Just speak Italian, and perhaps play the Pianoforte!

Hello All,

 

For my Birthday, my dear cousins Sarah and Anneke gave me a large book, containing all of Jane Austen's completed novels. Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey. Ooh, have I been having fun! I'm on chapter eleven of Northanger Abbey. I have had to consult a dictionary a few times, because I have come across sentences like this:

" But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives." Northanger Abbey, Chapter 1~

I really had no idea what, "vicissitudes", meant. By the way, it means something like, fate, or the changes in your life over which you have control. 

While I have been reading, and contemplating all of Miss Austen's writing styles, I have noticed something. 

Not all her Heroines are accomplished young ladies. In fact, they all have, by Regency Era standards, a large flaw which would make their society pronounce them "unfit". 

For Example many of them lack qualities of music and drawing: to name a few, Catherine Morland, Elizabeth Bennet, or Elinor Dashwood. Though in Elinor's case it was because she lacked talent, not just the discipline to practice. The pianoforte was really Marianne Dashwood's gift. 

" Her mother wished her to learn music: and Catherine was sure she would like it , for she was always very found of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinet; so at eight years old she began. She learnt a year, and could not bear it, and Mrs. Morland, who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave off. The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Catherine's life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her mother, or seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like one an other." Northanger Abbey, Chapter 1~

I realize that for many of her heroines, they didn't have the means to provide a top notch education for their girls. Emma Woodhouse might be and exception, of course. Though one cannot hold their family background against a person. In the delightful words of Jane Austen: ( again from Chapter 1 of Northanger Abbey!) 

" But when a lady is to become a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way,"

According to my Jane Austen Handbook, I am not that far from being an accomplished lady.

Here is their check list:

1-Study several languages. (French, Italian. Latin and Greek are not not necessary.) You will need these languages to translate love songs

2- Acquire a basic grasp of Geography and History, ( your father's library should have everything you need)

3- Become a proficient musician. ( these talents can become forgotten after marriage, because you only need to play the pianoforte to attract, or scare away! a man.)

4- Draw and Paint the picturesque. ('nuff said)

5- Master the art of needle work

6- Dance beautifully ( Practice with your sister until you "come out" in society)

I only need to work on numbers 1&3! Oh, and maybe read some more great English literature, like other fine heroines. 

Goodnight every one,

Julia Rosalinda