Jane Austen Portrait

I just read an interesting article by ladaisi called I’m a Jane Austen, Jane Eyre kind of Girl talking about the female characters that she loved as a teenager. Jane Austen has definitely been one of my favourite authors for many years now.  I first read Emma when I was about 14, but perhaps was too young to fully appreciate the artistry of Jane’s writing and depth of the character Emma at the time.  It wasn’t until I was in my late teens when I watched the seminal BBC mini series adaptation of Pride & Prejudice that I came to love Jane’s work.  From the moment the end credits of the first of the six episodes were rolling I was digging out my old copy of Emma for a refresh. The very next day I had bought a copy of every book she had ever written and my second hand copy of Persuasion is probably my most prized book on the shelves!

As much as I loved the feminist sass and independence of Elizabeth Bennett in Pride & Prejudice it was the stoical resolve and unswerving devotion of Anne Elliot in Persuasion that spoke to the deeper recesses of my psyche.  Besieged by her tactless family, written off as a lost cause by friends and family alike, pursued by a roguish and unwanted admirer, persuaded by a friend to give up the man she loved and then shunned by the object of her affection, Captain Wentworth upon first being re-acquainted.  It is Anne’s poise and equanimity that speared right to my core as a young woman struggling to understand who she was and where she fitted into the world.  For so much of the book Anne suffers, never showing how much it hurts or burdening others with her pain.  A selfless character who puts the feelings of those she loves and cares for above her own, resigning herself to a cold and lonely existence.  Of course, Jane was too kind a writer to leave Anne’s selflessness unrewarded, but I shan’t spoil it too much for those who have not read the novel.

It is not an overstatement to say that Anne was a revelation to me, proof that I wasn’t all that strange, that someone like me – a self possessed, introverted and deeply passionate individual who kept her heart a closely guarded secret could exist, if only in fiction.  I found something in all of Austen’s characters though, the feminine determination and independence of spirit in Elizabeth Bennett and also in the youthful innocence of Marianne Dashwood in Sense & Sensibility and her sister Elinor Dashwood’s constancy and selflessness, so reminiscent of Anne Eliott and the sense of purpose, morality and conscience of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park.

I could go on and on, but rather than continue to wax lyrical about the characters and the books and how much they mean to me I want to share with you a poem.  The poem demonstrates how throughout my life I have not only been supported, comforted and befriended by Austen’s work, but also inspired.

So cinch in your corsets and put on your bonnets, watch out Wentworth and Darcy, it’s time to get Pinned by Jane Austen!

Wealie x

P.S. if I’ve inspired you to go out and read a bit or even watch a bit of Jane Austen then here’s a woo hoo! If you need inspiration or help with choosing click here to see all things Jane Austen that you can buy on Amazon!

PINNED BY JANE AUSTEN

I’m confused, this morning I was so sure, the look in your eyes, the lingering of our touch…God I want you too much.  And now the insipid doubt returns and I feel my heart, it burns.  My mind is reeling; I don’t know where to turn.  This morning my smile could not be swayed, yet now I sit alone a bundle of nerves each one broken, each one frayed.  How do you do this to me?  Why do I continue to let this be?  What the fuck happened to my wonder woman gene and who the hell let Jane Austen in?

My confidence escapes me and the mask of my dominance melts away.  Struggling with my inner demons, how do I get the courage to tell you how I feel?  My corseted emotions locked sickeningly deep, stood in the corner in my dunce’s cap, someone hand me a shovel, I need to dig my way out of all this emotional crap.

Give me back my tiara and cape, let me spin around and find the courage to do what must be done.  Give me back my wonder woman and someone please show Ms Austen the door.  Give me leave to pick my fractured dignity up off the floor.  I’m so confused; do you feel this way too, how do you feel when I’m with you?

Are you to be my Mr Darcy with your stoic resolve?  Are you struggling as much as I to articulate these emotions, or am I alone in my ardour for you?  Why can’t you be my superman, you look equally good in red or blue?  Why are you not entwined within my arms and legs, tucked up safe with me in my warm bed?

But in the corner I still stand, pinned down by Jane Austen’s hand and yet still I wish to say:

“I like you,
Like you more than I should,
I like you
Like you more than friends,
Like you like no other
And I would like for nothing more than you to like me too.”

Oh God I hope you do!

Ruth Weal
02 September 2005, 3.30 pm
Copyright R.Weal 2005 ©

I love to write using calligraphy fountain pens and on quality papers as in the picture below.  The picture is of my piece “Confessions of a writer” that I wrote after watching the film Becoming Jane.  The film is loosely based on the life of Jane Austen, one of my all time favourite authors and after watching it I was inspired to write Confessions.  The paper I used is vellum and the ink is schaffer’s violet calligraphy ink, both some of my favourites.  I wouldn’t usually write on my best paper, but on this occasion it just felt right.

Confessions, was written as a stream of consciousness and as you can see from the picture I didn’t make too many revisions.  The words had been beating at my brain all the way back from the cinema.  I remember clearly the moment on the drive home when I literally had an explosion in my mind as these lines were born:

“Like out of season strawberries, sensible of all that a strawberry is supposed to be, coloured a deep red with bright green stalk and juicy seeded flesh, all apparent as they should be. And yet the flavour is lacking and their aroma distinctly wrong. In truth the forced nature of the poor fruit takes away what beauty it may have held. Love, like a strawberry in season, once tasted is never forgotten and can never be replaced with mere lust.”

I was under a compulsion to write, driven to bring to life the words burgeoning forth in my brain.  It’s something that I have experienced many times in my life and feel very lucky and privileged to have had happened to me.  It’s a strange experience, almost trance like, you are aware of the fact that you are writing and that time is passing, but you don’t really connect with the outside world.  It’s not until the compulsion lifts and you look down to see what you’ve created and suddenly you notice that the light in the room has changed and the hands on the clock have moved -you realise that life passed on while you were captured by the trance.  It’s an incredible spiritual communion between art and artist that takes you to places in your mind that you would never have experienced otherwise.

Once I’d completed the piece and downed my pen I noticed that the layout of my desk with the papers and pens seemed perfect for a photograph.  I took the opportunity to combine two of my favourite arts by actually photographing my writing once it was completed and the picture below was the result.  Beneath the photo you’ll also find “Confessions of a writer”, the subject matter of the picture.

I hope you enjoy both the picture and the prose.

Wealie x

Confessions of A Writer - Copyright R.Weal 2006

CONFESSIONS OF A WRITER

My poet drives me this night, courting the ink in my pen, captivating this page with her prose. She is restless, her nature that of the caged bird, longing for an open sky in which to sing. She is lonely, the absence of love, of a vessel upon whom to lavish it her current woe. So simple a confession it seems, and yet the reality a painful truth. For no simple remedy might be found, no fast fix to paper over the hole in my heart.

It is not the physical presence of a man in my arms, nor the lack of passion that has my poet all a twitter. I have passion enough for ten more women as I, and the warmth of a man’s physical presence is easily remedied. But such easily won company has a hollow ring. Like out of season strawberries, sensible of all that a strawberry is supposed to be, coloured a deep red with bright green stalk and juicy seeded flesh, all apparent as they should be. And yet the flavour is lacking and their aroma distinctly wrong. In truth the forced nature of the poor fruit takes away what beauty it may have held. Love, like a strawberry in season, once tasted is never forgotten and can never be replaced with mere lust.

My poet misses the easy camaraderie of shared knowledge of acquaintances favoured and foul. The absence of the knowing smile across the crowded room, a secret smile meant only for mine eye and given only from his lips. A smile that only I might decipher and the promise of eternity from my lips the response to its unasked entreaty. An earnest and gentle caress of hand to cheek, stolen kisses for unshed tears. The inner warmth of total acceptance. All this worth more than any words have ever told.

This void in my heart vexes me so. In all my years I have felt naught such as this. I grew so used to love, to giving and receiving it to one man for more years than I care to recount on these pages. Love that was flawed and imperfect, but true and faithful in the giving. Sometimes it brought me pain, sometimes exquisite joy, but always it was my constant emotion to keep. Having finally bade the love gone from heart, knowing the course of it held more pain and suffering than I could survive I find myself in uncharted territory.

I am bereft, who now do my words of love speak to? Who will drink from the well of my prose with a thirst that cannot be quenched? Who will look beyond the siren and see the dreamer? Who will seduce the seductress and yet still captivate the heart and mind of the poet? Better yet, how could he love one who was so thoroughly owned by another? Unending questions with no simple answers, the innocence of youth has long since departed and I am not so enamoured of life as to believe in happy ever after.

The root of the issue it seems is in my luck and good fortune to have found once in my life that which all seek……true love. Having found it once, feeling the power and magic that it wields, well I find myself ill content to be resigned to a fate of never knowing it again. Do I find myself grateful to have loved so completely and been loved so thoroughly in return? Indeed I do not! A selfish heart beats beneath this breast, she is not content for one love to have been her lot. Even as she knows how truly rare such a find was, she would steal another’s chance and another’s, and another’s in an unending chain of guilt and remorse, but still she would take it. For she has been seduced by the elixir of the soul and has had life itself breathed into her very heart and music dance through her thought.

So now my poet is lonely, longing for true love to once more take a hold. Watching with ill concealed envy the love shared between those she secretly observes. Her jealousy a callous on her nature and a blight on her character. The reluctant romantic, wistful in her imaginings, treacherous to my sense and intellect, perhaps a silly, vain part of me still believes in happy ever after?

Ruth Weal
9 April 2007 1.24 am

For all those who have loved and lost
You know who you are.

R
x

Copyright R.Weal 2007 ©