JOURNAL OF THE FIRST MEETING - SENSE, SENSIBILITY AND ... MISS BATES!

 4.30 p.m. AT HOME

Half an hour to the meeting. It rained and rained. What is it that you say on these occasions in English? It rained cats and dogs? Well, it was rainging all the cats and all the dogs in the universe. What then? Will it be another failure? Will they come this time?

17.00  SUBIACO PUBLIC LIBRARY

They came! Here they are!

(Look at Elisabetta laughing while Costanza tells about her favourite sister...Is it Elinor or Marianne? And have you noticed the cake on the table? Delicious! Thank you, signora Letizia!)

18.30

Here we are, smiling and proudly showing our copy of Sense and Sensibility at the end of the meeting: from the left Letizia, Maria Francesca, Marika, Maria Grazia, Ludovica, Marta, Martina, Costanza and Pina . Elisabetta is hidden behind Costanza and  Rosaria and Natalia are taking this picture. Thanks to all of them, our first meeting was a success. We really had a good time !

I opened with a game: the youngest girl, Ludovica,  picked a card with the name of one of the characters on it (Colonel Brandon) and the others had to ask yes/no questions to discover who she was. The questions didn't have to contain names of other characters. It was a good warm - up activity.

We talked about the protagonists, of course, and I was curious to discover which one of the sisters they all liked better: Elinor got 8 votes, Marianne 3 and one of us couldn't decide because, according to her, perfection would be a blend of the two. She got it right. Perfect! I think it is just what Jane would have said.

Among the male characters, well, not a surprise: Willoughby was considered the most interesting  one, though none of us  would have trusted him.

Then, we compared our opinions on many other topics :  the title, marriage, love, irony, Jane's uneventful life, Jane's illness,  Cassandra,  a woman's education at that time, inheritance and the law of primogeniture, balls, minor characters.The discussion was vivacious, lively and friendly.
We even had a Miss Bates among us and we had some problems at containing the flow of her enthusiastic comments.  Jokes apart,  she is such a nice lady, she's forgiven. It was great fun to listen to all her memories of old movies based on Austen and of all the things she had read about Austen and her novels.  We had a very good time thanks to "Aunt Jane" and to the kind enthusiastic contribution of all the readers. 

Next month , NORTHANGER ABBEY. Our next meeting will be on 27th February.