Sunday, November 22, 2009

Pemberley Ball


Returning to Mansfield Park after attending the Pemberley Ball

I took a break for the past 3 days in my reading for the Everything Austen challenge in order that I, as my alias Lady Elizabeth, might partake in the festivities at the Pemberley Ball and I quite enjoyed myself. Well now that the excitement of the ball has subsided I will again resume my reading of Mansfield Park.

vvb32 reads: Bright Star (2009) movie

vvb32 reads: Bright Star (2009) movie

Before watching the film, I picked up Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne with introduction by Director Jane Campion.

Just like the movie, exquisite.
vvb32 picked up a second copy for some lucky soul out there in the blogosphere.

Interested in receiving a bundle of Keats love letters? Check out the blog site for further details on entering the giveaway.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Northanger Abbey is finished through Persuasion

I apologize now for my near month’s hiatus from posting but I have been very busy and have just lost track of time. I have not, however, been neglecting my Everything Austen challenge list. In my last post I had only started Northanger Abbey, I finished the book a few days after my last post but I was sidetracked by Christmas crafts and the fill a Christmas Charity stocking project at work so, alas, I was so busy that I thought in the back of my mind that I had posted my comments about Jane Austen's Gothic Novel about Miss Catherine Morland and Mr. Henry Tilney. Catherine with her notion of abbeys being possessed of mystery and dark secrets is proved to be without merit in the reality of Northanger. In the end she succeeds in winning of the affection and hand of Mr. Henry Tilney. Having just recently visited Bath again and visited many of the very same places that Catherine and the others do it was quite interesting to reread the work with the pictures, smells and, dare I say tastes, of it still fresh in my memory. While it is not my favourite of Jane's novels, nonetheless I quite enjoyed Northanger Abbey.
Having left Northanger Abbey I continued on to Persuasion; while P&P will always be my favourite of Jane’s novels but for some reason I always teeter between whether Persuasion or S&S is my second favourite (often the teetering will come after I have just read one or the other). Persuasion shows how one can lose their true love but if that love is constant they can get a second chance at it. Anne Elliot is persuaded by her confidant Lady Russell to break off her engagement to the man she loves as the young man is without rank or fortune. When Frederick Wentworth returns some years later with a fortune that he has amassed out of his rising through the ranks of the navy and later proves his muster in the eyes of the same Lady Russell his character is only more firmly entrenched within Anne’s mind and heart. One of the reasons I like Persuasion is that it shows that true love and consistency of feeling within a person of good character will be rewarded and that money does not necessarily a man of character make [where as in most of Jane’s other novels it does: i.e. Darcy, Col. Brandon, Tilney]. I am now on to my next stop on the Everything Austen Challenge that of Mansfield Park and Miss Fanny Price.