Men in tailcoats and riding boots, women wearing gowns and brooches, Jane Austen’s world was full of beauty, charm and simplicity. I wish I had lived in her world. 🙂
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Ring a bell? It is the most popular opening line to a book ever, and is written by Jane Austen, for Pride and Prejudice.
I recently bought a book called 101 Things You Didn’t Know About Jane Austen. I found it in National Bookstore, at a discounted price of P75 (love that store!) and it’s been fun just rifling through the pages of Jane’s life and comparing it to the lives of her heroines. For example, Jane, had her own romance (albeit brief) with Tom Lefroy.
In a letter to her sister Cassandra, she wrote about him:
Mr Tom Lefroy’s birthday was yesterday, so that you are very near of an age… You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment received from you, that I am almost afraid to tell you how m Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everythign most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together.
Sounds like she had a blast flirting with him. 🙂 Of course, if you’ve watched Becoming Jane (starring James McAvoy and Anne Hathaway), you know the story didn’t end well. Unfortunately, even though Tom and Jane were attracted to each other, they didn’t have much money between themselves to establish a marriage.
I guess life back then wasn’t without its perils. Still, it would be wonderful to be able to spend at least one year in Jane’s shoes. Makes you wish time travel was possible, eh?
Yeah I love the olden days too but I guess when we’re there we’d quickly get bored because there’s no internet and want to come back to our time. LOL. But a year would be fine. Tara, let’s go together! Haha. I wish someone would discover time travel, stat.