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. 

OUR READING SCHEDULE & PLANS FOR THE FIRST MEETING

Our reading club was inspired by the movie The Jane Austen Book Club. We are a group of Austen fans ranging from 16 to 70 something. We are starting getting in touch and organizing our meetings that will take place at the public library in Subiaco (Rome) monthly,  every last Saturday afternoon at 5 p.m.

Our first meeting will be to friendly talk about Sense and Sensibility with tea and cakes, of course. After the chatting and delicious tea time we will even compare some scenes from two different adaptations of the novel: 

• 1995 movie with Emma Thomson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Greg Wise and Alan Rickman  

• 2008 BBC 3-part series

We are reading the six major novels in a chronological order, thinking of their writing not their publication

30 January – Sense and Sensibility (written between 1795-1797 as Elinor and Marianne)

27 February – Northanger Abbey (written between 1798-99 )

27 March – Pride and Prejudice (written 1797 First Impressions)

24 April – Mansfield Park (written 1813)

29 May – Emma (started in 1814, published in 1815)

26 June – Persuasion (started 1815, published a.d. 1817)

We are going to read and discuss in our language, of course, that is Italian. But I'll let you all know about our impressions and discoveries in English  in this blog . Any suggestion and comment will be welcome.