Amy D'orazio: Lessons Learned from Pride and Prejudice Through a Child's Eyes

 Amy D'orazio: Lessons Learned From Pride

 And Prejudice Through A Child's Eyes

First, thanks to Barbara for inviting me to do a guest post on this wonderful site of hers. It’s always a good feeling to be among those who share this hobby ~ even if it is a virtual society, it’s still a bit like coming home!

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when my love of Pride and Prejudice, and the rest of Austen’s novels too, blossomed from interest to obsession. Probably like many of you, I first read the novels in high school, and for my favorites (P&P by a landslide, but also Persuasion and Emma), I would pick them up again as the years rolled on, always enjoying them thoroughly and finding something new to love in them each time.

I would have to say my true love, and appreciation of P&P was born a few years ago. It was a quiet Saturday or Sunday afternoon, and my young daughters and I were flipping through the channels trying to find something we could all agree on to watch. Suddenly my youngest daughter (then a 6 year old) exclaimed, “Hey look! Isn’t that the dad from Nanny McPhee?” With that, we all had agreement on wanting to see what ‘the dad from Nanny McPhee’ was going to get up to next.

We didn’t watch all six hours of it that day, and in fact, came in when Darcy and Elizabeth were already at Rosings Park, so some explaining was required, as well as a thorough re-watch later, once the DVDs were ordered and arrived. At first, I told them the basics: it’s the ultimate Cinderella story. The poor (-ish), not so beautiful girl who by virtue of her wonderful personality and intelligence marries the prince. We all love that story, don’t we?

Of course, like so often happens, my kids gave me a whole new perspective on P&P. Listening to the ideas and concepts they drew out of it made me realize how much more there is than just a romance ... it’s very nearly the meaning of life all rolled into one fabulous story.

The first concept, put forth by my youngest, was pretty simple: You should always apologize right away if you hurt someone’s feelings. This led to a spirited debate on what would have happened if Elizabeth had not heard Darcy and he walked up and apologized -- he would then be forced to tell her his comment and hurt her feelings anyway. After much discussion of the options we came to the real crux of the matter -- any time you talk about people behind their backs, it’s going to lead you into trouble so you just shouldn’t do it.

Caroline Bingley, interestingly was the inspiration for our second discussion. My girls decided, first of all, that she was a bully. I had never thought of her like that, but when they said, I realized it was true! And like most bullies, she got that way feeling badly about herself -- she always wants what she doesn’t have and isn’t grateful for what she does have. Mr. Bingley, on the other hand, is always pleased with what he has, and is thus happy and nice (their words) because of it.

There have been so many more of their thoughts that have amused me, inspired me, and most of all, made me love this story more and more. Things like: when you always pretend something is wrong with you (a la Mrs. Bennet) pretty soon no one believes you about anything -- even when something really is wrong; or, it’s okay to be helpful but no one likes someone who’s bossy (Lady Catherine); and, from Mary Bennet and Sir William -- don’t take yourself too seriously. They are also very firm in their contentions that Mr. Collins, in the BBC adaptation, is seen spitting on Elizabeth during his proposal. I’ve watched it many times and not seen it but nonetheless, the wisdom in say it, don’t spray it cannot be denied.                

Now that a few years have passed, I find myself with a teenager and an almost-preteen, my most valuable character is Lydia Bennet. I find young Lydia’s everywhere I look these days, young girls who want to grow up too fast, wearing their short, tight clothes, and enjoying way, WAY too much freedom.

It’s a great thing to be able to show your young daughters that, although it seemed like Lydia was having a pretty good time (dancing all the dances, going on vacation by herself, roaming around town whenever she wants) in the end, the man she thought loved her was ready to ditch her without a second thought. He had gotten what he wanted from her and that was it for him.

I really loved the day my daughter wondered aloud why Wickham never ‘tried anything’ with Lizzy and then concluded on her own that he must have seen that Lizzy would never have put up with it. That Lizzy, unlike Lydia, knew how to be lively and have a good time without lowering herself or compromising her standards. Lizzy has respect for herself and others respect her for it.

Recently I’ve asked them more about the love story in it all. After all, we’re here because we are Darcyholics, and while I would not say I myself have completely married a Darcy-type (he’s got quite a bit of Bingley’s joie de vivre in him) in essentials, I’d have to say there is a good bit of similarity and I wondered if they saw it too. Their summation of Darcy had to make me laugh, and I’ll couch it in the phrases of Jane Austen in hopes it will amuse you too. It’s a truth, universally acknowledged that when a boy likes a girl -- it makes him act weird. It was true 200 years ago, and it’s true today too -- but if you wait until he gets through it, then you find the good stuff!

Susan Fales-Hill: From Sitcom Writer to Jane Austen Inspired Author

Susan Fales-Hill: From Sitcom Writer to Jane Austen Inspired Author

(When watching the interview below on the Today Show, little did I expect that Susan Fales-Hill would agree to visit with us here at Darcyholic Diversions.  I hope you enjoy getting to know her as much as I have.  She will be giving away SIX hard back copies of Imperfect Bliss.  Your comment is your entry, but be sure to include a contact email.  Extra entries as usual. Winners will be announced after December 15th.)

Link to Susan Fales-Hill Interviewed by Kathy Lee and Hoda on the Today Show About Her Book Imperfect Bliss

With a couple of notable exceptions, my love affair with “Pride and Prejudice” is the longest of my fifty years on this planet.   It began when I was sixteen, and already an avid fan of Nineteenth Century French and English novels (my heroine at the time was Queen Victoria, a symptom of my personality disorder, ADR -Acute Delusions of Royalty.)   Though I favored the florid language of Dickens and Balzac,  Austen’s spare, epigrammatic prose proved a revelation.   Her wry humor drew me in, as did her sharp yet humane satires of the sillier Bennett sisters, of the snobbish Miss Bingley and the pedantic Mr. Collins.   And then, of course, there was Elizabeth, the warm, strong, intelligent, intellectually accomplished and elegant woman I aspired to become.  My Penguin paperback edition quickly became a constant literary companion, read and re-read whenever the opportunity arose.  One summer weekend in college, I read it aloud to my best friend as we sat by the shores of a lake (such a pastime seems unimaginable in today’s frantically wired world, but I highly recommend it over “texting,” or even “sexting.”)

            In my untried youth, I appreciated the book’s literary merits without quite grasping its warnings about the pitfalls marriage.  People think of “Pride and Prejudice” as a romantic tale, and certainly Darcy and Elizabeth’s union is one of the most moving in all of Western literature.   In Darcy, Austen has created the ultimate female fantasy: a dark, brooding, sensuous man who is also emotionally, morally and financially reliable, Heathcliff without the temper and with a better retirement plan.   If one examines the book closely, however, it presents the reader with only three “marriages of true minds” that of Darcy and Elizabeth, that of Elizabeth’s aunt and uncle, and that of Bingley and Jane.  Every other union is one of unequals, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins, or based on financial expediency and impure motives (Lydia and Wickham.)    The triumph of Darcy and Elizabeth’s romance, in which the former overcomes the class prejudice of his day to marry a woman of lesser social rank, represented a subservice happy ending Austen failed to experience in her own life.   As a young girl, she fell in love with a member of the landed gentry only to have her amour ripped away by his family and forced to wed a woman of “equal standing.”

It was only as I matured, and experienced marriage myself that the book’s darker shadings became apparent.  In my dating years, Darcy and Elizabeth’s romance served as my template of the perfect “happily ever after.”   Given that I spent my twenties and early thirties living in Los Angeles and writing for sitcoms (“A Different World,” “Suddenly Susan” etc..)  this was a less than achievable ideal.   Elegant Darcys do not abound in the entertainment industry so I was condemned to many a Saturday night snuggling up to Darcy on the page.   A good friend and colleague suggested at one point that I would save myself a good deal of time and heartache by inviting any potential suitor to my home before a date and asking him to watch my favorite film adaptation of the book, the 1938 version starring Lawrence Olivier and the luminous Greer Garson.   If the young man in question made it through the full two hours, my friend’s theory went, we might have a prayer of finding common ground.   I never did attempt this method of triage because I knew the assorted directors, actors, executives, rappers and ball players who found their way to my door would probably not make it past the “Assembly Ball” scene. ( All’s well that ends well, the man I married undertook to read not only “Pride and Prejudice” but also, “Madame Bovary,” another favorite.)

            Still the book remained an obsession.  At one point, I developed an idea for a television “dramedy” based on a contemporary version of the Bennett family.   Like many an idea pitched in Hollywood, it landed in the “round file.”   Then, a good decade later, after I’d finished my first novel, “One Flight Up,” the tale of a multicultural group of women bound by friendship, an alma mater and adultery, my agent and editor suggested I return to the notion of updating “Pride and Prejudice.”  The advent of reality T.V., with its parade of women vying, twenty-five to a hot tub, for the attentions of an unremarkable yet buff and toothsome young man (“The Bachelor,” any given season) seemed to provide the perfect fodder for Austenesque satire and social commentary.  The marriage market skewered by Ms. Austen has found its latest incarnation in the worlds of the “Real Housewives,” and “The Bachelor” and “Bachelorette” franchises.   And are not the Kelly sisters, the twin “Tampa socialites” at the center of the Petraeus scandal modern day replicas of Kitty and Lydia, running to consort with the local regiment?

            And so “Imperfect Bliss,” the story of a family with four eligible daughters one of whom is selected to be the star of a reality show I titled “The Virgin” (and lest my reader recoil in horror, one of the networks developed but then chose not to proceed with a reality show with that very title…) was conceived.  I won’t give too much away, but the book has its Elizabeth (the Bliss of the title, a divorcee pursuing her PHD in history and studying the 18^th Century Chevalier de Saint Georges, aka “The Black Mozart”) and its Darcy (you’ll have to read it to guess which man that is.)  Like the masterpiece to which it pays homage, it is, at bottom, the story of a woman and a man finding lasting passionate love by learning to “read” others with open hearts and understanding, as opposed to judgment.   The original title of “Pride and Prejudice” was “First Impressions,” and in that theme lies the key to the eternal appeal of Austen’s work.   Is not the quest to see and be seen, to love and be loved, truly, madly, deeply the essence of the human journey?   Here’s to reading Austen for another two hundred years.

Link to Imperfect Bliss on Amazon 

Elizabeth Darcy and Black Friday Sales: Barbara Tiller Cole

Elizabeth Darcy and Black Friday Sales

By Barbara Tiller Cole

(I am sharing what I hope is a fun series of interviews between Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy and myself last holiday season. They were posted at various sites during a blog tour I did.  Some of you may have seen one or two of them, or perhaps more.  But I will be re-posting them all here, starting today, in honor of the Special Holiday Cover re-release of Fitzwilliam Ebenezer Darcy.)

Friday began the shopping rush for the upcoming Holiday Season.  While I am not a huge fan of Day after Thanksgiving sales (now called Black Friday since 2005), I know many of my friends anticipate them all year long. While contemplating that I was quite shocked and extremely excited when Elizabeth Darcy, from my story Fitzwilliam Ebenezer Darcy, stopped by to talk with me.  I will not question how she managed to transport herself to my humble abode (after all I wrote a story about ghostly visitations), but she did want to speak to me about this particular Holiday custom.  I recorded our conversation and will transcribe it for your entertainment.

EDarcy:  Miss Cole, or should I say Lady Cole? 

BTCole:  Ms. Cole, but I would be happy if you would wish to call me Barbara, Mrs. Darcy.

EDarcy:  I would be honored, Barbara.  Please call me, Elizabeth.

BTCole:  Thank you, Elizabeth. I understand you have some questions to ask me about the twenty-first century Holiday custom of Black Friday?

EDarcy:  I do.  First of all, I cannot understand all the signs I see about Black Friday?  Is a plague coming?  Has someone very important in your world died?  Are you all to be in mourning and wear black clothes on Friday?  I just cannot determine the meaning. Most peculiar of all is something will be sold on that day? Is it some type of armband or mourning jewelry?

BTCole:  No, Elizabeth.  Black Friday refers to the custom of deeply discounting merchandise for sale on the day after Thanksgiving.  It is called ‘Black’ because most stores open in the middle of the night for these sales to begin, while it is still black outside. For many businesses it is from this point on that they are making profit during the year, or being ‘in the black’. ‘In the black’ means they are on the profit side of the profit and loss statement for their business.

EDarcy:  Thank you, Barbara.  I have heard of this holiday called Thanksgiving, but do not know much about it.  Can you tell me more?

BTCole:  In the United Stated, the Thanksgiving holiday originated in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621 as a celebration of a successful harvest after arriving in the colonies.

EDarcy:  Fitzwilliam and I have studied some of the history of the formation of the colonies and their uprising against the British.  So this is not an event to celebrate freedom from their native homeland?

BTCole:  No, it is not.  And even if you understand the history, over the years, it has just become a time when family and friends get together for a good meal and talk about their gratitude for the year. 

EDarcy:  The history of the event was about a successful harvest you said?  It sounds similar to our harvest celebration.  I assume you clear the tables after dinner and dance a jig, or a similar dance?

BTCole:  I am sure there are some families that might dance after the meal, but my family mostly relaxes on the couch and either takes a nap or watches football games.

EDarcy:  Football games?

BTCole:  Believe me, you are much better off not knowing about them. Many a modern woman becomes a football widow during the Bowl game season.

EDarcy:  Bowl Games?  I am quite a proficient at lawn bowling!  Fitzwilliam and I love to play with our children.

BTCole:  No, Elizabeth.  It is not like lawn bowling. I am not sure I can explain it appropriately.  It is nothing like games in the Regency period.  Believe me, you are much better off not knowing about it.  Let us just leave it that the men folk go off and watch these sporting events—perhaps not unlike they disappeared into the billiard room or the smoking room after dinner in your time.

EDarcy:  My dear Darcy taught me how to play billiards.  He particularly enjoys getting behind me and helping me handle the long pole to manipulate the balls into a pocket.  So this football is like that? 

BTCole:  Oh dear!  I am not explaining this well.  Perhaps I can show you a game on TV.

EDarcy:  What is a TV?

BTCole:  This is also a bit difficult to explain.  I will call it an electronic box that shows sports, and plays and news.  It is almost as good as being in attendance.  Instead of going to the opera or the theatre, you can watch the events on this device.

EDarcy:  It sounds quite fascinating.  Perhaps I will have an opportunity to watch one of these electronic boxes while I am here in your century.  I still find I need to understand more about the purpose of Black Friday.  It is about buying things?

BTCole:  It is about purchasing deeply discounted merchandise for sale on that one day.

EDarcy:  I am trying to understand this.  Would it be similar to my going to the modiste shop the day after Thanksgiving and receiving a discount on the things I ordered?

BTCole:  That is probably the closest to what transpires in our century, but few people purchase their clothes made to order in this century.  We go to stores and purchase them ready-made.  They come in a wide variety of sizes. 

EDarcy: You mean all the classes shop in these stores? Are there not shops that specialize in catering to the upper classes?

BTCole:  There are special designer shops, that is true, but even in those stores they have sales.  Most people purchase items off the rack.

EDarcy:  Off the rack, you say.  I think that Fitzwilliam likes my rack. (she giggled)

BTCole:  Mrs. Darcy!  I am happy to see a bit of your impertience showing through. I am sure Mr. Darcy appreciates all of you, but this kind of rack is actually a long stand that holds the items, and those that are shopping can look through the items as they hang.  It works in a similar way to the rod in your wardrobe closet.  At least I am assuming I am correct in that conclusion.

EDarcy:  I certainly have rods in my closet. But there are none in my good friend Mrs. Collins’ closet.   Mr. Collins insisted in putting shelves in the closets as Lady Catherine declared it the most efficient use of the space.  And as we all know, she is never wrong. (she laughed)

BTCole:  (laughing) How are you and your ‘aunt’ getting along these days?

EDarcy:  I am quite happy to report that with the intervention of Fitzwilliam’s ghosts, she is quickly becoming a very dear friend.  It may sound impossible, but I am very happy to report that it is indeed true.  Thank you, dear author, for suggesting that as a possibility in your story.  Perhaps I can tell you more about it and you will write about it in the future!

BTCole:  I would be happy to learn more about how the ghosts intervened into Lady Catherine’s life.  I could write about that for next holiday season.  Would you like to accompany me to the Black Friday sales this coming Friday, Elizabeth?

EDarcy:  While I cannot promise I will be allowed to return, I would love the opportunity to do so!  I hope to see you soon!

BTCole:  Thanks again Elizabeth, for coming and visiting with me today.

I will be giving away 2 softcover copies, and 2 eBook copies of Fitzwilliam Ebenezer Darcy to be chose from comments from this series of interviews.  Those who comment on each will be given additional entries for each comment as well as being members of this site, my author's blog, Tweeting this post, or sharing it on facebook, etc.  For THIS comment tell me about what YOU did on Black Friday!

 Fitzwilliam Ebenezer Darcy Blurb:

A Jane Austen/Charles Dickens crossover story, Fitzwilliam Ebenezer Darcy takes the best of both classics and spins them into a delightful Holiday yarn! F.E. Darcy has fallen into pitiful self-loathing and sorrowful angst-ridden despair; all of this due to his belief that he has lost forever the chance to marry the only woman he has ever loved—Elizabeth Bennet. Seeing her son in such a state, the Ghost of Anne Darcy reaches out to him; informing him that three ghosts would visit him and give him hope. Will these Spirits provide him with the courage to try again to win the esteem of his one true soul mate?  Barbara Tiller Cole, an Atlanta native and the writer of the popular book White Lies and Other Half Truths, presents this family friendly classic—a delightful combination of the best of her two favorite authors, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. Barbara credits her parents with fostering a love for both of these authors. Each Christmas, Barbara’s father would sit and read Dicken’s classic A Christmas Carol to the family. Her mother consistently challenged her to improve her mind by extensive reading, Jane Austen style. This book is dedicated to the memory of Cliff and Jeanne and the season they loved the best.