The Month of JANEuary and Northanger Abbey

To kick off 2011 – a prime number for a prime year – I have decided to rename the first month.  Henceforth, the month of January will be known as JANEuary, in honor of one of my favorite authors, Jane Austen.  I will be rereading her six novels (and possibly, if time allows, her novella Lady Susan), watching some of the adaptations, and writing about my reactions to them.

I love Jane Austen.  She happens to share a birthday with a great composer, Ludwig van Beethoven – and much like Schroeder from Peanuts, who likes to inform everyone of his acquaintance about Beethoven’s birthday, I like to tell everyone I know when it’s Jane Austen’s birthday (I do the same for Shakespeare).  One of these days I am going to have a Jane Austen-themed party.  People will have to come dressed as their favorite characters from repressed Regency society, have politely shallow conversations, make veiled, catty comments about everyone’s fashion choices, dance, and try to find arranged marriages.  It shall be uniformly charming.

I’m starting the reread with her underrated gem, Northanger Abbey. It’s the only one of her novels to have never been adapted into a full-length feature film.  I never understood why, because the premise is ripe for a modern interpretation: Catherine Morland is a spirited young girl who reads too many Gothic novels.  She receives an invitation to stay with the family of the man she secretly wants to marry – Henry Tilney, the most swoon-worthy of Austen’s heroes (yes, even moreso than Mr. Darcy).  But when she stays in the Tilneys’ mysterious castle, she strongly suspects Henry’s father of being a scary murderer…and she can finally act out the part of the heroine in the Gothic novels she loves so much!

Now, tell me, why hasn’t this been updated for the screen in a story about a teenage girl who’s read one too many vampire novels, falls for the funny guy in her class, stays with his family for awhile when they start dating, but then starts suspecting her funny boyfriend’s father of being a vampire?

On the other hand, maybe I’d better write that screenplay.  So, I take all of that back.  It’s my idea (patent pending).

To conclude my first Austen post, I’m linking to a delightful scene from the BBC adaptation of Northanger Abbey. Catherine and Henry have their first dance, and Henry flirts shamelessly with her while commenting on the type of conversation they’re supposed to be having as proper members of society.  I love the way he (and Austen) mock the repressed, boring people of their time.