All Roads Lead to Austen (20 page)

“Well, I see it as a criticism of that world,” Marcia interjected, “and anyway, it's what makes it interesting. If she had been too involved, it would have been harder to criticize the trivialities.”

“Comparing how tall the kids are,” Fernando offered, hitting directly on one of Austen's best eye-rolling scenes from the book, one that makes clear how little the lesser characters have going on in their heads.

“And that opening dialogue, when the brother keeps lowering the amount he'll give his sisters,” Marcia added, as Silvia joined in: “So ridiculous!” I wasn't surprised that this scene came to mind so readily for them, as well; Diego had loved it, although it had really made Salvador angry.

“That was impressive,” Fernando agreed. “That woman really bargained him down.”

“I think it was only half ironic,” Marcia said. “The text is really current because that kind of thing still happens, but now, with the people who've got economic power, it's better hidden, better disguised.”

“And marriages of convenience, for money,” Silvia put in.

Carmen Gloria shifted slightly in her seat, smoothing her skirt. “I've always said that culture imposes so much on relations, especially for women. That imposition of ‘maternal instinct,' all of the cultural impositions on women's behavior.”

“And to think how a woman born so long ago wrote a novel exposing that,” Marcia said. “There was so much pressure for women trying to find husbands with a certain amount of money to be a certain way. If you didn't draw or have this skill or that, you might not find anybody.”

After pursuing this line of conversation for a while we lapsed into a comfortable group silence, during which people reached for their drinks or flipped through their copies of the novel.

Carmen Gloria drew us back together again, returning to a point Fernando had made earlier. “This book makes me think of the old custom of publishing novels in magazines, with chapters coming out one at a time, where you're moving toward a happy ending, but the action is drawn out to get you there and then
suddenly
,” she leaned forward then threw her hands in the air, “here it is!”

“I didn't like the end either,” Silvia said. “It wasn't consistent with the earlier level of the language, the descriptions of the characters, and most of all, their feelings. Everything was lost, and the actions weren't consistent with where the characters really were, psychologically. How did it all happen so fast with Marianne?”

“In two or three lines we've got a change that runs against what Austen was narrating for three hundred pages!” Carmen Gloria agreed.

“A lot of critics agree about the abrupt end of this novel,” I offered. “It's the first one she published, and it's not as polished. There are lots of people in the U.S. and U.K. who write their own sequels, and when they don't like how things turned out, they change them. There's a sequel where Marianne decides she's made a mistake and runs off with Willoughby instead, and they—”

A crowing rooster cut me off. What the heck?! Fernando leaped up, with apologies and sheepish looks at the rest of us, to grab the book bag he'd set on my desk in the living room. Since I doubted he'd smuggled in tiny Uriel from the Franciscan monastery gardens, I had to assume he was hunting for his cell phone.

As we all laughed, Marcia picked up the sequel topic. “I had no idea people did that. If I don't like the end of a book, I might think about how I'd do it differently, but it seems really funny to me to write a whole new novel.”

“That's bizarre,” Silvia concurred.

“Well, there's Borges,” Elvira pointed out. “He encouraged writers to take some of his characters and work with them, and he did the same with characters from other fiction.”

Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentinean (so, more about him later), is arguably the most important writer in Latin America. Surely if Borges did it, it was legit?

“But to take a novel and write another ending to it,” Silvia intervened with a dubious look, “that really surprises me.”

“It's rewriting,” Elvira said.

“Yes, but with Borges it had to do with admiration,” Carmen Gloria countered.

“For me, I'd
think
about how I might end a novel differently,” Marcia added. “But to write, publish, and put my name on a sequel, that would be kind of embarrassing.”

“In a society of mass communication, it's not surprising this sort of thing happens,” Fernando suggested.

As the line of conversation turned toward the “cult” aspect of Austen's fame, I opened my computer to show the group a photo that summed up the level of adoration certain folks feel for Austen.

“
Tell
me
that's not a picture of you!” Carmen Gloria glanced at me with horror then turned her gaze back to the close-up of a tattoo on a woman's arm.

“I took this at a conference held in England. It's a quote from one of Austen's first novels,
Northanger
Abbey
.” It read, “Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?” The text wound around her upper arm in the shape of the symbol for woman. Someone who takes her Jane seriously—I loved it!

“Are there other authors people are this fanatical about?” Carmen Gloria asked, as the group all exchanged wondering looks. “Like Mark Twain?”

“There are fan groups for lots of different authors, but none as large or as widespread,” I responded.

Before we moved too far away from the ending of
Sense
and
Sensibility
, I couldn't resist checking in about something. Most of the Mexico readers had opposed the match between Marianne and Brandon on grounds of the age difference—especially Josefa and Juan, thinking about their own daughter's marriage. Was a mismatch what these readers didn't like?

“Many of my students in the States feel disappointed with the end of the novel, like you are,” I began. “Some even say that it seems like a punishment for Marianne to end up with a husband so much older than she is.”

“I don't think it's bad in that sense—that seems pretty common for the period,” Silvia replied quickly. “My problem is with how poorly the narration works in comparison with the rest of the novel.”

“In fact, it's not even ‘narrated,' really, it's just mentioned,” agreed Fernando.

“I also got the impression,” added Carmen Gloria, “that Austen created one character at the beginning, but didn't quite stick with that character for the ending.”

Again, I couldn't help but notice how “writerly” their reactions were compared to those of the other groups. Nobody was focusing on how they felt about the characters—nobody was taking Fanny Dashwood's greed personally or worrying that Marianne won't really be happy with Brandon. Given their interest in Austen's technique over her subject matter, I decided to share a bit about her juvenilia, assuming they'd be interested in her development as a writer. We discussed the wild stories of Austen's youth as I refreshed people's drinks.

“Was Austen very religious?” Carmen Gloria asked during an opening in the conversation. “It surprises me that the theme doesn't come up, given the time period when she was writing. Since her father was a clergyman, it seems like she would have spent more time on that subject.”

“She was religious in her private life,” I answered. “We know she wrote some prayers. But while morality is important in her works—keeping your word, being loyal—morality's not tied with observing a specific faith. That makes it easy to adapt her novels. There's even a Bollywood version called
Bride
and
Prejudice
. It's set in modern India, but the plot's essentially the same.”

“Has she been translated into many languages?” Carmen Gloria asked. “Because I think Austen's really not known in Chile. I've mentioned her to a few people here, and they have some idea who she is but only because of the film versions of her novels.”

“People just know her by name,” Fernando said.

“Very few people have read her,” Silvia agreed. “Maybe it has to do with people not reading much from that time, but they
do
read Russian novels from that period.”

“What about Emily Dickinson?” Fernando said, raising the subject of the group's preferred genre. “I don't think people here know about her poetry.”

“I think they do,” Marcia countered mildly.

“But where can you get translations of her poetry? I really don't think they exist.”

“I believe she's been translated,” Elvira offered.

“Do you mean it's hard to find translations of Dickenson in particular or poetry in general?” I asked.

“I think that poetry's translated less, in general,” Silvia responded.

“I really don't like to read translations of poetry,” Carmen Gloria said with a shake of her head. “I just feel like I'm not really connecting with the writer when I do.”

“Well, I think it would be practically impossible to translate poetry from German or French,” Carmen Gloria continued. I could see the others poised to pick up this line of conversation, so I cut in.

“We've got a reservation at a restaurant nearby,” I said half apologetically, knowing how they'd love to talk poetry but not wanting to miss our table at the popular nightspot I'd selected. Our two hours had flown by in no time.

“Okay, but one more thing.” Carmen Gloria gestured dramatically with one hand for attention. “I've got a recommendation, because I was just going crazy trying to contextualize Austen, and I found somebody on the Web. Read Mary Wollstonecraft,” she said.

Wollstonecraft's major works came out in the 1790s, when Austen was drafting early versions of some of her novels. Wollstonecraft lived a life radically different from Austen's; she traveled widely, had multiple lovers, and bore a child out of wedlock. Near the end of her life she married and gave birth to Mary Shelley, author of
Frankenstein
. But the two writers shared many ideas about women, including that mutual respect is the best foundation for a good couple.

Carmen Gloria knew that a laid-back attitude toward timing still got my knickers in a twist, despite my best attempts at assimilation. Saying a bit more about Wollstonecraft, she winked at me and reached for her purse to move things along. But suddenly getting a naughty look on her face, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed.

“Hello, Ramon?” Carmen Gloria said, adopting that instantly recognizable answering machine voice when she didn't reach the study abroad director himself. “We're waiting for you. We haven't even started the discussion yet!” Wow, that was
very
naughty of her! “It's nine o'clock at night already! Should we start without you? Well, give me a call.
Chao!
” Even a Twain lover who'd slighted Austen didn't deserve to think he'd held up the entire reading group. But I had to assume they'd work it out, since Carmen Gloria and Ramon had known each other a lot longer than I'd known either of them.

Just as we seemed poised to leave, another exchange about how critical Austen actually was of her culture flared up again. Then Fernando raised yet another topic. Would other happy diners be enjoying our table by this point? Well, so be it. I had to chill out and let the night happen.

“It's just fabulous when Willoughby and Colonel Brandon have that duel,” Fernando said, laughing, “and they
both
manage to walk away satisfied. It's like magic. They've done the right thing, there's nothing more to be said!”

Elvira agreed: “The role of manners and customs is something I liked about the book. Compare it to things today. Our relations are often so fraught, so harsh, especially from the point of view of language.”

Silvia nodded vigorously. “Such a fault of courtesy—that's the word. I also liked that about the book. It's something worth recovering, something worth teaching.”

I was surprised to see this somewhat more sentimental side of the readers, who'd been so focused on the critical and technical aspects of Austen's novel. North, Central, and South America weren't so far apart after all. The teachers in Guatemala were definitely taken with Austen's emphasis on courtesy, and it's a common subject of conversation with my California students. They often find themselves pleasantly surprised by a world where people treat each other with a certain courtliness (the irony being that they're precisely the generation so often accused of completely lacking manners themselves—but what's a discussion of Austen without a little irony?).

On that note, copies of the book were stowed, and purses and jackets gathered for the walk to the restaurant. I waved at the doormen on the way out, who looked curious at the size of the group I was hosting; I'd been a very private tenant. Don Alberto, fortunately, was off duty. Most of the readers began lighting cigarettes, and Carmen Gloria and Marcia discussed the small-world discovery that Marcia's mother had been one of Carmen Gloria's favorite high school teachers. Suddenly, Fernando caught me by the arm and allowed the others to move on ahead of us.

“There's something I have to tell you,” he said, looking vaguely embarrassed. What on earth was he about to confess? Sending one more glance in the direction of the smoking, chatting cluster ahead of us, he fixed me with an urgent gaze. “It's about Elinor. When I was reading the book I…I fell in love with her. I really did. I fell in love with Elinor!”

Too surprised to answer, I stared at him for a moment then smiled. Here was a Chilean who liked more than Austen's narrative technique!

He smiled back, sighed with relief that his secret was out, and changed the subject.