By Linda Darden
The North Carolina chapter of JASNA devotes one meeting per quarter to a book club, with the August meeting aligning with the theme for each year’s Annual General Meeting (AGM). This year’s AGM will be in Denver, Colorado with the theme “A Rocky Romance” focusing on Pride and Prejudice. Accordingly, an energized group from across the country (welcome all to the NC meeting!) joined in a Zoom book discussion on this much-loved novel. In order to get to know each other, the North Carolina chapter leaders started the meeting asking participants to share their first time reading or seeing a version of Pride and Prejudice and sharing first impressions.
Mary Jane Curry facilitated the group’s discussion with the aid of selected book passages that focused on nature and landscape. This provided an opportunity to explore the novel, as well as other Austen works, through the lens of natural scenes as they set the tone for certain episodes, or served as parallels to personalities and emotions relevant to the story.
The scene describing Elizabeth Bennet’s walk on the grounds at Rosings Park opened the conversation, with the language of boundaries reminding of the ways that Elizabeth often crossed both physical and social boundaries. In her many walks she frequently crossed boundaries such as fences or a ‘park paling’. And on those same walks she crossed social boundaries by showing up with her petticoat ‘six inches deep in mud’ for example. In other settings as well, Elizabeth crossed social boundaries by offering her opinion freely or refusing the proposal of a wealthy man.
Highlighting another part of the novel, the group was encouraged to consider the description of the grounds at Pemberley, which Elizabeth later claimed had an impact on her feelings for Mr. Darcy himself. She of course may have been joking, but the grounds are described in a way that reflects more positively on Mr. Darcy – the stream’s banks delighting her as neither ‘formal, nor falsely adorned’. Given the previous opinions of his proud nature, this scenery begins to suggest a changing perspective of him, later affirmed by the comments made by Mrs. Reynolds. It was noted that the house itself was relatively unimportant until the end of the description.
Additional passages referencing natural descriptions were offered to guide a lively discussion which also touched on poverty and the role of the wealthy, a comparison of Mr. Knightley and Mr. Darcy as landholders, and the relative lack of social skills between Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine. With several writers present for the meeting, a fascinating debate took place regarding the degree to which a reader might expand the interpretation of an author’s work – possibly another sort of boundary to explore.
The discussion was ended with a reminder of the upcoming AGM, at which NC’s Sue Scott will be presenting a session on ‘Is My Idiolect Showing?: Individualized Speech Patterns in Austen’s Novels’. A future NC meeting will include a debriefing of the AGM from those who are able to attend.
Many thanks to Mary Jane Curry for guiding the discussion and offering a new perspective for considering Pride and Prejudice!
Next Up
September 10th we are hosting speaker Damianne Scott, who will engage us in a conversation about “The Shades of Bridgerton.”
In October, we’ll have our next Virtual Book Club with a fanfiction selection: The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray, led by member Nancy Martin Young. With the AGM happening in November this year, we had to switch up our typical meeting order between the debrief and book club. Our AGM debrief will be in November this year.