When the natives get bored on the Facebook Jane Austen Fan Club – and they seem to get bored perilously easily – some member almost always pipes with “Poll!!! Who’s the worst mother/villain/sister/adulterer/whatever in Austen’s novels?”
Polls are conducted… opinions shared… and sometimes some seriously vicious judgement calls get handed down.
According to some, Mrs Norris’s wickedness is positively Hitleresque, while John Willoughby puts Stalin in the shade. The judgements are just that over-the-top.
Which got me thinking. Are these fans-of-Austen as judgemental in real life as they are on Facebook’s Austen Fan Club? Do they slam down their own neighbours and acquaintances the way they do the Willoughbys, the Isabella Thorpes or the Lucy Steeles???
A few of them just might. I’m very glad not to live on the same street as do some of these (mostly youthful) Facebookers, because they’d undoubtedly buzz round my London suburb hissing, “That Alice McVeigh’s parallel parking is an international disgrace – and she mows her lawn even less often than old Mr Jones living at number 27, though he has the excuse of a bad knee. And her bottle and can recycling on Mondays!!! Heavens!!!! Even more cans than the Smiths at number 42, and we all know what a problem the Smith’s grown-up sons have with the booze!!”
(And this, by the bye, is because my professor husband, who had a minor heart attack, only drinks 2% low-alcoholic beers. I long to put up a sign saying, “I know there are tons of cans in our recycling bin but please check out the small print on the cans!!!” )
But most Austen fans – I suspect at least, I could be wrong – are NOT judgemental in real life. Instead, I think they enjoy saying wildly exaggerated things about Austen’s fictional villains (say, Mrs Norris of Mansfield Park or George Wickham) instead of bashing real people they actually know.
In other words, I sense they’re blowing off steam.
Instead of getting ratty with their sister/father/friend who adores that awful Trump/Biden/please insert your own pet political hate here, they indulge in the sweet relief of proclaiming online that Mrs Norris’s cruelty is Stalinesque or that Lucy Steele committed genocide in Rwanda or whatever.
They’re probably very nice to people they know, even the most annoying ones, having taken out their real-life irritations on Jane Austen’s unreal characters – the characters they love to hate!!
Just as, when their own partners might be less than perfection (maybe – just to take an example at complete random – their husband forgets to mow the lawn, omits to become a billionaire, or recycles quantities of practically-no-alcohol beer) they’ll fantasise about being married to one of Austen’s heroes. In this case, they might very well shove up yet another poll about the most appealing Austenesque leading man, just to get fans of the damp Colin-Firth, the swashbuckling Wentworth, the quick-witted Tilney, or the straightforward Knightley – Knightley!! I love Knightley!! – all excited.
Which is why the husbands of JAFF writers have got to be the most patient men on the planet.
And here my husband most feelingly agrees with me.
In fact, he agrees so much that he’s going to mow the lawn – the front lawn, at least. Result!
Happy reading, everybody!!!!
(Alice McVeigh’s DARCY was in the last seven novels for the UK’s Selfies Book Awards at the London Book Fair. Her newest book, Pride and Perjury is being read by ARC team, and will be released in May. Her Austenesque series – the Warleigh Hall Press Austenesque series, McVeigh’s DARCY and her latest short story are all current finalists in the Chanticleer’s International Book Awards.)
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