UNEXPECTED FRIENDS & RELATIONS - BLOG TOUR WITH AUTHOR JAYNE BAMBER

 The Faults in Austen’s Stars: Flawed Heroines

By Jayne Bamber, author of the Friends & Relations Series

In all the facets of Jane Austen’s genius, perhaps the most delightful is the reality she imbues in all her characters. No one is quite perfect, making them all the more relatable. We can easily imagine ourselves as one or other of her heroines, not because they are as perfect as we might wish to be, but because they, like us, are not. Elizabeth Bennet, the paragon every Janeites wishes to be, is prejudiced and faulty in her judgement. Anne Eliot is too easily persuaded, and Fanny Price rather a bore and a prude. Each of the Dashwood sisters lacks one of the titular traits, while experiencing rather too much of the other, and Catherine Morland literally accuses her future father-in-law of murder (yikes.)

BLOG TOUR: HAPPIER IN HER FRIENDS THAN RELATIONS. AUTHOR GUEST POST AND GIVEAWAY

Evil Jane!

By Jayne Bamber, Author of Happier in Her Friends Than Relations  

Giving you flowers or giving you the finger?

As a reader (okay, addict) of Austen fanfiction for over a decade I have, like many of you, consumed a lot of JAFF over the years, and have seen all sorts of wild liberties taken with the characters and storylines we love so dearly.

One of my favorite tropes in fanfiction is raising antagonists to Supervillain Status, and it’s been done with a lot of characters from Pride & Prejudice – Lady Catherine, Caroline Bingley, and George Wickham (the usual suspects) are often upgraded to evil masterminds with nefarious schemes against our dear Lizzy and Darcy. Even characters like Mr. Collins, Lydia Bennet, and Mrs. Bennet, who are more chaotic-neutral (or idiotic neutral?) than true evil, have taken their turn as villains, as have revered supporting characters like Mr. Bennet, Georgiana Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam. So why not the angelic Jane Bennet?