Lover's Vows

It's been too long since my last post.

Going on with the Jane Austen theme, I've been enjoying immensely the Sunday night Masterpiece Jane Austen novels adapted for TV. Mansfield Park was the offering last Sunday. Fanny Price is the heroine of Mansfield Park and one of my favorite Jane Austen characters. Many people feel Fanny is too tame and too much of a goody-two shoes to be a favorite heroine. But I like her quiet ways and her absolute confidence to do the right thing in spite of her anxiety and fears and in the face of strong opposition.

The latest PBS version of Mansfield Park stars Billie Piper as Fanny. The character is written for the movie with a bit more spunk than comes across in the book. Her constant running here and there in the movie is definitely not in the book. But, I like the liveliness that comes across on the screen.

One of the key plot elements in the book is the preparation for a play by the residents of Mansfield Park and their friends. The play is entitled Lovers Vows. Fanny and her cousin Bertram disapprove of the endeavor and especially the choice of the play and the decision to cast the engaged Maria Bertram in the part of Agatha (the victim of a seduction and the resulting unwed pregnancy).

Reading the play helped me to understand the story of Mansfield Park better.


Fanny's Opinion of "Lovers' Vows"

From Chapter 14

The first use [Fanny] made of her solitude was to take up the volume [of "Lovers' Vows"] which had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the play of which she had heard so much. Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance—that it could be proposed and accepted in a private Theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make

More to come, got to run to take Aimee to gymnastics...

Soul Piercing

The Masterpiece presentation of Persuasion on Sunday was not a disappointment. Watching Miss Anne Elliot brought back to life by the return of her true love, Captain Wentworth, after an eight year separation was quite enjoyable.

I am re-reading each of Jane Austen's 6 novels in preparation for watching the Masterpiece presentations. The climax of the novel Persuasion and the movie comes with the unveiling of one of the greatest love letters ever written (well certainly better than any I ever received.) Here is Captain Wentworth's impassioned epistle to Miss Anne Elliot, for your enjoyment and mine:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.

Next Sunday watch out for Gothic twists and turns in Northanger Abbey.

Milestones

January 2008 has already been a month of milestones. This past week my son turned sixteen. And the week before that yours truly, turned, ahem, fifty. That’s right. FIFTY! But I don’t feel like fifty. Well, I’m not sure what fifty’s supposed to feel like, but I don’t feel any different than I did at say, forty-nine.

I guess I have some good company and lots of it. I read somewhere that since 2001 someone turns fifty every six seconds. Here are some other people turning fifty in 2008:
1958: Grandmaster Flash, Ellen DeGeneres, Ice-T, Sharon Stone, Holly Hunter, D. Boon, Alec Baldwin, Andie MacDowell, Michelle Pfeiffer, Rick Santorum, Drew Carey, Annette Bening, Prince, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Jello Biafra, Kevin Bacon, Mark Cuban, Bill Berry, Madonna, Angela Bassett, Belinda Carlisle, Steve Guttenberg, Tim Burton, Michael Jackson, Thomas Dolby, Tim Robbins, Viggo Mortensen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charlene Tilton, George Saunders, Nikki Sixx, Bebe Neuwirth. Elsewhere: Andy Gibb, Gary Numan, Gary Oldman, Simon Le Bon.
Source : Braniac

In the Bible, fifty is a Jubilee year. It’s a year of liberty and release from debt. It's a year that to enjoy the increase of the land without sowing or reaping:

Leviticus 25:10, 12
And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.

That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows..., not gather the grapes of you untended vine.

For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its increase from the field.

I'm ready for some JUBILATION! Let's Party!

On Turning Fifty
Today I turned fifty. I feel really good.
My body's still working quite well thanks. (Touch wood!)
My hair's not too grey, my wrinkles are few,
I can still touch my toes with my knuckles. (Can you?)
I'm quite full of vigour, just getting ripe.
(But they now print the phone book in much smaller type.)
Inside this old body I'm still young, but then
If life starts at forty, I'm really just ten.
By Sue Taylor

You'll Be a Man, Son

For my son on the week he turns sixteen:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
Rudyard Kipling

Where's My King Cake?

Today, January 6, is Kings Day. Kings Day, also known as Ephiphany, is the day when according to tradition, the Magi brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the baby Jesus. For me, growing up in New Orleans, that meant one thing, King Cake! I love King Cake. I am craving King Cake, I have been all day. Last night I did a google search asking "where to buy a King Cake in Los Angeles".

Google gave me one suggestion. The suggestion Hansen's Bakery. Oh yes, Hansen's Bakery does have King Cakes, but this is not a New Orleans King Cake, not by any stretch. This is a fake King Cake:




I could order one online from New Orleans, but I just can't bring myself to spend $40.00 to $50.00 to ship one here. I could make one, but it just wouldn't be the same, so here I sit, craving King Cake.

Jane Austen's Captain Wentworth

I’m looking forward to Sunday evenings this winter. I’ll be tuning in to PBS for The Complete Jane Austen on Masterpiece 2008. (9pm/8pm CT) Here’s the schedule:

January 13 Persuasion
January 20 Northanger Abbey
January 27 Mansfield Park
February 3 Miss Austen Regrets
February 10 Pride and Prejudice
to 24
March 23 Emma
March 30 to Sense and Sensibility
April 6

In preparation for watching the film adaptations I’ve started re-rereading the Austen novels. I’m reading Persuasion now. Miss Anne Elliott is pining away for her lost love when he suddenly reappears in her life. Anne had fallen in love with a young naval officer, Frederick Wentworth, eight years earlier. She was persuaded to break it off by well-meaning friends and relatives on the grounds that he was not a suitable match for her in station or fortune. Now that he is a naval captain and has made his fortune and she a spinster the chances of them being reconciled seem slim. You’ll have to read the book and/or watch the movie for the rest of the story.

I came across something interesting pertaining to the possibility that Jane Austen had a romance with a real naval officer who perhaps became the model for Captain Wentworth. This is from Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, by her nephews, William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh:

A story is given in the Reminiscences of Sir Francis H. Doyle, to the effect that Mr. Austen, accompanied by Cassandra and Jane, took advantage of the Peace of Amiens, in 1802, to undertake a foreign tour. Whilst in Switzerland, they fell in with a young naval officer, who speedily became attached to Jane. His love was returned, and all seemed to be going smoothly. The party were making for Chamonix; but while the Austens kept to such high road as there was, their friend was to make his way thither over the mountains. The Austens reached Chamonix safely, but their friend never arrived, and at last news came that he had over-tired himself and died of brain fever on the way. The Austens returned to England, and Jane resumed her ordinary life, never referring to her adventures abroad.

Here's an excerpt from a poem by W.H. Auden about Jane Austen:

A Letter To Lord Byron, W. H. Auden
"...
There is one other author in my pack
For some time I debated which to write to.
Which would least likely send my letter back?
But I decided I'd give a fright to
Jane Austen if I wrote when I'd no right to,
And share in her contempt the dreadful fates
Of Crawford, Musgrove, and of Mr. Yates.

Then she's a novelist. I don't know whether
You will agree, but novel writing is
A higher art than poetry altogether
In my opinion, and success implies
Both finer character and faculties
Perhaps that's why real novels are as rare
As winter thunder or a polar bear.
...
I must remember, though, that you were dead
Before the four great Russians lived, who brought
The art of novel writing to a head;
The help of Boots had not been sought.
But now the art for which Jane Austen fought,
Under the right persuasion bravely warms
And is the most prodigious of the forms.

She was not an unshockable blue-stocking;
If shades remain the characters they were,
No doubt she still considers you as shocking.
But tell Jane Austen, that is if you dare,
How much her novels are beloved down here.
She wrote them for posterity, she said;
'Twas rash, but by posterity she's read.

You could not shock her more than she shocks me;
Beside her Joyce seems innocent as grass.
It makes me most uncomfortable to see
An English spinster of the middle-class
Describe the amorous effects of 'brass',
Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety
The economic basis of society.

New Year's Reading Roundup

Happy New Year!

You crown the year with your goodness and your paths drip with abundance.

Psalm 65:11


Here's a list of the books I read in 2007, at least all the ones that I finished and remembered to write down in my journal. I didn't read as many books this year as I did last year. There are probably a number of reasons for this. I think that I probably started more books and didn't finish them. Right now I'm in the middle of four or five books. I also spent more time online this year reading blogs, social networking and just chasing bunnies around the internet. I did a lot more reading when I was driving my daughter to gym 50 miles away in 2006. Not wanting to make two round trips and not really feeling comfortable with leaving her there alone, I was "stuck" there for four to six hours at a time. Needless to say that gave me quite a bit of time to read. Now she's at a local gym and I'm not "stuck".

The books are listed in the order that I read them, except that I found a few that I had missed in another list and stuck them at the end. The books marked with asteriks are those that I bought this year.

Books Read in 2007

The Princess and the Wise Woman by George McDonald

Emily Bronte and her Sisters

*The Book of Hours by Davis Bunn

Codex by Lev Grossman

The Good Nanny by Benjamin Cheever

*The Jane Austen’s Guide to Manners by Josephine Ross

Lileth by George McDonald

*The Know It All by A. J. Jacobs

Phantastes by George McDonald

Middlemarch by George Eliot

An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

*Amazing Grace, William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas

*The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Christ in the Passover by Cecil and Moishe Rosen

Tess of D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy

*Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde

*The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde

The Histories by Herodotus

The Bookwoman’s Last Fling by John Dunning

The Mill on the Floss George Elliot

Never Before in History by Gary Amos

Misquoting Jesus By Bart Ehrman

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

*Many Waters by Madeleine L’Engle

The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Sansome

*Rashi’s Daughters, Book I: Joheved by Maggie Anton

The Holiest of All by Andrew Murray

Under the Lilacs by Louisa May Alcott

*Thursday Next: The Sequel by Jasper Fforde

*The Narnian by Alan Jacobs

*Rashi’s Daughters, Book II: Miriam by Maggie Anton

*Rotten Tomatoes by Jasper Pford

*The Copper Scroll by Joel Rosenberg

*How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill

Our Father Abraham by Marvin R. Wilson

The Gift of the Jews by Thomas Cahill

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton

The Collectors by David Balladuci

Studies in Words C.S. Lewis

The Light Princess by George Macdonald

Prometheus Bound by Aescylus

The Truth War by John MacArthur

God’s Gold: A Quest for the Lost Temple Treasures of Jerusalem

The Last Secret of the Temple by Paul Sussman

1 Dead in Attic: After Katrina by Chris Rose

The World of the Talmud by Morris Adler

Reordering Your Day by Chuck Pierce

*Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

*The Fight for Jerusalem by Dore Gold

*1453 by Roger Crowley