If you’re
anything like me, I’ll bet you have wondered how Jane Austen settled on the
names for the characters and places in her novels. Among others, these questions have crossed my
mind : Was “Lizzy” a popular nickname for
headstrong girls at the time? Did Austen
have a natural antipathy toward the name Willoughby because she had a
distasteful neighbor with that moniker? Did a young Jane Austen read about a
Mr. Darcy in a newspaper article on a bright blue day when she was particularly
happy? I’m not a fiction writer myself,
but I feel certain that as careful a novelist as she was, Jane Austen thought
long and hard before finally selecting each character’s name in every one of
her novels.
Author
Janine Barchas has carefully delved into the issue of the names of people and
places that populate Austen’s novels in her newly published scholarly book from
The John Hopkins University Press, Matters
of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity. Matter
of Fact’s book jacket states,
“Barchas is the first scholar to conduct extensive research into the names and
locations in Austen’s fiction by taking full advantage of the explosion of
archival materials now available online.
According to Barchas, Austen
plays confidently with the tension between truth and invention that
characterizes the realist novel. Of
course, the argument that Austen deployed famous names presupposes an active
celebrity culture during the Regency, a phenomenon recently accepted by
scholars. The names Austen pluck from
history for her protagonists (Dashwood, Wentworth, Woodhouse, Tilney,
Fitzwilliam and many more) were immensely famous in her day. She seems to bank upon this familiarity for
interpretive effect, often upending associations with comic intent.”
This is the
same book that Susie Russenberger recommended to those present at the October
meeting of the Middle TN JASNA regional group.
Matters of Fact in Jane Austen:
History, Location, and Celebrity promises to be a scholarly book which may
cross over to the popular non-fiction category for Austen lovers. --Mildred Tilley
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