Jane Austen Photoshop Throwdown

Gentle readers, We all know how photoshopping has made us wary of the veracity of photographs, causing us to ask: Is what we see real? Or not real? Take Kate Middleton, for instance. We all know she has a spectacularly small waist and slim figure. So why did the magazine editors of Grazia feel the need to photoshop her wedding picture? No wonder 21st century women rarely like their own figures.

Suppose editors had felt that Jennifer Ehle and Kate Winslet were too zaftig to play Lizzie and Marianne respectively? How would you have felt if their fine rounded figures had been artificially thinned?

Lizzie loses weight in front of our eyes, from right to left.

Beautiful Kate stretched and thinned (on the right).

Fair is only fair. Let's reverse the process for Gwynneth's Emma. Heaven only knows how Keira Knightley would look if she had been stretched to a curvier weight.

Gwynnie with full arms and cheeks

This week's question asks: What would Jane Austen have said of photoshopped images? Which answer fits your thoughts best? Perhaps you can think of a more appropriate phrase!

What would Jane have said of photoshopped images?
	"I do not think this at all agreeable."
	"No one can be esteemed whose vanity stretches the truth."
	"Nothing amuses me more than the natural manner in which one regards one's own image."
	"I cannot think well of an artificial method that sports with a woman's image."
	"I have few pretensions, for I rather like myself."
pollcode.com free polls

Quiet Blog

Gentle readers, I broke my foot and thus the blog will be quieter than it has been for a while. Thank you for your patience! Meanwhile, to keep you amused, I shall pair an image with a Jane Austen quote in a few posts until I regain my energy.

Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam) drinks tea

During the Georgian era, tea was a new luxury item that was kept under lock and key. Jane Austen estimated that the consumption of tea at Godmersham was 12 lb. A quarter. - Jane Austen and Food, Maggie Lane

Kaitlin Saunders Talks About Her Book: A Modern Day Persuasion

Ahh…romance… (as I let out a contended sigh) Let me tell you what inspired me to write A Modern Day Persuasion, which is a modern day approach to the beloved classic, and my personal favorite, Persuasion.

Many of you, like myself, probably adore the multiple adaptations of Jane Austen films like Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Mansfield Park, and of course Persuasion. Yet, how many have the patience to tackle the Napoleonic-Era verbiage novels? Thus came my inspiration to introduce my friends to the magic of Jane’s pen in a language a modern day woman can relate to.

So whether you have read Jane Austen’s classics as is and are looking for another Austen-inspired novel to wet your romance-appetite, or you’re curious about sinking your teeth into what has spellbound both women and men for the past several hundreds of years in a 21st Century approach, you’ve found the right book.

My number goal while tackling the modernization of Jane's classic was to stay as close to the original as possible. Too many Austen-inspired novels and movies today stray too far from the beloved premise and therefore miss the mark. I didn't want to make that same mistake. My novel is a modern day adaptation.

Some circumstances had to be updated to make it more believable in this day and age such as Rick's career-gaining fortune, the fact that Anne, as a modern day girl, would have a job, and a better explanation for her family's retrenchment to Bath. It was also important to minimize the emphasis that Mr. Elliot, the man pursuing Anne, is her cousin. Those are just a few to mention, but when reading the book, one will find a handful of others. These “updates” don't mean drastic changes to characterization and circumstances like adding characters not in the original, etc. or giving them off-the-wall histories.

Persuasion, with all it's ups and downs, is a feel-good story. A Modern Day Persuasion takes its cue from the original, playing up Anne's heartbreak while also adding in satiric tid-bits, complementing Jane's already wonderful sense of humor. I hope my readers enjoy this modern approach, re-introducing themselves to a familiar friend, Anne, as they follow her present-day love story.

Author Bio: Kaitlin Saunders is proficient on the works of Jane Austen and finds that literature written by Austen serves to give her inspiration. At age sixteen, Kaitlin began her literary career writing her first screenplay, titled, “Caroline,” later bringing this period piece to life. Directing and producing this film, it gained popularity after being aired on local television. She was recently married and enjoys cuddling up with her husband to watch BBC.

Click here to visit Kaitlin's blog

Is Mr. Middleton the new Mr. Bennet?

The Daily Mail described Michael Middleton's role in the Royal Wedding as thus:

His role has, in short, been most unusual – stripped of the few patriarchal pleasures still allowed to the rest of us embattled blokes. He may have found himself reflecting on the life of Denis Thatcher. Or possibly even Jane Austen’s Mr Bennet, father of five daughters.

Prince William, Catherine, and Michael Middleton

Ah, Mr Bennet. When Jane Austen wrote him into Pride And Prejudice, she succeeded in creating a kind of literary patron saint for dads with daughters.

He, of course, had good daughters (Jane and Elizabeth) and bad daughters (Mary, Kitty and Lydia). Lizzie was his closest confidante, whose marriage to the vastly eligible Mr Darcy, must have been a mixed fortune. But his younger daughters were dimwits or debauchees. 

Happily for Michael Middleton, his own girls Kate and Pippa seem modelled from the same clay as Elizabeth and Jane.

Read more: The Daily Mail

Seen on the Blogosphere

Advice Success from Jane Austen, by author Beth Patillo on Guideposts

I fell in love with Jane Austen more than 25 years ago when I was a college student spending a semester in London. Here are some of the many lessons I've learned from her over the years.

Queen Victoria's Wedding Drew a Crowd Too! at Two Nerdy History Girls

Queen Victoria's wedding spawned wedding souvenirs and adoring crowds. Sound familiar? The two girls, Loretta and Susan, quote The Mirror of literature, amusement, and instruction,1840.

Keepsake Editions on Old Grey Pony

In which Reb discusses two Keepsake reissues of Jane Austen's classics: Pride and Prejudice illustratedby Hugh Thompson in 1894, and Sense and Sensibility illustrated by Chris Hammond in 1899.

Pride and Prejudice in Two Minutes

This link came from the Jane Austen Community: A Truth Universally Acknowledged on FaceBook. Good reason to join that group.

The Royal Wedding From the Sidewalks of London

Gentle readers: Frequent contributor Tony Grant managed to take the train into London with his lovely wife, Marilyn, and take images as a by-stander. His pictures will give you an idea of how fleeting their glimpses of Prince William and Kate Middleton were as the newly wed couple rode past the crowd in the 1902 state landeau. But Tony also captured the excitement of being among the crowd on a memorable and festive occasion. Thank you, Tony, for being our roving ambassador! While you are here, do vote for Kate's (Duchess of Cambridge's) gown in the post below.

Crowds near Westminster Abbey

Tony captured the image I have in my mind of a typical seasoned British lady

All glammed up as a walking advertisement for Tesco

In the thick of the crowd

Tony thinks this is Prince Charles and Camilla. This is about all of Camilla that I want to see.

One of many marching bands. The Brits do know how to put on a good show.

The chap (front right) is momentarily distracted. The horses are not.

Lovely shot. I can picture my mom with these ladies.

Thankfully it did not rain, but these ladies were prepared!

These images remind me of why I stay at home to watch parades on the telly.

Tony thinks this is Charles and Camilla

If you click on this image, you can see Princess Beatrice leaning forward. Too bad her Philip Traecy "Antler" hat is not visible!

Oh, dear. Good or bad? You decide. Image @The Daily Mail

After all that waiting, here is Tony's image of the bride. You can barely see her at the left.

Tony says that he stood higher than the top people on this statue

Biking from Jamaica?

Grabbing a bite to eat. But where is the loo?

Whitehall

These two ladies look smart

Buckingham palace in the distance

About the time of the kiss, these planes flew overhead

Tony's wife, Marilyn

Tony in a quiet section of Whitehall

This Bobby must be tired of standing on his feet for hours watching the crowds

What did you think of Kate Middleton's (Duchess of Cambridge's) wedding gown?

The dress was made of ivory and white satin gazar, a loosely woven silk, with the skirt echoing an opening flower, with white satin gazar arches and pleats and a train measuring 2.7 meters (9 feet). The ivory satin bodice, which is narrowed at the waist and padded at the hips, draws on the Victorian tradition of corsetry and is a hallmark of McQueen’s designs, Prince William’s office said. - Bloomberg

Royal Wedding Dress: Kate Middleton
	Adored it
	Liked it
	Thought it was ok
	Too simple
	Didn't like it at all
pollcode.com free polls

Route of the Royal Wedding

This map might help you keep track of where Wills and Kate are on their nuptial day. The schedule sits in the sidebar. Click on the map for a larger image. Courtesy The Telegraph.

Westminster Abbey. Image @Daily Mail

Northanger Abbey: Spring Rewatch

Dear readers! you know you want to join in! What are we rewatching this time? The 2007 version of Northanger Abbey.

When: April 29, 2011 @ 8pm EST (Yep. The day of the Royal Wedding. I know, I'll be half dead too ;) )

Where: Twitter: #REanger
look for @heatherfrances and all the rest of the fantastic rewatch group: @CaseeMarie, @Ladyrelaynie, @darbydashwood, @sheblog, and @so_meow

Who: Everyone!

Why: Because we can. And its an absolutely adorable Austen drama. There are only 2 twitter rewatches left for the season! Get into the last 2 before its too late!

Incentive: Like with the S&S rewatch, I will be posting rewatch-only wallpapers and photos. Feel like showing off your photoshop skills too? The more the merrier! Stop by and tweet your fan art. We love sharing!

Check back the day of for youtube links and more. RSVP on Rusty Sarcasm's facebook page to get a special wallpaper.

Watch the Royal Wedding on YouTube!

Gentle Readers, blog contributer, Raquel Sallaberry, contributed this YouTube invitation to the Royal Wedding. Will you be watching? I will take a peek before work, but alas and alack, I must pay the mortgage and for the kibbles and bits my dog swallows by the pound, and shall have only an hour or two to see the festivities.

Flora of the Regency: Paper Doll Series

Flora of the Regency is the latest paper doll created for Paper Thin Personas. She comes with an extensive wardrobe too. What I like about this particular series is that the doll and dresses are in black and white and can be downloaded in PDF format. Little girls can color this series with crayons before cutting out the dresses and playing with their doll. How cool is that?

Flora's ballgown

Flora's half dress and day dress

Scents and Sensibility

The trailer is out; the movie can't be far behind in this year of Sense and Sensibilities' 200 year anniversary.



Learn more about the film in this post on Jane Austen's World, contributed by Adriana Zardini.

Here's a link to the Facebook page.

A Jane Austen Education, new book coming by William Deresiewicz

Gentle Readers, for several years my blogs have covered Jane Austen from the male perspective. Most recently, Tony Grant wrote about Sense and Sensibility's two hundred year anniversary and how he discovered Jane Austen. Several years ago, Laurel Ann and I reviewed Two Guys Read Jane Austen, and I wrote a blog post, Men Reading Jane Austen. A new book, A Jane Austen Education, by William Deresiewicz is about the be released. In modern parlance, it's raining men in the JA community! Here's an interview with Mr. Deresiewicz on Amazon.com:

Author Q&A with William Deresiewicz:

Q: Can you describe your initial resistance, as a young graduate student, to reading Jane Austen?

A: Like a lot of men, I thought Austen was chick lit: soap-opera romance, fluffy and boring. When a friend of mine heard I was writing this book, he said “I expect a lot of sex and dating advice.” It was an understandable assumption, and my friend’s, no doubt, was based on all those movies—the ones with the beautiful gowns, and the beautiful homes, and the beautiful actresses. The ones with all the swoony music and the lush, romantic lighting, the ones that leave out everything that Austen had to say to us except the love—and then, don’t even get the love part right.

Q: What most surprised you about yourself once you discovered Austen's novels and started examining your own life?

A: If you had told me, when I was eighteen or twenty or twenty-five, that the most important writer I would ever come across would be Jane Austen, I would have said you were crazy. Why should half a dozen novels about provincial young English ladies, published in the 1810s, make any difference whatsoever to a Jewish kid in New York in the 1990s? But I learned that books aren’t written by groups, and they don’t belong to groups. They’re written by individuals, speaking to individuals, and they belong to anyone who loves them.

What was Austen saying to me? Well, first of all, what an idiot I had been about so many things--about pretty much everything to do with relationships. And that I had so much to learn from seeing things from a woman's point of view. But most of all, finally, I think, that I didn't have to be afraid to learn things about myself--didn't have to be afraid, in other words, to be wrong. Aside from all the specific lessons, I think the largest message was simply that I no longer had to be so armored, so defended, so defensive. And that's made it easier to admit mistakes and be vulnerable and keep on growing.

Q: Is that when you came up with the book’s subtitle, How Six Novels Taught Me about Love, Friendship, and the Things that Really Matter?

A: Well, a while ago, I was interviewing for a job as an English professor. At the very end, the head of the hiring committee posed a question that she must have been dying to ask me the whole time. Glancing down at my resume—I had written my doctoral dissertation on The Novel of Community from Austen to Modernism, published a book entitled Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets, and was planning a study called Friendship: A Cultural History from Jane Austen to Jennifer Aniston—she asked, “So what’s with you and Jane Austen?”

I wanted to give [the dean] her a good answer. But how do you explain your deepest attachments? I tried to muster an intellectually sophisticated response, something about the purity of Austen’s prose or the brilliance of her satire, but it didn’t feel right, and besides, I’d already given enough answers like that. Finally, I just blurted something that I’d already been telling myself for a long time. “Well,” I said, “sometimes I feel like everything I know about life I learned by reading Jane Austen.”

Click here to read the rest of the review and to preorder the book.

Regency Easter Bonnets

1823

Oh, how I love these bonnets. Happy Easter, all! For a post I wrote last Easter, please click on this link to Jane Austen's World.

Pride and Prejudice Cover by Anne Benjamin

For the past seven years, Katie Cromwell and Jensen Carp at Gallery 1988 have been showcasing pop culture-themed artwork to a new generation of LA residents. This month Cromwell and Carp are exhibiting (and selling) 45 limited-edition posters inspired by novels we all know and love, curated by OMGPosters and Rob Jones - Huffington Post

• Anne Benjamin, the artist