Dear Austen-tacious Ones,

Yes to the Canadian, Julie  and yes to the moose.  (I once had one that grazed in my yard, and would come up to the picture window.  She didn't know I was standing inches away from her because she couldn't sniff me out, I guess, but you'd think the movement would at least interest her, no? Not terribly clever things, moose.  I can't imagine why anyone would think it sport to hunt them.) Contrary to my subject line, I've actually never had a moose suit.  Sometimes I just say these things.  It was a kangaroo suit.  No lie.  Have you ever seen a devil?

Come to Canada, by all means.  I live in Vancouver, right now (having abandoned both picture window and moose together), not your best place for "a real winter," but some of the best skiing in North America is only a short drive away, in winter months.  If you want snow, though, I recommend Winnipeg, any day but July 7th at 2:15 when summer is scheduled.

Ashton, "no" to the web page.  I've created a few, but I'm too shy to put them out there yet.

I like the OED better because we Canajans prefer to misspell things.  I've seen (for Julie's continued interest) caribou and whales, but I've never yet seen an unabridged Webster's.  Such animals are not indigenous to our libraries, though I can't imagine why.  Some day, I imagine, we will be properly trained to use Webster's, in much the same manner that the proliferation of golden arches in these latter years has taught our youth to ask for french fries instead of chips. Does your favourite dictionary in its unabridged manifestation contain examples of usage through quotations of words?  If so, a Trollope or contemporary quotation would be worthwhile having.

I'm not quite certain that Charlotte is using the "modern" usage when she says she's not a romantic, could she not mean that she doesn't see herself as a damsel in distress waiting for Ivanhoe to sweep up to her castle gate?  Nothing but practical, our Charlotte.  Nothing to dislike, as far as I can tell.  What else has a woman to do with her life in Charlotte's time and place, but to seek out someone to own property for her and earn a living for her, because she's not allowed to do so for herself, and then get the bleep out of her way and let her grow a garden?  She knew her choices were limited in both quantity and quality, and under those circumstances did very well for herself. Although, I must admit that Austen took great pains to make Collins as creepy as she could, and so I am appropriately appalled at the thought of Elizabeth stooping to his level.

Work beckons, alas.

Dear Heather,

I think that "a damsel in distress waiting for Ivanhoe to sweep up to her castle gate" is consistent with the modern usage of "romantic" and, yes, I think that is exactly what Charlotte meant. I should think that she would have intended the archaic meaning if she had meant that she had decided to marry rather than lead an attack on Paris. It seems to me that Horatio Hornblower is romantic in the archaic sense while Pride and Prejudice is romantic in the modern.

Jane Austen's novels tell of many women who own property, starting with Lady Catherine whose heir was an heiress, her daughter. Sense and Sensibility is riddled with women owners of property; in fact, there seem to be as many female landowners as male. There were not as many occupations for men either. If he didn't inherit, the only options for a man of that class were the military or the church. If such a man would choose law or medicine - especially medicine - he would be disinvited from his class.

Charlotte gained complete freedom by capturing the attention, devotion, and labor of another human being. No matter to her that she did that by being disingenuous - tell the poor fool any damn thing - and no matter that she then manipulated him out of her real life and, even, out of her very sight. If she were a sexual woman, she would have become Madame Bovary.

I don't think that Collins is "creepy"; I think he is unattractive, awkward, and not very bright. That is not the same thing. He obviously feels badly about the entailment and, so, when Lady C. commands him to marry, Collins heads to Longborne to find his wife. As did Bingley and Darcy before him, he falls for Jane Bennet; but, after being informed that Jane is off limits, he moves down the line to Elizabeth. We all recognize that this is the most perfect mismatch. However, Jane Austen did something very interesting when she, in fact, creates the perfect match for Mr. Collins. I am thinking of Mary Bennet who would have been his best possible wife for her best possible husband. And look, Mary is the next in line. However, Charlotte intercepts him using - Lord knows what - certainly her dowry didn't hurt negotiations. A wise Mr. Bennet would not have spent so much time enjoying his mocking and snide jokes and would have recognized this great opportunity for his third daughter. But then, Mary was too unattractive and too unaccomplished to be worthy of his assistance in this matter. A plague on Charlotte and on Mr. Bennet!

I can sense the engines revving up in Tasmania. I am being too intense and too serious and I deserve everything I am about to receive. And Julie will not allow a defense of Mr. Collins to go unchallenged. Well, perhaps you will first forgive me for these things.

To Ashton: I had a long point-by-point rebuttal in the pipeline, but frankly, after working all weekend, I'm not up to arguing.  What I will say is this:  don't mistake me for a "conservative" in the sense I think you're talking about.  I've never voted Republican  I give money to enviromental causes  I endorse some gun control laws, as long as they aren't completely unconstitutional.  It's just that, unlike (it seems from what I can find out about my fellow Janeites here) most people who like to talk abut Jane Austen, I've spent most of my life in/among the working class.  And guess what?  Having spent ten years working 60+ hour weeks in a job that I hated (but paid well) so that  my husband could go to school so that we could have a better life, makes me very unsympathetic to the typical "liberal" (in the modern sense) idea that I have an obligation to provide for everyone "less fortunate" than myself, regardless of whether or not they do anything more to help themselves than robbing little old ladies or breeding like rats.

If I understand you correctly, you want to redefine "liberal" as someone who practices cultural, religious and political tolerance but is still free to think with his eyes and his mind open, well in that case, I'm behind you 100%.

Julie: it appears I insulted the entire rest of the world with my posting. That really wasn't my intention.  It was meant to be taken at face value: why shouldn't Americans, who as a general rule are ignorant and uniformed about anything that doesn't immediately and directly concern them, believe themselves the center of the universe when the rest of the world does the unthinkable and actually pays attention to things that might conceivably affect them indirectly or sometime in the future?  Really, it wasn't meant to be an insult.

To Heather Swallow: welcome. I too live close to the border (about 75 miles.)

What led me to Jane Austen was that I went through a time at about the age of 19, when I decided I should start reading the classics.  I read Of Human Bondage, Wuthering Heights, Tess of the D'Ubervilles, and Sense and Sensibility. Although it's currently my least favorite JA novel, it was good enough to get me to read (eventually, after a detour into Herodotus and some other Greek historians) Pride and Prejudice.  From there I was hooked. Incidentally, Of Human Bondage made so little an impression on me, a few years later I was two chapters into it before I realized I'd already read it.
Cheryl

Dear Ashton,

Did you know Cheryl was from the working class when you allowed her to post on your board? This is shocking.  Does Emma know about this?

Perhaps now that her husband is a Medical Doctor, however,  Cheryl has become the social equal of Mrs. Parry, and we can deign to associate with her.

Of course even worse than being from a working class background is the fact that she once worked 60+ hours a week.  Look where ambition got Julius Caesar, Cheryl.

By the way, I figured you were the same Cheryl from the campfire board, but your anti-multiculturalism post and then this last post proved it.  Hi.

I wondered if anyone would choose to discuss the posting of "Mary" on 4/28/92? In Y2K format, that date would have been 4/28/1792 because, indeed, this is a quote from Mary Wollstonecraft herself. All paragraphs were taken from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but the first paragraph was lifted from a different chapter than the others. I added "or a cog" to the end of the first paragraph, broke up a really long sentence in the second, and substituted "in that situation" in place of a reference to class structure. Other than that, this is straight Mary Wollstonecraft.

Mary would be dead before the end of the decade. She died after childbirth (the baby was Mary Shelley) and the end would come ten days after the birth, the time it took for the infection to spread. Mary was thirty-eight years old at death. It is difficult to read about that ten-day period so filled with pain for Mary. A lot would happen in that short time between the publication of Vindication and her death. There were trips to revolutionary France and to the Nordic countries; an ever increasing notoriety and fame; two unsuccessful attempts to organize a menage a trois; two unsuccessful suicide attempts; the birth of two daughters; and, a marriage just prior to the second birth.

Mary would sometimes express the opinion of others even though she may not have felt it herself. (As she lay dying, she asked for clergy even though she had publicly taken a stand against religion. Her atheist husband was incredulous and ignored the wish after explaining it away to those present.)

I suspect that her stricture against the reading of novels was not a true opinion of hers. Actually, Mary is credited with the authorship of two "novels" herself (short stories would be a more accurate term). The second, Maria, was incomplete at her death and showed much promise. That promise may never have been fulfilled, even if she had lived, because it had degenerating into the worst kind of feminist perspective, probably a reflection of Mary's poor moral in the last year or two of her life. Still, there was that hint of a great talent. Also, there are stories of Mary and her husband reading Werter aloud to one another so she must have enjoyed some novels. The husband himself published a few novels. Of course, the novels of the daughter, Mary Shelley, are perhaps the most valuable contribution of that family (others would point to the philosophies of the father).

Jane Austen was sixteen at the publication of Vindication and our lady's novels would not appear in print until more than a decade after Mary Wollstonecraft's death. I doubt that Mary would have liked or even bothered to read Jane Austen's novels because Mary Wollstonecraft consistently expressed a loathing for country gentry.

But here is my question, given that Mary Wollstonecraft was expressing a common attitude about novels, might this explain why Jane Austen published anonymously? I have seen a number of explanations of why Jane did not publish under her name; the explanations are inconsistent with one another and none are compelling.

Dear Ash,

I hesitate to pick up the thrown gauntlet of this "Do we have any reason to think that Jane Austen published and died anonymously because of the poor example and stated views of Mary Wollstonecraft?" question. The reason that I hesitate is that my feeling about questions of this nature, i.e. questions about the actions of great persons, is that the answers that I would expect to be true are so plebian and mundane that if I was to set them forth, I would feel like the aforementioned "brown suit in a room full of tuxedos."

For instance, in the case in question, I would rather expect that it went something like this: Cassandra (or maybe Henry) is talking with Jane one day and as the conversation drags for a moment, they say (just to have something to fill the time) to their sister, "You know this Mary Wollenberger or whatever the hell her name is, has stirred things up according to something I read somewhere. I’m sure that mother and father have no idea about who this woman is or what she has said, but if they ever did, they might worry about the family reputation if you were to publish under your own name." Our lady, being who she was, said, "You might be right."

You can see at once why, if my guess could be proven, over ten thousand researchers and professors would be out of work. In short, simple answers just will not serve when it comes to the actions of great people.

So, on second thought, instead of picking up the gauntlet, I will just kind of lean towards it as though I was going to pick it up, then jump away at the last second.

Hello everyone!  I am still trying to come up with a good thesis statement for my paper on irony in Pride and Prejudice, and my teacher suggested that I try to figure out why she uses irony in her novels and try to prove that in my paper.  What do you think?  The only thing that we could come up with is that she uses it to provide contrasts between Darcy's world and Elizabeth's world, but I'm not sure that my information would support that. Any other suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Dear Laurie,

Laurie, Laurie, Laurie - the assignment drives me crazy because it seems to me that there is a presupposition that Jane Austen made an artistic decision like "I will use some irony here in order to suit such and such a purpose". I would as soon believe that she made a conscious decision to use English rather than German. And does P&P have a greater number of ironic passages than Emma or Northanger Abbey? I don't think so. I am not even sure that Jane Austen was the most ironic writer of her age. Swift and Fielding published before Jane Austen and seem, to me, to be far greater practitioners of ironic prose. Still, it does no good to rail at you, you merely hold the assignment, you didn't invent it.

I would recommend that you take the stand that "irony" is a form of humor much admired and practiced by the English - then as now. And that Jane Austen was steeped in this cultural aspect of her heritage. Further, one can find many examples of ironic humor in the original verses of Jane Austen's mother, verses that Jane heard as she was growing up. And that ironic humor was very much a part of Jane's brothers' writings when they were away at college and publishing a college magazine. In other words, "ironic" humor was part of Jane Austen's national heritage and family legacy, it had become a part of her very nature. All this as opposed to a conscious artistic decision to use irony to put across certain aspects of P&P. Jane Austen was ironic because she could not be otherwise; I suggest that should be your thesis statement. However, Jane Austen was so very more than simply that.

Dear Folks,

Friday at the library we got an e-mail from some company or another which was doing a survey about new virus problems faced by libraries. One of the questions was this: Has your library had to confront any new and unusual viruses? Always on the alert for ways to keep the name of our lady uppermost in the minds of the world, I was moved to report on the "Jane Austen Virus". I replied to the inquiry by setting forth our library’s experience with the "Jane Austen Virus" which came to our computers by infected e-mail. We found that the virus consisted of a downloaded copy of the entire text of Pride and Prejudice in which the names of all the characters had been replaced with the names of characters from other Jane Austen novels. In order to remove the virus it was necessary to go word for word through the text inserting the correct names of the characters. One irreversible effect of the virus is that the names of all files in the infected computer will be changed to the names of various characters in the works of Jane Austen.

Knowing librarians as I do, I rather expect that there will be quite a stir created by the "Jane Austen Virus", and I enlist your aid is helping spread the warning on this latest and most destructive virus.

As soon as we play that virus out as far as we can, I am ready to move on to an even more vicious virus, namely the "Irony Virus" which will infect the computers of literature teachers all over the world. What will trigger the "Irony Virus" is the use of the words "Jane Austen" and "irony" within ten words of each other. I have decided to make this virus more benign than the "Jane Austen Virus". All that will happen is that the screen of the infected computer will present a message that reads, "There is more to Jane Austen than irony. Do your students a favor and come up with another assignment."

My gut feeling is that the two viruses I have created (so far) will do more for Jane Austen than all the literature teachers who ever lived. Hell, look at Melissa. She is a topless dancer who never wrote a word.

Dear Ray,

I paraphrase G.K. Chesterton when I observe that no man is free if he is not free to take a step backwards. No man is wise who will not even consider retracing his missteps. No society will progress that is not willing to retreat from a wrong path. For that reason, your posting struck a chord with me. However, when you suggested that we retreat all the way to "Jane Austen and Lawrence Welk", I thought you might want to go too far. I was about to preach moderation in all things so that we might leave the bus when we got only as far as Jane Austen and Bob Dylan. But then, as I began to formulate my own plans for orderly retreat, it became clear that it was I who needed to be restrained - please do so!

My own preferred path of retreat has nothing to do with laws or constitutional principles (of which, by the way, I am an admirer). I think we need to retreat on cultural forms. In other words, I choose to take the more difficult road, but I believe it to be the only road out of our American cultural dilemma. I am thinking of Elizabeth Bennet and her sisters on their way to the Netherfield ball. Jane and Elizabeth were going to meet the men they loved and whom they thoroughly intended to beguile. All of the younger sisters had the same intention, only their targets were not so well defined. For all of the young men and women in the neighborhood, this was an occasion for great excitement because it was one in which they might meet familiar or new lovers. It was all a boil. But here is my point, the Bennet sisters were moving to this event in the company of their mother. Think about that! There was nothing so very unusual in the Bennets' carriage, all of the young people were moving in the company of parents. In fact, the older generation was the official though not the real focus for all social events. Compare that to our cultural forms in which we take as self evident, the inalienable right of the blind to be led by the blind - the inalienable right of the immature to plan and execute all the social events of that most critical period in any person's life. The mature and experienced are not invited. Meanwhile the "mature" and experienced are off in their own segregated social events and damn glad of it because the presence of the younger folks would inhibit this generation in their habits of smoking dope or scheming on someone else's spouse. Yes I think that the makeup of the Netherfield ball kept all generations on the straight and narrow - well, the straighter and narrower. Am I suggesting that we dismantle our age-segregated social order? Yes, most emphatically, that is precisely what I am proposing.

Talk about shouting into the wind! But doesn't Jane Austen warn about age-segregated society in Mansfield Park? If so, then can I be so radical? Of course it is easier to change laws - easier and ineffectual.

Dear Sir,

It was easier in Jane Austen's day, and for some years after, for the generations to mix, because they hadn't invented the teenager.  Girls, in particular, were either 'out' or 'not out' - if not out, they were pretty well invisible socially (Lydia is an exception, but, then, the whole thing became more formalised in the nineteenth century).  Edmund Bertram might choose to be precious about whether Fanny was out or not, but he certainly must have known what Miss Crawford was talking about.  There was no such thing as a teenager, and no such thing as teenagers' rights.  Young unmarried women never went anywhere without a chaperone, and that was that.  Maybe this is why the 'conservatory' evolved, and became so popular - all those aspidistras and palm trees to hide behind!

Right up until World War II - or at least, nearly - until Edward VIII got bored with the whole thing - young ladies came out, got presented, and did a London season - all in the company of their mammas.  What they got up to behind the aspidistras is another thing entirely.
Julie

Dear Folks,

Thanks to your responses to my suggestion that the world would be a better place if we shared a common culture across generational lines. I really liked the examples you gave from our lady’s writings, and it could well be that one of the reasons I am so drawn to her is this very aspect of the culture that you point out.

Alas, the new culture bus piloted by Pat Robertson will not be stopping at the corner of Jane Austen and Bob Dylan. For those who just can not accept Lawrence Welk, the bus might stop at the corner of Jane Austen and Mantavonni.

However, Ash clearly has in his power the ability to get some kind of special dispensation. For years now I have been looking for an adult who wears a baseball cap backwards. What I have in mind is sending this person and their backwards cap around to the various high schools and teenage hangouts. When the teenagers saw an adult so attired they would at once either throw away their caps or at least put them on right. Like everything else teenagers do, this backward cap wearing is designed to drive adults to distraction. As a for instance, did you see the ABC late night program last week where they had on a teenage boy who had survived that terrible ordeal and there he was on national TV to discuss the tragedy wearing a t-shirt and on his head a baseball cap worn backwards? My first reaction was, "Does that boy have parents and are they crazy to let that kid go on national TV looking like an idiot?" (No offense, Ash.) If teenagers (and I am with Julie here--we would be better off if there were no such things) had reason to think that an actual adult would wear their cap backwards, that would be the end of it. Of course, they would probably start wearing them sideways. There is no hope for us short of our new saviors Fallwell and Robertson.

Dear Ray and Ashton,

I must say I envy you both.  One of the things my husband and I discovered to have in common was the fact that we were both born out of our generation.  By which I mean that our parents were a generation older than our contemporaries' and we have siblings old enough to be our parents. Being brought up with depression era values in the "if it feels good, do it" generation rather leaves us in the position of the governess in Gothic romance novels...neither fish nor fowl.

My husband and I can testify that the multigenerational, connected family existed as late as the mid 70's. That no members of my parents' generation confused "Ozzie and Harriet" with real life (any more than they thought being a German POW was all laughs, or that the US space program was run by a scantily clad genie.)  I can also testify that while I had many friends who smoked pot, used cocaine, and screwed around indiscriminately, simple exposure to those activities was not enough to force me to take them up.  That our parents actually were right (!) when they tried to teach us that duty to others is more important than duty to oneself.  You can imagine just how popular this makes us with our own generation.

What frightens me about the whole baseball cap thing is that apparently their parents don't care that their children, dress like criminals, speak like criminals, listen to music written, sung, and produced by criminals, and get tattoos designed to look like home-made prison tattoos. I mean, forget the violent video games, the network news and Bruce Willis movies, let's think about the effect of a teenagers's parents allowing their child to adopt the culture of drug dealers, rapists, car thieves, pedophiles and murders because it's "the fashion."   And let's not forget that more and more adults are buying into this culture.  Something like 1/3 of the people getting tattoos are over 30.  How happy I am to have been brought up in the stone age when children got to act like kids because they had adults to look after them, instead of in our enlightened times when parents are too busy extending their own childhoods to be bothered with rearing their own offspring.

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