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Monthly Archives: September 2013

If my daughter had been born 200 years earlier…

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Last week Mr Fraser and I grounded our nine-year-old daughter, Miss Fraser, from all her electronic devices–her regular Kindle, her Fire, her DS, her computer, and the TV. She’s taking her electronics fast pretty hard. At one point I reminded her that when I was her age, I didn’t have any electronics except a TV which only got six or seven channels, two of them extremely fuzzy, and yet I entertained myself just fine with books, toys, and paper and pencils/crayons. All of which she has plenty of. “But you were used to it!” she wailed.

She’s adjusting. She’s been digging out toys she got for Christmas or her birthday that she’d barely touched, and she follows me around the kitchen wanting to help, but bored by the simplicity of my typical weeknight cuisine. While I’m just trying to get pasta or breakfast-for-dinner to the table, she’s trying to make it a round of Chopped or Iron Chef. Which might be fun–on a weekend when I have more time.

But it got me thinking what her childhood would’ve been like if she’d been born in 1804 instead of 2004. Setting aside for the moment the fact she’d probably be motherless (since I had complications of late pregnancy and labor and delivery that were no big deal in the 21st century but would’ve been dire back then), her world would look very different. She wouldn’t have My Little Pony figurines, she’d have an actual pony. (Assuming of course that Regency Mr Fraser and I were at least genteel and could afford to keep horses.)

Horsie!

(Yes, yes, I know, that’s a horse, not a pony. But isn’t it pretty? Horsie!)

She wouldn’t be able to read about Katniss Everdeen, Harry Potter, or Firestar the warrior cat, but she might enjoy Charles Perrault’s fairy tales. Or, given that we are Frasers (it’s a pen name, but one chosen from my family tree), she might find The Scottish Chiefs more to her taste than anything else available in 1813.

Bannockburn

And while I suppose the Regency versions of me and Mr Fraser would’ve felt obliged to restrain our daughter’s tomboyish tendencies, I’m sure she would’ve angled for toy soldiers instead of dolls.

toy soldiers

As much as I love history, the only thing I envy about Regency Miss Fraser’s childhood is the pony.

What about you? What are your favorite toys, or your kids’ favorites? And what would you have played with 200 years ago?

Posted in Frivolity, Regency | Tagged , , | 9 Replies

Dreams, works under reconstruction, and other good ideas

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I must tell you that next week it will all about the one year anniversary of Hidden Paradise and the Baltimore Book Festival, where I’ll be speaking and reading from the WUR (that’s the Work Under Reconstruction) on Friday, September 27. But to maybe win a signed book (including one of mine) and start planning your attendance, check out this post all about the festival at the Romantic Times blog today.

I want to talk a bit about the Work Under Reconstruction today. It’s my first venture into self-pubbing and I’m a bit nervous about it. Its title, rather than referring to it as the WUR, is A Certain Latitude. It was published six years ago and was my major flop for many and good reasons, one being that it wasn’t that good a book. It had moments–many of them–but as a whole it didn’t do the job. Well, you try writing a book about sex and abolitionists and see what happens…

So I’ve been rewriting. Mostly I’ve been trying to make sense of the heroine. I think I have her nailed now (haw de haw haw, so do both the heroes).  About five times in the last couple of months I’ve hit save, turned off the computer and grandly announced “I’m done!”

The last time was yesterday afternoon. Then one of my beta readers gave me a fantastic analysis of the book that I read last night in which she suggested something about my favorite chapter. And she said … she said get rid of it. Noooooooooooooo.

But then I went to bed and had an amazing dystopian, Stockholm syndrome type of dream that tied into a novella I’m planning to write and I woke up with that bouncing around in my head and also absolutely clear about what I was going to do in terms of sorting out my heroine some more. And yes, it does involve cutting that chapter. It will make the book shorter, it will make it tighter and stronger and I need to go write what I have to do on the back of an envelope before I forget. Or maybe this blog is the equivalent.

Thanks, Anna!

Do you find dreams sort things out for you? Do you remember dreams at all? Do share, within reason.

Posted in Writing | 4 Replies

Pride and Prejudice – A Victorian Soap Opera???

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PrideandPrejudiceCH15

I’m continuing Myretta’s Jane Austen theme today.

The Christian Science Monitor just published an article on the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice, coinciding with Bath’s annual Jane Austen Festival. The title of the article is “Victorian-era soap opera turns 200: Pride and Prejudice still resonates today.”

Doesn’t that raise your hackles?

My goodness! First to call the book Victorian-era?

One could argue whether the book was Regency, because it was published in 1813, during the Regency, or whether it was Georgian, since Austen first wrote it in 1797, but it is lightyears from being Victorian in time-period and story! One wonders whether the journalist (or title writer) ever thought to check his research on that matter? Ironically, attached to the article is a a quiz about the United Kingdom (more on that later). I suspect the writers would not score well.

PrideandPrejudiceCH3detailThen to call Pride and Prejudice a soap opera? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

The article compares the popularity of Downton Abbey to Pride and Prejudice. Now, I love Downton Abbey, but it is more a soap opera than Pride and Prejudice ever could be. Wikipedia defines a soap opera as:  a serial drama, on television or radio, that features multiple related story lines dealing with the lives of multiple characters. The stories in these series typically focus heavily on emotional relationships to the point of melodrama.

Pride and Prejudice isn’t a series. True, the book has multiple characters with multiple story lines and is heavily focused on emotional relationships, but never never to the point of melodrama! Austen did not write melodrama. She wrote with a keen observation, wisdom, and wit about people, about their strengths and weaknesses, about how they could change and grow-through love.

Bingley&Jane_CH_55What’s more, Pride and Prejudice is considered one of the greatest books in literature. It regularly appears on lists of the greatest books of all time (except on one list I read yesterday and couldn’t find today to provide a link. And this list of 100 Must Read Books for Men- only one woman author there, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird). Consider this quote from Anna Quindlen:

Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel to teach us that that search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk as in the pursuit of a great white whale or the public punishment of adultery. (from Wikipedia)

Other than that, the article is pretty decent with some good observations from people who have the expertise to speak knowledgeably about the book.

It also includes a fun quiz – How Well Do You Know Pride and Prejudice? I scored only 80% mostly because I didn’t know enough about the film adaptations of the book. And I guessed Lizzie’s age wrong.

The article also links to another quiz – Keep calm and answer on: Take our United Kingdom quiz. I scored 80% on this one, too, mostly because I know Regency history, but not much else!

Take the quizzes and tell us how you do!

Do you think Pride and Prejudice is a soap opera?

Posted in Frivolity, Jane Austen, Reading | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Replies

Elinor or Marianne?

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Marianne & Elinor

Marianne & Elinor

Well, who are you?  I’m of the belief that we’re all one of Jane Austen’s characters and, heaven knows, there are enough online quizzes to bear this out.  Only Sense & Sensibility, however, gives us two heroines from which to choose, and they couldn’t be more different.  I think that we all have a little bit of either Elinor or Marianne in us (or possibly both).  Literary criticism, in general, has signed the traits of sense and sensibility to Elinor and Marianne, respectively.

The cult of sensibility was a late 18th century social construct that was characterized by the exaggerated expression of emotion.  So Marianne. The Marianne whom we first meet in Sense & Sensibility is all sensibility.  After Willoughby leaves Allenham, Marianne indulges in every symptom of sentimentality associated with sensibility.

When breakfast was over, she walked out by herself, and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning.

The evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Willoughby, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books, too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast betwen the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together.

Such violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments, to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations, still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever.

Elinor, on the other hand, is all sense, the embodiment of early 18th century rationalism.  It is Elinor who takes charge when the Dashwoods must leave Norland and gets them moved and settled at Barton Cottage while Marianne mourns the loss of “dear, dear Norland.”  It is Elinor who worries about Marianne’s emotional attachment to Willoughby and who tries to talk sense into both Marianne and her mother.  It is Elinor who confronts Willoughby when he calls during Marianne’s illness.  And, although Elinor is also nursing a broken heart, she never wallows in melancholy, but gets on with what must be done.

The conversation that, perhaps, best exemplifies these two personalities occurs in Chapter 16:

“Dear, dear Norland,” said Elinor, “probably looks much as it always does at this time of year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.”

“Oh!” cried Marianne, “with what transporting sensations have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.”

“It is not every one,” said Elinor, “who has your passion for dead leaves.”

 


The wages of sensibility
So who are you?  The sensible Elinor or the sensitive (and wet) Marianne?
Posted in Risky Regencies | 13 Replies

Fairs and Giveaway Winners!

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bunniesA few weeks ago I went to the New York State Fair. It’s become something of a ritual for my family; there are things we must do every time we go.

We eat lunch and dinner at the International Building, each getting different things and sharing. Sushi, falafel, pierogies…yum.

We always visit the Poultry Barn, where my youngest and I play a game she started as a toddler. Can we buy a (chicken, duck, bunny, racing pigeon)? My answer is just “No.”

muppetchickenWe catch a little of whatever is going on in the equestrian arena in the Toyota Coliseum. This year it was six hitch Belgians and later, Percherons driven “unicorn” fashion (two behind, one in front). Gorgeous beasts, all of them.

Besides those things, we wander the various exhibition halls and watch whatever performers happen to be on, check out the sand and butter sculptures, etc… We end the day watching the parade and eating funnel cake.

Greenwich_ParkFairs in England started out as agricultural events: opportunities to buy and sell livestock. Entertainment was also important, but by the late eighteenth century it was a major focus of the “Fringe Fairs” around London, which included Greenwich, where I had the hero of Fly with a Rogue do a balloon ascension.

Here are some descriptions of Greenwich Fair from Sketches from Boz, Chapter 12 by Charles Dickens, 1836. According to other sources, his descriptions were valid for the Regency. He describes the entertainment, which included itinerant theatres, Wild Beast Shows, exhibitions of dwarfs and the like, and dancing at the Crown & Anchor.

Imagine yourself in an extremely dense crowd, which swings you to and fro, and in and out, and every way but the right one; add to this the screams of women, the shouts of boys, the clanging of gongs, the firing of pistols, the ringing of bells, the bellowings of speaking-trumpets, the squeaking of penny dittos, the noise of a dozen bands, with three drums in each, all playing different tunes at the same time, the hallooing of showmen, and an occasional roar from the wild-beast shows; and you are in the very centre and heart of the fair.

Greenwich_Fair

And here’s a bit on the food:

The entrance is occupied on either side by the vendors of gingerbread and toys: the stalls are gaily lighted up, the most attractive goods profusely disposed, and unbonneted young ladies, in their zeal for the interest of their employers, seize you by the coat, and use all the blandishments of ‘Do, dear’—‘There’s a love’—‘Don’t be cross, now,’ &c., to induce you to purchase half a pound of the real spice nuts, of which the majority of the regular fair-goers carry a pound or two as a present supply, tied up in a cotton pocket-handkerchief. Occasionally you pass a deal table, on which are exposed pen’orths of pickled salmon (fennel included), in little white saucers: oysters, with shells as large as cheese-plates, and divers specimens of a species of snail (wilks, we think they are called), floating in a somewhat bilious-looking green liquid.

I remember the hero of Georgette Heyer’s Fridays’s Child taking the heroine to a fair, but off the top of my head, I can’t remember other fairs in Regency romance. It wasn’t an especially proper thing to do, and could get a bit rowdy. Not to say that people of the gentry or aristocracy couldn’t go, but they’d plan accordingly.

Do you enjoy county or state fairs? What’s your favorite thing to do (or eat) there?

Fly with a Rogue by Elena GreeneBut before we discuss, here are the winners of the paperback version of Fly with a Rogue:

Bonnie
Kathy
Stella
Sheila C
Mary C

Please send your snail mail address to elena @ elenagreene.com. Thanks for visiting!

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Giveaways, Research | Tagged | 9 Replies