Members Meeting - March 2021
Members Meeting March 20th
“When the Going Gets Tough, Readers Go to Jane Austen”
“In the final trying months of her life that ended at age 41, Austen composed Sanditon, an incomplete but hilarious fiction replete with the hardiest, zaniest hypochondriacs and riskiest, most dubious financial schemes ever to appear on paper—even funnier than Pride and Prejudice.” When the Going Gets Tough, Readers Go to Jane Austen (simplycharly.com)
Our latest Member’s Meeting asked, “What zany, dubious or hilarious passages from Jane Austen do you turn to in the midst of trying times?” As we are all ready for some humour and lightness, we shared passages that we turn to most to brighten a day, cure an ill or elevate a long winter day.
Onced logged onto the Zoom invite, our members began sharing thoughts on their favourites.
Pride & Prejudice:
Amy read the letter Mr Collins sent to Mr Bennett about Lydia running off with Wickham. Him taking the moral high road is so humorous - like he's twisting the knife into the family's back.......(members words) "what if I had married Lizzy or one of the other sisters, than I would be stained as well!"
Liz read Chapter 60. It's one her favourite sections and it depicts couples and their courting - how and when they fell in love with each other. It's just lovely that they are chatting together without any veneer of the social posturing with each other.
Persuasion:
Lindsey read a few passages from this novel.
Mary Musgrove - Mary seems to make everyone laugh....when Anne first goes to Uppercross, Mary greets her by saying " I am so ill, I can hardly speak....". When Little Charles breaks his collarbone, Mary's response is quite over the top about nursing the little boy in order for her to attend the dinner with Captain Wentworth. In a letter to Anne she discusses mothering and finds it "odd" how some woman mother their children - she doesn't see at all how her mothering technique is no different than those she criticizes. Example when she criticizes someone for leaving her children, then peaks about leaving her own boys for 4-6 weeks.
Richard Musgrove - The family described their son and brother as "Poor Richard", however the narrator's description although harsh is humorous.
Juvenilia
Amber read Leslie Castle (Penguin & Oxford Edition) which Jane wrote when she was 16 years old. It is written in the episcopal style (a novel in the form of letters). "Your fiance may be dying, but I have to make all this soup"
Northanger Abbey
Kathleen started by saying that NA Abbey was Jane's first novel she finished for publication which her father ended up buying back. She thinks that this novel is closest to her Juvenilia and is the bridge to her other novels. She read passages when Katherine was walking with Eleanor and Henry and also read the one that some scholars believe explains why Jane Austen never married.
Group Notes and Comments
We all agreed that P&P has the best opening line in a JA novel, Kathleen believes that NA Abbey has the best last line - "To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced that the general's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience."
How is it that Jane had such insight during a young age and short life that she could write such characters
She had great observation of humanity
Rereading her novels at different stages of your life, you pick up on different characters you never noticed before
When you reread the novels you see humour where it may not have been before Example, Mary Musgrove is very annoying and can grate on your nerves but after reading again you find her hilarious. The same was said about Mr Collins. At first read you may not like them at all, but when you read the novels again, you see them as funny and humorous.
So you have a favourite Austen passage that you turn to in trying times? Share with us below or send along your idea for future meetings.