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The new year: a time during which we, in the Roman God Janus’s namesake month, look backward at what has been and then forward to, hopefully, apprehend what will (or might) be. This is a continuation of my most recent newsletter where I explored how looking backward into the Bennet Wardrobe books allowed me to look forward to the end of the series. However, rather than consider my resolutions for a new year, this column looks at how authors use resolutions to bring their readers to a satisfying conclusion.
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#InspiredByAusten authors understand that relating interesting stories is only one part of what they do. They must also, if they are thoughtful writers rather than digital versions of campfire storytellers, explore the how and why their characters move through their plot in the manner that they do. They not only need to offer plausible explanations as to why they have taken a reader down this path as opposed to that trail.
Regular accomplices in my literary journeys know that I am a fan of the double entendre. Oddly, though, in this case, the entendre buried in the title of this article may be, at best, an entendre-and-a-half. Authors, of course, know that resolutions are conclusive points that move their story and characters forward, be they plot points or character traits. And, in many cases, the resolution of one leads to the resolution of another. However, unlike many television (Hallmark?) stories, these are not necessarily presented in a convenient and predictable location. Readers in the presence of a great author need to look further down the timeline, essentially punctuated cruxes/resolutions that demand some thoughtful consideration, if not detective work, by the reader.
Two brief examples of how Jane Austen, I believe, actively used these two forms of resolution in an intertwined manner: in other words, a 1.5 percent solution (with apologies to Nicholas Meyer for altering the title of his fabulous Sherlock Holmes variation).
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Resolution Form #1: Plot
The resolution of the crux represented by Colonel Fitzwilliam’s elliptical use of Darcy’s separation of a dear friend from an unsuitable lady is not Elizabeth’s refusal of the Hunsford Proposal but rather the delivery (and reading) of Darcy’s explanatory letter.
Resolution Form #2: Character
The resolution of the reading of that letter is not Elizabeth’s disequilibration at the discovery of her errors but rather in the alteration of her understanding of Darcy followed by the heart-wrenching realization of a potential lost love that was forced by that eye-opening experience.
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Let me consider the first resolution of a plot crux. Austen needed to have Elizabeth’s dislike of Darcy transform into the coruscating anger that leads to the type of rejection that would force Darcy to unburden himself in writing. In other words, in a very Kantian enlightened manner, A led to B.
Think of the implications of a Pride and Prejudice universe without the stroll with the doughty soldier. Ask yourself these questions.
What if Elizabeth had offered to Darcy in the midst of the Hunsford proposal that they would not suit, as she did with Collins? Even if Darcy became angry or cold, would it not have been more logical for Elizabeth to keep her head? If Elizabeth was less inclined to despise Darcy, to take his accompanying her on her morning walks as a passive form of courtship, might she have offered generalized explanations, probably falling back on the simplest…that she did not love him? Would she have committed the unpardonable sin of throwing Wickham in his face?
Of course, Austen had set this in motion “months” before by presenting the Netherfield departure as she did. We knew that Darcy had conspired with the sisters to get Bingley out of Dodge. Elizabeth did not know, although she certainly did suspect, that something was fishy. Austen uses the loyal colonel to inadvertently stick a needle in his cousin’s balloon to bring Act Two’s plot development to its final stages.
Yet, the Hunsford Proposal and Rejection is not character resolution. ODC act thoroughly logically and in keeping with every expectation which we have developed from our reading of the Hertfordshire Encounters along with the Rosings Evolution. Up to this point, though, we know more about the Jane/Bingley story than Elizabeth. However, Elizabeth’s talk with the colonel shifts the focus from Elizabeth worrying about Jane’s heart and health to Elizabeth’s fury growing from her discovery that one of the architects of Jane’s misery has been at her side for weeks. Austen, at that moment, puts a pin in that thread, removing any doubt that Elizabeth held about Darcy’s role in the separation.
I do stand in complete awe at Austen’s mastery. Imagine, if you will, a couple of scenarios that might have been employed by a lesser writer.
1. Austen might have had Elizabeth inadvertently read a letter that had dropped from Darcy’s pocket on the last visit to Longbourn, one in which he reveals to the colonel that he would rescue Charles from a bad relationship. True, she might have had Elizabeth meet Darcy at Rosings over Easter…but the confrontation?
2. Elizabeth might have met Darcy at Rosings and had confronted him with her suspicions about his role in Jane’s unhappiness. I could see him still delivering the lines he did, but would not her emotion be different than her learning a Darcy secret from a third party?
No, Austen perfectly sets up both Elizabeth and Darcy—as well as the reader—for a blinding and painful confrontation, one that is absolutely required for Resolution Form 2. The writing and the reading of the great confessional.
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The ground of Darcy’s reformation after Elizabeth holds before his eyes his nature as seen by her has been well-plowed. The proposal and the writing of the letter are his first steps on the road to redemption. Elizabeth’s, though, is less clear.
The character resolution that the letter brought to Elizabeth Bennet set the stage for her realization that first impressions are not necessarily the best and that her pride in being accurate blinded her to the possibility of error. Her heartache at so thoroughly misunderstanding Darcy…clarified by his letter…allows the Wickham/Lydia plot crux to grow. It is true that she could have learned Wickham’s character without Darcy’s letter but only if she had been inclined to ask. Her prideful prejudice blinded her. Lizzy knew just how awful Wickham was, but, like Cassandra trying to tell the Trojans of the Greek danger, she could not make herself understood (Mr. Bennet).
However, Wickham’s elopement with the ditzy teenager lacks meaning…and cannot be resolved in any way…without the alteration in Lizzy’s feelings for the Master of Pemberley and Darcy’s perception that she might be thawing toward him. The later encounter at Pemberley would not have held any meaning to Elizabeth other than, probably, a subtle sense of unease at being at a former suitor’s home.
The rogue’s efforts would have been unremarked upon as Darcy would never have visited Elizabeth immediately after she received Jane’s letters. Her rekindling of her feelings for Darcy allows us to become invested in this romance.
In all reality, there would have never been the book we know as Pride and Prejudice because the ending would never have led the readers down an interesting track. However, the dual character resolutions forged in the fire of the proposal and letter bring us to the point where plot and character can logically intersect.
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As I noted earlier, all of us who are engaged in writing #Austenesque fiction must necessarily be problem solvers. We have to look for plot cruxes that will lead us to resolutions that move both our characters and plots forward in a world where disbelief is assuredly suspended.
If we simply depend upon the familiar profiles of the characters established over two centuries ago, we cannot provide readers with an authentic expression of the truth that lies within our compositions. If our endpoints are the personalities defined by Austen, our work will be pale tribute band, paeans to Jane Austen’s work—imitations and not an articulation of our own—and our story’s—truth. In a historian’s sense, that is impossible because we are writing rooted in 21st Century contexts even if our tale is set in the Regency. Our truth is not that of an Eighteenth-Century woman writing in the Napoleonic period.
A story without authenticity fails, as far as I am concerned. That may be a bit snooty on my part, but I am that type of reader—and, I hope, writer. I have accepted that I can never seek to imitate the romance writing as constructed by Jane Austen in Napoleonic Regency Britain. The most I can do is use character outlines that use Austen as a starting, not an end, point.
Thus, my resolutions for 2022 are rooted in the past, but looking toward the future.
1) To be honest with my readers, to present authentic stories that will transport them to a different understanding of the nature of the eternal story.
2) To write my own truth and to deliver well-crafted works that will engage readers and enhance their interaction with the printed words.
3) To inspire others to break free from the traditional tropes and elevate their own writing that will leave me gasping “I wish I had written that!”
At this writing, I am working on re-editing Volume Seven of the Wardrobe: The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion. The book is set to release in January 2022. Right behind that will come the eighth and final volume—The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy. Please enjoy this excerpt that brings resolution from earlier scenes that painted deep misgivings on ODC’s part.
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This excerpt from The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy is ©2021 by Donald P. Jacobson. This is a work in progress. Republication without the expressed written consent of the author is prohibited.
Chapter 55
Pemberley, Summer 1964
The height of the day saw clouds of bees flitting from flower heads to drooping blooms. The heat made the insect buzzing more intense. A gentle breeze concentrated the heady aromas of the meadow.
Shoes suspended from her fingers, Lizzy rambled barefoot down the hillside through grasses that gently whipped her shins, unprotected by pant legs rolled up to her knees. She craved the sensation of green blades against her tanned skin. There was something so elemental about this pasture. She stopped in her tracks, dropped to her knees, and ripped a sheaf from the carpet. She buried her nose in the broken foliage to inhale a rich greenness that pulled Pemberley deep inside her. There was an elegant simplicity found in the connection between the bruised grass and the great estate of which it was a small but integral part.
She fell back onto a level spot carved in the hill’s flank. Elizabeth took in the world about her from a perspective two feet above ground level. The estate when seen from this height was all-encompassing, the entire world. Such a vista was what a sheep might apprehend with wave upon wave of bounty cascading away waiting to be cropped. Would that her needs were as simple as that of a merino.
Again, I must work on that puzzle that is my William. Humph…I wager he would be saying the same about me. How many times have we trod over this same ground? Darcy’s unique love finds its footing in my acceptance. Oh, he can pine with the best of them if he feels that my approbation is absent. At that moment, though, he assumes that whatever has set my teeth on edge grows from his failure to manage the situation so that my feelings are spared. He never countenances the idea that my problems have me out of sorts.
Sighing at her dour train of thought, Elizabeth adjusted her position to take the stress off her knees, joints which had recently begun complaining when she acted as if she were a limber adolescent. As she lifted her body, she chanced to glance down the hill toward the lake. In the distance she discerned a figure clambering over a stile in the hedge bisecting the slope.
It always has been thus. Where my inner needle points forever toward Longbourn, William infallibly tracks me down as if I were the Lizard Light and he was a frigate flying toward the Pool of London. Vain creature that I am, I find joy in the fact that Darcy is drawn to me, even when he is seeking to put me from his mind. Pleasure and pain are handmaidens.
Elizabeth softly giggled as she observed her man climbing the slope. She could not, would not, wreak further havoc upon his already tattered ego by gamboling down the grade. While his labors would be truncated, her energy—even if that of a forty-six-year-old—would underscore every notion he held of his manhood’s diminution. Rather, she would allow him to act the great stag and she the queen doe awaiting his attentions in her bower.
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As William worked his way toward her, he found his steps becoming shorter and more difficult to take. Was this not the same hummock up which he had raced his wife when they were newly married? Had subsequent Darcys raised the stile? And the grass seemed more sedge now than fescue, its long strands matting the ground and slowing his progress. He would have to speak with Lord David about reseeding the entire pasture. The man was much more a city gentleman than he let on.
Yet, while today’s Darcy was feeling his years, pictures exploded from a younger man’s memory and gave him the strength to soldier upwards. How sweet was the capture of a shrieking Elizabeth after he intentionally had fallen behind to appreciate the roundness of her hips and the flash of her ankles. The only sweat that ever coursed his forehead came after they had tumbled into the sweet clover.
William could feel her gaze wrapping itself around him, gathering him to her, pulling him up the hill. Her brown eyes, twin chocolate pools that had so arrested him all those years ago, worked their magic, and their yearning—more obvious to him now the closer he came—sent a charge through him. Had David’s words sent his being down a different channel already
Her tiny feet, big toes tapping together to the beat of a tuneless march, lay side-by-side at the end of her outstretched legs.
Darcy stopped above her, his jacket long since abandoned somewhere in the uncut hay. The open collar of his linen shirt exposed a grayish thatch encircling the base of his throat.
Elizabeth’s lips parted and, in a wordless exhalation, begged his attention. That look, its need suffused with warmth, drove away old worries that had flourished anew.
Supple now, his knees broke, and he dropped to the ground beside her. Her hands lifted to cup his face, drawing him down into her shirt front.
As when they lay atop Pemberley’s primal barrow—for him so long ago and for her just last year—she helped him rise above himself and celebrate the joining of eros and agape. Although redemption and forgiveness were neither required nor sought, the couple’s dance spoke of both loves as their bond, often frayed but never broken, was celebrated anew.
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Her throaty chuckle vibrated across Darcy’s chest as her fingertips traced the tiny whorls of hair that wrapped about one of his nipples.
“What, my Elizabeth, has you so amused? The fact that I survived the ascent of one of the minor peaks in the district or that I have not expired in the face of your ministrations?” William asked, trailing his fingers along the creamy curve of one hip and into the valley beyond. His feathery touch sent a shiver through the woman draped over him.
Elizabeth lifted herself on an elbow, a dark curl drooping to obscure one eye. She preserved her modesty by pressing her bosom into his side, seemingly incongruous for a lady who only minutes earlier had encouraged her husband’s ardor with a courtesan’s expertise. She inhaled his musk, its dark aroma sweeping over the embers of their lovemaking, sending fresh flame racing across a bed of coals only deferred satisfaction can create.
Her tease bathed him like a cool cloth. “If I had desired an adolescent boy bursting with pride at his green accomplishments, I would have had Caroline drive me down to Eton. No, fine sir, I got what I wanted, what I have always needed: the admiration of a man who knows how to please the woman in his life.”
Her thigh slid up his to meet her hand where it had resumed its maddening motion. Elizabeth knew that whatever had beset William for the past two months had been banished if his rising to meet her wandering digits was any indication. Darcy groaned as his hips bucked, easily lifting her astride him. Then he stoppered her impertinence with a deep, searching kiss.
Shadows chased clouds overhead across the sward beneath. Grasses earlier bent showed their resilience and sprang back, reaching again for the afternoon sun. The chirps of crickets basking in the warmth accompanied soft chuckles and gentle cries uttered in an expression of rediscovered joy.
After they had again stilled, Elizabeth stretched. “When you first arrived with Jane, there was a sense of desperation in your lovemaking that went far beyond the longing I would have expected from a man who had remained chaste for nearly twenty years. There were moments when I felt that you were frightened that I was a figment of your imagination, a fever dream’s fantasy.”
Darcy looked earnest. “For eighteen years, the only time I saw you was in my dreams. To hold you in my arms, to know that you were real, caused me to try to make up for all that we had missed. I over-exerted myself and then assumed that my lantern would never again burn—either dimly or otherwise.”
Elizabeth’s throaty chuckle filled the air. “If what has just passed between us is a feeble flicker, then I look forward to the time your flame flares up. You, husband, have demonstrated the truism that absence does make the heart…”
“Speaking of absence, we ought to make our way back to the house since our grandchildren have demands upon our time.” Darcy stood and helped Elizabeth to her feet.
The downhill slope played havoc with Darcy’s knees. Elizabeth also gingerly took her time. Although Doctor Wilson had cautioned them against taking too much aspirin, the couple agreed that two tablets were vastly more convenient than tasking Pemberley’s modern-day cook to brew up a pot of willow bark tea. However, pain relief would have to wait until they managed to limp back home.
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