This Jane Austen blog brings Jane Austen, her novels, and the Regency Period alive through food, dress, social customs, and other 19th C. historical details related to this topic.
At the 2022 JASNA AGM, Renata Dennis (head of JASNA’s Diversity Committee*) virtually interviewed author Uzma Jalaluddin. Uzma came across as friendly, passionate, and joyful. As I left the room, I overheard one participant saying, “Uzma seems like someone I could be friends with,” and I felt the same. That session encouraged me to go back and reread Uzma’s novel Ayesha at Last (a variation on Pride and Prejudice), and also to read her newest book, Hana Khan Carries On (a variation on You’ve Got Mail).
Ayesha at Last by Uzma Jalaluddin gives a modern Canadian Muslim twist to Pride and Prejudice.
In Ayesha at Last, Ayesha is a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet, while Khalid is her Mr. Darcy. Both are from Indian-background Muslim families in Canada, and both have experienced loss and tragedy. Their Muslim community faces challenges, and they try to help, though their ideas don’t always match.
Uzma told us that she wanted to show an “observant” Muslim as a character we could understand and relate to, so she introduced Khalid. (“Observant” here means that he strictly observes the practices of his faith.) Khalid finds his identity in wearing a long white robe, a white skullcap, and a bushy beard. He doesn’t shake women’s hands (sign of a strict Muslim), and tends to judge others, though he treats them with respect. He works hard and does well in his company. But a new boss arrives who is prejudiced against him for his religion and appearance. She looks for excuses to fire him.
Ayesha is a poet, working as a substitute teacher but unhappy with teaching. She wears a purple hijab—traditional, but not. She is also a committed Muslim, but not as strict as Khalid. Sparks fly when they meet. A villain, of course, tries to come between them.
The story is compelling and I found it hard to put down. The characters are well-drawn and interesting. Uzma Jalaluddin gives us insight into a Muslim community in Toronto, Canada, their mosque and community center, and the challenges they face. The novel is a clean read (although there is some discussion of pornography).
In an illuminating online article, Uzma Jalaluddin says,
“I write romance novels.
“That’s not what I set out to do when I first put fingers to keyboard. I wasn’t thinking about genre at all. All I knew was that I wanted to write funny, joyful books about characters I had rarely seen represented on the page; characters who looked like me, and who would bring a different perspective to the traditional love story.
“I write romantic comedies so that I can see my stories represented in the world.”
Hana Khan Carries On is another entertaining story set in the same community.
In Uzma Jaluluddin’s second excellent novel, Hana Khan Carries On, her heroine focuses on the need for “more entertaining stories that represent all of our experiences, not just our pain.” Hana Khan is a budding broadcaster who insists on stories that reflect many dimensions of her Toronto Muslim community, not just tragedies and stereotypes. She asks “The Big Questions: ‘What do you want out of life? What do we owe the people we love? How do our histories and stories influence who we become?” Uzma Jalaluddin says those questions “form the backbone” of all her stories.
Like Jane Austen and all good writers, Uzma Jalauddin gives us three-dimensional characters. We can relate to them on many levels, while also seeing their uniqueness. She entangles them in plots that are fun and compelling to read.
Note: Previously I reviewed another excellent Austen variation set in a Muslim community: Soniah Kamal’s Unmarriageable, a Pride and Prejudice retelling set in Pakistan.
*The JEDI Committee: JASNA Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a book can change a life.”—The Jane Austen Remedy, by Ruth Wilson
I’ve certainly found this true in my life; haven’t you? This statement opens Ruth Wilson’s memoir of how a “careful re-reading of Jane Austen’s six novels” enabled her to “re-examine [her] lived life in the context of [her] reading life.”
In The Jane Austen Remedy, by Ruth Wilson, the author explores her life through the lens of Jane Austen’s novels.
When Wilson turned sixty, she realized she was “out of love with the world and . . . not happy.” She says, “my body was telling me that my soul, however such an entity is conceptualised, was ailing.” She grieved for herself, for what she had not achieved, and for “the years that lay ahead.” She identified with Elizabeth Bennet who says, “The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it.”
So, Wilson bought a small cottage two hours from her home in Sydney, Australia. Her goal was to have “a room of one’s own,” as Virginia Woolf puts it in her book with that title (which I highly recommend, by the way). Woolf is talking about women writers, but Wilson says, “All women need their own space to inhabit, their own air to breathe.” She hoped, in that place “to find a happier way of being.”
Wilson left her husband and family for a time and determined to re-read Austen’s novels. She says,
I was making Austen’s novels a starting point for exploring the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of my own life, framed and illuminated by her fictional universe.
The Jane Austen Remedy takes readers along with Ruth Wilson on this journey through her life. She discusses many books that impacted her, some of which were familiar to me and some not. But the Austen novels were at the heart of her journey.
Wilson begins with her own discovery of literature and how it impacted her life. Her “reading life truly began with Pride and Prejudice,” which made reading into “a source of nourishment and imaginative expansion” for her. She says from that point on, Austen’s novels
shaped the course of my future: because of them, I became a lover of language, a teacher of literature, a parent-reader, and, in a broader sense, an educator. My inner life has been nourished, illuminated and comforted by the empathetic voices, the complex characters and the challenging ideas in Austen’s novels – and they have changed, as I have done, over a lifetime.
As Ruth Wilson was growing up, Austen filled personal needs that her family and the people around her could not fill. She says, “I think of Jane Austen as a writer whose novels never stop helping readers to grow up.”
Northanger Abbey covers, like this one from Barnes and Noble Classics, tend to emphasize the Gothic connection. But Wilson suggests a different emphasis for teenage readers.
Northanger Abbey
When she set out to re-read Austen, she began with Northanger Abbey, since it was the one she remembered the least. She discussed it with an English teacher, who taught it with a focus on the Gothic novel. (I have taught it that way myself, I confess.)
However, Wilson says we should teach literature by helping students look for ways the story relates to their own lives. I love this idea! She says, “The nature and authenticity of friendship and romantic intimacy are central ideas that shape the events of Catherine’s holiday in Bath.” Friendship and romantic relationships are likely to be the most relevant issues for young people reading the novel.
Re-reading Northanger Abbey led Wilson to consider her own friendships throughout her life. She identifies herself as being, like her father, “both Jewish and Australian.” She meditates on how those parts of her identity affected her relationships.
Pride and Prejudice
In Pride and Prejudice, Wilson found “an exploration of what it means to be human, of the consequences of daring to make bold choices about how to live.” She repeatedly finds new insights and new connections to her own life as she re-reads it. Elizabeth became her heroine as soon as Elizabeth laughed when telling Charlotte about Darcy refusing to dance with her. When you think about that, what an amazing and joyful response it was!
Sense and Sensibility
The Dashwood family’s displacement in Sense and Sensibility led Ruth Wilson to consider her own family’s displacement when they moved to Israel for some years. This move had repercussions for her children, her marriage, and her extended family. She considered her expectations, losses, and gains as she read about Elinor and Marianne’s experiences. This chapter also delves into the implications of Austen’s grammar and use of free indirect discourse to share the Dashwoods’ experiences.
Fanny Price shows her “strength of character” in refusing Henry Crawford.
Mansfield Park
Wilson looks at the moral dilemmas raised in Mansfield Park. She points out that many readers are drawn to the Crawfords, “despite continuing evidence that pursuit of their own happiness inflicts pain on those they call their friends.” Fanny’s “strength of character” shows up in strong contrast. Wilson appreciates Fanny’s “bold” claim that:
“it ought not to be set down as certain, that a man must be acceptable to every woman he might happen to like himself”!
Wilson also considers times of displacement in her own childhood as she sees young Fanny’s homesickness and adjustments.
Emma
Wilson’s reading of Emma is subtitled “A Critique of Love.” She found that each time she re-read one of Austen’s novels, she connected with “a different stage of [her] life” and found “a different significance in each novel.” She thought about Emma’s early loss of her mother, and how her indulgent governess might have encouraged Emma toward self-love and slowed her emotional progress toward loving others. Emma investigates “filial love, neighbourly love, romantic love, love of others, self-love, and love of self.” Since Emma treats her self-centered father with love and respect, her story led Wilson to examine her relationship with her own father.
In thinking about film adaptations of Emma, Wilson makes a telling comment:
The point of making a film about a novel, surely [is] to illuminate or enrich or comment intelligently on the novel that is being glossed.
I suppose this is why we react strongly to some Austen adaptations; they may not fit our own understanding or interpretation of the novel, or they may give us new ideas about it which we love or don’t.
Persuasion
Wilson reads Persuasion with an old friend. They examine choices they have made and what second chances might look like. A theme of feminism runs through this book, and her friend Tamar has chosen a more independent course than Wilson has, but both have struggles and regrets. Wilson concludes that the people who love us can help us change. They can teach us how to love ourselves.
Conclusions
Wilson rebuilt her life in new ways. She began her PhD at age 84 and completed it at age 88. She researched “how and why Jane Austen’s novels were read and studied at school.” She says,
Fiction shows us possibilities; in real life we make our own choices and learn to live with them, one way or another.
She ends with a series of “Jane Austen remedies” for various maladies. For example, she prescribes Pride and Prejudice for “heartache” and Mansfield Park for “anxiety.” You’ll need to read the book to find the relevant symptoms, treatments, dosage, side effects, and benefits!
I found this book enjoyable and interesting. It does ramble, as the author takes us with her on her personal journey. Occasionally, she went off on tangents related to books and ideas I didn’t connect with, and I was lost for a bit. However, she soon returned to Austen, her own life, and how those intersected. The idea that Jane Austen can help us grow personally, at different stages in our lives, appeals to me and will probably appeal to most of our “gentle readers.” So, I recommend The Jane Austen Remedy to you all.
Please tell us in the comments:
What is something new you’ve learned this year from Jane Austen?
Or, for what situations or feelings would you recommend a particular Jane Austen novel as a remedy?
From the press release:
An uplifting memoir of love, self-acceptance and the curative power of reading, The Jane Austen Remedy raises big questions about truth and memory, personal loyalty and betrayal, prudence and risk, reason and passion. It is an inspirational account of recovery and self-discovery. Ruth travels through nine decades of living, loving and learning, unravelling memories of relationships and lived experiences, looking for small truths that help explain the arc of a life that has been both ordinary and extraordinary.
Ruth Wilson, author of The Jane Austen Remedy
Ruth Wilson read her first Jane Austen novel in 1947 and in 2021 completed her PhD on reading and teaching Austen fiction. In between, she taught English and worked on oral history projects including one with Holocaust survivors. She encourages her four children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren to read widely, wisely and well. She and her husband are a married couple who live apart together.
Our very own author and contributor to this blog, Rachel Dodge, debuts yet another devotional on November 1st. Entitled The Secret Garden Devotional, the book offers inspiration that explores the themes of faith, family, contentment, wisdom, and joy based on the classic Frances Hodgson Burnett novel, cherished by generations. Purchase this book at stores near you or online in a variety of formats. Read the outstanding reviews on Goodreads. Average stars: Five!
Several weeks ago Mr Philip Turner, who volunteers with a children’s history club, described independently researched projects and presentations on topics of the children’s choosing. One group chose 19th century England. Their presentation was so successful and interesting that Mr Turner reports he learned a great deal of new information!
They thought that our readers would find this site interesting. I love that they wanted to share their find!
Mr Turner, and a number of other teachers and students over the years, have regularly sent their appreciation of our links. We are more than happy to include Alice’s suggestion! Thank you for contacting us, Mr. Turner, and please let your class know we’ve included the link in our list!
Pride & Prejudice 1995 China Pattern
Inquiring readers, Krissy, who enjoys our blog’s posts, alerted us to yet another china pattern used in the 1995 film that featured Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth and Colin Firth as Mr Darcy. She writes: “I‘ve especially enjoyed reading the articles about the china patterns in the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, so when I came across the breakfast set used by the newly minted Mrs. Charlotte Collins at Hunsford Parsonage I thought I’d send it in!
This Mandalay Blue Multicolor set by Mason’s was, no doubt, suggested by Lady Catherine herself as we all know that nothing is too small to be beneath her notice. (The photo is from Replacements.com.)
Where’s Jane? Find Jane Austen Hidden in Her Novels
This book, published in 2018, and written by Rebecca Smith and illustrated by Katy Dockrill, is still available. I purchased mine at the Walters Art Museum gift shop recently. Amazon still sells it (although with postage added, it is the same cost as the museum’s). The reading age is for 6-9 year olds. What a perfect time to introduce Austen to children!
Images below show how the main plot of Pride and Prejudice (one of six novel examples) is introduced in comic book form, as are the characters in oval vignettes. Part One introduces the first half of the book, then provides two pages of wonderful images. Readers are asked to find the characters, as well as Jane Austen, whose image sits on the ‘About this Book’ page.
The solutions sit at the very end.
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Images from Amazon.com from a preview of the book.
Part Two introduces the last half of the novel and more characters. As a tutor of adults, adult literacy, and children, I found this book not only a delightful introduction to Austen’s novels, but also a perfect way for a child to interact with texts and images, and provide them to answer question and ask questions of customs 200 years ago.
Our very own Brenda S. Cox has just published her new book Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England. It’s already receiving a wonderful reception, and I know it will continue. For those of us who are always expanding our understanding of Jane Austen’s life, and particularly her personal life and faith, this new book is an essential resource.
When I was writing my book Praying with Jane: 31 Days Through the Prayers of Jane Austen, I read every article and book I could find on the topic of religion and faith as it related to Austen and her family. I scoured every available resource on Austen’s personal faith, her family’s daily and weekly religious habits, and the Anglican church at large. I discovered many wonderful details about her religious life, but as I worked, I always felt as though I was putting together a giant puzzle. And when it came to understanding more fully the implications of her religious beliefs and background in her novels, I felt as though the puzzle was missing many important pieces.
In Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England, Brenda has finally put the puzzle pieces in their rightful places and collected all of the information one might want to know about Jane Austen’s religious life in one handy place. This book covers a broad range of topics that any Jane Austen lover can benefit from knowing, especially for those of us who enjoy looking into the varied layers and greater context of her writing.
Of particular interest is the clever manner in which Brenda has organized the information in this book. Each chapter is easy to find, plus she has included many helpful resources at the end of the book, including handy tables with income information, terminology, ranks within the church, and denominations; several appendices; detailed chapter notes; a hefty bibliography; a glossary of terms; and a topical index. You can read this book cover-to-cover or you can pick and choose the topics that interest you most.
I highly recommend this book for any Austen fan or scholar. Without this book, you can only know part of what makes Jane Austen’s characters and plots so intriguing. Thank you Brenda for creating this invaluable resource!
(See below for giveaway details.)
St. Nicholas Church, Steventon Photo: Rachel Dodge
About the Book:
“Brenda Cox’s Fashionable Goodness is an indispensable guide to all things religious in Jane Austen’s world. . . . a proper understanding of 18th century Christianity is necessary for a full appreciation of Austen’s works. Cox provides this understanding. . . . This work will appeal to novice readers of Austen as well as scholars and specialists.”
Roger E. Moore, Vanderbilt University, Jane Austen and the Reformation
The Church of England was at the heart of Jane Austen’s world of elegance and upheaval. Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England explores the church’s role in her life and novels, the challenges that church faced, and how it changed the world. In one volume, this book brings together resources from many sources to show the church at a pivotal time in history, when English Christians were freeing enslaved people, empowering the poor and oppressed, and challenging society’s moral values and immoral behavior.
Readers will meet Anglicans, Dissenters, Evangelicals, women leaders, poets, social reformers, hymn writers, country parsons, authors, and more. Lovers of Jane Austen or of church history and the long eighteenth century will enjoy discovering all this and much more:
Why could Mr. Collins, a rector, afford to marry a poor woman, while Mr. Elton, a vicar, and Charles Hayter, a curate, could not?
Why did Mansfield Park‘s early readers (unlike most today) love Fanny Price?
What part did people of color, like Miss Lambe of Sanditon, play in English society?
Why did Elizabeth Bennet compliment her kind sister Jane on her “candour”?
What shirked religious duties caused Anne Elliot to question the integrity of her cousin William Elliot?
Which Austen characters exhibited “true honor,” “false honor,” or “no honor”?
How did William Wilberforce, Hannah More, and William Cowper (beloved poet of Marianne Dashwood and Jane Austen) bring “goodness” into fashion?
How did the French Revolution challenge England’s complacency and draw the upper classes back to church?
How did Christians campaigning to abolish the slave trade pioneer modern methods of working for social causes?
Interior of St. Nicholas Church, Steventon Photo: Rachel Dodge
About the Author, Brenda S. Cox:
Brenda S. Cox has loved Jane Austen since she came across a copy of Emma as a young adult; she went out and bought a whole set of the novels as soon as she finished it! She has spent years researching the church in Austen’s England, visiting English churches and reading hundreds of books and articles, including many written by Austen’s contemporaries. She speaks at Jane Austen Society of North America meetings (including three AGMs) and writes for Persuasions On-Line (JASNA journal) and the websites Jane Austen’s World and her own Faith, Science, Joy, and Jane Austen.
Buy the Book:
You can purchase Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England here:
What is one question you’ve always had about Jane Austen’s faith or the role religion plays in her novels?
Giveaway Details: This giveaway is for ONE (1) print copy and ONE (1) ebook (Kindle) edition for readers of this blog. The winners will be drawn by random number generator on November 18, 2022.
Note: This giveaway is limited to addresses in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, or Italy for a print copy of the book. The author can only send a giveaway ebook (Kindle) to a U.S. address. (However, both the ebook and paperback are available for sale to customers from any of these countries, and some others that have Amazon.)
Oct. 21 My Jane Austen Book Club, Maria Grazia, Book Giveaway and Guest Post, “Sydney Smith, Anglican Clergyman and Proponent of Catholic Rights, Potential Model for Henry Tilney”
Oct. 27 Australasian Christian Writers, Donna Fletcher Crow, Guest Post, “Seven Things Historical Fiction Writers Should Know about the Church of England”
Oct. 30 Regency History, Andrew Knowles, Book Review and Video Interview with the author
“Trusting providence [God] seemed to lead to trusting people, as well. How differently the world appeared, when one stopped cringing away from it and faced it in the light.”—Fanny Bertram in The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray
Who doesn’t love a cozy mystery? Gather a large group of unconnected people for an English house party at a manor house. There should be one member of the party who is hated by all, though each has his or her own reasons. Snow them in or otherwise disconnect them from civilization, and the nasty one of course gets murdered (in the middle of the night while somehow most people are wandering around the house). Then an incompetent policeman tries to figure it out, and one or two members of the group actually uncover “whodunnit,” at great danger to themselves.
Now in this fun cozy mystery, The Murder of Mr. Wickhamby Claudia Gray, the manor house belongs to George and Emma Knightley. Their guests are some of our favorite people—Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Darcy, Marianne and Colonel Brandon, Anne and Frederick Wentworth, and Fanny and Edmund Bertram. Each has a plausible reason for being there. Of course, Wickham also shows up, and he gets himself deservedly killed (the title told you this already).
The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray, is a fun cozy mystery starring many of our favorite Jane Austen characters.
Frank Churchill, local magistrate, is the incompetent sleuth (with a flirtatious daughter). The Darcys’ oldest son (who we can see is mildly autistic) and the Tilneys’ teenage daughter try to solve the mystery, while not transgressing propriety any more than absolutely necessary–sort of.
Well, all that would have sold me on the book already. It’s also beautifully written and consistent with Austen’s characterizations. Gray has even postulated dates for each novel’s events and given the characters appropriate ages (though she’s made Sense and Sensibility rather late, apparently in order to make Marianne and Brandon newlyweds, which is fine).
Now, the stresses of Wickham’s dastardy toward each family, and then the suspicions aroused by his murder, awaken marital tensions in each couple. (The Darcys are also grieving the death of a loved one, and Fanny is keeping a secret.) So we get to see each pair struggling to communicate better, and growing in their marriage relationship. To me, the most interesting couple is Fanny and Edmund, whose conversations deal with deeper issues of judgment, mercy, and family loyalty.
Of course there is also a delightful budding romance between Jonathan Darcy and Juliet Tilney. After a rocky start, Juliet is very accepting of Jonathan’s quirks. When he tells her that when he gets overwhelmed, he rocks back and forth, she says she would not mind that. She adds, “It is peculiar, of course, . . . but my mother has often told me that most people are really very peculiar, once you get to know them. The only difference is in how well we hide our peculiarities. Your habit seems harmless.”
By the way, Juliet’s mother, Catherine Tilney, is not in this story. But we’re told she has become a successful novelist. A hint to Claudia: I’d like to meet Catherine in another story . . .
In the story, Wickham, the charming rogue, has deceived various characters into investing in a false scheme and stolen their money, which is quite plausible. (It seems less likely that after this has been revealed, he’s still legally able to force them to give the money they promised him.) We’re also not surprised that when he discovers a compromising letter, he steals it and holds it for ransom. (Whether that letter would have been written and mailed around the world through various hands in the first place seems less likely to me.) All this fits Wickham’s character very well. And his final demise is appropriate.
If you enjoy mysteries and sequels to Jane Austen, I highly recommend The Murder of Mr. Wickham to you. I loved being with all these characters again for an extended time. The themes are good, and the ending is satisfying. Great summer reading!
Brenda S. Cox blogs at Faith, Science, Joy, and Jane Austen. Her book entitled Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen’s England should be out this fall, Lord willing.
Fashionable Goodness: Christianity in Jane Austen's England is now available! By JAW contributor Brenda S. Cox. See Review. Available from Amazon and Jane Austen Books.
“My idea of good company…is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation.” – Jane Austen, Persuasion
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Project Gutenberg: eBook of Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2), by Charles G. Harper
STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE: A PICTURESQUE HISTORY
OF THE COACHING AGE, VOL. II, By CHARLES G. HARPER. 1903. Click on this link.
The students used our links page (
This book, published in 2018, and written by Rebecca Smith and illustrated by Katy Dockrill, is still available. I purchased mine at the Walters Art Museum gift shop recently. Amazon still sells it (although with postage added, it is the same cost as the museum’s). The reading age is for 6-9 year olds. What a perfect time to introduce Austen to children!
Jane Austen's World 