Carol Presents Jane Austen

 Jacquie's Email

Hello Literary Ladies!!!

I hope you had a lovely holiday season and not ALL of your holiday plans were interrupted by a COVID-related wrinkle.

So back to Zoom we go for our first meeting of 2022 this Wednesday, when Carol will be discussing Jane Austen. I, for one, will be imagining myself in Christine's beautiful parlor, snuggling down in a ridiculously comfy chair, knowing Jane herself would be most comfortable in that gracious setting (though would have much to say of the newer fashions all around her), and grateful that technology has made it such that we can still be all together, as well as be able to watch Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy swimming in the pond at Pemberly scene whenever we wish, a scene I don't believe Jane would have fantasized about herself... or would she?

Jacquie's Minutes

(Jacquie got to be both Corresponding and Recording Secretary; Christine was recovering from an operation on a ruptured tendon)

As one by one members of The Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson appeared in little boxes on my computer screen as we were once again meeting on Zoom due to the quickly spreading Omicron variant in our community, I\this writer couldn’t help but feel the weight of history creeping into the very fabric of our precious gatherings. With resigned good humor, members conveyed how contagion, illness, and the latest shut downs effected their holiday plans and how accommodations were hastily and creatively made – from pared down gatherings and flight cancellations, to no gatherings at all while family members quarantined, to larger get-togethers attended, pandemic-be-damned. Associate Member Lyn McClean spoke about her meaningful work with Afghan refugee families. And time was spent remembering that this was the day before the one-year anniversary of member Barbara Morrow’s talk on Shakespeare’s Fools, which we all were all delighting in when some were interrupted by alerts on their phones that the Capital was under attack, while others chuckled on, unaware of what was unfolding, and that this day was to be known forevermore as January 6th. And Mary Greenly quietly mentioned that she was celebrating her 90th birthday. Her many years as a member of the Literature Club, along with the ringing of the bell by President Fran Greenberg bringing our meeting to order, were reminders of the strong ties we have to the traditions of our Club, and the connection we all feel to the many storied women who came before us over the past century, as they persevered during times of war and uprising, and national and personal joys and heartaches. And finally, as news was conveyed of the passing of Recording Secretary Christine Lehner’s beloved mother, all of us were momentarily silent as we mourned another fierce story coming to an end, yet aware that her story, along with so many others, will not soon be forgotten.

After some final words about how grateful we were to be able to meet on Zoom and not cancel our meeting, which Fran might have had to do even under normal circumstances since the weather outside was icy,Treasurer Lori Walsh reported that we have $265.11 in our coffers.

At this point, we all settled in as Carol Barkin began her presentation on Jane Austen by admitting she had chosen her subject as a good excuse to re-read Austen’s six novels, (as if an excuse was ever needed!)

Using our theme of Biography as a guide, Carol chose to compare the life of Jane Austen as presented by two of her biographers – one, her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh in A Memoir of Jane Austen published in 1871, and the other, historian Lucy Worsley in Jane Austen at Home published in 2017. “There is far more interest in her life than information about it,” Carol told us, since her family destroyed all but 161 of the over 3,000 letters she wrote during her lifetime, most probably to save friends and relations the embarrassment of Austen’s sarcastic commentary. This might account for the more sanitized Victorian version of Jane that Austen-Leigh presented - the quiet and lovely Aunt Jane, sweet tempered and loving of heart, hesitant to be published, wishing to avoid publicity and uninterested in finances, versus the funny and smart woman portrayed in Worsley’s account - an early and eager feminist. Carol sees the later as a bit of a stretch, yet the former “does not account for the woman who created such strong heroines with their cool and sarcastic view of social relationships, and who saw their world so clearly.” Carol thus illustrated how this contrast shows how much biographers’ biases influence what we know, and don’t know, about our subject. What we do know is that – quote - “Jane’s life on the surface was typical of women in her time and social class; but she was thinking in surprising ways about the lives and loves of people around her.”

To readers of her novels, the facts presented about Jane Austen’s life that are known seem all too familiar. It is difficult not to fill in the blanks of Jane’s own story and character with the stories and characters she wrote about.

Between 1810-1816 Jane Austen somehow wrote or revised six full-length novels while also fulfilling her family and household obligations. Years of revising made for tightly plotted and written texts, and we, the readers and lovers of Jane Austen’s novels, can only be grateful that her life story unfolded as it did, to inspire her to write as she did. As Lucy Worsley wrote, “Only with Austen did women begin to think that they wanted – no, needed – to find Mr. Darcy. Only with Austen were women’s thoughts and feelings beautifully and accurately and amazingly brought to life. Only with Austen did women being to live as they still live today.”

Respectfully submitted,
Jacqueline Weitzman
Corresponding Secretary