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CMP#67  Austen Antecedents

8/31/2021

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​    One Evening in December as my Father, my Mother and myself, were arranged in social converse round our Fireside, we were on a sudden greatly astonished, by hearing a violent knocking on the outward door of our rustic Cot.
    My Father started—“What noise is that,” (said he.)
    “It sounds like a loud rapping at the door”—(replied my Mother.)
    “it does indeed.” (cried I.)
    “I am of your opinion; (said my Father) it certainly does appear to proceed from some uncommon violence exerted against our unoffending door.”
   “Yes (exclaimed I) I cannot help thinking it must be somebody who knocks for admittance.”

     “That is another point (replied he;) We must not pretend to determine on what motive the person may knock—tho' that someone DOES rap at the door, I am partly convinced.”

                                                                   --- Love and Freindship, Jane Austen (juvenilia)

CMP#67   The Antecedents of Austen: or, Chance or Design?
PictureBefore Jane Eyre on the moor, there was Louisa
     My article in the current issue of Jane Austen's Regency World magazine discusses the similarity of two distinct plot points found in Austen's unfinished novel Sanditon and the 1796 novel The Farmer of Inglewood Forest. 
     Jane Austen’s characters and stories are so beloved that some of her devotees might think it treasonous to suggest that she owes anything to other novelists. Her own voice is so distinct and her genius shines so bright. We discuss her literary creations as though they are living, breathing people. How could anyone think that Austen drew on other writers for plot ideas and characters?
   Many scholars do think so. And of course, we know she lampooned existing novels for her juvenile parodies. For example, the opening of Elizabeth Helme's 1789 novel Louisa, or the Cottage on the Moor, is satirized in Austen's hilarious juvenile work Love and Freindship. While she was writing her juvenilia, she was honing her art.
   Helme's story begins: On a frosty night, the latter end of December (when the mild radiance of the moon, to a mind at ease, might have made even this rough scene delightful)--the inhabitants of the cottage were disturbed by a loud knocking, which was answered by a female voice, who from a window in the upper story demanded the reason of this late alarm!
    Who knows, perhaps the idea of a heroine wandering on the moor and ending up at a lonely house inhabited by poor but honest genteel folk inspired more than one novel.   


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CMP#66  Elizabeth Helme's five reasons

8/26/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. I’ve also been blogging about now-obscure female authors of the long 18th century. For more, click "Authoresses" on the menu at right. Click here for the first in the series. 

CMP#66:   A Tribute to Elizabeth Helme
     My article about the connection between Jane Austen's unfinished fragment Sanditon and Elizbeth Helme's novel The Farmer of Inglewood Forest appears in the September/October 2021 issue of Jane Austen's Regency World magazine. Here is more about Elizabeth Helme.​
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      Elizabeth Helme's writing career spanned almost thirty years. She wrote gothic novels, historical novels, and sentimental novels. Her sentimental novels are: Louisa, or the Cottage on the Moor (1787), Clara and Emmeline, or the Maternal Benediction (1788), The Farmer of Inglewood Forest (1796),  Albert, or The Wilds of Strathnavern (1799), and Modern Times (1814). These books have everything: virtuous heroines, dauntless heroes,  suffering orphans, dastardly villains, rich uncles, dissipated aristocrats, untrustworthy foreigners, loyal servants, scheming servants, duels, runaway carriages, surprise inheritances, fainting, blushing, frenzy fits, life-threatening fevers, abductions, seductions, amazing coincidences, and.... some things that also show up in Jane Austen novels, too.


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CMP#65  Austen and Social Class

8/18/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. Folks today who love Jane Austen are eager to find ways to acquit her of being a woman of the long 18th century. Further, for some people, reinventing Jane Austen appears to be part of a larger effort to jettison and disavow the past. Click here for the first in the series. 

CMP#65  Austen Plus Money Plus Social Class
PictureDistinctions of rank: Emma disapproves when Robert Martin woos Harriet Smith
   Many critics of Jane Austen--in both senses of the word "critic" --have commented on the focus on money in Austen. Some have read deep meaning into the fact that most of Jane Austen’s characters move in a higher social sphere than she did in real life. Austens' parents were pseudo-gentry, or of the middling class. They did not own property. Their sons (except Edward and their disabled brother George) had to work for a living. Jane and her sister Cassandra had almost no income of their own, not enough to make them financially independent.  
  In a New Yorker article, "How to Misread Jane Austen," Louis Menand asks if there is any significance in the fact that her main characters are wealthier than she was. “Does this mean that she was pressing her nose against the glass, imagining a life she was largely excluded from?”
​  Or, “does it mean that she could see with the clarity and unsentimentality of the outsider the fatuity of those people and the injustices and inequalities their comforts were built on?” That is, does Austen write about the magnificent grounds at Pemberley out of fascination or envy? 
​   


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Guest Post at The Book Rat

8/17/2021

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"If a poor devil is once in a vortex, he must whirl on."
​-- Edward Grenville, spendthrift man about town, in
​    Private Life: or Varieties of Character and Opinion (1829)

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    ​Misty at The Book Rat hosts an annual online event called "Austen in August" and invites participation from Janeites around the world to celebrate Jane Austen.
     My guest blog is based on a bit of advice that Jane Austen sent to her niece Anna Austen LeFroy concerning novel-writing. 
     Austen didn't care for the phrase "vortex of dissipation." She thought it was what we would call today a cliché. And a lot of authors used the term, as well as a lot of essayists! I supply just a sample in my blog post. Many 18th century novels showed dissipated characters, but for the purposes of morality, it was important that they either be reformed or be punished by the end of the story. Thus they provided both titillation and a moral lesson. It seems to me that many novels portrayed the London social scene is venal and populated with frivolous, malicious, stupid people. Routs and masked balls were crowded, insufferably hot (think of all those bodies in motion and all those candles) and a minefield of social danger, yet some of the characters would go to any lengths to be called a member of the ton and stay a member of the ton. Regency FOMO, if you will.
     I think my favourite dissipated character in 18th century literature is Lady Delacour from Belinda by Maria Edgeworth, though she doesn't use the word "vortex." She's witty and clever. In this quote, she's teasing Belinda for acting like a good 18th century girl and being oblivious to the fact that a man likes her: “If you would only open your eyes, which heroines make it a principle never to do—or else there would be the end of the novel—if you would only open your eyes, you would see that this man is in love with you; and whilst you are afraid of his contempt, he is a hundred times more afraid of yours; and as long as you are each of you in such fear of you know not what, you must excuse me if I indulge myself in a little wholesome raillery.” 
    Delacour's also a spendthrift and, until she's reformed later in the novel, morally bankrupt as well. However, she's a much more energetic and interesting character than the heroine Belinda, as these18th century scholars discuss near the end of this podcast about female authors.
​      I've got more about the Vortex of Dissipation at this earlier post. 

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    More about me here. My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time as a teacher of ESL in China,(just click on "China" in the menu below.) more recent posts focus on my writing, as well as Jane Austen and the long 18th century. Welcome!


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