Jane Actually

Melody had planned this tribute without telling Jane. Unfortunately the effect was somewhat lessened because Jane was not actually in that spot, but she quickly slid into place.
    The audience also took a beat before realizing what Mary was doing, but then the applause got louder. Finally Mary turned and took her place behind the lectern.
    “Thank you, thank you. I am very happy for the first time in almost two centuries to acknowledge those of you who have been kind enough to read my stories. It is a sobering experience. In my lifetime, I did not seek fame—in fact I fled from it, but I would be lying if I did not admit that at this moment, I am quite enjoying it.
    “Now I had planned to make some extemporaneous remarks, but my agent, Melody Kramer, whom you may notice standing there shaking her head, has reminded me of the folly of extemporaneous remarks, and so I will instead simply proceed to the reading of an excerpt from
Sanditon
.
    “This excerpt will require some explanation, of course. It is a dark and stormy night and the rain is, in fact, falling in torrents onto Trafalgar House, Mr Parker’s new home in Sanditon. Miss Charlotte Heywood is there, with Mr and Mrs Parker, Mr Sidney Parker and Miss Diana and Susan Parker. Charlotte has only just met Sidney and as with all my heroines, she already has a decided opinion of him.”
    1 Oscar Wilde wrote his poem
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
after his incarceration at that jail. Wilde had been convicted of homosexual offences in 1895 and sentenced to two years hard labour.
    2 Austen parodied Radcliffe’s gothic story in
Northanger Abbey
. Radcliffe was a contemporary, although
The Mysteries of Udolpho
was published in 1794, long before Austen’s novel.
    3 In a letter to her sister, Austen wrote of Tom Lefroy: “He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded.”
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
, is a novel by Henry Fielding published in 1749. The novel’s tales of sexual promiscuity and Jones’s status as a bastard made it scandalous.
    4 An informal or half curtsey in Austen’s time was little more than putting the right foot immediately behind the left foot and bending the knees, timed with a nod of the head.
    5 Edmund Bertram is the cousin of Fanny Price, the heroine of
Mansfield Park
. Fanny loved Edmund since the time they were children, but Edmund only realizes he loves Fanny after he understands the true nature of Mary Crawford.

Excerpt I
A dark and stormy night
    C harlotte sat close with Mrs Parker, their arms locked together and with each howl of wind and each rattle of a shutter, their hands would squeeze tightly. Across from her she could see Miss Parker and Miss Susan also sitting closely together, any complaints of their ailments forgotten in the violence of the storm.
    “It is only the wind, my dear,” Mr Parker said to his wife. “And think how much more fearsome it must be in the valley.”
    At these words, however, the lashing of the rain on the roof grew louder and now came a shriek, as some part of the house broke loose.
    Mrs Parker gasped and would rise, but Charlotte’s grip was firm. She would be strong for her hostess, although in truth she was quite frightened. She was used to the wind in Willingden, of course, for it would crest the top of their hill and moan, and yet it compared nothing to the storm this night. Her last image before the shutters were closed seemed to show the sea just outside the house instead of its quarter mile distance. She composed herself before answering: “Mr Parker is quite right, it is only the wind and cannot hurt us. What do you say, Mr Sidney?”
    “Yes,” he said, with a smile, and his smile seemed to give no hint of anxiety. “It is full of sound and fury but it signifies nothing. In fact, I think it is already spent.”
    A flash of lightning that shone through the cracks of the shutters and an almost simultaneous boom of thunder gave lie to his observation.
    “Or nearly spent,” he amended. Charlotte gave him a faint smile, which she begrudged immediately. She still felt the sting of his inadvertent slight, despite his earnest apologies. It was clear his belief in the “bumpkin nature of our country cousins” coloured his opinion of her. And how could it not be so? He had knowledge of so much of the world, moving from place to place whenever he had found “so much to bore oneself with the same