Bad Austen Read online

  “Mr. Darcy is not so well worth your consideration, for he is most disagreeable,” Mrs. Bennet protested from across the breakfast-parlour. “So proud and conceited; I detest the man. How pleasant it is to spend time with Mr. Collins, instead, a lively gentlemen of the finest breeding with ties to Wall Street, and having made a bucket-load of money hedging crude oil and gold bullion; he is clever and well-suited!”

  Elizabeth left the breakfast-parlour where all but Jane and Mr. Bennet were assembled, gathered her thoughts, and sat down in the library where Mr. Bennet spent late afternoons playing games of leisure on his laptop, such as Mafia Wars and Farmville.

  He, too, had been headstrong and less than enthusiastic to involve himself with proud activities such as social networking until Mrs. Bennet explained that her nerves could simply bear no more.

  She related to him that the neighbors were frequently tagging photos of Mr. Bennet, a handsome but rather large man, onto her Wall, photos of him playing electric guitar with his band, Good and Amiable Company.

  “My dear, you must indeed get your own account and have compassion on my nerves,” she cried. He had always intended to open an account, so while his wife visited the Bingley home one fine afternoon, he signed up thither.

  Elizabeth logged on to Mr. Bennet’s computer and pondered this new adventure with much attention. Opening a Facebook account could be pleasant and satisfying! She reflected on the prospect of reuniting with friends from high school and abroad, as the Internet was vast and enormous, a place containing a great variety of ground, a place to perhaps even write a blog—or sell crap on eBay. Oh, the possibilities!

  With a few keystrokes she had registered herself and entered the world of social networking, looking upon ladies of fashionable attire, well-groomed and handsome gentlemen, less-than-well-groomed and handsome gentlemen, and some less-than-handsome and in need of a bath.

  Suddenly a red spot appeared on the top of the screen. Elizabeth promptly clicked the unannounced e-mail. Here she found a “friendship request” from Mr. Darcy himself. “Will you accept my friendship, as my feelings have not changed since I saw you last?”

  Elizabeth was elated. The decision had been a good and proper one. She confirmed his request, as any lady of good character and happy manners would, and then spent the rest of the evening viewing photos that he had recently posted of Pemberley Woods.

  He had not a profile photo, however, as both Elizabeth and he agreed was far too pompous, lacking humility.

  Elizabeth had also entered “it’s complicated” in reference to her relationship status. Soon, however, within a fortnight, she would be updating her status to “in-a-relationship” with none other than the handsome, although privately so, Mr. Darcy.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  With five brothers at home and just one sister, Jane was growing up in quite a masculine household. Moreover, her parents ran a school for boys in their home. Is it any wonder Jane Austen was able to depict the behavior of men with such accuracy and their feelings with such sympathy?

  We see how much the dispositions and preferred pastimes of spirited boys must have appealed to the young Jane in the characters of some of her heroines. Catherine Morland, the heroine of Northanger Abbey, is in fact what we would call a tomboy: “She was fond of all boys’ plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy … she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.” As many have pointed out, there is just such a slope at the back of the Steventon rectory.

  Bennet Bridezillas

  TARA O’DONNELL

  It has become a truth universally acknowledged that a successful television network, possessed of the need to keep their rating status on a high level, must be in want of an entertainment dedicated to strife.

  Bearing that notion in mind, the Royal We Channel is pleased to extend an invitation to its gentle viewers to accompany them as they pay a call upon the Bennets of Longbourn during their preparations for the upcoming nuptials of one of their five daughters.

  Do join us in celebration as well as speculation into the goings-on amongst this seemingly happy family as they gather together to create a splendid occasion that should bring their best behavior forth or, for the benefit of our mutual amusement, reveal some of their less attractive qualities:

  (As the curtain rises, Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins are seated near one another in the parlor while Mr. Bennet keeps to his book nearby.)

  Mrs. Bennet: oh, my dear Mr. Bennet, is it not wonderful that just as our dear Lydia was finished mourning the loss of poor Mr. Wickham than she should find herself engaged to that charming Colonel Fitzwilliam, who has quite a good income for a second son, and a relation of our dear Mr. Darcy as well?

  Mr. Bennet: Quite true, my dear. our youngest is indeed most fortunate to have found another man with a taste for silly women and enough of a fortune to make such a union worth her while. (He turns away from visitors, book firmly in front of his face.)

  Mrs. B: oh, how you take delight in vexing me and my poor nerves! (She turns her attention to Mr. Collins.) And how fortunate for our family that one of your parish duties is now as arranger of weddings, Mr. Collins!

  Mr. Collins: Yes, madam, the banns for your daughter’s marriage could not have been called at a more suitable time. With the assistance of my dear Charlotte, along with my noble patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh, whose sanction I would not dare to proceed without….

  (Mr. Collins’s lofty statements regarding his new employ are interrupted by the fierce opening of the parlor door and the entrance of Lydia with her sister, kitty, alongside her. Mr. Bennet chooses to take this most agreeable opportunity to make haste to his library.)

  Kitty: The gowns that Lydia has chosen for her wedding party to wear are a hideous colour that makes me look ill, Mamma! Have her change it, I beg of you!

  Lydia: It is not my fault that you are too plain to look well enough in it! There is not a prettier shade in satin in all of Brighton, and when my dear Fitzwilliam wears his regimentals amongst all the officers attending our wedding there, that colour must match his blue coat!

  Mrs. B: Have some compassion on my poor nerves!

  Mr. Collins: I was not informed that Brighton would be the location for your wedding, cousin. Lady Catherine was condescending enough to allow Rosings to be used for the reception, provided that certain restrictions are adhered to.

  Mrs. B: Why, that is very good of her Ladyship to make her house available, Sir, but Rosings is quite a long ways away. Now, I was considering Purvis Lodge, despite their dreadful attics or …

  (The former Mrs. Wickham chooses this moment to make her displeasure at such arrangements known by raising the tone of her voice to such heights as to cause the furniture to tremble while stamping her feet.)

  Lydia: I WANT TO GO TO BRIGHTON!!!

  (Kitty begins to weep and flees from the limited comfort her mother can provide at this particular time. As she ascends the stairs, her elder sister Elizabeth can be seen speaking with their father outside of the library door.)

  Elizabeth: Father, I entreat you, it is bad enough that Lydia’s impudent behavior is known outside her family, but to have this most public exposure while she is in the midst of preparing to make a new beginning for herself and Colonel Fitzwilliam will only serve to fix her in society as the most determinedly foolish bride that ever chose to reenter the married state!

  Mr. B: Calm yourself, my dear. It is true that Lydia seems to have learned little about proper decorum during her earlier marriage, but do remember what I told you once about being sport for our neighbors and laughing at them in return, which sadly seems to be the fashion these days. …

  (our presence has been detected by Elizabeth and her father, causing them both to retreat into the quiet sanctuary of the library and firmly close the door behind them. Perhaps they will excuse our interference at
a later time and realize that it was kindly meant.)

  Sass and Sexual Ambiguity

  STACEY SPENCER

  Elizabeth and emma were neither above the age of graduation nor below the age of menstruation, and were in possession of a notable tendency to enjoy the taste of Pimm’s and not stray away from even the most altering of mind-numbing pharmaceuticals. to their well-below-favorably-rated credit, they had recently gained acquisition of a fine Ford taurus, which aided them in setting out to drive to the end of the world or, as their fellow countrymen called it, California.

  One would not say that it wasn’t true that they had set out to visit a vacationing friend, a man who had gone to college and left, then returned to college only to be released again and come back with a condition called PhD. At university, Elizabeth had been acquainted with this PhD while not dabbling in Sapphic Arts and Literature, and it wouldn’t be untrue to say that she had also, in an unwittingly ambitious way, attracted a condition of her own, also named with its own three-letter acronym, from him.

  Ooh! He angered her so with his crotchetiness that her chest would heave at the very thought of him. He, with his bad taste and conservative ways, was no match for a wild and untamed thing such as herself. one would be unwise or unobservant to say that her motivations for this visit, though murky with the unhinged emotion of a single woman who was inebriated and had not been to bed in several weeks, might have included a plan lesser than to kill him with kindness.

  But, oh my, how her bitter tune changed once she caught sight of his palatial pleasure dome! The velvet fainting couch! Rotating bed with optional harness and chains! Purple and leopard-print window dressings—the height of her own tastes and such magnificent display of the man she did not know he was! And his bookshelves! They were filled to the brim with stories that had captured her youthful heart: The Kama Sutra, The Story of O, and—gasp!—The Happy Hooker.

  His place was the perfect blend of sass and sexual ambiguity she had been secretly waiting for her entire life! She hadn’t considered marriage before (particularly not to a man after finding emma), but after a night with his frisky servants and olympian-like playmate, how could she not consider?

  When he finally arrived at the party, he serenaded her with a lovely song about from whence he came. She had never been serenaded before and felt a ping of jealousy from emma. But she would do well to find her own man now and live the kind of life that Elizabeth now cherished, with white picket fences adorned with velvet drapery and electric barbed wire.

  There was such a fuss between the two girls on the car ride home concerning Elizabeth’s newfound fondness for Dr. Darcy.

  “Surely, you don’t take the professor seriously. I mean, think of your family.”

  “I wouldn’t think they’d mind much, since he has a large house and servants. What do you have?”

  “I think he must have put some kind of spell on you. It’s as if you’re dreaming.”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t not say but that I felt as if I might be. Could it be the effect of some kind of magical spell or power that Dr. Darcy has me under? Could it be I have fallen in love?”

  “Most likely it’s the poor mock imitation of Pimm’s we consumed during the revelry last night. given the host’s affinity for madness, I’d not be surprised if he hadn’t heightened our drunk with hallucinogens.”

  “I say it’s not a crime, to dream and to want more. That’s what I say, ‘Thou shall not dream it, though must be it.’”

  “Now you’re being just plain childish and foolish. Really, get your feet on the ground and look at the rational evidence. What has he done to you?”

  “I don’t know, but I definitely feel different. Wait—what’s this? Could it be?” She lifted the hem of her jacket and skirt to reveal a fishnet-stocking-clad leg. “I doth believe I feel quite sexy.”

  Virtue and Voracity

  JENNIFER HARGIS

  Eleven men stood on each side of one of the lines that had been drawn on the lawn. The gentlemen on one side were wearing red regimentals, while the others wore white. As they assembled in an orderly manner and bent over, those who wore white snarled at those who wore red and the men in red did likewise.

  Mr. Jonathan Higney-Pickering looked straight ahead at Mr. Andrew Wilerman and said, “good day, Mr. Wilerman. I have it on excellent authority that your mother is of questionable reputation.”

  At which point Mr. Wilerman became warm and stated that Mr. Higney-Pickering was of no consequence and his information was unsound.

  Further down the line Mr. Henry Fitzgammon took the opportunity to express the following to Mr. Thomas Badhus-band: “good sir, I will shortly run toward you with great speed, thrust you to the ground, and trample upon your hindquarters.” Mr. Badhusband took no offense, but rather smiled and invited Mr. Fitzgammon to try.

  There was an oddly shaped ball on the ground, and one of the gentlemen in red reached down to touch it as the gentleman behind him, who was standing erect, began to shout with little concern for such ill behavior as would not befit a gentleman of his position. The man with his hand on the ball thrust it between his legs so that the gentleman behind him was forced to put his own hands out to catch it, lest he be injured.

  This insufferable act set the gentlemen in white propelling themselves toward the men in red, as if all those in red were equally as responsible for holding the ball as the two gentlemen who had actually touched it. As promised, Mr. Fitzgammon did indeed thrust Mr. Badhusband to the ground and trample his hindquarters.

  The gentleman in red, who had the ball, fearing for his safety, threw it to Mr. Higney-Pickering, who proceeded to run around, over, and under all of the men in white who stood before him and did not stop until he reached the area at the end of the lawn that had been colored red. Having ended his journey, he threw the accursed ball down and began to walk around it in much the manner that a chicken might.

  Several men, who had been staying out of the way of the men in regimentals, began shouting and throwing yellow handkerchiefs on the lawn. It had become evident that Mr. Badhusband, now able to stand, had elected to retaliate against Mr. Fitzgammon, had grabbed the lower portion of Mr. Fitzgammon’s head-dress, the part which he wore across his face, and pulled with such abrupt force as to cause injury to him. Because Mr. Badhusband was wearing white, the gentlemen in red determined that this incident was of less importance to them than the happy occasion that had been precipitated by Mr. Higney-Pickering’s achieving the end of the lawn.

  There was a great deal of excitement, which grew even more unseemly when Mr. Wilerman’s mother ripped away the bodice of her gown and ran across the lawn, thus reinforcing Mr. Higney-Pickering’s statement that she was indeed of questionable reputation.

  DID YOU KNOW?

  Many good writers are bad spellers, and Austen didn’t have the benefit of computer programs to check her work for errors. But spelling was also not completely standardized in the eighteenth century, and people were more accepting of variations. Even proper names were sometimes spelled—or “spelt”—in different ways. In a famous reference to Pride and Prejudice, Austen wrote that she had “lop’t and crop’t” it—where we would insist on “lopped and cropped.”

  It might be distracting to read whole novels in which common nouns were capitalized in the old-fashioned style Austen frequently used, but some modern editions of Austen’s texts bring every instance of her erratic and charming spelling into line with current usage, and so we also lose “Swisserland” and “ancle.” Somehow Sophia’s dying warning to Laura in Love and Friendship, “Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint,” loses something when the spelling of the word “chuse” is updated. (Fanny Price, too, is amazed to find herself “a chuser of books.”) The flavor of a different era is subtly retained with such details, whereas many writers of sequels to Austen’s novels today, in the mistaken belief that such words are authentically “period” terms, use language that was archaic even in her time!

  Because she w
rote before the age of certain strict—and rather pedantic—grammatical rules, Jane Austen also makes what many today would deem grammatical errors, using “which” for “that” and “they” as a singular pronoun. (Many today are careful to say “he or she” rather than fall into that agreement “error.”) However, we should also note that Austen cared enough about correct language to make use of it in her novels as a way of signaling character.

  In Northanger Abbey, Henry Tilney jokes about ladies who have a “a very frequent ignorance of grammar,” and his sister complains that he is always finding fault with her “for some incorrectness of language.” He wittily complains about how the word “nice” has completely lost its original precise meaning and “now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.” (We might note that his complaint has lost none of its relevance.) Although he is being playful rather than serious and pedantic when he makes these remarks, he clearly does care about the way language is used. Henry Tilney is very closely identified with the author’s attitude and opinions throughout the novel, so we can infer that Austen entered into his feelings on this subject, too.

  One of the things that impresses Emma (to her surprise) about Harriet’s would-be lover Robert Martin is the quality of the writing in the letter containing his marriage proposal: “There were not merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a gentleman.” Of course, Emma must talk herself out of this approbation in order to keep her predetermined opinion of him as “illiterate and vulgar.” Lucy Steele in Sense and Sensibility truly is vulgar, and her speech is littered with grammatical errors: “It would have gave me such pleasure,” “It would have been such a great pity to have went away,” and “Anne and me are to go.”

  Lydia Bennet has grown up in the same household as articulate, eloquent Elizabeth and Jane, whose speech is grammatically correct, but she is quite different from her sisters in a number of ways. It is no coincidence that Lydia, who risks ruining herself and disgracing her entire family by living with a man outside of marriage, also says things like, “Mrs. Forster and me are such friends.”