Local fans celebrate the life of Jane Austen
U of R, public library hosting events to honour British author from Sept. 6-23
Do you long for a Jane Austen action figure with a miniature quill pen? Have you lost count of the times you’ve watched Pride and Prejudice? Does your wardrobe include empire-waist gowns and billowy white shirts?
A “yes” to any of the above means you’re probably a Janeite. And if you’re not yet, you should be after Regina’s first-ever Jane Austen Festival. In the words of Austen’s Emma, “One cannot have too large a party,” and so this one will run from Sept. 6 to 23. Janeite or not, all are welcome.
This year marks the bicentenary of Austen’s death, prompting celebrations of the author and her novels. New generations have discovered Austen through the big and small screen, including the popular 1995 BBC miniseries Pride and Prejudice, which featured a then up-and-coming Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy in that now famous wet white shirt scene. Modernized adaptations, including Clueless, Jane Austen Book Club, Bollywood’s Bride and Prejudice, and even a zombified Pride and Prejudice, have further cemented the Jane enigma in present day.
Heather Hodgson, one of the festival organizers, fell in love with the books about 20 years ago in a class taught by English professor Kathleen Wall at the University of Regina.
“It’s important to celebrate something of value,” says Wall of the festival. “And if there’s fun as well as thought involved, that’s good, too.”
Hodgson’s dog-eared paperback copies have since been replaced by a beloved leather-bound set. A yen to reread the novels a few years ago prompted the formation of her own Jane Austen book club. Member Yvonne Petry’s mention of the bicentenary sparked plans for a local festival. Regina’s mayor will officially proclaim Sept. 13 Jane Austen Day.
Throughout the festival, the Regina Public Library’s (RPL) main branch will have a display of Austen-inspired fashions, including a dress made from Austen’s letters, a Bollywood dress, Mr. Darcy’s white shirt, and a red dress fashioned by Joely Bigeagle Kequahtooway in honour of missing and murdered Indigenous women and a nod to the vulnerable women even in Austen’s day.
The festival also includes: a Sept. 6 welcome and talk, introductions and Austen movies at the RPL theatre Sept. 13 to 17, tea and trivia at the RPL’s Bothwell branch Sept. 16, a discussion of Pride and Prejudice with celebrities Sept. 19 at the RPL, an Austen colloquium at the U of R library Sept. 23, and a Regency ball that evening. Buttons with 823.7, the Dewey decimal number for Austen’s books, will be available at the RPL main and Bothwell branches and the U of R library. For more details, go to uregina.ca/arts/english/Events1.html, which also has a link for colloquium and ball tickets.
What’s the enduring draw of an author who penned books 200 years ago, a time of civility and subtlety far-removed from today’s tempestuous, tactless tweets?
“Jane Austen as an author poked fun at pretension and meanness,” says Petry, a history professor at the U of R’s Luther College, Saskatchewan regional coordinator for the Jane Austen Society of North America, and owner of two Regency ball gowns. “There’s kind of a moral quality to her writing, but it’s not moralistic. It’s simply that her characters are gentle and kind to one another, and the ones who are not ... a mirror is shown up,” she adds.
Hodgson appreciates the intelligence of Austen’s female characters. “They just stay with you. You know somebody like them.” Emma, about a meddling matchmaker, is her favourite. “It’s the one (book) you can’t put down, and you’re sorry it’s over.”
Wall, now retired and penning her own books, notes readers are often initially drawn to Austen for the romance. “But they’re really novels of education … Austen almost pulls a bait and switch. The heroines have to recognize something important about the way the world is or, even more importantly, the way they see the world.”
She began teaching an Austen class a full year before “Austenmania” — spawned by the BBC miniseries and Hollywood adaptations. “Every once in a while I say, well, I caused that,” she chuckles.
Wall calls the books “beautifully built,” from the narrative pacing to the character development and Austen’s clarity of vision. “She redefines what it is to be human; it’s to be pretty flawed. But that’s OK.” Her favourite? “Pride and Prejudice is the most perfect novel ever written.”
Her second favourite is Persuasion, which Wall will introduce at the RPL’s Sept. 17 afternoon matinee. It’s followed by a cocktail reception, starting at 4:30 p.m. at the Hotel Saskatchewan. A crier will yell a toast at 6 p.m. in Austen’s own words: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife!” Round out the day with the 7 p.m. RPL theatre showing of Sense and Sensibility.
A third-year, U of R English student and self-described bookworm, Tanisha Khan began reading Austen around Grade 8 and discovers something new each time she picks up the books. “There’s more to it than just a romance,” she says, adding that she particularly appreciates the humour in Pride and Prejudice. “It’s so universal because of the social commentary.”
The U of R English Students Association, which Khan leads, is hosting the Regency ball on campus at The Owl. Costumes are optional. It includes instruction that evening in English country dancing. (Think of line dancing from the early 1800s.)
“That was the main way that young people socialized and met and mixed and flirted,” notes Petry. She and her husband, Gary Diver, are among the dance instructors.
Like Grigg in the 2007 movie the Jane Austen Book Club, Diver is the lone man in Hodgson’s group. He learned English country dancing while teaching at a women’s college in Virginia in the 1990s, where he also encountered a “middle class civility” similar to that found in Austen’s books.
The couple attends some of the international annual meetings for the Jane Austen Society of North America, which Diver likens to a comicon for Janeites.
“Not only do they dress up, everything’s taken very, very seriously.”