After last week’s lecture, I made it my personal mission to uncover the strangest item boasting Jane Austen’s image. I was intrigued by the idea of ‘Austenmania’, and wanted to know how far people were willing to go, or what they would voluntarily shell out money for, in order to acquire a piece of ‘their beloved Jane’.

During my search, I came across a lot of standard memorabilia: badges and buttons, magnets, bumper stickers, mousepads, gift cards, writing sets, jewellery and items of clothing. Initially, I was unimpressed with my search results, but I managed to locate a few unexpected items.

Jane Austen finger-puppet from the Unemployed Philosophers Guild
Their website warns buyers that “her biting social satire will reveal the underlying truths of her finger puppet society!”

Jane Austen beanie doll, also from Unemployed Philosophers Guild
Another odd-looking Austen toy. I think the Jane Austen action figure has to be the winner in the Austen doll stakes. This thing, I think, more closely resembles a muppet.

In the Pride and Prejudice board game, one needs to “be the first to collect all game tokens, then race to the Parish Church to marry and win the game! Funnily enough, the artwork, rules and object of the game are not disimilar to the Sweet Valley High board game.

If you wanted to Austenify your house, you could always go for this glow-in-the-dark Jane Austen light switch plate! From Amazon.com

I must admit, I actually kind of like this bag. It’s not really an obscure item and Cafepress.com has thousands of Austen-related clothing and accessories, but this made me laugh.

By far, I think the strangest find in terms of Austenmania oddities was definetely the item below:

Jane Austen underwear!
Again, cafepress.com has an alarmingly large collection of underwear with various Austenisms. Declare your love for Darcy, support Team Brandon or quote your favourite passage from Pride and Prejudice. Cafepress Austen undies
Hmm, I feel it tends a tad more towards the creepy end of the scale. Though I can’t decide what suprised me more: the vast range of Austen designs available, or that there are people out there wearing Jane on their jocks.

The other item I wanted to include was a Jane Austen cookie jar. It was on Ebay and the sale ended last night, so someone else now owns a ceramic cookie jar displaying what looks like a baboon in a bonnet (I mean this in no offence to Jane Austen, it was just a truly hideous item and really had no resemblance at all to any pictures we have seen of Austen, just that it depicted a brunette woman with a bonnet. I suppose this shows how some people will buy anything even loosely related to Austen).

I must admit, I was sort of hoping to find some really obscure Austen related items, like toilet-seat covers, or something as equally kitsch. If anyone else has found particularly amusing objects of Austenmania though, please add them!

I recently found this drawing on DeviantART and thought that it would be appropriate to post it now as it directly relates to our next reading, Pride and Predjuice.

When I first saw this I instantly feel in love with it, mainly because I also often found myself somewhat frustrated with Elizabeth’s behaviour throughout the novel. It would have been quite amusing if Mr. Darcy had of reacted like this and it defiantly would have saved them alot of time and trouble.

The full title for this image is: “How Mr. Darcy Could Have Ended Pride and Prejudice Whilst in the Midst of Volume II” and the artist believe that instead the proposal should have ended like this:

“And this,” Darcy said quietly, as he walked towards Elizabeth, “is your opinion of me? This is the estimation in which you hold me?” He was now standing quite close to her, she stared up into his eyes, suddenly forgetting everything she had meant to say. “I thank you for explaining it so fully,” he continued, then added, “Please hold my hat for me a moment, will you?”

Her eyes were still fixed on his as she absentmindedly reached for his hat. Then she turned away in an abrupt manner that betrayed her agitation, and tried to collect her thoughts as she focused on finding a place for his hat, when suddenly…

At the moment illustrated above he is saying, “You take eager interest in THAT gentleman’s concerns!”

During his actual proposal however, he admits that he was surprised that he had fallen in love with her and stated that because of this he is willing to damage his social status by marrying her. Even though he’s harsh words do come across as insulting towards herself and her family, we must remember that it was a different time, different place.

During this period, people were locked within social classes and convention. He’s somewhat emotionless proposal was so blunt because he did not have the expressive capabilities to soften the truth. This probably would have been a normal reaction for a man of his social standing, who was proposing to a woman of lower class and rank. His marriage to her would bring himself and his family no social or financial gain. This was a different time in which women and men usually married for these two reasons. Darcy’s bluntness on this topic, although quite startling to us now (in a world where most people in the Western world marry for love and not money), this would not have been that shocking to a girl in those times.

From what I have read, a marriage between two such people would have been viewed as quite outrageous and Darcy would not have been oblivious to this. He and his family were both full of pride, and this difference in status would have weighed heavily on his mind. I do not believe that he told all of this to Elizabeth just to insult her, however believed that he thought that he was showing his respect for her by proposing to her, which would have been viewed as a great honor to a woman during this period.

In his mind he ignorantly seemed to believe that his status and wealth would be enough to entice her, and that she would respect his honesty regarding her sister and Mr. Bingley. However, he was too blinded to see that Elizabeth was a women who longed for more in life, and wasn’t going to be persuaded by such material things.

This picture I think encapsulates his frustrations perfectly, and is able to show his emotions much more clearly than he was verbally able to at the time.

What are everyone else’s opinions on his proposal or even the picture?

This picture can be found at:

http://dr-mabuse.deviantart.com/art/How-Mr-Darcy-Could-Have-80114946#

Kellie.

In order to stop Laura from begging (temporarily at least) I decided to have a look at YouTube to see what I could find that was Jane Austen related. (Ok, so maybe I am just procrastinating about writing the first essay – but hey, it’s all related!) YouTube was interesting however. There are A LOT of music video tributes to the adaptations – both films and television series. While they are not particularly exciting, they are fun and there are some interesting choices in music. Generally most are fluffy and romantic but I came across one video set to the song ‘Maneater’ by Nelly Furtado. It portrays all of Austen’s leading ladies (and other female characters) as ‘maneaters’. A bit of a stretch I would say (as did the producer of the video actually – her comment was ‘please don’t hate me!’) but it is still entertaining.

Have a look HERE.

Or for something a little more traditional you might like this ONE.

The number of video tributes is amazing, outshone only by the number of fans responding to them.  Have a look yourself using the keywords ‘Jane Austen’.

RJA students and visitors: hello!  and welcome!   I hope you’ll soon be using the site yourselves.  I will not be posting much here in the future as it’s your blog, but I’ll read everything you all write and I’ll comment, and I’ll be generally hanging around.

I’ve put together some information about what this course blog is for, and how it’s meant to be used, on the Blog Info pages at the top of the site.  But it also seems like a good idea to start us off with a couple of glances at some interesting Austen-in-popular-culture things I found recently.  One is a news article and the other is a website about a collection of Austen clippings held by a university library.  They’re both examples of the fascination Austen seems to exert (and not just over readers of novels.)

The clippings collection, which now belongs to Goucher College in the USA, is a fascinating thing and  all the scrapbooks have been digitised and put online.  The website says:

The Jane Austen Collection is one of Goucher College’s most significant research collections. The basis of the collection is the 1975 donation of Henry and Alberta Hirschheimer Burke, which included rare Austen editions and related books about Austen’s life and times, as well as personal correspondence and memorabilia related to the Burkes’ interest in Austen and the development of their collection.

Alberta Burke filled ten scrapbooks with press notices and publicity material for stage and screen adaptations of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in the 40s and 50s, correspondence with various Austen experts (and rare book sellers) in England, and also seemingly with any newspaper or magazine article she came across that mentioned Austen or her books, no matter how slight the mention.  Some of the clippings are interesting and others are not.  But it’s that desire to document everything vaguely Austen-related that is so intriguing.  It’s not something anyone would attempt now, I suspect – dealing with the deluge of information on the internet would be too much.

Lefroy miniature

The news article deals with the miniature portrait pictured here and how it was just about to be sold at auction.  It’s of Tom Lefroy, a man who Jane Austen met, and seems to have got on pretty well with although nothing serious came of it, when they were both in their early twenties.  In the movie ‘Becoming Jane’  they were depicted as in love and when their romance broke off, the movie implied that Jane used Lefroy as the basis for Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ There’s no historical basis to this.  It’s just movie stuff.

The assumption that Jane Austen based Darcy on a real person, rather than just made him up, is something I find rather strange.

Which is why it was so interesting that the BBC, which one would expect to be a bit careful about things like this, called the miniature a ‘Mr Darcy portrait’ and seemed generally happy to accept the movie’s fairly over-the-top version of reality.  I guess without the Mr Darcy angle it’s not much of a story.  But I’m sure it didn’t hurt the eventual sale price the painting got when it was auctioned.

By the time the ‘Mr Darcy portrait’ story filtered down to the tabloid gossip website Gawker.com, poor old Tom Lefroy was not only the original of Darcy, he was also the distant ancestor of Mr Big of ‘Sex and the City.’  Which is an awful lot to lay on any man, especially one who’s been dead for 150 years.  I did enjoy the comments left by Gawker readers: “Mrs. Gardiner was right; he looks better after you’ve seen the estate.”