To All,

Re: Letters from Pemberly, I've read The Watsons and Sanditon, and (although I don't remember them very well), I remember both of them as shockingly bad. Sanditon appeared to have been written by a Georgette Heyer fan rather than an Austen fan, and included a fake abduction as an important plot device. Even the chapters written by Jane Austen were far below her published standard.

I'm not sure if Austen abandoned these books because they were so bad, or perhaps she dramatically improved all of her books through extensive rewriting.  The chapters she wrote seemed to lack her normal wit - which may indicate that she wrote for plot first, and added some of the humor upon revision.

Re: Irony in Pride and Prejudice and the teaching of literature.  I've always thought that novels are over-emphasized in High School English classes here in America.  The objectives of High School English should be:
1) Teach kids to read and write.
2) Introduce kids to the Western Cannon, and to the various forms of literature.

The concept that novels are "literature" at all is a new one - as we Austen fans know. There is no reason a high school English cirriculum couldn't teach history, philosophy, political essays, and mythology instead of novels. No doubt English departments should teach a couple of novels over a four year period, but the problem with teaching MAINLY novels is that the student is reading novels, but writing expository essays. If the writing emphasis in high school English were on learning to write fiction, it would make sense to read novels. Since it is instead on learning to write effective, argumentative essays, kids should read more argumentative essays. Kids never read essays, their teachers can't teach them how to write essays, and everyone wonders why.

Of course it is reasonable to wonder if essay writing SHOULD be the writing emphasis in high school. I think it is a reasonable emphasis because such writing develops precision of thought and of expression. Please, teachers, don't tell kids to tell you what they're going to say, say it, and then repeat it in their conclusion. Redundancy is NOT the essence of good writing.

Dear Ash,

You will be thrilled to hear that I am staying out of this "Male Voices, How Dare You?" thing. Something tells me that incautious is not the way to go. Good Luck.

Tonight I find myself in a state that I can not spell. I am with one of my South Carolina grandsons visiting his aunt (one of my other daughters) and cousins (some of my other grandchildren. When the daughter I’m visiting lived in California I was OK with the spelling. She then moved to North Carolina and I was still OK. Then two years ago she moved to a state, which if it did not have a postal abbreviation, I could never refer to in print at all. I have reference, of course, to CT.

From the Meister: Julie, that is Connecticut to you. Southern men
can't spell the names of Yankee states because that part of school maps
is left blank in the south - Or covered with water (?) - Whatever.

I brought along my laptop so I could deal with this pledge thing. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the pledges, and the more I think about them the more unsure I become. I would like to start by pledging to push harder for students to read Jane Austen. Most of the kids - hell, ALL the kids that come into the library with their reading list are looking to me to point them towards "something short". I have done so and that has resulted in a whole huge group of kids who have read The Red Badge of Courage. The Jane Austen on their list is always P&P and whereas I do love the smell of irony in the morning, I have been avoiding sending kids to P&P in the hope that I can keep them from being turned off of Jane Austen early on. I had rather they read Red Badge now and save JA until some time when it is not a book they have to read. NO more. I am going to encourage them to read P&P and to come back to me if they get bogged down.

Next I pledge to pay each of my granddaughters fifty dollars to read P&P when they are thirteen years old. I can not think of a better way to spend my money. I will, of course, insist on having a discussion with them after they read the book and at no time during that discussion will the word "irony" be mentioned. Next I pledge to figure out and justify to myself why I did not include my grandsons in the second pledge. (I can only hope Sherry has not read this far).

Meister: That will be money well spent. You may also be as shocked
as I was when listening to all the intelligent things that my nieces had
to say about P&P, Persuasion, and Tess. I don't think about those two
youngsters (10 and 14) as I once did - They are now awesome to me.

I also pledge to remember that not all my attempts to introduce literature to those around me have worked out like I planned and that I will have some failures in the future, although nothing on the same scale as what happened when I took my four children to visit Hemingway’s grave. At the time of the visit the children ranged in age from two to twelve. As we drew near to Ketchum, my wife of that time said "I have no interest whatsoever in seeing Hemingway’s grave. Let me out right here at this shop." Whatever happened to that woman anyway? So the kids and I go to the cemetery and find the grave. As we stood there I was waxing poetic and serious about Hemingway and his contributions to literature, when suddenly the sprinkler system comes on and my children go laughing and screaming back to the car. I tried to maintain a more dignified demeanor but I’m afraid it was hopeless. So whereas my children do remember the visit, their memories have nothing to do with Hemingway the author, but as Hemingway (whoever the hell he was) that was buried where the sprinkler system went off and drenched them and their pontificating daddy. Darcy surely got it right with his statement to the effect that even the most serious, worthwhile and well-intended act or idea can be destroyed by a joke. (I would give the exact quote but I am removed here in CT from my usual sources.)

My last pledge is not to dispute Hardy with you. Your remarks have the ring of truth about them and I can’t hold my own in a debate with anyone who knows what they are talking about.

Meister: That has always been my approach to things, but
I am very sorry to hear you say that. Damn! This means that
Julie will continue to win all the debates around here. This is
bad news, big guy! On the other hand, your pledges are good.

Dear male voices,

Do men think they should be equal as women or better or worse?  Do you think it is prejudice?

Dear Sherry,

I have known too many men to imagine it possible to generalize about them. I am certain I would not be elected spokesman if such a thing were possible. If you are offended by the title of this board, then you have not read the explanation given in the home page. I hope you will take the trouble to do so.

References: 4/2/99, 4/2/99R, and 4/4/99

Dear Folks,

Maybe I’m off on the wrong track here with my constant complaints about the teaching profession and their fixation with irony in the works of Jane Austen. Instead of complaining in an "incautious" manner about idiot teachers (how’s that for incautious) and their never-ending attempts to ruin Jane Austen by their constant insistence of "show examples of irony", it is clear that what is needed is a book that contains nothing but irony in Jane Austen. Surely there is a fortune to be made with such a book. Since it appears that teachers know of nothing else to turn to but irony, we would make a bundle. Julie would, of course, do the research and the rest of us would share all the credit and money with her.

From the Meister: I would prefer a tradeoff
by which Julie would receive all the credit
and none of the money. You know, the kind of
arrangement Don King has with his boxers.

I will look for guidance from you guys on this newly announced book, Letters From Pemberly. I am prepared to read it or not as instructed, but for the life of me I just can not imagine how it is that a person wakes up one morning and thinks to themselves, "What the world needs is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, and I am the person to write it." I have had a lot of bad ideas in my life but nothing that reaches that level.

Ash, I liked your, "To be human is to be both a teacher and a student and precious little else." Also agreed with your assessment that novelists have been our greatest teachers. But most of all I strongly agree that libraries "are the most human of all institutions." The reason that I agree so strongly is that I am, in fact, a librarian. In spite of the fact that I consider myself to be a "pure" librarian (that is to say a librarian who stands at the circulation desk), somehow I became the director of a four-county regional public library system. The only way I can account for my selection is to attribute it to my size (6'4"--225 pounds - thereby allowing me to lay claim to the title "The World’s Largest Librarian"). I became a librarian when I had my mandatory mid-life crisis some thirty years ago. Before becoming a librarian I had an actual job. I should be retired but who in their right mind would give up a key to the library? Computers and technology have become so much a part of what libraries do now, that if I were having my midlife crisis today I would probably go to work in a bookstore. Now that you’ve got me in context, you can see why I have such a problem with literature teachers. In the short term they are keeping us busy looking for irony, but in the long term they are stealing away the people who would be our lifetime readers and patrons.

I have spent all weekend thinking about how I was going to respond to your call for my pledges. Since I have gone on for so long tonight, I will delay my response until tomorrow. Just rest assured that I do have some pledges.

I would like to close by saying that it has always been my feeling that Hardy did not kill off Tess to punish Angel. Hardy killed Tess to punish the reader. We are being punished by our realization that Hardy has so little belief in his reader’s intelligence and understanding that we have to be hit over the head by Tess’ death to understand that the wages of sin is death. Angel and Tess could have sailed away for a new life in America and I would still understand, plus I would not have been so sad to see poor Tess strung up. No duck pond for her. She tried.

Dear Ray,

I am going to react to your suggestion that Tess's death was the "wages of sin".

Tess of the D'Urbervilles has a subtitle: A Pure Woman. And, indeed, Tess is the purest of women. To be sure, Tess thinks she is a sinner and it is Angel's epiphany to discover that she is not - that she is the perfect woman and wife as well. Hardy caught a lot of hell for his subtitle and became sensitive about the issue. (The novel was published in the late Victorian, a time of the rigid sphincter.) Hardy's (and my) attitude is best expressed by his narrator when he tells us this as Tess is walking in the countryside in the early stages of her unwanted pregnancy

"At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed they were. ... But all the while she was making a distinction where there was no difference. Feeling herself in antagonism she was quite in accord. She had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly."

Have you ever thought about the way that Hardy uses the figures of animals in his novels? In Tess, it is the horse, the chickens, the caged budgies, the cows (those sweet cows!), the crowing rooster, the wounded pheasants, and the cornered rats that are used. Most readers will remember the watchfulness of the reddleman in Return of the Native, but how many notice that it is not he but the feral ponies (the "heathcroppers") that are omnipresent? No! Hardy does not think Tess a sinner and, so, would not provide her with the wages of a sinner. Tess, as each of us, is a victim of her psychological construct - society - and could have been saved only if she had rejoined nature rather than merely to have walked out into it.

To Everyone,

Hi everyone! I've been reading your replies to the post about irony in Mansfield Park so I think you could probably help me out with Pride and Prejudice. First of all, let me explain what I'm trying to do. I'm an Advanced Placement English student doing a 12-15 page paper on irony in Pride and Prejudice. I've been doing a lot of research on this topic and have been finding some interesting things. I think that from reading P. and P. it is pretty obvious that there is some sort of irony at work there, and some of the criticisms that I've read have suggested that it was deliberately placed there by Jane Austen.  So my first question is, what do you think about that idea?  Another question would be, what do you think the thesis statement for my paper should be?  I know that you can't say for sure because you haven't seen my research notecards, but any suggestions you have would be greatly appreciated.  One last thing - have any of you read Pemberley, the sequel to P. and P., written by Emma Tennant? If you have, what did you think of it?  Obviously I can't use that in my paper, but I found it interesting.  I'm not sure that Jane Austen would have written anything like that, but it was interesting to see what might have happened to Elizabeth and the others. By the way, I'd like to thank Ashton for his earlier help in suggesting sources for my research. I've actually been able to locate some of them and found them very useful.  I'd also like to say that you guys get into some interesting debates on Jane Austen, and since I am in the proces of working my way through all of her novels, I hope to be able to join in with you soon. Thanks for everything!

Dear Laurie,

I look forward to when you can join us in a more complete fashion. But, now, your paper is the most important business at hand.

Be patient, this the Easter season and so it may be a few days before the community gets around to your request. I hope Julie Grassi will post because Ms. Grassi has a photographic memory and an eye for this kind of detail. I will try to supply a few things at this point. Elizabeth Bennet says a number of intentionally ironic things to Mr. Collins and to Darcy, but I think them snotty - I am not amused. I have suggested that Jane Austen intended the story to be one of Elizabeth's realization that her first impressions were wrong; she realizes the error of her first impressions of Darcy as well as Wickham. That is not a common interpretation - I thought it unique when I first wrote it. Since then, I was very pleased to find that Park Honan interprets things in the same way. (Of course, Park Honan has credentials and I do not.) I start my interpretation very near the beginning of Pride and Prejudice where it is explained that Bingley's father made his fortune from "trade". In other words, Bingley's father was about the same social rank as Elizabeth's Uncle Gardiner. Bingley is Darcy's best friend, and yet Elizabeth will claim that Darcy is class conscious - even to the extent that she expects Darcy to shrink away from the introduction to her uncle. To me that is ironic. Also, Wickham's father was the business manager to Darcy's father and, therefore, of a lower social rank. Yet, notice the respect that Darcy pays to that man in his letter to Elizabeth. The more clearly ironic thing that evolves from this matter is the class consciousness that so dominates the Bingley sisters' attitudes. They even go so far as to laugh over their joke that Sir Walter probably attained his knighthood from operating "a nice little shop".

I invite you to glance over the conversation begun by Ray Mitchell on 3/31/98. That conversation is jocular and incautious - on everyone's part - but there may be some truth to be gleaned there. I mention that because it might suggest a "thesis statement" to you. I mean, is it possible to distill away something, like only the irony in P&P, and not destroy the whole? You would need to find a less rude way of saying it, but that might prove an original approach to your research. Maybe not.

Everyone worries about Elizabeth Darcy. I do. We all want her to be happy and more. Jane Austen's nieces and nephews were concerned about all the characters and so the Aunt made up little stories to amuse the youngest family members. Our Lady told the young Austens that Kitty spent most her time at Pemberley where she became much improved and, eventually, married a clergyman from that neighborhood. Mary married a law clerk that worked for her Uncle Philips. It is not surprising then that people who can write will put down their fantasies in book form. (Refer to the post of 4/2/99 in which a publisher announces the publication of a new book of this type.) I don't read them because these are people writing of a period two hundred years before their time and so they cannot possibly get it right. Jane Austen herself cautioned against such an attempt. At worst, these sequels are transparent marketing ploys - exploitations of Jane Austen's name and reputation. That is too severe I suppose, most often they are innocent fantasies; I just can't bring myself to participate.

To Everyone,

I'd just like to say that my English teacher, who incidentally has never worn tweed in all the time that I've known her, is fantastic at making compulsory books fun for the whole class.  We've had to read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald among others this year, and even though I hated The Scarlet Letter and was lukewarm on The Great Gatsby, we've had some great conversations and activities with them and I've found something to like in every one of those books. I would agree with those of you that have suggested that it really is the teacher's fault that America's youth hate to read because I have had that kind of teacher in the past.  However, this year I love English and have tried harder than ever before even though the class has been harder than ever before (it is AP!).

Now I'm getting off my soapbox to say that I have been continuing my research on irony in Pride and Prejudice and have also been reading the other Jane Austen novels and I'm finding lots of interesting stuff.  Hopefully I'll soon be able to start some interesting discussions and join into some other ones.  You guys are great - you really seem to know your stuff!  I can see that you will be very helpful and interesting to me long after I finish my paper.

Dear Laurie,

It is sweet and good and right that you recommend your teacher as you do.

Actually, a soapbox is required, standard equipment around here. The last preliminary requirement is that you choose sides. You can be on my team or you can be with everyone else. I don't recommend those other folks. How do you feel about Marianne Dashwood? Charlotte Bronte?

On my team, you will find that a dislike of The Scarlet Letter is a recommendation. Hawthorne published that book in 1850, which means that his subject matter was two hundred years before his time. I mean, he was as far removed from those characters as you and I are from Jane Austen. I believe that he got it all terribly wrong. I am not a scholar, so I can't prove that, but I might be able to lead you to something that may arouse your suspicions. We think of Benjamin Franklin as a Quaker because he spent his adult life in Philadelphia; actually, he was born and raised in a Puritan family in Massachusetts. He was born in 1706 which is a little late for my purpose. Anyway, read his autobiography; that book is short and easy and shocking - I mean fun. Read that and you will begin to suspect that Hawthorne didn't know what he was writing about, not the foggiest.

Oh - before I forget - I have the ideal biography for you. That would be Jane Austen by Helen Lefroy, Sutton Publishing (Pocket Biographies), (106pp), 1997. Ms Lefroy is descended from Jane Austen's best friend and is a recognized Jane-Austen authority. The biography is short and informative. I should mention that I think that the book may contain an error: On page 55, Ms. Lefroy says something about the manuscript of Sense and Sensibility that I have never heard before. I think that there is some confusion here with Northanger Abbey - a blunder or the two manuscripts had remarkably similar histories. I don't think so.

A good portion of our community is international and won't know what "AP" means. I will give my understanding and then, maybe, you will correct me where I go wrong. AP classes are given in high school, but only to people who meet certain criteria; students must be "college preparatory" and must have a high grade-point average. Most colleges and universities give higher weighting to such courses when evaluating applications. The courses also prepare students for Advanced Placement Exams (is that SAT II?). Depending on the results of those exams, universities will award units toward graduation at entrance, and will allow immediate enrollment in advanced classes. Is that right?

Dear Sir,

I pledge to send your grandson some George Eliot. I personally find Hardy a little hard to take. I prefer Jane Austen's view 'Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery, I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.' That is not to say that tragedy does not exist, but I do feel that Hardy tends to wallow a bit. If we all dwell on this world's tragedies to the exclusion of its joys - well, why be here at all? I'm going to put this quite badly, I know, but I believe that those of us who have the great good luck to have comfortable lives show disrespect to the sufferings of those who have not, if we do not appreciate our good fortune - if we casually chuck away what others would give anything to possess, such as comfortable homes and safety for our children (however comparative that might be). That's why I get irritated with Hardy, with his 'great big black cloud' view of life.

Are you sure your grandson wasn't trying to say 'Bronte, Bronte', rather than 'b..' whatever it was?

By all means, though, feed him all the Jane Austen you can - it can only do his soul, and his vocabulary, good.
Julie

From the Meister: What's wrong with his vocabulary? He doesn't say "Bronte"
and that one ommission alone is the mark of a good vocabulary before any
other words are added. And, I was with him yesterday and he demonstrated a
clear understanding that most of his cats share the same name: "No! No!".

Dear Ashton,

You are mistaken, sir. Marianne is not merely immature, she is also rude, unfeeling, and self involved.  She makes no effort to better her understanding of the people around her, or the simple facts of her existence. She seems to feel that the Middleton's charity towards herself and her family is merely her due, and that the Middleton's are lucky to be let off with only giving her a place to live. Ditto living at Mrs. Jennings' expense while in London. I don't think Marianne ever accepts her own responsibility for her actions...Eleanor's words are put into Marianne's mouth in the movie. I truly believe it is possible to be immature without being deliberately hurtful (or "hateful" as they say in the south.) Immature and unaware that other people have feelings is NOT synonymous.

The "context" that I live in is one in which in 39 years I've witnessed too many media generated ends of civilization to take yet another manufactured shock rocker like Marilyn Manson too seriously. (Remember "The Great Rock and Roll Swindle"??) What I take seriously is the fact that so many Americans have come to accept advertisers attempts to separate them from their cash with real life.

I'm not sure how to interpret your "obsolete" remark. Do you seriously believe that any author who doesn't share your world view can't write a book that speaks to modern society? It appears from that comment that either you dismiss a large percentage of literature or that your modern humanitarian views can accept genocide, ethnic cleansing, and exposing unwanted babies  on a local hillside - that suicide is a crime against God. I'm not prepared to accept that the Illiad, Oedipus, or Anna Karenina are obsolete because their authors held such views nor am I ready to agree with such beliefs.

My thoughts on comparing JA with other authors of more-or-less the same time is about the same as yours if someone writes the perfect sonnet it's idiotic to criticize it for not being haiku. I also think about the difference between the social conscience in a novel written in, say, 1940 and one written in 1970. - Or 1969 and 1999. This century doesn't have an exclusive claim to sweeping social and political changes within a short period.
Cheryl

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