Austen again

I keep going back to Austen. I was just reading parts of Emma actually and I think a vey interesting theme that I maybe missed just came up. Austen likes to have characters who meddle! With good intentions of course, but still Emma herself is a bigg meddler and matchmaker as is Mr. Darcy in a way. I woder how I can use this new bit? Something else I have been thinking about is language and the way Austen uses it. Its very charming but there are many instances when I sorta of lose the thread of what was being said. Too many long sentences is what im trying to say. I think that I could sort of use that to enhance the indie feel of the writing. Very long sentences which sometimes you cant even follow....isnt that sorta indie?

More Regency writers

I have found a great web site in which there is alot of information about women writers during the period. Most of the books are very hard to find and I had to read summaries of the stories, most of which are about romantic relationships, marriage and love! 

Here are a few examples:

Sophia Lee  The Recess 1783-5 
This is a tale of the two daughters that Mary Queen of Scots had in a secret marriage (need I add this is a historical fantasy?) The two daughters are raised in a hidden underground cave (the recess) and manage to get out and make the two worst marriages possible. (Spoiler warning) One ends up in jail in the Caribbean, and the other is driven mad by the malice and machinations of Queen Elizabeth I. To extend the misery to three generations, a daughter of one of the two hidden heroines goes on also to have marital woes. Lee isn't realistic, but the novel is powerful, gothic, and at times surrealistic. It was a huge bestseller. Ayer Company writes of this book: "This novel marked the beginning of the resurgence in historical fiction, blending the atmosphere of supernatural terror with the distinct panorama of history and chivalry." 

Jane West A Gossip's Story 1797
Fascinating tale of two sisters--one who is involved in a very romantic friendship with another woman. In discussing this female friendship, the novel seems clearly to be referring to a lesbian subtext. The novel is extremely funny in its satire, and many speak of it as a model for Austen's Sense and Sensibility.

Jane Porter Thaddeus of Warsaw 1803 
The heroine of Mary Brunton's Self-Control (1810-1) loves the hero of this novel and it is not hard to see why. How can you resist the tall, handsome, brave hero who fights bravely in battle, goes into exile and fights to help his horse and general in the face of poverty? He also defends women in the streets and helps children. He makes a living teaching languages and selling drawings, resisting the seductive efforts of assorted women who long to make him their play-thing. There is some great satire of London society, as well as a vivid account of spousal abuse and the lack of legal recourse for women. The novel opens with extremely realistic battle scenes of the destruction of Poland in 1796, based on first-person accounts told to the author by a number of soldiers and the great Polish general himself, who Napoleon offered the throne. The book was banned by Napoleon and huge success in its day.

Mary Brunton Discipline 1814 
A great novel written in the first person which tells of a spoiled young woman's journey to maturity and love. Great details of the London season and Scottish city and country life. Novel covers great themes such as jealousy, pride, suicide, sexual harassment, the oppression of the poor, true friendship, and true love. The novel includes also a great ball scene, a fashionable auction scene, a wonderful masquerade scene, a scary madhouse scene, and some vivid depictions of the horror of poverty.

Susan Ferrier Marriage 1818 
Marriage is an enjoyable, funny novel dealing with the life of twin girls, born to a silly London beauty who eloped with a Scotsman. He was disinherited, and poverty in Scotland is too much for the beauty to endure. She leaves with one twin, Adelaide Julia, and leaves the other, Mary, to be raised in Scotland by her aunt, Mrs. Douglas, and her three great-aunts: Miss Jacky, Miss Grizzy, and Miss Nicky. Of course, when Mary is ready for marriage, she reunites with her sister and fun complications occur which of course contrast a fashionable London education and a good, moral Scottish education.

There are many more and I will post more next time!

More on Austen

So, I have been thinking alot about common themes in Jane Austen's work and I have found a useful source. Heres a summary:

In her completed novels, Austen generally explores the same issues or questions, though she explores them from different perspectives, under different situations, and with varied consequences. However, this does not mean that the endings are necessarily different; being comic novels, they all end with at least one marriage.

The individual and society

• What is the proper relationship of the individual to society and to others? What are the consequences for the individual, for others, and for society when the individual ignores or even deliberately transgresses society's rules? What are the consequences when the individual conforms? 
  
  
• How should conflict between the individual's desires and the individual's responsibility to society be resolved? How are the individual and society affected by the resolution, which may range from self-fulfillment to self-sacrifice? 
  
  
• Are the society and the values Austen presents a portrayal of actual society or are they an idealization, goals to be striven for? 
  
  
• Does Austen uncritically accept the values and attitudes of her society? If so, does her acceptance of society give her the freedom to show the limitations and perhaps even the corruption and cruelties of her society? 
  
  
• Is she concerned with the social responsibility of the privileged? If so, does she idealize their responsibilities and show the consequences of not fulfilling them? 
  
  
• How is individual worth perceived and determined in a class-conscious society? What is proper consciousness of class difference and what is snobbery in Austen's view? (Modern readers may also ask the question, is there such a thing as proper consciousness of class difference, or is such consciousness merely one expression of snobbery?) What are the proper class responsibilities of the individual?

• How may concern for others be properly expressed? 
  
  

Freedom and constraint

• Is constraint or limitation a condition of living in society? (Some critics find this issue at the heart of Austen's achievement: Martin Price suggests, "The larger irony that informs all of Jane Austen's comic art is a sense of human limitations." And Walter Allen believes, "Dickens recognizes no limits at all; the art of Jane Austen is made possible precisely by the recognition of limits.")

• Are the rigid rules of conduct in the society Austen depicts necessary to protect the weak and the powerless and to control aggression and violence?

• A formal cole of behavior or manners prescribes conduct and distances feelings. But do the individuals in a society with such a code feel less, or are they merely less able to express emotion freely and openly? What are the advantages and the drawbacks of living in such a society as Austen presents them? The advantages and drawbacks may seem quite different from the perspective of a twenty-first century reader.

• What use does the individual make of freedom, with what consequences?

Imagination/fancy versus reason/judgment

• What are the consequences of yielding to imagination, which may take the form of prejudice, rather than listening to the dictates of reason?

• Do her protagonists generally learn their errors through experience and, as a result, reform? (May such a change also be described as movement from innocence to rational experience?)

• Are any of her characters held up as flawless models, or is even the most rational character flawed?

Love, courtship, and marriage

• What is proper love? Is it intelligent love, and does Austen understand love "in the fullest sense," as Lionel Trilling suggests? If so, do her protagonists naturally have the ability to love intelligently, or do they develop it?

• What qualities and behavior lead to a happy marriage?

Of course I cant write about the regency era without mentioning Jane Austen. Almost everyone has either read or seen an adaptation of one of her novels. She is known as the Queen of Romance through out the world. Surprisingly she only has 6 novels...of which I have read 5 already. I have found a website with very interesting articles about her work and I am starting to think that perhaps she could be the author I choose to work off of. I will post some of the main themes and features in her works in the next post after I am done reading them. But for now from wiki: 

Jane Austen (16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose realism, biting social commentary and masterful use of free indirect speech, burlesque and irony have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and most beloved writers in English literature.^[1]

Austen lived her entire life as part of a small and close-knit family located on the lower fringes of English gentry.^[2] She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to Austen's development as a professional writer.^[3] Austen's artistic apprenticeship lasted from her teenage years until she was about thirty-five years old. During this period, she wrote three major novels and began a fourth.^[B] From 1811 until 1815, with the release of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park(1814) and Emma (1815), she achieved success as a published writer. She wrote two additional novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, both published after her death in 1817, and began a third, which was eventually titled Sanditon, but died before completing it.

Austen's works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the eighteenth century and are part of the transition to nineteenth-century realism.^[4][C] Austen's plots, though fundamentally comic,^[5] highlight the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.^[6] Like those of Samuel Johnson, one of the strongest influences on her writing, her works are concerned with moral issues.^[7]

During her lifetime, Austen's works brought her little fame and only a few positive reviews. Through the mid-nineteenth century, her novels were admired only by a literary elite. However, the publication of her nephew's A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869 introduced her life and works to a wider public. By the 1940s, Austen was firmly ensconced in academia as a "great English writer", and the second half of the twentieth century saw a proliferation of Austen scholarship that explored many aspects of her novels: artistic, ideological, and historical. In popular culture, a Janeite fan culture has developed, centred on Austen's life, her works, and the various film and television adaptations of them.

more on the Regency

I have been doing some reserach on Byron and Shelley this past week and some of their work. Here is a few examples of Byron's work:

She Walks in Beauty

She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright meets in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impair'd the nameless grace which waves in every raven tress, or softly lightens o'er her face - where thoughts serenely sweet express how pure, how dear their dwelling - place. And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, so soft, so calm, yet eloquent, the smiles that win, the tints that glow, but tells in days of goodness spent, a mind at peace with all below, a heart whose love is innocent. and one by Shelley: LOVE'S  PHILOSOPHY By  Percy Shelley  1819  &/\&/\& The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the Ocean, The winds of Heaven mix for ever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine? ---    See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister-flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What is all this sweet work worth If thou kiss not me?  I have also read about these two poets personal lives which in itself is very interesting.In fact tehre was a short summer in which a group of writers including these two and Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley's wife all spent time together in Europe and created many wonderful works. I am also looking into some of the "famous" or "infamous" people of the time, including The Duchess of Devonshire. I am interested in the fact that the rich and famous led very free lives, mostly interested in their own pleasure. They did not work for a living and almost all gentleman kept mistresses openly.  This website has very interesting information:  http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~awoodley/Regency.html

History on the Regent Period

I have found a very interesting website which not only talks about the actual events of teh period but also takes into account the social status of the period. http://www.likesbooks.com/regent.html

Though there was also a great deal of information about romance novels which I'm not very interested in. The fact that all of the court was in such turmoil and corruption may explain why thepeople of this era were divided into so distinct group. The rich and nobel against the poor and common. Husband hunting during the Season was a very common thing which may explain why so many Romance Novels choose this period for their setting. s for literature, Lord Byron and Shelly are on my list to read. I have already read most of Jane Austen's work and am more or less familiar with the sweet side. 

British regency

This past week I have done a lot of thinking and reading to figure out what period of time I am more interested in. From the start, I knew that I wanted to write about the British society, mainly because I am more knowledgeable about their habits and social standing. I also decided that I would enjoy writing about a period when some war was in process...I feel it would create a great deal to write about. the Napoleon Wars seem to be a very good start..most of Europe was engaged in the war and the British felt they were liberating Europe and relieving it of a tyrant. So I have limited myself to the early 1800s which is the Regency era. I like the fact that it was a state of transition, a short period of time when so many things were uncertain. During this week, I will do some extensive research on this period and report my findings. I would like to know what the main characteristic of this period is and what caused people to behave the way they did. One other thing I have decided is that I would not particularly like to write in the style of the writers of the period. I will have to do more research on that though.

First Thoughts

I realize that historical fiction is too wide a range and I need to choose an era that will limit my research. I decided that this too will be a part of my process, and I am hoping that writing about it will help me decide. When i think of historical novels, I always think of contemporary authors writing about the past. An example would "Girl in the Pear Earring" by Tracey Chevalier. However, I see now that I can also narrow my research to an actual era, the Victorian for example, and its novelists. I've already read many of Charles Dickens' works, the Bronte sisters, Wilkie Collins and Oscar Wilde...all authors who belong to that period. So maybe it will be a good choice. However, I'm also very interested in a few centuries back, in the Renaissance, Queen Elizabeth's period in England and the French Revolution. In order to make a choice I need to know a little more about what I actually like more.....is it the time when art was flourishing...or when literature was finally blooming....or when the world was at a very important and interesting political whirlwind? I will try to learn a little more about the different periods and decide soon I hope.