ideas

When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or to someone else.
-- p. 359,
Alias Grace

Women are taught from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, everything else is needless, for at least twenty years of their lives.
-- p. 9,
Mary Wollstonecraft

on a winter's Saturday

Setting: The Chapters on Whyte Avenue.
me: I think I'm going to get this. It seems to make a good argument.
Andy: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman? Uh.... You're not going to go throwing that in (politician's name)'s face, are you?
me: No, no. This was written in the 1700s. It would put things in perspective, right? Like Jane Austen?
Andy: You would stalk her if she were alive, wouldn't you?
me: No. Because if she were alive she wouldn't have written all six books by now.
Andy: That is your reason?

On the topic of Austen, Marvel is unveiling a Pride and Prejudice comic this spring. I applaud anything that gets children reading, but object to the cartoony hotness of the Bennet girls. The only one who's supposed to be obviously pretty is Jane, and possibly Lydia. (Fact.)

In other news.... A Toronto school is debating the appropriateness of reading The Handmaid's Tale in classrooms. This is old news, of course, but I for one believe there is nothing inappropriate about the book. (Shocking, I know.) It's clearly a better thought-out argument and less vulgar show of sexuality than anything a teenager will catch on Gossip Girl. (No offence to B or S.)

While we're talking about the Centre of the Universe, this story found its way into the front section of The Globe and Mail's national edition today. Strange, eh? An interesting read, though.

On a totally different topic, in London a crew of romantic authors have started a collective. I don't know why I find this cool, except that I hope there will be writing workshops and coffee sessions this summer. Imagine? Talking romance novels along the Thames? (And I'm a geek.)

Last of all, another Lost in Austen moment for you. (Before Sam Mendes works his hopefully-British-not-Hollywood magic on the storyline, you can pre-order the DVD of the original series.)