Category Archives: Northanger Abbey

>Happy Thursday

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In the world-weary words of everyone’s favorite homosexual Disney villain; “Life’s not fair, isn’t it?” (Scar, by the way folks.  Scar.  The Lion King.  Yea, I know, figuring he was gay was a mind-blowing event for me, too).
I very frequently describe my workload as an ocean.  It is vast, uncountable, uncontainable, and the best I can ever hope to do is tread water within it.  At a certain point in the semester, this treading water becomes strategic drowning.  Where can I take a break?  How long can I hold my breath?  Where do I really need to break the surface, how much is that going to take out of me, and in the long run will the effort to do so equal the greatest rate of return?
Generally, this feeling begins right around midterms time.  If I’m lucky, I can keep it at bay until I begin research for my finals.
Well I’m two weeks out from midterm number one and already I’m gasping for air.  I blame the common reading exam.  You see, usually when my work is done for the week I have a few hours with which to relax with the knowledge that I have nothing to do (unless I want to be an over-achiever and start on next week’s reading).  With the exam, however, all that time is diverted into (gasp) more reading.  It never ends.  As soon as I think I’ve caught a break, another wave comes by and shoves me right back under the water.
So I’m tired.  And stressed.  And my brain feels like oatmeal (maybe with little chunks of bananas because there are still a few bits that haven’t liquefied yet).  I’ve started getting the stress-headaches and all the wonderful things that erupt from them (tired eyes… migraines with aura are AWESOME let me tell you), my traps feel like someone stuck a fist in them and clenched and has refused to let go, and of course there is the ever-lurking threat of becoming sick yet again.
With that in mind, I’m having trouble being coherent this week.  Here’s a list of random stuff that has crossed my desk recently.
1)    I’m reading Northanger Abbey for aforementioned Best Professor Ever’s Gothic class.  I love this book.  I LOVE this book.  Have I mentioned how much I love this book?  I wrote a paper about it for my Austen class last semester which then became my PhD writing sample and I’m hoping to whip it into publication shape as soon as I have a moment to breathe.  I have to say despite everything reading this book feels like coming home again.  Shhhh.  Don’t tell Will I said that, he may be jealous.
2)    I’m giving a talk Saturday at the inaugural Rutgers Newark MA Consortium.  I haven’t looked at the paper I’m giving in months.  I haven’t looked at the notes on the paper I’m giving in months.  Luckily, I have a presentation written up I just have to brush the dust off of it and remember my Nietzsche.  Easier said than done I think.  Hey, by the way, come to the Rutgers Newark MA Consortium on Saturday!
3)    In a month, I will be past the roughest spot of this semester.  I’m torn on whether this is an awesome thing or a horrible one.  According to www.thegradcafe.com, Columbia’s decision letters usually come out the first week in March (or at least they do for my program).  My first midterm is due 3/9 (I will be begging an extension though so that I have Spring Break to work on it).  Spring break is 3/12-3/20.  MA exam is 3/21 and 3/22.  After that, I’m not gonna say it’s all smooth sailing, but at least I can ignore the extra reading that keeps weighing me down like a big regency dress on a chick who was forced to walk the pirate plank into some exotic gulf in Bermuda. 
4)    I am not where I want to be with my short story that I’m writing for my writing group.  I have a draft.  I want to have several drafts.  Pens down on this story is in three days.  Several drafts is so not going to happen.
5)    First stack of grading came to me yesterday.  I both adore and loathe the first stack of grading.  I am always eager to jump back in with my red pen in hand and learn them undergrads good.  On the other hand, putting a grade on the first assignment innately limits the potential of the students.  Before that first grade, they are all A students.  As soon as I mark this paper, lines are drawn as to the quality of the class and the work which should be expected from them.  This point of view may grant me, the grader, a little too much agency in what is really a problem precipitated by them, the students, but I can’t help but see things this way.  I want them to do well.  I don’t want anyone to do poorly; there’s no reason for them to do poorly.  The assignments aren’t mind-bending hard, we have resources for students who aren’t stellar writers to get help, and it’s not like they didn’t have warning about the workload for the course.  With proper time management skills and resource utilization, there is absolutely no reason why these students should do poorly in the class.  And still, I can nearly guarantee, at least a third of these papers will exhibit piss-poor quality (possibly poor enough to fail).  Sigh.
6)    I would very much like a massage, an honest-to-god day off, a good-looking man to come feed me chocolate-covered strawberries, and a pony.  Is that so much to ask?

>I Want you to Hit me as Hard as you Can

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Since Austen has been so high on my mind lately, the world has become a hazy rose-hued place of beauty and sensationalism coupled with the grayish-pink normality of daily life.  Things taste of earl grey and smell of violetwater.  I resist the urge to say “Oh my!” and fan myself daintily with a glove-clad hand.  The practice of reading novels is something I must think twice about before engaging in lest I become one of those women who thinks too much and thereby shall never land a husband.
Apparently, I am not alone.  Over this past weekend, this video was brought to my attention.
First and foremost, let me articulate how hilarious I find it.  The following analysis comes not from any lacking in my sense of humor, but rather an over-exaggeration of my sensibilities as a reader of Austen.  Honestly, if I wasn’t wading hip-deep in Austen criticism currently, I probably would have laughed the entire thing away and failed to put a second thought to it.  It is, truly, a funny piece of work.
That disclaimer out of the way, as a theorist I can’t help but note that Lizzie Bennet is likely miscast in her role of Tyler Durden.  Lizzie is most certainly the most famous of Austen’s women and for good reason.  She has a staring role in Austen’s most well read novel.  She has a bright, intelligent, strong personality that a modern audience absolutely connects to.  She is smart, beautiful, and gets the ultimate tall-dark-brooding-handsome-rich man in the end.  If I was stuck in some bizarre and world-altering literary cataclysm and had to choose one of Austen’s women to live as, it would be Lizzie Bennet.  Her story is relatable, desirable, and utterly romantic.
However, one of Lizzie’s most important characteristics is that, despite her brilliance and wittiness, she never outwardly performs any action of social impropriety.  Her barbs are measured, counted, and always reserved for the correct place at the correct time.  There is no unhealthy oppression in Lizzie (that is all left to her father, poor soul).  She says what she wants and needs to, but only does so at moments in which she knows she can get away with it.  Most importantly, Lizzie’s careful application of tact ensures that even her rebellion attracts the most desirable suitor.  Darcy is drawn to Lizzie precisely because of her rebellious streak.  This streak, thereby, goes to re-enforce social norms and the institution of male power within the novel despite its assertion of female agency in the acquisition of that power.
There is undeniably another woman, however, who would be more appropriately cast in this role.  To me, Marianne Dashwood is a much more likely candidate for the institution of such an organization as depicted in this little vignette.  Marianne famously is of a passionate and over-brimming heart, and acts precisely as she feels when she feels it.  She is unable to succumb to the boundaries of social propriety, and though her mind is sharp she cannot tame it to the demands of a society woman.  She, it seems, would instigate such fights.  She would lead the other women into the same lack of restraint that she exhibits throughout the course of her novel.
That being said, Fanny is the perfect candidate for the role of unnamed-Edward-Norton-narrator.  Quite, reserved, constantly told that she is inadequate, unable to stand up for herself, insistently put down by the book’s higher-socially-ranked characters, if anyone required a means of blowing off repressed anger it would be Fanny.  More importantly, the weak and measly push-over that Fanny is is the text-book definition of “beware of the quiet type”.  It would be of no surprise to me that Fanny should imagine herself an alternate person which, once donned, would allow her to act out.  More importantly, Marianne Dashwood would fill that persona swimmingly; wild, romantic, carefree, unbounded; the perfect fantasy for the mousy Fanny to enact in her attempt at conquering her own meekness.
….and perhaps it’s just because my most recent paper is on Northanger Abbey, but where is Catherine Morland?  Don’t satirical Gothic heroines get to beat people up too?
In any case, this certainly inspires further thought.  In recent years, Austen’s works have provided the muse for a series of adaptations which has brought them center-stage in the eyes of the reading masses.  Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the first (and perhaps most famous) of these.  It is hard to say whether these appropriations should be grouped into literary fan fiction, or legitimate attempts to make these texts speak to a modern audience.  Having done no lengthy study upon them, it is a difficult distinction for me to make.  I suppose it begs us to first answer the question of how far one can go from an original text while still maintaining its integrity.  Do the zombies make this book another book, or should it still be shelved with its predecessor?  Are we talking about one thing, or two things?  Where does something go from “classical” to “absurd”? 
Rather than proposing any immediate answer to these questions, I’d rather pull a Professor move and allow them to ruminate in your minds.  As per usual, thoughts upon them are always welcome…. Especially if accompanied by beer.

>A Confession

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I have a confession to make.
I wasn’t going to say anything about it, especially in so public a forum as this, but it’s been eating away at me.  I’ve been living with this secret weighing upon me day after day and I just don’t think I can bear it any longer.  I hope none of you will think the less of me for it, but I simply cannot remain silent anymore.
I am having an affair.
A steamy, torrid, passionate affair right under the nose of the man who I am eternally bound to.  I have secret trysts in the library after lectures.  I leave my apartment constantly peering over my shoulder for fear that My Man won’t buy the lame excuse of “lunch with the girls” again.  I creep into my armchair with my sordid companion knowing that someday my Beloved will look out from his perch on my bookshelf and see, his vision suddenly cleared.  Those little “homework sessions” weren’t so innocent.  The time I spent thumbing through pages was perhaps a bit too tender, too enthralled, too loving.  The hours of research weren’t just for class, they were for something more, something dangerous, something that perhaps could be a huge detriment to our relationship. 
I’m cheating on Shakespeare with Jane Austen.
At first it was innocent.  That class reading wasn’t going to do itself.  I had to spend quality time with Jane, my syllabus (Lord High Ruler of my life), demanded it.  But then, somewhere midway through Northanger Abbey, it changed.  No longer was I just doing class reading.  No longer was I taking notes to keep myself awake.  I began to enjoy her company.  I was enraptured, captivated by her wit and charm.  Mesmerized by the research prospects and the impact it could have on my greater sphere of work.  I became a woman possessed, slave to the wiles of another author.
I deluded myself for a long time.  It’s easy to do.  “It’s okay to think whatever I want to think, it’s just a crush, it’s natural.”  “Everyone has urges to stray, the important part is that they don’t follow them.  Fidelity is achieved by action, not thought.”  “It’s just one cuddle session, it doesn’t mean anything.  I bet Will has them with other girls all the time.”  “We’re like SISTERS, we can totally spend time together!”
I didn’t realize how serious things had become until I picked up Pride and Prejudice.  I opened the novel, breathe bated.  I eagerly anticipated that infamous opening line.  Those words that were just so funny, so re-assuring, so much like home that I wondered why it had taken me so long to return to one of my favorite books.  I prepared, primped, projected… and then… they were there.  In front of me.  “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”  I smiled and felt Her bubble up from the pages to embrace me and I fell into that embrace contented, comforted, keen.
There was no doubt about it.  This was going to be a serious problem.
It’s not like you can’t love two people at once, right?  Juliet herself says it, “My bounty is as boundlesse as the Sea,/My Loue as deepe, the more I giue to thee/The more I haue, for both are Infinite…” (Romeo and Juliet, 934-936).  Love doesn’t run out.  It’s not like I’m taking anything away from Shakespeare by loving Austen.  He can’t miss me that much, there are so many other scholars still talking about him… I’m sure he’s barely noticed that I’m gone.  And besides, I’ll be back.  This is just for a semester… just for this one class… or maybe a year if I wind up conferencing with my paper… or maybe two or three if it gets published….
Oh god.  I’m going to have to tell him.  That’s all there is to it.  It’s been going on too long, I’m sure he sees that something is wrong, I just hope he realizes that it’s me and not him.  And that, once this is all over, I’ll be back to him.  He has my intellectual attention now and forever and nobody can take his place in my heart.  Not even a women who wrote such funny prose about some amazing characters and whose works offer a plethora of opportunities for…
No.  Stop.  I’m telling Will.  And I’ll do something nice for him.  Maybe pay him some homage by lecturing the kids at fight call this weekend about the bad Hamlet quartos…