SPOTLIGHT ON ... & GIVEAWAY! MRS BENNET'S ADVICE TO YOUNG LADIES: A MOTHER VIEW OF PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

 

We have a new Austenesque read under the spotlight this weekend.  The book is Mrs. Bennet’s Advice to Young Ladies: A Mother’s View of Pride & Prejudice by Victoria Grossack, a dear friend of My Jane Austen Book Club. Her latest book gives us Mrs. Bennet’s views of the events of Jane Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice. Scroll down, enjoy reading the excerpt Victoria has granted us and get your options to win an ebook copy. Good luck and happy weekend!

FAIR STANDS THE WIND BLOG TOUR - CATHERINE LODGE, IN DEFENCE OF MRS BENNET

Author Guest Post

I admit it, I feel sorry for Mrs Bennet.  I know she would be horrendously annoying to live with, no one likes to hear the same thing over and over again, and no one likes to be told what they ought to be doing, especially if it's the one thing you don't want to do, whether it's tidying your bedroom or marrying someone you can't stand.

But the poor woman, really doesn't understand her own life.  She must know that her husband despises her and most of her children, he makes no secret of the fact and she, equally obviously, does not understand why.  As far as she is concerned, she is doing everything right, she runs a comfortable, well-fed household and she is doing her best to get her daughters advantageously married.  Indeed, she seems to be the only person who understands how desperately important it is to get them married, and what a horrendously stupid thing Elizabeth does in refusing Mr Collins.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY! JANE AUSTEN AND HER MOTHERS

Alison Steadman as Mrs Bennet (1995)

Today is Mother's Day in the UK, Jane Austen's country, and author Victoria Grossack wants to celebrate it with us,  sharing this brilliant post about Jane Austen's   mothers. Thank you so much, Victoria!

Jane Austen is celebrated for many things: her wit, her irony, her insight into the human heart, her romances, and her skill in creating characters.  This article looks at Jane Austen’s mothers, the ones she brought to life in her stories.

The mothers in Jane Austen’s novels differ in each book.  In part this is due to her mastery of characters – they are all unique and three-dimensional – but they also reflect Jane Austen and her own development as a person and an author.  Jane Austen had two main writing periods.  When she was young, before 1800, she wroteNorthanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.  These books were not published until later, and certainly they were revised, but the mothers in them reflect the author’s youthful attitude.  Between 1800 and 1809 Jane did not produce much, mostly because her life was unsettled.The novels that she wrote later, after finding a new home in Chawton – MansfieldPark, Emma and Persuasion– show motherhood with greater maturity.

ROUND CHARACTERS AND FLAT CHARACTERS IN JANE AUSTEN'S WORK

My students listening to one of their mates' lessons

I've been working on Jane Austen's novels with my students these days and you can only imagine what bliss that can be for me. Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are the novels we've been reading extracts from and working on. Now in one of the two class groups, they are going to read Emma - the whole novel - with their Italian teacher and, of course, we will discuss it in English together in my lessons after they finish. (You can find some of the materials and videos we used at my other blog LEARN ON LINE: 
1. My Students give their lessons: Persuasion by Jane Austen, 2.  Pride and Prejudice Part I  3. Pride and Prejudice Part II 4. Born to Be a Heroine: Watching Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey ) 

We discussed several issues like marriage, propriety and decorum, money and power, education of men and women in the Regency   but we also learnt something about irony and characterization in fiction.

This is what I wanted to share here tonight, something about characterization:  flat characters and round characters.

The difference was stated by the novelist E. M. Forster (I love all his novels!)  in his work Aspects of the Novel (1927)