Austenesque authors have to walk a peculiar fine line. We face a conundrum akin to Stockton’s remarkable 1882 short story, “The Lady or The Tiger.” Except we are not the brave youth forced to choose between death or marriage to an unknown lady rather than the princess he truly loves. That suggests a stark choice between love and life.
Yet, there is another character in the story: the princess herself. She, too, is presented with a choice—apparently to make for the youth. She has discovered which door will unleash the tiger that will rend her lover and which door will reveal his bride, a woman she despises. The youth implicitly trusts her. He will open the door she suggests. Will she condemn him to death at the hands of the tiger because she would be denied his love or does she love him so much that she will condemn him to a life married to an awful shrew? Stockton never tells us, rather leaving us with the youth’s hand on the doorknob his princess has indicated.
I am convinced that authors who are pursuing their truth through the writing of Austenesque fiction are faced with a similar choice. Do we pick the lady who represents the characters fixed in time and space on July 18, 1817? Or do we select the tiger that prowls along the margins by exploring themes that deviate from the expected and characters who find their foundation in Austen, but grow and bloom (or wither) as they move forward in new Austenesque considerations?
By now you have correctly surmised that I choose the tiger.
In the years since I began writing Austenesque fiction (defined by Victoria Kincade as using Austen as a starting point for plot and character development), I have sought to differentiate my work from Jane Austen Fan Fiction (JAFF) by following what Ms Kincade articulated. I am what one might consider to be a late-comer to the parade that began in earnest with the release of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries. The genre was built by those who wanted more Austen, exclusively, though, of the P&P sort. Now, nearly 30 years later, that field has been well-plowed. Enterprising authors are moving away from placing the characters within the traditional romance model and creating wholly different reading experiences.
In the past few years, Austenesque variations have included more than a fair amount of fantasy, intrigue, suspense, mystery, war, and more. The field has opened up to embrace humor, modernity, and—near to my heart—an acceptance that many of Austen’s secondary characters can be interesting in their own light and worthy of starring in their own stories. Oh, and of course, there are magicians and dragons populating a landscape unimagined by Austen. That is not to say that the eternal love binaries are ignored (my eight-book Bennet Wardrobe series is built upon the premise that the universe itself is powered by love and requires all of the characters—and many more—to restore the balance overturned by Elizabeth Darcy’s bout with typhus in 1834). Yet, they are not treated like an unalterable gospel.
And, thus, I know that I am not alone in putting my hand against the door to see if claws are scraping the inside. The present Austenesque world still allows readers to choose the lady. However, it also permits them to challenge themselves by taking a ride on the back of a giant striped creature.
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My considerations of secondary characters in the Bennet Wardrobe series have allowed me to use them to examine deeper human conditions. I have also tried to answer questions with which I—and I hope others—are wrestling. That permits me to imbue my characters with life that transcends that which Jane Austen required.
Consider this following imagined scene that would have occurred in the midst of Volume Six, The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament. Here we find a researcher speaking with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet—well, mostly Mrs. Bennet—about how roses represent so much in their lives.
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The following is © 2022 by Donald P. Jacobson
From a brief prepared by Adelaide Reynolds, Research Department, Bennet Family Trust, September 23, 1948.
As I walked into the bookroom, ably escorted by Hill, the young butler serving this smallish Hertfordshire estate, I was struck by the floor-to-ceiling bookcases lining this well-appointed room. The general atmosphere, light and airy despite dozens of feet of richly-stained shelves, inspired a sense that this was a space designed for contemplation but able to accommodate vigorous debate. From time to time a gardener’s shape could be perceived moving through the grounds beyond the windows: their crystalline panes new from France in the early 1690s, in 1948 still admitting rippling waves that warmed the library and cast its occupants in a golden hue.
The Founder, Mr. Thomas Michael Bennet, was seated behind the great oaken worktable. This desk, while its provenance extended back to the Glorious Revolution and then forward through ten generations of Bennet men, nonetheless firmly established that this man was now, as he always had been, the Master of Longbourn. Contrary to the image which Miss Austen left of the Bennet patriarch, he showed none of the legendary indolence which had been his image for nearly a century-and-a-half. His uniquely shaped eyes, hazel-green, alertly began to scan my figure as if he was seeking to take a preliminary measure of me before I had a chance to utter a word.
Then he rose, pushing the wheeled chair back with his legs.
He stood, perhaps, nine inches over five feet. His frame was trim and tending toward athletic, which surprised me. I had been schooled by Miss Austen’s biographical musings and, thus, had assumed that Mr. Bennet would have been shaped more like men of the current where/when: rounded by too much rich food and drink and too little exercise. I might have thought him to be more akin to Sir William Lucas whose history was briefly sketched by Miss Austen. His hair was thinning, however, his face was unlined beneath a skin glowing from the regular rounds of golf which, my brother Walter had assured me, had become Mr. Bennet’s passion. I will admit that I was taken by the manner with which his figure “V-ed” from his shoulders to his hips. That powerful shape was made most apparent when he buttoned the grey jacket of what was a masterful evocation of Saville Row artistry.
His greeting, combined with an outstretched hand, was awesome in its familiarity. Who was I, a recent hire into the Trust after my graduation from Oxbridge, to be deputed to interview The Founder and his Lady? Yet, there I was.
[The following is an edited literary transcription of three Dictabelts produced during an hour-long interview. AR]
Mr. Bennet greeted me in a rolling baritone, “Ah, you must be another of that remarkable clan we have come to call ‘Research Reynoldses.’ I am aware of your brother’s role in the Department. I must admit that my sensibilities, rooted as they are in the late Eighteenth Century, still find women in academic roles unique but at least no longer unsettling.
“However, I must allow that ’twas my wife who schooled me in the modern way in which ladies move through society.”
Then his voice lowered into a conspiratorial whisper, moderated by an impish twinkle in those arresting eyes of his. “However, you will have to forgive me if I slip and act in an antediluvian manner.”
Returning to his normal voice, he continued, “Permit me to gather my wife. Mrs. Bennet was quite excited to learn that you wished to speak to us about her roses. She will organize the seating once we return.”
He left me standing to admire the tooled leather bindings encasing the hundreds upon hundreds of volumes in the Longbourn collection. While smaller than Pemberley’s vast hoard, the Longbourn collection was well-curated and tailored for a family of more modest means. However, I had little time to contemplate the diverse reading and collecting habits of this most senior of the Five Families. Mr. Bennet shortly returned with a woman upon his arm.
I was stunned; for, while I had perceived The Founder as a total entity in our brief conversation, I now could sense a soaring of spirit when this woman’s presence was combined with his. They were, to use a hackneyed phrase, a force of nature.
They fit together.
Bennet provided the offices of introduction. Soon we were seated in three leather wingbacks around a low table upon which rested a simple bowl filled with cut flowers.
Frances Lorinda Bennet, born Gardiner, was a delightfully shaped woman of middle years. She was clearly a lady who had birthed children but had been fortunate to retain much of her figure. Even now I could see the burnished version of the astonishing beauty she had been when she had first discovered Eve’s tigress power. As with most blonde women of a certain age, her hair was streaked with the purest white that added highlights to her tresses. A gentle dusting of freckles graced her lightly tanned cheeks told of a love of the outdoors in her much-vaunted gardens.
Taking her appearance as my cue, I asked about her fascination with gardening.
Mrs. Bennet settled back into her chair and smiled brilliantly. “Well, Miss Reynolds, it seems that word of my love of rosa floribunda has made it to town. I happily will satisfy your curiosity.
“My Grandfather Gardiner, I am not certain how many ‘greats’ he would have been to me, returned from the Far East in the late 1680s—he was with Mr. Christopher Bennet, you know—bearing cuttings from rose plants cultivated in China. His wife planted them in her first garden in town. When they installed themselves in Hertfordshire, she uprooted her best and favorite bushes and transplanted them into her garden behind their Meryton house.
“Every Gardiner woman, even my sister Mrs. Philips, has made the cultivation of roses her particular mission.
“When I married Mr. Bennet, my mama allowed me to take my own cuttings from her plants. That was the beginning of Longbourn’s rose beds! Mr. Bennet’s papa, Mr. Samuel Bennet, had allowed the original lawns behind the house to go to seed. ’Twas his grief over having lost Mr. Bennet’s mama, Mrs. Lizzie Bennet, on top of having his eldest son simply vanish, that had laid low the poor man. He had already passed on before I had married his son.”
The lady subsided into a thoughtful pause, so I broke in with another question, “Is that why your daughters were referred to as ‘The Roses of Hertfordshire?’ Was it their love of the plant and their carrying on of the Gardiner heritage that led to that moniker?”
Mrs. Bennet snorted and proudly replied, “No, my dear, they were so called because they were the beauties of the county! I am beyond certain that you have seen the portraits at the Trust, Thornhill, Pemberley, and Selkirk. I defy you to find another collection of young ladies with whom they could be compared.
“Even my darling Mary—and I will never forgive myself for the way I assailed that poor girl—who was the plainest of the lot was still a stunning woman in her own right. And, to think I would have considered aligning her with that slugworm, Mr. Bennet’s cousin, C…”
Here Mr. Bennet broke in. “Fanny, that is a name no Bennet will ever utter!”
Looking slightly abashed, Mrs. Bennet carried on. “Tom, I was only seeking to offer an example of how beneath our Mary was that awful man.”
Then she directed her sky-blue, nearly purple, orbs back at me. “But, in answer to your slight misconception about my girls and roses. While each of them certainly loved the flower, only one, Lydia, whom all seem to refer to as the Dowager Countess, assumed my mantle. I would commend a tour of the hothouses behind Selkirk. There you will see the extent to which she carried the Gardiner legacy.
“On top of that, the family apparently gave her free rein over all their houses, the Beach House at Deauville, and, on the other side of the beds here, the Longbourn cemetery.
“Her handiwork is evident at Pemberley, although Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy’s mother, Lady Anne, had been the prime mover.
“Mr. Bingley, my Jane’s husband, averred that the sunshine yellow Lady Anne roses reminded him of his wife. Lydia made sure there was an ample supply of those transplanted from Pemberley over to Thornhill so that Bingley could grace his wife with a bouquet any time he was so moved—which was nearly every day.
“Lydia’s work at Pemberley included creating a special hybrid for Mr. Darcy. She named it Lizzy’s Own Red Bourbon. That rose was such a rich red that only a lady with the darkest brunette locks and eyes could do it justice. That was my Lizzy!”
During this oration, I glanced over to Mr. Bennet. His eyes had assumed a faraway look and swam with unshed tears. Mis wife’s speech was shaking his memories of young girls in their first bloom of womanhood.
Mrs. Bennet’s speech broke through my own reverie. “Lydia also found a way to create a hardy, late-blooming white cultivar, suitable for outdoor plantings. Look at the Kympton Vicarage. Mr. Benton and Mary adored late afternoon walks amongst the bushes. Of course, the white rose was perfect for my middle girl. It symbolizes purity, and if I have learned anything of the woman into whom my daughter grew, her spirit and motives were of a kind with fresh-fallen snow, unblemished.
“Of Kitty, well, I would suggest you visit the Beach House. Lydia planted hundreds of bushes along the grey fieldstone wall surrounding the compound. Apparently, she once told Kitty’s husband, Lord Henry, when he was but a boy, that Kitty reminded her of all the roses she had chosen to represent her beloved female relatives.”
At this, Mrs. Bennet quieted until I asked, “But, Mrs. Bennet, I have visited Deauville as I was researching roses and the Bennets. There are five varieties planted there.”
The lady nodded and replied, “You have the right of it. Lydia had originally planted four, but I chose not to mention the last for she did that to honor me, calling me the Mother plant. I would not wish to draw undue attention to myself as I have always felt that my girls were the ones who climbed to great heights.
“My rose, you see is rosa Chinensis.”
“That would be the one which tends toward a tangerine or salmon hue,” I clarified.
“Yes, it has always been my favorite. If you step out into Longbourn’s garden right now, you will find r. Chinensis in full bloom.
“The fifth rose at Deauville was not planted by Lydia, but rather in her honor just three years ago. The two Countesses, Georgiana of Pemberley and Anne of Matlock, added the fifth rose as a memorial to her for all that she did for Kitty.
“So, the final rose in the garland is the blush, and I think it suits Lydia perfectly. The tints of pink are redolent of happiness. That was my Lydia. No, she was not virginal, the other context for blush, but rather she embraced life—the good and the bad—with unfeigned joy. She had limited pretentions. She was neither haughty nor proud.”
Mr. Bennet interrupted his wife’s flow of thought saying, “Yes, our youngest ate life with a large spoon. Of course, Miss Reynolds, you must realize that we have only known her as a young girl, prone to an adolescent’s failings.
“In our where/when she still trusts too easily and judges based upon surface traits rather than a deeper reading of character. I imagine that she changed considerably as she aged.”
Mrs. Bennet chimed in, “What little I have been able to learn about Lydia’s life in the years after she left home, it seems that she drew closer to her sisters and built a life with her husband and their sons.
“But, she never stopped, as Mr. Bennet has reminded us, eating life with a big spoon.”
With that, the discussion of roses ended, and the couple stood to bid me farewell. As Mr. Hill escorted me from Longbourn’s bookroom, I caught Mr. Bennet reaching down and pulling a salmon-colored blossom from that bowl on the low table, embellishing his wife’s short coiffure with a perfect rosa Chinensis.