Category: Mansfield Park
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Murder, Theft, and Guillotines: The Colorful Lives of Jane’s Family & How They Influenced Her Novels
Murder! Theft! Guillotines! Dive into the colorful lives of Jane Austen’s family members and how they influenced her novels.
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What Did Jane Austen Look Like?
What did Jane Austen look like? No one really knows. Which is to say: We know fairly precisely her size and shape, but only a little of what her face looks like. A forensic analysis done by clothing expert Hilary Davidson in 2015 details Austen’s figure. Davidson has since written books on Austen and Regency…
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What Did Jane Austen Have to Say About Her Own Novels?
Take a peek into Austen’s letters to find out what she thought about her works and about herself as an author.
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Ranking the Most Emotionally Clueless Austen Men
(A lighthearted list — Mr. Collins is obvious, but not alone) They say the wrong thing. They entirely miss the point. Sometimes they launch into a long, confident speech, while everyone else wonders if there’s a polite way to make it stop. Many of these moments belong to the Austen men who are not villains.…
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A Taxing Subject for Americans—and for Austen, Her Peers
April is tax month in the U.S. for most people, so this month’s blog will cover the topic. For the British of Jane Austen’s time, as well as for modern citizens, taxes were both necessary for the realm and a drain on the populace. (My fellow Always Austen author, Don Jacobson, took on the topic…
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Holiday Musings
Though the posting cycle shoots me past Austen’s birthday and Christmas, it is still a time of holiday reflections. Let us begin with the seemingly Grinch-like rejection of the following “Pride and Prejudice” holiday wishes, which we occasionally see on Austen-themed cards and knickknacks: “I sincerely hope your Christmas … may abound in the gaieties…
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Giving Thanks with Austen
With Thanksgiving just past–and passed with family–I revisit the holiday and examine the extent of the formal giving of thanks in Jane Austen’s work. The November U.S. holiday has spread to most of the Americas. The English have a more general harvest-related tradition of providing bread and other food to the poor, often through the…
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The Perfect Regency Heroine
Over the past few weeks I’ve been busy writing a new novel. I haven’t signed up for the official NaNoWriMo event this time, but I’m staying accountable in a small group with some friends. It’s been a great experience, since we’ve done some brainstorming as well as keeping up our word counts, and it’s a…
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Fresh Thoughts on the 2024 AGM
It is ever so difficult to characterize an annual general meeting (AGM) of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). There are so many different elements—local tours, specialty events, sometimes a major evening event, the plenary speeches open to all attendees. Multiple breakout sessions go simultaneously for two days so that no one person…
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“Mansfield Park is too dark.” Really???
“Mansfield Park is too dark.” Really??? I don’t think so. How can a novel where nobody perishes, a novel where there is no scene of violence, war, destruction or self-destruction possibly be dark? Some people do fret about the slave trade (Sir Thomas’s plantations were 99% certain to have been worked by slaves. This is…