Virginia Wolf famously said of Jane Austen that "of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness." 
  Perhaps, but we can certainly catch her in the act of cleverness -- for example, in the way she uses weather to shape events.
​  "Austen makes her plots turn on the weather," writes John Mullan in his insightful and delightful What Matters in Jane Austen?  "Having arranged her characters and defined their situations, having planned her love stories and hatched the misunderstandings that might impede them, she lets the weather shape events. It is her way of admitting chance into her narratives."

   The weather naturally plays a important part in Regency life and in Austen's novels. In a world where roads were unpaved, and a large portion of the population were farmers, and there was no central heating and double-glazed windows, people were not as isolated from the weather as we are today.
    But Jane Austen subtly, cleverly, uses the weather to bring events about. Professor Mullan illustrates this with the example of the rainy day in Bath when Anne Elliot, her sister Elizabeth and the artful widow Mrs. Clay go shopping on Milson Street with Mr. Elliot. It begins to rain and Austen arranges matters so that after some bustle about carriage rides and errands, Anne and Captain Wentworth encounter one another in a shop. He  watches as Anne walks off with Mr. Elliot in the "manner of the privileged relation and friend." The captain's walking companions remark on how Mr. Elliot is obviously taken with his cousin Anne. 
    (And I think -- after all the punishment Anne has endured, watching Captain Wentworth thoughtlessly flirt with the Musgrove girls -- I think she has the right to take a little pleasure in his discomfort.)
    Another example of using weather to shape events is the light snowfall in Hartfield on the night of the Westons' dinner party which results in Mr. Elton being alone in a carriage with Emma.
     A further example, which was so subtle I hadn't noticed it, occurs also in Persuasion... 

I'm interrupting my "Clutching My Pearls" series for some exciting Shelley news!

This news builds on a literary mystery which I discussed in an earlier series about the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The Journal of the Keats-Shelley Association for 2019, which came out this month, features an article by Donatella Sisti, which tells of her interesting discovery relating to the "Neapolitan Mystery."  I used this mysterious episode in the life of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in my novella and in my Mansfield Trilogy, so I was very excited to hear about this article and couldn't wait to read it! I assume that the full article is available only to subscribers to the Keats-Shelley journal, or to people with library access, but there is a link here. ​

  So Percy Bysshe Shelley either fathered or adopted a little girl in Naples in the winter of 1818/1819. We don't know if his wife Mary Shelley knew about this child, or how much she knew, but historians agree she could not have been the mother of the baby. My earlier posts will give a recap of the questions that linger around this child, who died before her second birthday.
  She was christened "Elena Adelaide Shelley" and she was evidently placed with a working-class Neapolitan family. She didn't live with the Shelleys and they were not in Naples when she died.
  An enterprising scholar and Shelley enthusiast, Donatella Sisti, searched the national archives of Naples to see if she could find anything that would shed further light on the mystery. She had the name of the midwife from the birth certificate and the names of some working-class Neapolitans who served as witnesses for the death certificate. Sisti searched for these names in the archives, including the police reports, of the time but found nothing.
  She then turned to the actual neighbourhood where Elena Adelaide lived. Aware that Naples would have had church parish records in addition to government archives, Sisti located the relevant church archives for the area--and found the burial certificate of Elena Adelaide. Her burial was conducted by the priests of the Church of Santi Francesco e Matteo (St. Francis of Assisi). How exciting to uncover this long-hidden document! ...

I had some thoughts about the new sculpture commemorating Mary Wollstonecraft. It started as a Twitter post, then it got too long and I thought, nah, Facebook post, then it got longer and I thought, nah, blog post, and then it got longer and it became a published article! You can read it here: