Always Austen

Country Dance Medley (32 bars) Miss Moore’s Rant, Revenge, and Earl Breadalbain’s Reel (7:28) “Scottish tunes were popular in the Regency ballroom. The orchestra at the elite Almack’s Assembly Rooms in London was from Edinburgh, conducted by Neil Gow, grandson of the celebrated Scottish violinist and composer of the same name. Revenge is still popular as an English country dance tune.” (Willcox, 1793; Perkins MS, 1790; Wilson, 1816) (retrieved from: http://www.bfv.com/regency/)

EMMA WOODHOUSE!!!

Persuasion (Ch. XXIII) by Jane Austen (Norton Critical Edition, P. ???)

swooooon

“She had only time, however, to move closer to the table where he had been writing, when footsteps were hear returning; the door opened; it was himself. He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves, and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, an standing with his back towards Mrs Musgrove, he drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Anne with eyes glowing entreaty fixed on her for a moment, and hastily collecting his gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs Musgrove was aware of his being in it - the work of an instant!”

Here is a map of Bath I found on the Jane Austen Society of North America web page! I thought it was really interesting that the Elliots move to Bath and not London. Like Prof Rehn was saying, it was much easier to appear important in Bath than in London.  

Yikes, that’s gotta hurt 

I finally watched Girl Meets New Years and, boy oh boy, those writers are so sneaky. I know, being an older member of the fandom, that I’m probably one of the few people who is well acquainted with Sense and Sensibility. I’ve read all of Jane Austen’s books a few times. But, if I remember correctly, I didn’t start reading her until the eleventh grade. They weren’t introduced earlier because of the density of the language and the rules of propriety which is hard to translate in middle school. The audience for Girl Meets World, I know, is younger. Their demographic is not college student. I don’t think they anticipated the force of the BMW fandom coming over to watch, but here we are.

ANYWAY, all this being said I think they anticipated their audience being unfamiliar with the text. This meant they could bend and shape things to look one way when in reality they are paralleling something completely different.

Within the episode, the drew illusions between the sense for Riley and the sensibility with Maya. They did not touch upon the plot very much, they just made blanket statements and moved on. However, the book was continually mentioned throughout the episode. They were purposefully drawing attention to needing sense and sensibility, blah blah blah.

So on first glance it looks very much like Lucas is passion, Riley is sense (she thinks with her head) therefore their relationship has sense and sensibility. It seems concretely defined.

BUT the writers tricked their audience. I watched the episode through very different lenses because I’m super familiar with the book.

In the novel, Elinor and Marianne are sisters. One is sense, one is sensibility. Marianne is an idealist. She wants the best for people, loves her family deeply and is an eternal optimist. She barely knows a man who she finds attractive and declared herself passionately in love with him. It is love at first sight. Sound familiar? Marianne, in the book, is the sensibility. They said Maya was sensibility, they misdirected their audience. It was genius. It was sneaky and it had me cracking up the whole episode because I know how the book ends.

Whereas Elinor, the other sister, is the more cynical of the two sisters. She guards her heart and is constantly seen protecting her sister from the rest of the world. She does not want her light to shine out. But for herself she never wants to talk about her feelings (“you know what’s a good book?” “the universe doesn’t want to know.”). Elinor is self destructive because she is cynical. And she is the sense. That is Maya.

They used the vagueness of the novel, just the idea of sense and sensibility, to have their audience under the impression that Riley and Lucas were better suited for one another. If we’re going by the BOOK, though, the passionate, family oriented, all around nice guy ends up with Elinor. His passion, her sense balance each other out. That last line about that making up for everything, the thing Lucas says, is a direct parallel to when Elinor apologies to Edward for her behavior toward him.

Now, on to Marianne’s relationship in the novel. Because she is an idealist she is obsessed with the notion of overwhelming romantic love. Willoughby is the most perfect man in her eyes. She finds out that she doesn’t really know him at all when she goes to a ball (RILEY WANTED THAT BALL, OKAY?) and sees he is actually engaged to another lady. Her romantic dreams are crushed.

Colonel Brandon, aka. precious cinnamon roll, tells Marianne everything about Willoughby. He blows the horn, Gabriel’s horn. He hopes she can forgive him for hurting her, it was never his intention. Oh hey there Farkle. And funny, guess who Brandon ends up with? Marianne. Oh hey there Riarkle.

Other stuff happens. There is a lot of small talk. It’s a Jane Austen novel. There is a brief flirtation between Willoughby and Elinor, which is how the love triangle between the two sisters arises. But the real love story of the novel is between Brandon and Marianne along with Elinor and Edward.

I see you GMW writers.