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?