If you liked reading The Darcys and the Bingleys, you can tell Marsha Altman’s publisher that you want to read the other nine in this series. They’re already written, and take the characters all the way to their deaths (although odds are she’s kidding about the manner of their demise). Personally, I find that a little time in sequel-land goes a long way. It’s kind of like ordering a gin martini, which I do once every fifteen years on account of my father and aunt used to drink them, and I always thought one day I’d learn to like them. That still hasn’t happened, but there’s no harm in checking, is there?
Book Two of The Darceys and the Bingleys, The Question of Consent, is an entertaining story in its own right. Pride and Prejudice fans should know that it is farther away from the world of Jane Austen than the first part: Elizabeth rides unescorted from Scotland to London, Darcy gets shot and reacts to pain medication much the way he reacts to liquor, and then Elizabeth, Bingley, and Georgiana all make fun of how “out of it” he is. The story of Caroline Bingley is brought to a satisfying matrimonial conclusion, during the course of which anachronistic-sounding dialogue and stage direction take place, such as this example:
“Are you done emasculating my husband now?” Elizabeth snickered.
“I think he is,” Darcy said with his usual extreme formality that came down like a wet blanket.
But if you’re reading The Darceys and the Bingleys just for the story, and not because you love Pride and Prejudice, you will find Book Two the best part, because it’s a story that can stand by itself. And it has drama (what J. Kaye was hoping for)!
A lot of loose ends are tied up in Book Two, but I wonder if one, in particular, is tied up a bit too tidily to be entirely true to human nature… Dr. Maddox, who is in love with Caroline Bingley, is treating a wound his brother Brian sustained while in league with the villainous “Lord” Kincaid who was only after Caroline’s small fortune. Naturally, Dr. Maddox is extremely angry with his brother, but “his first instincts, surprisingly, were to run to his brother who slumped to the ground when Kincaid pulled the blade out. Years of his profession could not undo his inclinations…” Okay, so given this, why does he later refuse to give his brother pain medication, not just once, but “every time” he asks? Why does he shake him, hurting his chest wound, before finally showing mercy and giving him his “legendary opium concoction” with Caroline’s blessing? This doesn’t strike me as likely behavior for a doctor, however grievously wronged and no matter how drunk. What do you think?
Also I’m not entirely happy with the notion that it takes a child to truly unite a couple, which is the note on which this novel leaves Elizabeth and Darcy. That seems to me a peculiarly recent idea, and not one that I particularly like.
But, overall, I’m not unhappy that I spent the time to read and think about this novel in such detail. It’s a good story, and I found it an enjoyable indulgence.
J. Kaye is also wrapping up our chat today at J. Kaye's Book Blog.
Showing posts with label Marsha Altman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marsha Altman. Show all posts
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Women's Work (Noontime Book Chat)
When I got pregnant for the first time, eleven years into our marriage, I commented to Ron that this would be a heck of a way for a newly married couple to continue getting to know each other. I was uncharacteristically faint, and we both agreed that this explained a lot about nineteenth-century attitudes towards women as “the weaker sex.”
The section of The Darcys and the Bingleys describing Jane and Elizabeth’s almost-simultaneous first pregnancies is my favorite part of the book. It has amusing detail, like that Bingley’s hair, the morning after his wedding, was “considerably more mussed than it usually was—which for Charles Bingley, was saying quite a lot. He had that dashing young ‘I am so exciting, my hair is trying to escape from my head, and it is a hopeless cause’ unintentional style that was so adorable.” I sometimes see this style on young men in my classes, and on the college swimmer who sits in front of me at symphony rehearsals.
I also like what Mr. Bennet says about his wife, despite the fact that Austen’s picture of their union needs no explanation, set as it is in an era when marriages were arranged for the joining of property, with the feelings of the young people considerably less important. Still, it’s a balm to the modern soul to hear him say to Elizabeth:
“You do not mean to imply that I married a fluttering imbecile with a chronic nerve condition? No, I confess I had almost forgotten it myself that she underwent a particular transformation when Jane came out, and suddenly she had the daunting prospect of five marriageable daughters who were in desperate need of prospects. And see as how I was only a very reluctant aid in the matter, so attached to you all as I was, it is amazing that she accomplished so much in so little time.”
Maybe it’s just a balm to my maternal soul. Are there any mothers reading this who ever feel that their husbands aren’t appreciating them quite enough?
As J. Kaye noted in yesterday’s chat, another fine amusement in this section is watching Darcy compete with Bingley for where their wives will spend their “confinements” (the final months of pregnancy, when a nineteenth-century woman “in a delicate condition” did not go out in public), and whose baby will be born first, as if the men have any control over this. When they decide to have a contest in order to determine where the confinements will take place, their dialogue is as quick as their conclusion, which is, of course, that “we will decide as men and then return to our wives, who will promptly ignore us and announce their own decision, which was probably made months ago….”
In the south this kind of female character was traditionally called the “steel magnolia,” like the 80’s movie of the same name, and in the present day I think you see less of these characters. Could it be that this is largely because young women don’t wear corsets, which (as Elizabeth Swann notes) can make a woman faint, most women are no longer more or less continuously pregnant from 20 to 40, and a woman today doesn’t necessarily have to manipulate a man in order to assert authority?
And yet. How many of the book bloggers you know are women who have the time to blog because they’re home with their children, at least part-time? (I’d wager on Maw Books Blog, 2 Kids and Tired Books, A Mom’s Book Blog, and Booking Mama, at least, just from the names). When you want to schedule a play date or ask another parent to take your child home from some event, do you ask to talk to the other child’s mother? (I do, because mostly it’s the mothers I know who keep the family calendar.) If you’re in church and you hear someone crying in the nursery, do your eyes meet those of other women who are wondering if they should excuse themselves and go check? (I once met the eyes of a man, because he was the primary caretaker for his children--but I remember the event, because it was unusual, in my experience.) How much has “women’s work” changed since Jane Austen’s time—is my enjoyment of the section about pregnancy at least partly due to the unchanging nature of the task?
Come back here tomorrow and join us at J. Kaye's Book Blog for our duet of conclusion about reading The Darceys and the Bingleys.
The section of The Darcys and the Bingleys describing Jane and Elizabeth’s almost-simultaneous first pregnancies is my favorite part of the book. It has amusing detail, like that Bingley’s hair, the morning after his wedding, was “considerably more mussed than it usually was—which for Charles Bingley, was saying quite a lot. He had that dashing young ‘I am so exciting, my hair is trying to escape from my head, and it is a hopeless cause’ unintentional style that was so adorable.” I sometimes see this style on young men in my classes, and on the college swimmer who sits in front of me at symphony rehearsals.
I also like what Mr. Bennet says about his wife, despite the fact that Austen’s picture of their union needs no explanation, set as it is in an era when marriages were arranged for the joining of property, with the feelings of the young people considerably less important. Still, it’s a balm to the modern soul to hear him say to Elizabeth:
“You do not mean to imply that I married a fluttering imbecile with a chronic nerve condition? No, I confess I had almost forgotten it myself that she underwent a particular transformation when Jane came out, and suddenly she had the daunting prospect of five marriageable daughters who were in desperate need of prospects. And see as how I was only a very reluctant aid in the matter, so attached to you all as I was, it is amazing that she accomplished so much in so little time.”
Maybe it’s just a balm to my maternal soul. Are there any mothers reading this who ever feel that their husbands aren’t appreciating them quite enough?
As J. Kaye noted in yesterday’s chat, another fine amusement in this section is watching Darcy compete with Bingley for where their wives will spend their “confinements” (the final months of pregnancy, when a nineteenth-century woman “in a delicate condition” did not go out in public), and whose baby will be born first, as if the men have any control over this. When they decide to have a contest in order to determine where the confinements will take place, their dialogue is as quick as their conclusion, which is, of course, that “we will decide as men and then return to our wives, who will promptly ignore us and announce their own decision, which was probably made months ago….”
In the south this kind of female character was traditionally called the “steel magnolia,” like the 80’s movie of the same name, and in the present day I think you see less of these characters. Could it be that this is largely because young women don’t wear corsets, which (as Elizabeth Swann notes) can make a woman faint, most women are no longer more or less continuously pregnant from 20 to 40, and a woman today doesn’t necessarily have to manipulate a man in order to assert authority?
And yet. How many of the book bloggers you know are women who have the time to blog because they’re home with their children, at least part-time? (I’d wager on Maw Books Blog, 2 Kids and Tired Books, A Mom’s Book Blog, and Booking Mama, at least, just from the names). When you want to schedule a play date or ask another parent to take your child home from some event, do you ask to talk to the other child’s mother? (I do, because mostly it’s the mothers I know who keep the family calendar.) If you’re in church and you hear someone crying in the nursery, do your eyes meet those of other women who are wondering if they should excuse themselves and go check? (I once met the eyes of a man, because he was the primary caretaker for his children--but I remember the event, because it was unusual, in my experience.) How much has “women’s work” changed since Jane Austen’s time—is my enjoyment of the section about pregnancy at least partly due to the unchanging nature of the task?
Come back here tomorrow and join us at J. Kaye's Book Blog for our duet of conclusion about reading The Darceys and the Bingleys.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
How can reading a novel be like watching a DVD special feature?
Reading Marsha Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys was, for me, like watching extended and deleted scenes on a DVD of a movie I already love. I found out things that I’d wondered about, like how Mr. Bennett can stand to be married to his wife, and things I hadn’t thought to wonder about, like what was Mr. Bennet’s initial reaction to fatherhood, why Darcy had a piano delivered to Longbourn, and when Darcy decided not to be called by his first name. Altman describes her purpose (in an interview at Risky Regencies) like this:
“I’m trying to have fun with her characters. As to whether she would mind, Miss Austen has posthumously endured her nephew and extended family publishing all of her unfinished writing and personal letters for profit, numerous sequels and adaptations, books analyzing her personal life, and even movies about her starring actresses wearing heavy lipstick. So, if she’s been spinning in her grave, she’s probably tired by now and may well have gotten over it.”
With this in mind, I believe that if you're as fond of Austen's Pride and Prejudice as I am and you want to have fun reading Altman’s version of the Darcys and the Bingleys, you might need to think of reading this novel as like watching the extended scenes.
The first section of Altman's novel is about the impending weddings of Bingley and Jane, and Darcy and Elizabeth. Who can resist such a glimpse at happily ever after? The problems start out small, like that Bingley knows his friend Darcy to be a cheap drunk. This explains some of Darcy's characteristically stuffy behavior as events ensue. The events include Darcy’s procurement of a sex manual to satisfy Bingley’s awkward request for advice on how to sexually satisfy his wife. (Although the back cover blurb identifies the manual as the Kama Sutra, Altman herself does not identify it.) Mrs. Bennet and Mr. Collins, the comic targets of much of the satire in Pride and Prejudice, are softened into less unsympathetic characters in this “sequel,” but that does not stop Mrs. Bennet from frightening her daughters about what will happen on their wedding nights. Darcy sets Elizabeth’s fears to rest, and Elizabeth does the same for Jane, with the help of Charlotte Collins: “the process took some time, and they were nearly late to lunch.”
One of the things I enjoy in Pride and Prejudice, and that I continue to enjoy in The Darcys and the Bingleys, is the closeness between Elizabeth and Jane. Since I don’t have a sister, I envy their intimacy. Do women who have sisters (even if they didn’t share a room and even a bed, as Elizabeth and Jane do) see themselves in these sisters, or are they too idealized? (Is it as wonderful to have a sister as Austen and Altman make it seem?)
One of the reasons that I think their closeness might not be overly idealized is that sometimes you do occasionally read about sisters marrying brothers, and I can imagine them saying, as Jane does, “there is much convenience in the fact that our husbands are practically inseparable. We must make a pact that we will conspire to never allow them to fight.”
On the other hand, I’ve never heard of siblings who don’t fight (Never? Well, hardly ever). Altman’s Jane and Lizzy never even exchange a cross word. And why is it that Mr. Bennet can think of those two as “his two eldest and most beloved daughters” and yet Mary, Kitty, and Lydia never seem to mind? In Austen’s novel, they were silly and oblivious to the life of the mind their father shared with Elizabeth (and, to a lesser extent, with Jane), but in Altman’s novel the younger sisters are, at least so far, nothing more than silhouettes. (Maybe they're more fleshed out in the second and third novels, which Altman says are tentatively scheduled for publication in Fall 2009).
There is some antagonism between Darcy and his former foster brother, Wickham, but it has devolved into low comedy in this novel--it's surprising how pleasurable it is to see Bingley and Darcy throw him out a window, and the pleasure is soon amplified by Lydia's "wedding gift" to Elizabeth (keeping Wickham away from the wedding ceremony!)
Let me know what YOU think, and then the rest of the week we'll go further into the book:
Wednesday: J. Kaye's Book Blog
Thursday: Necromancy Never Pays
Friday: Necromancy Never Pays and J. Kaye's Book Blog
Monday, January 5, 2009
Book Chat this week
This week I'll be having a noontime book chat about Marsha Altman's The Darcys and the Bingleys: Pride and Prejudice Continues
with J. Kaye at her book blog. Here's the schedule:
Monday: J. Kaye's Book Blog
Tuesday: Necromancy Never Pays
Wednesday: J. Kaye's Book Blog
Thursday: Necromancy Never Pays
Friday: Necromancy Never Pays and J. Kaye's Book Blog
As many Jane Austen fans have noted since it came out in September, 2008, Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys is not for Austen purists, but I found it more fun to read than many of the other Austen “sequels” I've sampled. As Altman notes (here), the number of these "sequels" have exploded in recent years. There’s an Austen fan fiction website (www.austen.com) and even an entertaining novel about a vacation spot where Austen lovers can pretend to be in her books (Austenland by Shannon Hale). (See my earlier post about "sequels" here.)
Lev Grossman (in his Nov. 19, 2007 Time magazine review of Donald McCaig’s Rhett Butler’s People) says that “sequels” are “one of the oddities of the current literary moment….Where once they were inviolable, the margins of books have become porous, with characters slipping in and out like naughty teenagers to lead their own lives when it suits them. It’s almost as if we’ve come to distrust the brief, biased glimpses their creators gave us. Like investigative bloggers, we’re determined to get the whole story, from all points of view, complete with outtakes and DVD extras.”
Well, J. Kaye and I are bloggers, and we're going to discuss this book's particular point of view on how the characters from Pride and Prejudice could have continued.
with J. Kaye at her book blog. Here's the schedule:
Monday: J. Kaye's Book Blog
Tuesday: Necromancy Never Pays
Wednesday: J. Kaye's Book Blog
Thursday: Necromancy Never Pays
Friday: Necromancy Never Pays and J. Kaye's Book Blog
As many Jane Austen fans have noted since it came out in September, 2008, Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys is not for Austen purists, but I found it more fun to read than many of the other Austen “sequels” I've sampled. As Altman notes (here), the number of these "sequels" have exploded in recent years. There’s an Austen fan fiction website (www.austen.com) and even an entertaining novel about a vacation spot where Austen lovers can pretend to be in her books (Austenland by Shannon Hale). (See my earlier post about "sequels" here.)
Lev Grossman (in his Nov. 19, 2007 Time magazine review of Donald McCaig’s Rhett Butler’s People) says that “sequels” are “one of the oddities of the current literary moment….Where once they were inviolable, the margins of books have become porous, with characters slipping in and out like naughty teenagers to lead their own lives when it suits them. It’s almost as if we’ve come to distrust the brief, biased glimpses their creators gave us. Like investigative bloggers, we’re determined to get the whole story, from all points of view, complete with outtakes and DVD extras.”
Well, J. Kaye and I are bloggers, and we're going to discuss this book's particular point of view on how the characters from Pride and Prejudice could have continued.
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