Sense & Sensibility 2011 — Bibliographies & Resources
Jane
Austen's Brothers and Sisters in Fact & Fiction 2009 — Bibliographies & Resources
Jane
Austen's Legacy: Life, Love & Laughter
2008 — Bibliographies & Resources
Emma
2007 — Bibliographies & Resources
Mansfield
Park 2006 — Bibliographies & Resources
Joan Ray’s
Talk — 6/11/06
On June 11, 2006, Joan Klingel Ray, President of the Jane Austen
Society of North America, came to our regional meeting to speak
on “Not Just a Pretty Face:
Why We Love Jane Austen.” Earlier in the day, eight of us hosted Joan at
a brunch at the Hotel Westin, where we all enjoyed the opportunity to get to
know her better and to
chat informally about things Austen.
In her talk, Joan described the different types of Jane Austen
that readers see. There is the gentle Jane Austen of the famous
frontispiece image from her nephew
James Edward Austen’s memoir, a round-faced Austen connoting tea and country
walks. Then there is the friendly Jane Austen—the wonderfully witty and
wise narrator who lures readers into her world and comforts us with her logical
plots. Joan pointed out that the original portrait of Austen by her sister Cassandra
portrays a woman with more acute angles to her face and a clear eye; in short
it is a portrait of an incisive observer, the third type of Jane Austen, the
wittily satirical one who knows life is not always gentle but who chooses not
to dwell on unpleasant things but instead to include them for those readers clever
enough to realize they are there amidst the humor and wit along with characters
of compelling psychological depth and emotional complexity.
Austen’s popularity is unquestioned at this point, but, as Joan said, her
writing is sturdy enough to survive any type of explanation or interpretation.
It may be that the compact size of her oeuvre has helped to enhance her reputation:
one doesn’t need to read thirty books to “get” Jane Austen.
One only needs to read and reread the several extant. It is no mystery why three
of Jane Austen’s novels were included in the top 100 favorite books of
all time in a recent BBC2 readers’ poll.
Jill Heydt-Stevenson’s Talk — 2/12/06
On February 12, 2006, Jill Heydt-Stevenson, Associate
Professor of English and Comparative Literature/Humanities at the
University of Colorado spoke to the Denver/Boulder Region on Jane
Austen’s Juvenilia.
Jill stated that the “joyful lawlessness” of these works and the
excessive behavior of their heroines represented both an internalization — over-consumption
of food and alcohol — of the repressive social codes of the day and an
externalization — thievery, murder, armed warfare — and rejection
of these codes. She used examples from “Jack and Alice,” “Love
and Freindship,” “Henry and Eliza,” and “The Beautiful
Cassandra” to show how the heroines of the Juvenilia place a high self-value
on themselves in the face of society’s attempts to treat them as “things” of
little worth. Their acts of hedonism, their lawlessness and sheer exuberance
are not only acts of rebellion but attempts to gain back for themselves what
is really due them and has been taken from them. As Sophia says to Laura in “Love
and Freindship”: Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint.”
Winning
Essay from the 2005 JASNA Essay Contest
Liminal Letters: Writing Between the Spaces in
Emma
Maggie Fromm, Third Place Winner, Undergraduate College Division
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