I thought about entitling this article “Leaning Into the Buzzsaw” as I am playing skittles on sacred ground. Every reader of the Canon is firmly committed to the love stories—both successful and failed—sketched in remarkably perceptive detail by ODA (Our Dear Author!). Any deviation may be excoriated with the zeal of a Stalinist purge!
In all the years (since 2015, so I guess that makes me a bit of a graybeard) of writing Austenesque Fiction, I continue to endorse efforts to extend Ms Austen’s wonderful creations reach beyond the “tribute band” mentality of slavish faithfulness to the words she finally published. We are enriched with new twists on the inner discourse of every character in P&P: Darcy as a rake, Wickham as a saint, Lady Catherine as a cunning matchmaker, to name a few. How well these new variations on the great love story succeed are entirely contingent upon the story-telling and character-building skill of my comrades who bend their creative minds toward examining beyond the tried-and-true plot lines.
But, exploring the craft of those daring enough to push forward their work is not the purpose of this piece.
Rather, I would like to examine my belief that Pride and Prejudice Variations have entered into the realm of Speculative Fiction.
Growing up in the 1960s was to mature in the midst of the great paperback boom. My mother had her Jacqueline Susann potboilers. My older friends clutched copies of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Salinger. Younger cousins lived in the world of local literary giants (Western Massachusetts) Thornton Burgess (The Old Mother West Wind stories) and Theodore Geisel (Dr. Suess!).
It was left to my father to slowly feed me the most powerful fuel that could lift my adolescent imagination: science fiction.
Now, to be fair, just as the world #InspiredByAusten has been populated mostly by women writers and readers, so too did the world of science fiction revolve around a nearly exclusive male center (Anne, McCaffrey, Ursula K. McGuin and D.C. Fontana excepted). As a result, many young male readers and writers (older ones, too) scorned Austen as “chick lit.” Yet, if #Austenesque tales purely contingent upon angsty romance is that today, cannot one suggest that science fiction novels are nothing more than pulpy “testosterone teasers?”
I wonder if the young men with whom I traded Larry Niven’s Ringworld novels knew that the first true science fiction story incorporating technology as yet uninvented into a story making a strong social commentary was written by a woman: Mary Shelley (Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus)?
There is much to be said for arguments on both sides as they articulate the hidden discourse of the social construction driving the tropes of gender in modern society. Yet, what we may be observing in the Twenty-first Century is nothing particularly new, rather rising from roots as ancient as the Greeks. (Which is why the stunning poetry of Sappho exists.)
As the proponents of the Cult of Domesticity would argue throughout the Nineteenth Century, women were sensitive and emotional, perfectly formed for childrearing and maintaining a balanced home life. This meant they were far too delicate for the rough-and-tumble of the public sphere and should not be expected to burden
themselves with the management of money or such pesky things as deciding government policy and the electoral franchise. Thus, for these ladies, forced to be stay-at-home mothers up to their armpits in children and soapsuds (be it in the 1850s or 1950s), “chick lit” offered an escape to a glamorous world of teas, balls, and tall dark-haired emotionally powerful men willing to “save” them.
Science fiction told the same story: just from the other side. Here we would see the male hero controlling the situation…dominating other men—villains all—or creatures that are monstrously dangerous (see Niven’s kzin; bipedal tigers) or unbelievably
devious (Niven’s two-headed puppeteers). Heroes mastered the situation through cleverness and strength. There was no small amount of mysterious weapons dispatching swarming hordes. Oh, and the female was saved in the end by a dark, brooding, hyper-mature hero (Peter Parker in Spiderman notwithstanding).
As the “science” in Science Fiction has now become “fact,” we refer to that genre as “speculative fiction.” Less emphasis is placed upon the technology and more on the human emotions being displayed or tested. I commend for your examination the groundbreaking television series Star Trek from the late 1960s.
While P&P variations set in the Regency may be difficult to place into a speculative fiction model, there are, none-the-less, clear examples which are less variations and more alternatives to the original Austen storylines. Nicole Clarkston, Mirta Trupp Dreiman, Melanie Shertz, Jann Rowland, and Renatta McMann/Summer Hanford (and please forgive me for not listing 50 of my friends) all offer utterly original plots while staying within the Regency spectrum. Other authors—Barbara Silkstone, Beau North, and Leigh Dreyer, for instance—move our characters into the modern era. Still others—Abigail Reynolds (the grand doyen of us all), Maria Grace, and, perhaps, me—explore the edges of fantasy and magic. All of these authors (and others) do meet the essential criteria of speculation/variation: the original characters are considered in ways that are thoroughly different from those envisioned by Austen.
There may devices that shift the plot…there may not. One of the most amusing was Cassandra Leigh’s Darcy’s Big Wish which brilliantly combined “traditional” story with the Tom Hank’s movie Big. There was magic, although not an inanimate magical machine.
But, if you want magical events that take our characters to different realms, the work of Ney Mitch in the two-volume series—Moments of Moments Past and Moments of Moments Present—is an excellent example. Like Jules Verne, Mitch sends characters both into the future or the past, depending upon their particular perspective, in this case using a magical stream as the portal. Again, the speculation revolves around how the characters increase their understanding of themselves and their surroundings through the stress of being immersed in unfamiliar circumstances.
What is also at work here is that these authors have transcended the tropish “chick or lad” lit pigeonhole. Here we find balls where the women duel as if they are having ‘grass before breakfast.’ And the men, while noble, demonstrate a particular level of sensitivity to the situation of others. Gender is pushed to the side. Perhaps Mr. Bennet would be more comfortable in these speculative worlds where lace is less important than sturdy boots. Yet, there is more…children rise to the forefront…not as miniature adults, but rather as growing, discerning, but still youthful actors.
So, perhaps the realm in which we write is less “Pride and Prejudice Variations” and more “Pride and Prejudice Speculations.” But, given the fun I have been having with Amazon search terms, please do not look too forward to that one!
Just before the pandemic hit the USA, I had submitted my novel In Plain Sight to Meryton Press. In this work, I wished to explore the idea of inversion. In P&P Variations, we are quite familiar with “the Bennets are barely gentry and they do have attachments to trade and are thus beneath Darcy’s notice.” I wanted to uncover what would happen if Darcy was beneath Elizabeth’s notice without turning her into the kidnapped/lost child of a duke. I also wanted to explore questions of love. Of course, ODC’s road to their HEA is fraught, but in a manner different from the expected.
Please enjoy this excerpt from In Plain Sight (Meryton Press, 2020). Universal Purchase Link to all Amazon storefronts mybook.to/inplainsightPandPvar
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This excerpt is ©2020 by Donald Whitfield Jacobson. Published worldwide by Meryton Press. Any reproduction, either electronic or mechanical, without the expressed written consent of both the rights holder and Meryton Press is prohibited.
Chapter 35
Hedgebrook Estate, Derbyshire
As epiphanies went, Elizabeth would have to ask Mary or Edward whether William’s pronouncements in the glade were on par with Saul of Tarsus’s visions on the road to Damascus. Like the original, they resonated with such power that her world tilted on its axis. She felt slightly blasphemous as a result.
As a young girl, she had entertained notions of love at first sight. Lizzy was too much her father’s daughter to view such fanciful inclinations with anything but the deepest skepticism.
I do believe that Papa considers himself a victim of “instant infatuation.” That, sadly, has fed five-and-twenty years of cynical behavior on his part. What my heart is telling me now is that this is something thoroughly different. There is a bubble of happiness that has unsettled my core. Perhaps…perhaps…
Here before her knelt a man who, by every measure she had ever been taught, was a danger to her person and an insult to her station. William Smith was not just beneath her but as far from Lizzy’s original class as the distance from the moon to the lowest level of a Welsh tin mine.
None of that mattered.
What had begun in the Netherfield barnyard and renewed itself on the Mimram River Road had evolved during those Dower House days into something more burnished. Like a bronze battering ram, that understanding crashed through Elizabeth’s last reserves.
There was a goodness about William Smith that shone through the scales of his crime—the contours of which she did not know. His nobility, his honoring of her shabby virtue, led her to try to see beyond easy labels.
His earnest gaze swept away all notions, all bias.
Her awareness faded as she replayed each interaction from that first through the waltz to their flight to Egypt beneath the straw piled atop Longbourn’s wagon. Flashes of his jawline as she had nestled in his arms during their dance, his profile as he stared out the window at Longbourn’s fields, and his natural scent redolent of musk that weakened her knees—all carried her from this plane.
The rest of her world receded.
Elizabeth needed to understand this new state of being! How had she arrived here? She felt as though great slabs of a snowy cornice had fractured and slid down to bury her in an avalanche of emotion. Even more profound was the grainy bedrock that was left exposed on the steep pitch above, a new foundation for her future.
She had been stripped down to her essentials. No longer was she Elizabeth Rose Bennet, gentlewoman. She had been broken and reshaped to a mighty purpose, finally to be that which she was destined to be and not what others insisted she should be. She was now simply Lizzy Bennet, a woman in love with a man. That defined her.
Through those sennights of uncertainty in the Dower House to that awful moment when everything collapsed around her head the night of the Netherfield ball, William Smith had been the glue used to bind her together. The scars that crisscrossed her heart were glorious, highlighted in gold, the result of the tender hand of a kintsugi master. All could see and understand the woman she was now.
The purity of her comprehension was glorious!
She pulled in a vast draught of air, so full of the land’s freshness that it was fairly bursting with life itself. ’Twas as if she were a babe, freshly birthed! Fresh from the womb, her eyes opened and ears unstopped. She saw and heard as if for the first time!
Smith had watched those chocolate pools as they lost focus when her contemplations turned inward. Elizabeth stood and floated on elvish feet across the dell to stop and stand above the limpid pool, arms wrapped around her narrow waist, head dipped, hiding those incredible eyes beneath her bonnet’s brim. Her study was so immaculate that Smith assayed that he could have crossed to her side without her noticing, to tuck back in place another errant tendril that had escaped her chapeau’s confines.
At first, William feared that her reverie might lead her to slip and fall on the foam-dampened tufts that lapped over the lip. Yet, he allowed her to be the mistress of her fate, tamping down his old inclinations to protect one and all in his circle.
Time slowed as the woodland sylph inhaled a massive breath.
A single leaf broke free of a branch high above the pool, rode along invisible currents swirling above the waters, and landed on the membrane that separated the two elements.
Its brown spikes shivered reality before the sprig disappeared into the small flume leading down toward the Derwent. With its passage, the universe that surrounded the two poles had forever changed.
Her sigh drew his attention.
Elizabeth had turned to him, her rosy lips parted to reveal perfectly shaped, pearl-bud teeth. Her soprano laughter bounced around their paradise.
All pain, all fear, flowed away in the face of her happiness. Smith immediately understood that she had broken free of the last chains that had bound her to her ancient life. With that, he knew that she had accepted who he had been, how he had been broken and reshaped, and that she would have to wait for him.
That she would wait for him.
***
The moment stretched into eternity, so timeless was the glade. As if in a dream, Lizzy had returned to his side, to hold her hand down before him, urging him to stand, to accept her embrace. Lips raised and lowered established the communion that had been incipient for months but now was confirmed in seconds. Then she drew back to demurely tattoo her thumbs upon his shirtfront.
Elizabeth patted a hand upon his chest, a smile playing upon her swollen lips.
“I know, dear man, that you have been bound by your existence these five years gone by.”
“Nearly six,” his voice rumbled next to her ear.
“Six then. You have had considerable time to contemplate that which led to your downfall.
“Much of what you have learned has become ingrained like this stain that darkens my hands.” Lizzy held up the offending members.
She continued, “My revelations are much younger, mere infants when compared to your lofty conclusions.
“I must give voice to them or I shall surely burst.”
She stepped back from him and gathered in their hiding place with an all-encompassing sweep of her arms. “Think about the beauty hidden here, just yards away from a farm field. If you had not escorted me here, I never would have discovered it…or you.
“Is that not the way of all things?
“The world is hidden in plain sight: all its wonders and its horrors waiting to be revealed. The sadness of it all rises from the fact that some do not see and others choose to ignore what is before them.
“My father raised me to observe but not to see. And if I, perchance, moved past looking at a scene, I learned to forget lest remembrance upset my world.
“In my quiet moments, I can cast back into the mists of my memories to see where my privilege blinded me to the plight of others. I recall a scene where a line of men shuffled in the dust along Meryton’s byways. It shames me to realize that one of those unfortunates was you.”
He made to reach out to her, but she darted from his grasp to settle like a frightened bird on a fallen tree trunk, its moss deep green.
She comforted him to relieve his worried look. “This love, my love”—she giggled at her wordplay—“is still new to me. I had accounted myself a fair-minded woman. You have done nothing to offend me.
“But I have come hard against the confines of my parochial vision. This is a rude—and new—shock for me. I had taken pride—foolishly, it now seems—in my ability to sketch the personalities of others. How ironic that the shape of my nature was opaque to me.
“We can count ourselves amongst the fortunate ones. Far too many of our compatriots—yours of old and mine of more recent vintage—are trapped in the miasmas of their prejudices and pride.
“The reason they are so hindered is that they have accepted that others have the right to dictate their station and behavior. They will grasp, clasp at the weakest of straws and the foulest of lies to feel more secure in their location upon the rungs of a hierarchy that demands a self-reinforcing affirmation from its adherents.
“And the biggest falsehood, propounded by those at the highest reaches, is that all can rise to the top through the dint of their goodness. The truth is that, for most, elevation comes only through that same grasping corruption you earlier decried.
“In such a world, my dear William, you and I are the lucky ones.
“We have dropped so low that our station does not matter. Nobody will pay attention to our actions. Nobody will care to see us. You and I can be as invisible as the rest of England in its millions, all but the Ten Thousand.”
Elizabeth stood and glided over to him, her hands clenched into fists. Then she raised them and opened her fingers, their marks contrasting with her face’s pristine skin.
“We no longer have to worry about what we might gain or lose by not playing along with society’s expectations, by not threatening the established scheme.
“Nothing can be misplaced except each other, and I promise you, I have waited nearly to my majority to find you.
“Our loss…another’s curse…is a blessing.
“We are finally free.”