To Modern or Not to Modern?

Question-based Austenesque Fiction

Many of my thought experiments begin with questions.

What if the three younger sisters in Pride and Prejudice were not constrained by the caricatures created for them by Austen? What if they could find their destinies not on the Regency timeline? What if their personalities could be shaped, in a John Locke Tabula Rasa manner, by their experiences in other times?

Those were some of the questions I explored as I developed the Bennet Wardrobe Series.

Plot-driven questions are one thing. Structural questions are something else.

The Longbourn Quarantine is a novella in which I use Austenesque forms to examine my own feelings about the COVID lockdown.

In Plain Sight flipped on its head the P&P model of Darcy’s superiority based upon birth.

Then there is style. Somewhere—and I cannot credit where—I heard that “Every story can be told as a love story.” While I read a lot of Austenesque fiction, I also read Napoleonic Naval Adventures. Persuasion is a novel of its time, and offstage lives a sea story. Experimenter that I am, I wondered how a tale not of manners but rather of adventure would scan in the Austenesque world. From that consideration came The Sailor’s Rest.

Political saga came naturally after Sailor’s Rest. After 200-odd years, Darcy and Elizabeth come across as people acutely aware of their surroundings. Although Austen focuses only on their interactions, she gives tempting morsels of British life in the characters of Lady Catherine and William Collins. As educated people, the pair could not have been ignorant of social undercurrents roiling British life beyond the War. Of those, the slavery question was at the forefront. I asked myself how Austen might have written Darcy and Elizabeth if they found themselves in the middle of the Great Cause—the abolition of the British Slave Trade. From that question arose In Westminster’s Halls.

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My current project began in response to my current reading fixation—World War II adventure and romance.

The Question: If the ODC story is eternal, must they be eternally locked in the Regency?

The fixation: Two books—Code Name Hélène and A Woman of No Importance, the first a novelization of the story of Nancy Wake and the latter a biography of Virginia Hall screamed “Elizabeth” to me. The two agents—Wake for SOE (Special Operations Executive) and Hall for the SOE and OSS (Office of Strategic Services)—proved that women could be more audacious and, thus, successful than their male counterparts.

Combining both the question and real-life characters tickled my historian’s fancy.

My “Elizabeth:’ Violette Szabo, SOE Courier

However, there is a reality in Austenesque fiction: readers tend not to gravitate toward “moderns.” The imagery of 1995 and 2005 media interpretations may be more comforting and provide a strong framework for revisiting familiar tales. A time-shifted Austenesque story demands an author to write fresh set decoration while recasting familiar characters to be consonant with the times. It also demands readers set aside long-held ideas about how an Austenesque tale must be told.

The challenge is for an author to do all that while telling a story in a period adjacent, at the very least, to that which is familiar to the reader. An unconvincing reality will break the story’s back as much as poorly framed characters. Yet, the very things we must be careful about can also give us pylons to which we can tie our plot. The Darcys can still own Pemberley, just not that Pemberley. Wickham can still be an awful human, just not one whose inherent awfulness is shown in toying with tender-aged girls. Elizabeth Bennet is still that obstinate, headstrong girl. Still, rather than being forced to conform to social norms to get a husband, she parachutes into France and, in the process, wins a damaged man with whom she endures a clarifying experience.

With the idea that Elizabeth Bennet has Wake’s and Hall’s strength of character, I decided to build a World War II story. Knowing that most Austenesque readers are not World War II historians, I knew I had to provide ample backstory so they could immerse themselves in how Darcy and Elizabeth come together. I also had to account for familiar names who would not appear in the book. Please see below for biographies I created for some of those folks.

There was a thin line I had to walk. I always joked with my US II history classes that I could imagine President Truman addressing General Groves—in charge of the atom bomb project—‘Don’t tell me how you mine the uranium, just tell if the damn thing blows up.’ That is similar to what I had to do with Ghost Flight. I had to place the reader in famine-ridden Occupation-era France without having starving children. Darcy could not get a cab to visit his lawyer in Deauville. He had to walk. And so on. Once the scenes were set, the action could begin.

A little note about Ghost Flight: the title comes from my imagination of what SOE did on a nightly basis—send lone aircraft across Occupied Europe to drop supplies to Resistance units. I named them Ghost Flights, airplanes that wafted unprotected across the countryside, appearing and vanishing like wraiths in the parlor.

I have a target date in mind...June 2025...for this book.

Please enjoy this excerpt.

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This excerpt from “Ghost Flight: A Pride and Prejudice Variation” is ©2025 by Donald P. Jacobson. Reproduction is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.

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Chapter Two

The radiator gurgled in its futile attempts to cut the winter chill. The sole window needed a good cleaning, probably not having been washed since 1939. As it was midday, the tattered blackout curtains were pulled back. Crosshatched with tape, the hazed glass allowed only a feeble winter glow into the room. Green paint, likely not renewed since it was laid on fresh plaster during Edwardian times, was dingy with the smoke of a thousand cigars and cigarettes. Worn linoleum and utilitarian metal furniture completed the picture. All contributed to a dogeared air of weariness that bore down on late-1943 Britain and settled its heavy cloak around the uniformed pair.

The colonel’s eyes sagged at their corners as he stared at her. This unusual cast in a young man’s face told Elizabeth of too many interviews that had sent too many off into the maw of the machine that ground them up, fuel for its insatiable appetite. He was weary.

He absentmindedly pulled a pipe and tobacco pouch out from his pocket. His eyes never left her as his fingers performed their actions by rote: stuffing, tamping, and, finally, lighting. Next, he fished out a pen and carefully set it on the desk, stroking the barrel as if drawing strength from the inanimate case.

Through it all, he cataloged Elizabeth.

Grunting, the officer pursed his lips around the pipe stem. He flipped open the second folder. While she was adept at reading upside down and backward, all she could divine through the smoke cloud was her card-sized WAAF intake portrait clipped to a stack of papers. The colonel quickly unclipped the packet and casually flipped her photograph face-down. Elizabeth shivered at his casual disappearance of her person.

“You like to climb trees.”

While he spoke as a declaration, not a question, Elizabeth felt that clarification was required. “Not recently, I should hope: my mother despaired of me and called me a tomboy. My older sister...”

“That would be Jane.”

A sleight of hand brought a deck of photos from the folder to the table. He spread them across the tabletop card sharp-like. This, though, was no effort to impress.

Jane’s picture was front and center, pushed forward, his forefinger tapping the image, encouraging Elizabeth to expand. “Yes, Jane: Jane was the young lady every country mama could love. Our mother groomed her to sit atop the social pyramid, even if only in our corner of the county. My sister is sweet and demure, always seeing the best in everyone. I doubt if she has a suspicious bone in her body.

“My father took a greater hand in my education and encouraged me to turn over stones to see what lay beneath. Sometimes that meant climbing trees.”

“Yet your sister joined up as soon as the WAAFs became a going concern. She’s now a Flight Officer on Tedder’s staff at SHAEF.”[i]

“I did say that my father took a greater hand in my education. I did not say he ignored her entirely. Jane is just as motivated to serve our country as I am. Maybe that was her tree, her escape from the gilded cage.”

“Please do not mistake her calm manner for placidity. Velvet and satin will lead you astray. Jane is difficult to judge because she is always on guard. In her element, Jane is the exemplar, always on task and always correct in every stitch.”

He dismissed further exploration of Elizabeth’s dear Jane and nudged her picture aside. “Miss Jane Bennet found her place in Tedder’s suite. We could not use her in our business.”

Elizabeth felt the discussion moving on. Unsure if her kin were being found lacking, she offered what she hoped would put a tick on the ledger’s plus side. “My next two younger sisters, Mary and Kate, have gravitated to nursing.”

A tarot reader could not have been more adept in his study of another two photos.

“Yaas,” he drawled, “Sister Mary Bennet has enlisted in Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service—too much of a mouthful, and the acronym is nothing but letter salad. She’ll see service as a flying nurse once the balloon goes up.”

He bore in. To a casual listener, his baritone betrayed little. Elizabeth, though, heard a tone that pointed to closer experience with her next sister’s lot. “Catherine is too young to enlist but volunteers at a convalescent home near your family digs in bucolic Hertfordshire.

“Netherfield is where we send men—boys, really—who have just survived Jerry’s worst. Most are burn victims—usually RAF bods—after they’ve had all the surgeries they can bear.

“I marvel at what the human body can take. Aluminum, while light, is as hard as a Damascus blade when cutting and crushing flesh. Petro fires are pernicious. The scars are hideous. How these men get past their terrible disfigurement is beyond me.”

Elizabeth’s courage rose before this transparent effort to discommode her. She gave the colonel a correction, not a set-down. “Although she is only seventeen, my sister has an old soul. Kitty tells me these heroes must be treated with respect and dignity; no matter her feelings, she never forgets there is a man inside. She has told me repeatedly that they may be different in appearance, but their sensibilities have not changed.”

“Hmmm. Based on what we learned, Your Miss Kate has shed her adolescent inclination to hide behind the youngest. Your parents must be comforted that Lydia remains unsullied by the war.” He frowned as he read a paragraph in the dossier. “Although, perhaps not for long.”[ii]

He paused and then ended the study of her family.

Silence descended.

Then he launched at her again. “Just as you are the opposite of your elder sister in appearance, are you likewise the flip side of her emotional coin? Are you skeptical of first impressions? Or do you make snap judgments?”

Elizabeth took her time answering this while she conducted a personal inventory. “When I was younger, I was prone to form opinions quickly without consideration. This was harmless and youthful folly...usually. I either liked or disliked someone based on my prejudices. Those could have been made based on whether I enjoyed my breakfast or had swallowed some bone hidden in my sausage.

“After one unfortunate incident where I had set my face against a young man who had unwittingly insulted me, my father took me to task and reminded me that my Weltanschauung trapped me. He dropped Doctor Freud’s article in my lap and sent me upstairs to read it.”[iii]

“In German?”

Elizabeth raised a haughty eyebrow. “Of course, colonel: even the best translation loses something. For instance, that word, the jaw-breaking Weltanschauung, if removed from its Teutonic framework, becomes the colorless and flavorless worldview. Now, if I may...?”

His sharp nod pushed her onward.

“Once I took the time to think, to stop and look closely at myself, I quickly realized that my failing was that I believed what I perceived determined what was true. How did Lucretius put it? ‘That which to some is food, to others is rank poison.’ Fair or foul depends on your perspective. I was grandiose and infantile in thinking that the world revolved around me.

“I thought he was slighting me, my appearance. But to him, his poorly framed words were an effort to dissuade another from hectoring him to be more sociable. I did not willfully misunderstand him, but I took what he said as the unvarnished truth demonstrating deficiencies in his character.

“That I later listened to gossip confirming my worst inclinations was and blot in my copybook.”

Grunting seemed to be this colonel’s favorite pastime. “Humph: sounds like someone I know. He determined that his was the true point of view, evidence be damned! He was going on and on about ‘for their own good.’ Those of casual acquaintance saw him as a man of an officious nature bordering on insufferable arrogance. His family knew better, of course, that some of his behavior grew from a need to control everything because he lost both parents when he was at an impressionable age.

“But he is not the subject of this interview. You are. Your travels down memory lane say you think you turned over a new leaf. What changed you besides the Socratic self-examination?”

Elizabeth’s chin firmed. “The war, colonel, the war made me grow up; it changed me.

“No longer am I the girl who blithely gambols about the countryside. Now I carefully survey the ground upon which I stand to see if it’s sand or stone. I watch people and compare their actions and mannerisms with what I have known, and if what they do is new to me, I become very cautious, preferring they call attention to themselves while I do my best to vanish.”

“And that is why you were summoned.”

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Biographical Notes

(((These sketches were written for the author—me—to have an understanding of what these folks did. The notes are rough and uncut.)))

Thomas Bennet (1890-1968), MA, served with distinction in the First World War, rising to the rank of Captain. Although he preferred to remain ensconced in his Hertfordshire estate, Longbourn, Bennet taught in France during the interwar years. He also was active in Liberal and later Conservative politics, following Winston Churchill when he abandoned the Liberal Party in 1924. Bennet was the Member for Longbourn-Meryton Village from 1924 through 1945. He was active as a backbencher, herding the diverse political cats that the Prime Minister wanted to ignore in favor of leading Britain through the war. He served as a junior minister in the Board of Trade, managing one of the black budgets hidden in plain sight. Mr. Atlee, having seen Bennet’s work in the intelligence community during the war, put his name forward for an MBE in 1947. Bennet married Frances Gardiner (1902-1970) in 1919. They had five children: Jane (1920-2005), Elizabeth (1922-2010), Mary (1924-2013), Catherine (1926-1999), and Lydia (1927-2011).

Mary Bennet (19 in 1943) was an RAF nurse in Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service. In a 1995 interview with the BBC, Matron Bennet stated, “It was the war that changed me from a bookish, prosy moralist. The manifold suffering of our soldiers and civilians opened my eyes to the difficult nature of the world. Nursing called out to me, and I have never looked back.” After the War, she continued nursing and ended her career as Chief Matron at The London. She took leaves of absence to nurse British troops during the Korean, Vietnam, and Falkland conflicts, rising in rank to Group Officer (in the post-1949 rank system). However, like most of the Second World War nurses, she preferred to use the traditional rank system even in the reserves. Thus, she was always addressed formally as Chief Principal Matron. Upon leaving The London in 1995, her patriotic service and her role as an exemplary teacher led Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to honor Matron Bennet with a DCBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire). Dame Mary lived in retirement at her sister’s home in Derbyshire.

Catherine Bennet (17 in 1943) lied about her age and trained in nursing at the RAF convalescent home set up at Netherfield Park in Meryton, Hertfordshire. Her demure behavior and beauty have made her a favorite with the patients. Her willingness to read for hours made her the heroine of the ward for the bedridden and an exemplar used in training young sisters. She lived at Longbourn—bequeathed to her by her father—with her husband, who she met at Netherfield as he recovered from severe burns incurred during air operations over France, Belgium, and Holland. Sir Thomas Malting, KCB, VC, DFC with Bar, Croix de guerre avec Palme, Legion d’Honneur. The couple raised their three sons at their residence. The eldest, Michael Bennet Malting, served as the Member for Meryton Village from 1981 through 2009 and served as Director General of MI5 during the First Gulf War. He was elevated to a baronetcy in 2010. The middle son, Sir William Charles Malting, KB, joined the Royal Navy in 1974 and retired as a Vice Admiral in 2014. Their youngest, the Right Reverend Thomas Alfred Malting, became Bishop of St. Albans.

Lydia Bennet (16 in 1943), still at home, had competed in the Daily Telegraph crossword used by the government to recruit puzzle solvers for work at Station X—Bletchley Park—to break the German Enigma codes. She was one of the few who completed it in under 10 minutes. Once her correspondents discovered her age, she was approached by a ‘pen pal’ and engaged in a lively exchange of letters and quizzes with a woman (22 years old)—Mavis Lever (see downloaded Diss page 327 by Bryony Norburn, 2021), who told her she was a puzzle fanatic, working on dozens each day. She forwarded Lydia puzzles and riddles, which she gleefully solved and returned to an address in Buckinghamshire care of Bletchley Park, GC & CS (Government Code and Cypher School). In 1944, Lydia was invited to attend an exclusive school in Buckinghamshire. Lydia, being her father’s daughter, rarely wrote home. She never spoke about her experiences there. She later earned her doctorate in Mathematics (specializing in Game Theory) from Cambridge in 1953. Her work as John Nash’s successor at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies saw her lauded with awards including the Fields Medal. Like her elder sister with nursing, Mary, Lydia found mathematics and not personal relationships most satisfying. She did not marry and bore no children.

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[i] Air Chief Marshal Arthur Tedder was Deputy Commander (D. Eisenhower’s deputy) of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) during the leadup to and after D-Day. His rank was the equivalent of a full general. Flight Officer Jane Bennet (the equivalent of army captain) was nominally Tedder’s adjutant and ran his office.

[ii] For biographical notes on the Bennet Family, please see Appendix.

[iii] Sigmund Freud, Civilization und die Weltanschauung (1918), where Freud posits a unifying worldview, a lens through which individuals perceive the events around them.