Previously in this series: How to tell if you are in a Dickens novel.
Someone disagreeable is trying to persuade you to take a trip to Bath.
Your father is absolutely terrible with money. No one has ever told him this.
All of your dresses look like nightgowns.
Someone disagreeable tries to persuade you to join a game of cards.
A woman who hates you is playing the pianoforte.
A picnic has gone horribly wrong.
A member of the armed forces has revealed himself to be morally deficient.
You once took a walk with a cad.
Everyone in the neighborhood, including your mother, has ranked you and your sisters in order of hotness. You know exactly where you fall on the list.
You say something arch yet generous about another woman both younger and richer than you.
You have one friend; he is thirty years old and does business with your father and you are going to marry him someday.
You attempt to befriend someone slightly above or slightly below your social station and are soundly punished for it.
A girl you have only just met tells you a secret, and you despise her for it.
You have five hundred a year. From who? Five hundred what? No one knows. No one cares. You have it. It’s yours. Every year. All five hundred of it.
There are three men in your life: one true love, one tempting but rakish acquaintance, and a third distant possibility — he is courteous and attentive but only slightly interested in you. He is almost certainly the cousin or good friend of your true love, and nothing will ever happen between you two.
A woman who is not your mother treats you like her own daughter. Your actual mother is dead or ridiculous.
You develop a resentment at a public dance.
Someone you know has fallen ill. Not melodramatically ill, just interestingly so.
A man proposes to you, then to another, lesser woman when you politely spurn him. This delights you to no end.
A charming man attempts to flirt with you. This is terrible.
You have become exceedingly ashamed of what your conduct has been.
A shocking marriage of convenience takes place within your social circle two-thirds of the way in.
A woman in an absurd hat is being an absolute bitch to you; there is nothing you can do about it.
You are in a garden, and you are astonished.
Tags: cads, hot sisters, how to tell what novel you’re in, jane austen, novelists
DYING. SITTING AT MY DESK AT 10.14AM ON TUESDAY AND DYING.
If only I’d read this before my orals.
You and your true love have fallen out and you don’t think you’re ever going to marry him, except you obviously are.
“A woman who hates you is playing the pianoforte.”
I aspire to be this woman.
I have, at least once that I can remember, played the piano(forte) at a party as a means of snubbing someone I hate (who happened to ALSO be a cad who attempted to take a walk with me). A+ experience, would snub again.
I am absolutely the woman in the absurd hat who is being a bitch.
Everyone in the neighborhood, including your mother, has ranked you and your sisters in order of hotness. You know exactly where you fall on the list.
Hmmm hmmm hmm why yes this does seem eerily familiar.
I’m the smart one. She’s the pretty one.
A picnic has gone horribly wrong. This could also be “how to tell you are in a low-budget horror film.”
Only if someone is breathing heavily into the camera.
You read too much. Even if it’s one book in your entire life, you have read too many books and they have addled your mind.
And your marriage-seeking cousin is just sliiiiiightly scandalized that you read novels when you could be reading improving works of essay and instruction.
Your expectations of life have been molded by dated melodramatic books. Ironically the story of your life will create new expectations that lesser works will wear into clichés.
God, like eight of these happened at my friend’s Memorial Day barbecue yesterday. I need to make a note of that so I can come up with a really good excuse for not going next year.
You workout routine consists of intense thinking, and taking occasional turns about the room.
Also, I greatly enjoyed this: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Zm1Ja6TEq8w/T9t39fvHl0I…
“It’s so refreshing!” 🙂
You have applied new lace to last year’s bonnet and everyone knows and is judging you for it.
You walked across a spring meadow or along a rocky cliff and this has told all the prying eyes all they need to know about your wildly abandoned nature.
There is mud on the hem of your dress and you might as well be dead.
Your sister… jesus christ, your sister.
“You are in a garden, and you are astonished.”
I keep thinking this is the first screen in “Jane Austen: the Video Game.”
I would play that
Where is this game? Do we get an array of suitors to decline?
In the GARDEN you see a CAD. What would you like to do with CAD?
After DINNER, your companion has made a CUTTING REMARK. How do you respond?
Do you CROSSTITCH LOFTILY, MARRY HER BROTHER, LEND HER YOUR THIRD BEST MUSLIN, or SET HER ON FIRE?
so. good.
i’m dying. this whole thread is amazing.
I’m sorry, but I don’t recognize the command BITCH I GOT MINE. Try again?
i love you
You are in a maze of twisted social conventions, all alike. You are likely to be seduced by a cad.
This entire thread is what pushed me over the edge into audible cackling in my office. Best to just let the coworkers keep wondering about me.
Your indecorous amusement renders your daughters unmarriageable.
A role-playing game called Ever, Jane was kickstarted this fall. I haven’t played it since its first release, but it’s a start!
Ooh, good idea! Here I have everyone spawning into the parlor.
A woman in an absurd hat is being an absolute bitch to you; there is nothing you can do about it.
BRB I need to go buy an absurd hat so I can legally be a bitch to everyone
“I send no regards to your mother” or whatever Lady Catherine’s line is when she’s chewing out Lizzie, is the greatest shade thrown in English literature.
I’m going to be Lady Catherine for Halloween and formally insult everyone all day. It’s going to be marvelous.
Oh, can I be your Mr. Collins? I’ll just walk around, hitting on all the wrong girls and saying things like, “This ‘Samuel Adams’ is rather good, I shall have to tell Lady Catherine about it. She is quite fond of craft beers, having an entire beer cave of Hungarian Tappel Bocks that are handmade by the finest brewers in the Austrian Empire. If you should ever chance to visit Rosings, she would be happy to let you sample one, I am sure.”
Oh my god, greatest couples costume ever, or GREATEST COUPLES COSTUME EVER.
We need a post on literary couples costumes for this Halloween.
STAT.
(or, I suppose, in October.)
Now I want an article titled “Greatest Shades of English Literature.”
It’s not so much shade as a burn, but this line from Titus Andronicus needs to be in it, too:
Chiron: “Thou hast undone our mother.”
Aaron: “Villain, I have done thy mother.”
Between that and the ol’ corpse-on-the-doorstep prank, Aaron really just has all the best disses for every social situation.
Probably doesn’t get invited to a lot of debutante socials, mind.
Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?
Why am I not surprised that you say this?
I have an absurd hat and I don’t like to brag, but my friends all say I am the kindest person they know.
Only you have put together the pieces about that one guy in such a way as to know his true character, despite what everyone else assumes because of his nice clothes and ability to dance politely.
You are conscious that your figure appears to the greatest advantage in taking a turn about the room.
I aspire to one day live in a house with rooms big enough that it would make sense to take a walk around them
This. This wins.
“Your actual mother is dead or ridiculous” is an insight upon which Mallory could write an entire monograph of literary criticism – or – it’s one good joke in a list of many good jokes. LOL.
Having a charming man try to flirt with you really IS terrible tho.
Sometimes, when I flick up the killing glance of my flat blank dead-shark eyes to silence a flirtatious stranger on the bus, I wonder if Austen-era women had the same look in their arsenal, or if propriety prevented them from delivering it.
I think that might be all they had to ward off men they didn’t want to flirt with, especially when its accompanied by polite verbal dissimulation.
That’s really what I’m wondering about: if they could simply look up in killing silence to make him back off, or if that has the same social implications as The Cut Direct.
The officers are coming, or are here, or have just left and there is not a goddamn thing you can do about it.
“A charming man attempts to flirt with you. This is terrible.” This is an Austen novel trope but also maybe my life.
Glorious.
What if all my dresses just FEEL like nightgowns?
Also this is reminding me of the Austen dating sim I played, and how bad I was at it. Still upset that Captain Wentworth SPURNED ME FOR BEING TOO MEAN.
Austen.
DATING.
SIM?
YES PLEASE
it’s probably Matches & Matrimony.
Downloading it right now.
🙁
WHERE IS THAT SIM *crazy eyes*
It IS Matches and Matrimony, but I have also linked downthread so more ppl could see the other Jane Austen game, a MMORPG called Ever Jane.
I…. I don’t know what I would do with myself if I was spurned by Captain Wentworth.
I am already crying, just at the possibility that it would happen.
Oh my god, and getting Mr. Darcy is SO HARD. I cheated.
Well, why wouldn’t you?
TOO MEAN? TOO MEAN?? THAT IS HIS JAM AND HE WILL EAT IT. THE JAM OF MY MEANNESS.
I have a nightgown that feels like a dress, so much so that I’ve been tempted more than once to run to get coffee early in the morning wearing my nightgown and pretending it’s a maxi dress. Next time I’ll just pretend I’m in an Austen novel.
Could you…point us in the direction of said dating sim? For research. Science. Purposes.
Oh my gosh, if only it weren’t true.
Your romantic life is based mostly around becoming bed-ridden within proximity of single men of a certain fortune.
Pretty sure if I was in an Austen novel I would be that call falling ill near handsome rich men’s houses ON PURPOSE.
Apply timed as I watched P&P before falling asleep last night; this might explain the weird dreams I had which are eerily similar to some of the points on this list.
You constantly talk about excessively diverting everything is. You have never been diverted in your entire life, much less excessively so.
All the cads in your life have names beginning with W.
“You have become exceedingly ashamed of what your conduct has been.” I really need to cross-stitch that into a sampler and hang it over my bed.
Is this the appropriate environs to retell the tale of a man I told I never wanted to see/talk to/communicate with/acknowledge again repeatedly writing to me in Willoughby’s likeness, these words:
“Your faithful and humble servant.”
“I am, dear Madam,
Your most obedient
humble servant,
JOHN WILLOUGHBY.”
Bow down, serf.
<3 <3 <3
You have an urgent errand in Nearby Village. You need to buy ribbon.
You are unbelievably bored, so you go buy some ribbon.
You want an excuse to saunter past the military men in their tight trousers. Coincidentally, your ribbon supplies are low.
You need to spice up a dress you have worn previously to a social gathering in such a way so that no one will recognize it and realize how poor you have become. The solution is ribbon.
I tried watching the first episode of that Paradise series that Netflix is advertising to me, and when the hapless country girl shows up at the department store to become a hapless shopgirl, a kindly/creepy man looks at her drab dress and says “here, put this on” and literally hands her a wad of blue ribbon and she literally sticks it, still in a wad, to her lapel.
I mean she got the job, so ribbon is actually everything.
(don’t watch it. unless you need an insomnia cure.)
The solution to poverty is always more ribbon. We must be brave in ribbons. Slowly starving and freezing while we sew ribbon on to our one good black dress. Oh wait, I’ve wandered into Dickens.
It was with a contented sigh that I pulled a perfectly good piece of ribbon from a worn-out garment yesterday, smoothed it out, rolled it up, and put it in my mending basket — OH NO I’M IN A JANE AUSTEN STORY HALP THIS CANNOT BE I AM ALLERGIC TO FRANK CHURCHILLS
[edited to add: this sounds like a joke but srly i like me some ribbon, y’all]
Your dad is being so embarrassing, god.
You pretty much always have writer’s cramp.
You know a lot of guys who don’t seem that religious but who are going into the clergy anyway.
OK, for everyone who is asking for a Jane Austen video game, one already exists , and one was recently Kickstarted , but has a very broken test version.
Oh I love your review. I think the Dickens thing would make me insane, too. OTOH: Darcy!
500 a year had me weeping with laughter. Too accurate. The whole thing. I’m going to go be astonished in my garden now. Hopefully no men spring a profoundly unwanted proposal on me whilst I’m there.
– Your refusals of marriage are constantly being misinterpreted as playing hard to get.
“You have become exceedingly ashamed of what your conduct has been.” — Okay, well, yes. This is true. But it’s the only one! I still hold out hope of being in a different author’s novels.
“A girl you have only just met tells you a secret, and you despise her for it.”
As a charismatic (but secretly misanthropic) gay man, this actually happens to me on a weekly basis.
Your ridiculous mother is actually right about everything.
Too real. TOO REAL.
(It never occurred to me but now every time I re-read and Austen book, I’m going to notice that the horrible shrill mother is right all the time, aren’t I?)
five hundred eggplants
Aubergines
you swoon regularly, or you look askance at those who do.
So hey, thanks for the literal laugh out loud over here. My house mate came to see if I was choking on something.
A dowager with an impeccable pedigree and the finest house in the neighborhood pronounces you to be comely but exceedingly vexing.
Well… for two points of this list (not the happiest ones) Yes ! I can say: I’m in a Jane Austen novel!
If you only fulfill approximately 50% of these criteria and also are an accomplished illusionist, you are in a Mary Robinette Kowal novel.
now that I think abt it, my dressed do actually look like nightgowns 😉
“Your father is absolutely terrible with money. No one has ever told him this.”
Oh god, this is my life. LMAO
“You say something arch yet generous about another woman both younger and richer than you.”
Oh yes! She finds it arch but I obviously just think I’m being generous and doing her a favour. Hahaha I can relate to this bitch, yup. 🙂
You look positively medieval if you walk to a neighbouring home
Those of you looking for a Jane Austen game, you want to go to http://www.everjane.com
Welp, I am definitely in an Austen novel.
Everyday! LOL
You have 500 a year, but this is insufficient to keep you adequately supplied with new ribbons and frocks. You feel pressured to marry for money.
You went for a walk in the rain, and now you may die.
He has five thousand a year, but he is exceedingly dull.
At twenty, you are beginning to lose the bloom you had at sixteen.
You like the same obvious Shakespeare sonnet, which must mean it’s True Love.
Nah, it means it ISN’T true love and also you are an idiot for having feelings and crushes and stuff. True love is when you spend twenty minutes talking soberly about how much you both love not getting foolishly overenthusiastic about anything.
I may have been that woman in the absurd hat, but damn I wore it well.
You prefer to travel coach.
You and your sisters must always make do. This involves the mortification of hand-me-down bonnets and only two types of cake to offer guests.
It has always been a shameful frustration of mine that the illnesses are only interesting, not melodramatic. I mean, Marianne’s illness could have SO MUCH MORE tearing of garments and wailing and gnashing of teeth and desperate midnight vigils. The movie helped! But in the book, everyone”s… desperately worried, but still very sensible in the modern meaning of that word, and the narrative voice doesn’t go that close to the sickbed. And she’s out of danger that little bit too soon while I still want to wallow. And I admire the restraint! But it’s like Austen baked a delicious chocolate cake and put it on a cake stand and wouldn’t let anyone eat it.
“Your exercise is to ‘take a turn around the room’.”
So I decided to just see how accurate this is and it is possibly very accurate, with a few minor details changed.
1.Someone disagreeable is trying to persuade you to take a trip to Bath.
Not to ‘Bath’ but I have had someone basically annoy me into agreeing to travel with them so it counts. I’ll point out that I have never been to the UK that unless Australia possesses a town called Bath I haven’t been there.
2.Your father is absolutely terrible with money. No one has ever told him this.
Yes, he was. I didn’t know him personally and I have no clue if anyone informed him of his inability to manage finances properly.
3.All of your dresses look like nightgowns.
Only a few do possibly.
4.Someone disagreeable tries to persuade you to join a game of cards.
If by ‘persuade’ you mean ‘annoy you until you agree’ then yes it has happened.
5.A woman who hates you is playing the pianoforte.
6.A picnic has gone horribly wrong.
Not necessarily a ‘picnic’ but ‘horribly wrong’ covers my childhood family Christmas gatherings.
7.A member of the armed forces has revealed himself to be morally deficient.
“A member of the armed forces has revealed himself to be morally deficient” this one was told to me in a less eloquent way “army guys are jerks” and they were called ‘AJs’ or army jerks (I don’t personally have anything against the army or men but these types of men were so smarmy), so basically men that propositioned women in degrading ways.
8.You once took a walk with a cad.
Well ‘duh’ what woman hasn’t? If not a “cad” then possibly another descriptive word can be used.
9.Everyone in the neighborhood, including your mother, has ranked you and your sisters in order of hotness. You know exactly where you fall on the list.
I’m an only child. But I did get some highly inappropriate comments from age 12. Less inappropriate comments about my appearance are that were commonly used pretty and cute.
10.You say something arch yet generous about another woman both younger and richer than you.
All the time and not necessarily just women either. I rarely get caught saying arch comments either as I mastered the skill of subtlety at a young age.
11.You have one friend; he is thirty years old and does business with your father and you are going to marry him someday.
No chance as anyone doing business with my father should seek medical help as he died some years ago.
12.You attempt to befriend someone slightly above or slightly below your social station and are soundly punished for it.
Yes and not just once but twice.
13.A girl you have only just met tells you a secret, and you despise her for it.
14.You have five hundred a year. From who? Five hundred what? No one knows. No one cares. You have it. It’s yours. Every year. All five hundred of it.
I laughed at this one.
15.There are three men in your life: one true love, one tempting but rakish acquaintance, and a third distant possibility — he is courteous and attentive but only slightly interested in you. He is almost certainly the cousin or good friend of your true love, and nothing will ever happen between you two.
16.A woman who is not your mother treats you like her own daughter. Your actual mother is dead or ridiculous.
First part is true but second part isn’t. My Mum is neither dead or ridiculous.
17.You develop a resentment at a public dance.
I resent being there most likely.
18.Someone you know has fallen ill. Not melodramatically ill, just interestingly so.
Yes several people I know actually.
19.A man proposes to you, then to another, lesser woman when you politely spurn him. This delights you to no end.
20.A charming man attempts to flirt with you. This is terrible.
Laughed at this as well.
21.You have become exceedingly ashamed of what your conduct has been.
No. 23 is when this might come into play.
22.A shocking marriage of convenience takes place within your social circle two-thirds of the way in.
23.A woman in an absurd hat is being an absolute bitch to you; there is nothing you can do about it.
There actually is, no. 10 covers it nicely. Also I happen to excel at verbal sparring with bitches, I have been called a bitch on occasion.
24.You are in a garden, and you are astonished.
If I’m in the garden I’m probably gardening. Or potentially I’m regaling people with the botanical names of plants, or I’m that woman in the hat.
Oh jeez, man that must have been a rough family dynamic. I'm pretty sure you are lovely and delightful– all toast commenters are.
It is Christmas, and you will give hampers to The Poor, because it is Charitable to do so.
This article: http://www.economist.com/node/5323633 explains five hundred what and from whom.
I know – gold!
I am HOWLING!
You have walked too fong into the wood and it has rained heavily. Your hat is spoiled and there is mud on the hem of your dress. You walk homeward only to see the carriage of that piano forte playing b*tch in the drive and hear your mother’s infernal cackle.
The men of your acquaintance talk incessantly about their barouches.
Someone in your social circle elopes with a morally deficient member of the armed forces about two-thirds of the way in.
aiieee! “This delights you to no end.” No no no no no no no. “This delights you NO END.” I am perturbed that with your unerring ear and gift for parody, mimicry, and inspired exuberance this solecism would escape your notice. Alas, my god has feet of clay.
The horses cannot pull the sleigh today so here I sit doing this dreadful tatting for a dress that will never see any human but my dear family who do not deserve dreadful ttting.
You get caught in a shower. You will almost certainly die.
If you go for a walk in the rain without your bonnet, you will become deathly ill, and have to stay at the grand mansion of your rich and handsome neighbour and his bitchy sisters.
A man proposes to you and you refuse. Then he proposes to you – and you accept!
Your sister rats you out for not wearing a tucker.
You find yourself stuck in a cab with the last man on earth you want to be with.
You try in vain to set up your new friend with a boy you know, only to have her fall for the man you’re in love with.
Your BFF does not approve of the fact that you’ve agreed to marry a man she hates, but you know he will be adequate company and take good care of you when you get older.
Love it
Love these two lines: “A girl you have only just met tells you a secret, and you despise her for it.
You have five hundred a year. From who? Five hundred what? No one knows. No one cares. You have it. It’s yours. Every year. All five hundred of it.”
You have an urgent errand in Nearby Village. You need to buy ribbon.
My husband has suggested this would be even better as a board game: ‘Your younger sister has just got married. Go back to the start. Do not collect five hundred pounds.’
Kickstarter, anyone?
I really like your Jane Austen bingo and would like to be able to reproduce it in the Jane Austen Society of North America’s newsletter, JASNA News. I am the editor. Would you give me permission to do this?
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Sheryl Craig, PhD
haha, thats hilarious.