Jane Austen For Dummies Read Online Free PDF

thought-provoking plot with a surprise at the end, rendered through interesting and articulate (except for poor Harriet!) characters, dressed in lovely Regency attire. A second reading reveals that all the clues to the surprise were there in the book all along. But in following Emma’s thinking, which was wrong, you were led down the wrong path. And there’s no need for even a finger-print test, though Frank Churchill’s distracting Emma from her Weymouth questions by calling her attention to Ford’s Store and going inside to buy new gloves certainly covers his romantic handiwork. The surprise is explained at the end of the novel. Emma was “duped.” But she’s wiser (or at least you hope so) and better for it.
    Austen tells such a good story in
Pride and Prejudice,
where Elizabeth and Darcy begin as verbal sparring partners, that this novel, along with Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick of
Much Ado About Nothing
, provides the DNA for all those movies about antagonistic lovers who finally realize they belong together. Whether it’s Tracy versus Hepburn or Jean Arthur versus Cary Grant, Austen’s presence (and okay, Shakespeare’s, too!) is hovering over the scene. And of course, Helen Fielding’s
Bridget Jones
books and films are directly indebted to Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice
— though Fielding’s Bridget lacks all the self-possession, wit, and smarts of Elizabeth Bennet. Indeed, poor Bridget makes
Emma
’s Harriet Smith look like she’s ready for rocket science!

    Going back to Hollywood
    Austen’s attention to details makes her novels great sources for scripts. With her ear for conversational voice and the words she gives to a voice, the script writer can borrow pages of dialogue from the novel. Granted, the adapter must frequently add extra little scenes here and there to explain the story line. But the original dialogue is so right for the characters that it is not unusual to hear from the screen the exact, or almost the exact, words written in the novel.
    Observing with Austen
    Flip ahead to Chapter 3, and study Cassandra Austen’s sketch of Jane Austen. Notice how sharp her eyes look and see her look of determination. But wait! There’s something else. Her eyes aren’t looking at the artist (her sister) but over her right shoulder. What could she be looking at or listening for? Whatever “it” is, “it” has her attention, and this portrait captures the astute observer that Jane Ascent was. No matter what she was doing, she was taking in all the little details of the world around her. Austen then used those details to masterfully write her novels, and those details make reading about her characters fun and insightful.
    Writing dialogue and conversation
    The observant Austen is a writer of witty dialogues that are the specialty of her novels. Each character’s speech seems to match him or her perfectly. Austen puts those characters in conversations that you overhear in the reading. By doing this, she enables her readers to come to know the characters of her novels in the same way you know people in real life: by listening to what they say and picking up on how they say it. Sections of her novels read like little plays; for example, when Darcy, Bingley, Miss Bingley, and Elizabeth converse in
Pride and Prejudice
(PP 1:10), the pages of their conversation look almost like a script for a play. Even the first page of the same novel, with Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in dialogue, is filled with conversation, allowing the readers to make first impressions of the couple.

    Putting Mark Twain and Jane Austen in the same paragraph
    When Mark Twain was traveling on his lecture circuit, he was asked by a budding writer how to make characters seem real. Twain answered, “Don’t say, ‘The old lady screamed.’ Just bring her on and let her scream.” In other words, Twain was advocating writing dramatically, showing