Sometimes, when I want to find out whether or not my students have actually read their assigned Emma pages, I mention that I’ve been compared to Miss Woodhouse. Those who have read past the first page look absolutely horrified, and their expression is a perfect reflection of mine when I came to the sentence that gave me the first inkling the man I was convinced was my destiny was not.
Should you find, whilst entertaining friends and wearing your finest frock at a public assembly or a private ball, that you are suddenly disrupted, surrounded and confronted by a wash (rabble?) of those most unbecoming, debased, and uncouth of guests, the Undead, I am in hopes that the following will help you assess what is the proper way to respond, in a manner befitting ladies and gentlemen.
This actor is playing a very specific version of Mr. Darcy. He is not, especially, Austen’s Darcy, who is famously awkward and impolite. The Jane Austen Centre’s Darcy is the Darcy from really bad fanfiction.
Let’s Be Real: We’re not Elizabeth. If we’re anybody in this saga, we’re dark-clad Mary, who thinks conversation is better than balls. You know what, Mary? Conversation IS a better way to get to know people and we get you, we totally get you.
Previously in this series: "Ozten": Pride and Prejudice for Australians Emma Woodhouse, Ems, bright, skilled, with a happy disposition and a preoccupation with jam and her friends and the Great British Bake Off (and its offshoot, the Great Australian Bake Off, filmed in distant Melbourne). She loves knitting and amigurumi, which her great childhood friend Knightley regrets ever mentioning to her after he returned from a trip to Japan, and reaches 22 with a…
Father is gone, Fanny
he died this morning not on the good couch?
the what? the good couch
you know how i feel about relations dying on the good couch
that's for guests only
no no, my love
he died in bed whose bed?
his bed oh
that's all right then
MRS BENNET: Someone’s finally moving into Netherfield! ELIZABETH: Really? I thought they were going to tear that down and build a Red Rooster. MR BENNETT: When the sailors come to town you all act like a pack of flaming galahs! No daughter of mine will be going to schoolies on the Gold Coast! But if you're very good, Kitty, in a few years you might earn yourself a Blue Light Disco. ELIZABETH: Bingo has the…
The date approaches when I enter into the matrimonial state. Soon I am to be united in perpetuity with a widower who possesses both a middling income and modest grounds. Time, it would seem, is our greatest benefactor; a mere few years ago, when I thought the title “Mistress of Pemberley” within my grasp, I might have scoffed at such
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…
After one reads all of Jane Austen’s novels, one begins fumbling through the literary desert seeking the Next Jane. Eventually, the search alights on Edith Wharton. Wharton, like Austen, uses feather-light prose to describe juicy conflicts: marriages of convenience vs. love matches, rich people jockeying for status with the slightly less rich. It’s all extremely satisfying, except for the glaring difference: unlike Austen, who bestows happy endings on her heroines, Wharton is a pessimist: a curmudgeonly,…
Oh, period dramas. There’s nothing like getting lost in a romantic narrative about a plucky heroine and her brooding throng of potential suitors to make you mentally gloss over the realities of personal hygiene in 19th century Europe. I’ve seen multiple adaptations of all my favorites, and I’m not terribly loyal to any particular version. Shirtless Firth or MacFadyen in the fog, Mia Wasikowska’s quiet dignity or Ruth Wilson’s magnificent eyebrows--why choose when you don’t…
Previous editions of the Quotable Jane Austen for Evil People can be found here. Most recently: Mansfield Park. When your friend asks if you like her new haircut: "We are not all born to be handsome." When ickily scamming on some chick named [Something] Elliot at a garden show: "You need not be afraid, Miss Elliot, of your own sweet flower gardens being neglected." When your son tells you he's gotten a merit-based scholarship…
darling Emma have you seen our friend Mr. Martin? he was to take me to tea this afternoon but he isn't here oh Harriet! do you really still like him?? oh I did yes i told him you were not virtuous and i think that got rid of him i didn't think you still liked him you wouldn't have liked him for much longer anyhow lol what would your name even have been if you…
