The "courting season" for Regency England began roughly this time of year, so let's hear it for Jane Austen! Most of these quips are from Pride & Prejudice. There is plenty more Austen to explore at other times.
Jane Austen's work experienced something of a "renaissance" in the 1990s. That trend has not really died down. In a time when roles were restricted and Austen preserved her own anonymity, her wit still showed through and entertained many. This is such a contrast to our time, when to be "heard", it seems like you have to give over your whole identity to a public, worldwide electronic platform. This blog undergoes those very struggles, as it seeks to take weighty information and "distill" it for readers. Is it authentic enough? Is the blog writer authoritative enough? Is the "voice" original enough? And, yet I feel it's important to reach out through each of my blogs at least monthly. Certainly, as they are fed through my social media accounts, they have consistent readership that finds value. My other blog does have higher readership than this, but this one is not inactive nor overlooked.
This post, beyond the quotes that anyone can find in Pride and Prejudice, has the addition of the blog author's "digital update" of Austen's only known lifetime portrait with very basic Microsoft tools. Notes on that are at the end.
“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” ― Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters
.jpg "Jane Austen Portrait, Adapted with digital art tools") |
| Jane Austen; only known portrait, a watercolor by sister Cassandra** edited* 2024 by cmb |
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ― Pride and Prejudice (opening lines)
“Angry people are not always wise.”
― Pride and Prejudice (describing Miss Bingley's reactions when she could not curry Mr. Darcy's affections)
“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
― Pride and Prejudice; Lizzy describing her reaction to Darcy
"Is not general incivility the very essence of love?"
- Pride and Prejudice; Lizzy being witty about how lovers tune out everyone else
"You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure."
- Pride and Prejudice; Lizzy encouraging Darcy to forget about his past behaviors towards her (near the end)
“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil—a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”
- Pride and Prejudice; Mr. Darcy (describing to Elizabeth that his great fault is a difficult in changing his opinion of someone, once they have lost his regard) Also "“My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”
“But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.” - Pride and Prejudice; Mr. Bingley (describing how even a small country neighborhood can keep one interested)
"“Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.”
- Pride and Prejudice; Elizabeth (*describing to Mr. Darcy how she amuses herself)
"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?" - Pride and Prejudice; Mr. Bennett to Lizziy (near the end)
*Jane Austen was described as having bright, hazel eyes; they were dark, dark brown in the original. The mouth on the original was even more "pinched", and Jane was known to have a lively, though private, disposition.
The black & white and colorized "engravings" of Austen appearing in her books and on posters are generally "smoothed out" renditions of Cassandra's portrait.
**Both Jane Austen's beloved (and only sister) and their mother were named "Cassandra." Interestingly, though Jane Austen otherwise recycled names for her characters (her own name, "Jane", being a common example), Austen did not have any characters named "Cassandra" in her major, adult works. Oner of her juvenilia works, written around age 12 or 13, was called The Beautifull [sp.] Cassandra. Perhaps as an anonymous author, Jane felt use of this name would have risked exposing her identity, as the name is not as common as others. Or, perhaps, it was just too close to her heart to use it as a character's name in a novel.
"Cassadra", as a name, comes from the Greek for "excels over men." As a mythological figure, where the name first appears, she is a tragic figure. The god Apollo fell in love with her and gave her the gift of prophecy. She rejected him, and he changed it to the curse that she would always prophecy accurately, but no one would believe her. At the end of the Trojan Wars, Agamemnon brought her home as a spoil of war. His wife, Clytemnestra, was already upset with him for sacrificing their daughter years before in order to get fair winds to sail to Troy. Clytemnestra had taken up a male lover herself, and they plotted Agamemnon's death. Cassandra prophesied that she and Agamemnon would be killed upon return but, of course, was not believed. And this is what happened in the myth. This set into course a whole cycle of actions Agamemnon's & Clytemnestra's son and daughter carried out to clear the family of generational guilt before the gods.
