | 4 Replies

How well do you know Jane?

Updated on February 9, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

I was inspired by Megan’s Quizilla post a few days ago (and also seeking to procrastinate at work!), so spent waaay too much time taking on-line quizzes and reading various England-travel websites planning a fantasy tour. The product is today’s post–a fill–in-the-blank Janeite quiz I found! Each quote comes from an Austen novel (and movie, as the case may be), and you just have to fill in the blanks with the missing word. (I got 7 out of the 10 right). I’ll post answers tomorrow, and just for fun will send a copy of one of my books to the person who posts the most right answers here before then!