A Curious Statistical Anomaly

With Jane, Elizabeth, and Lydia married, Mrs. Bennet has set her sights on marrying off Mary and Kitty. Since Kitty is currently away visiting her sisters, Jane and Elizabeth, Mary is taking the brunt of Mrs. Bennet’s efforts. While Mary is willing to meekly follow Mrs. Bennet’s instructions to smile and dance, she has no intention of marrying as she firmly believes that it is not a state she wishes to enter, having observed her sister’s marriages.

Ward has chosen to focus on Mary, the least understood and most overlooked of the Bennet sisters– in fact, in some movies based loosely on the original Austen story, they leave Mary out altogether. In A Match for Mary Bennet, Mary is very much as she was in Pride and Prejudice. She studies and reads but does not always get from the reading what most people would expect. She sees only the surface and assumes that what you see is all there is to a person. She doesn’t lie herself, and assumes everyone tells the truth. In a society based so much on hiding a person’s true emotions, Mary’s character leaves her ill prepared to deal with the world as it is. Luckily for Mary, she is somewhat protected by her family.

Mary also believes that people with authority are voices of reason; I believe that this is why she has been so taken with Mr. Collins. Her mother tells her Lizzie married Mr. Darcy to make up for refusing Mr. Collins and it was a huge sacrifice on Lizzie’s part. Mr. Collins tells Mary to never speak of Lydia again–to pretend she died. If authority says something, Mary doesn’t question–until she meets the new minister Mr. Darcy has chosen for Kympton, Mr. Oliver.

Without her sisters, Mary finds she’s asked to dance at the assemblies and that she also has to take part in conversations. We find that she’s not shallow. Mary has a good head on her shoulders, she just assumes that people are what they appear to be and when they ask a question — that is the question they are asking. As readers we find that Mary gives good advice. After meeting Mr. Oliver, she begins to pay more attention to the people around her and learns that she has often missed seeing the true person. Mary grows.

Her sisters’, Jane and Elizabeth, and their husbands, are aware that Mary doesn’t wish to marry and they manage to assist her in finding security in case she doesn’t change her mind.

There’s a lot going on in this book besides Mary finding herself and new inner strength to stand up for herself. Many of the original characters from Pride and Prejudice appear and continue their lives in concert with the way they were set in motion in that original book. Life goes on in the world of Pemberly and the people live their lives. Ward has fashioned an interesting story and has given us an interesting take on a Mary Bennet. It may not be to everyone’s taste as religion is a large part of Mary’s life and thus is a large part of her moving forward to become a more independent person. It’s not preachy and it’s totally in character.  And as it shaped Mary in Pride and Prejudice it shapes her thoughts and actions in A Match for Mary Bennet. And as readers, we come to know her better for spending some time with her.

Mr. Darcy has married Elizabeth Bennet. Caroline Bingley is devastated and mortified by this turn of events. After the ceremony, she finds an empty room and gives way to her heartbreak and sorrow. Imagine her surprise when she realizes that her blatant display has been witnessed by a gentleman who had been in the room before she entered. They agree to never mention it again. Carolyn believes that is the end of the matter until months later when she is introduced to Mr. Darcy’s American cousin, Mr. Robert Darcy, the man who witnessed her loss of decorum and who, because of his station and relations, will be thrown into her company as he waits out the war before returning to America.

Most of the follow on books that continue the story of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, deal with the lives of Elizabeth and Darcy. Monica Fairview has chosen to focus on Caroline Bingley. In Pride and Prejudice, Carolyn was depicted as a proud, jealous, status seeking, snarky, conniving woman who had set her sights on Mr. Darcy. In the very first scene, Fairview changes our perception of Carolyn by showing us that she didn’t just want Darcy’s fortune and status–she actually loved him. We can’t help but feel for her loss and sorrow–but can we come to like her? How will she take this loss — will she accept it and move on to try again, or harden her heart and become the woman we all thought she was?

It doesn’t take much effort to guess that Robert Darcy is smitten with Caroline Bingley. He was privy to her outpouring of emotional tears and had been touched by the depths of her feelings. He wants to get to know her better and perhaps take his cousin’s place in her affections, or at least gain her good will. We don’t get into his head, so we can only guess at his motives and wishes. However, it’s obvious that the two of them come from different backgrounds even though their status might be equal. So, there’s plenty of misunderstandings and cultural differences to add to the mix.

The major stumbling block is that Caroline is a woman of her times. She’s been trained from a young age in how to behave and what is acceptable and what is not. Over time she has had to give up almost everything she loved in order to become the woman that society expected her to be. But underneath, Caroline still remembers bits of what she lost and it’s only now, with the loss of Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet that she wonders if it was worth it. Caroline begins to question all her assumptions about society, her way of life, her status, and reputation. She’s beginning to see herself, her family, her sister, and her friends with some new insights. When Robert Darcy comes to the rescue of her reputation it just adds to her confusion.

Over time Robert Darcy and Caroline Bingley have their own dance of approach and avoidance and pride and prejudice. Some of the best and wittiest dialogue is during the fights these two have over their perceptions of right and wrong, society, reputation, and trust. You find yourself wishing you could reach within the pages of the book and give a shake or whisper in an ear — as with Pride and Prejudice, we can only sit and continue reading and hoping that these characters will eventually work out their differences and realize their true feelings for each other.

Along the way, Caroline reclaims herself, finding that many of the preferences and talents that she’d suppressed in order to be deemed “proper” are ones that if she’d had any say she’d never have abandoned. As she examines her life and her future, she becomes a person that this reader, at least, found she actually liked.

Fairview gives us a Caroline Bingley that has history, which in turns gives her depth. She allows us to see that there is more to this character than we could ever have guessed from the pages of Pride and Prejudice. Yet, she doesn’t do anything that would take away from the original presentation of the character; she only puts it in a different light and gives us background to understand Caroline a bit better.

Indeed, this is a worthy addition to the growing body of works that continue the stories begun in Pride and Prejudice.

Publishing Info: The Other Mr. Darcy. Did you know, Mr. Darcy had an American Cousin? by Monica Fairview. ISBN: 978-1402225130. Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, October 1st, 2009.

Monica Fairview, author of The Other Mr. Darcy. Did you know Mr. Darcy had an American cousin?, will be setting out on a blog tour to talk about her book and her writing.

A Curious Statistical Anomaly will be part of that tour. The review of The Other Mr. Darcy will be posted on September 23rd and an interview with Monica Fairview on October 11th. But you don’t have to wait for October 11th. Below is her blog tour schedule which starts September 28th. Be sure to check in with these websites to learn more about The Other Mr Darcy and Monica Fairview prior to the books publication date of October 1st.

Note that there will be a give-away of one copy of The Other Mr. Darcy after the October 11th interview. Check back then for details.

September 28: Fallen Angel Reviews Guest Blog
September 29: The Review from Here/ScribVibe
September 30: Everything Victorian
October 1: The Good, the Bad, the Unread Guest Blog
October 2: A Bibliophile’s Bookshelf
October 5: Grace’s Book Blog
October 6: The Burton Review
October 7: Bloody Bad Books
October 8: The Long and the Short Reviews
October 9: Love Romance Passion
October 11: Curious Statistical Anomaly
October 12: Good and Bad Books
October 13: Lib’s Library
October 16: Fresh Fiction

Marsha Altman was gracious enough to make A Curious Statistical Anomaly a stop on her Blog Tour and talk about her newest book, The Plight of the Darcy Brothers. We’ll be giving away 1 set of Marsha’s two books: The Darcy’s and the Bingleys and The Plight of the Darcy Brothers (must have a mailing address in the US or Canada). I will pick a random person who as posted a comment on this blog post as the winner. Winner will be chosen on August 19th.

I’m the author of The Plight of the Darcy Brothers, a sequel to The Darcys and the Bingleys, which is a sequel to Pride and Prejudice. And it is a series; book 3 (Mr. Darcy’s Great Escape) is due out in Feb 2010. Gayle asked me to talk about the problems of remaining true to the original characters once I’m beyond the scope of the original Austen book, and in book 2, about four years have passed since the wedding, other people are married too, and there are kids. I would say I’m pretty past the scope.

The real answer, as I see it, is that there is no way to remain true to the original characters because there is no one set of “original characters.” Every person who reads Pride and Prejudice comes away with a different impression of how the characters acted and how they would like them to act in a sequel. I have my own interpretation; at times it’s wild and at times it’s pretty straightforward. As an author, my job is to make it presentable, so even if the reader doesn’t agree with it, the reader is at least willing to accept it.

A prime example is the first book, which got a lot of criticism for having Darcy be a lush and therefore the butt of several jokes while in college. I didn’t think making Darcy a lush was at all negative to his character. You work up a tolerance for alcohol by drinking a lot, and Regency gentlemen drank more than a lot. The idea that Darcy has a lower tolerance means that he is very conservative in his alcohol consumption, perhaps fearing that a slovenly image would harm his family name (which is so clearly important to him in Austen’s work), and as a result he doesn’t have much of a tolerance compared to his peers, so when he does drink, he gets very drunk quickly. Since Darcy lives on his high horse, his college friends (and Wickham, of course) take any advantage they can get to knock him off it. In other words, he’s so virtuous that people enjoy seeing him knocked down a peg, albeit in a friendly way. I felt it was an amusing way to soften Darcy, but some readers didn’t agree, as Darcy is not supposed to be ridiculous. I can see their point, but it’s the story I wanted to write, so I wrote it.

Much less controversial methods of maintaining a tone involve simply expanding a character, keeping the old ideas in place but implying there are other facets of a character’s personality we haven’t seen before. Bingley is still overly sweet and has bad handwriting, and knows his judgment when it comes to assessing relationships can be flawed, something he learned in Pride and Prejudice, which is why he went to Darcy for help vetting Caroline Bingley’s suitor in my first book. On the other hand I felt no need to make him a complete idiot. His father was massively successful in trade, so Bingley is good with numbers and languages. He’s not experienced running an estate but he’s a fast learner. Caroline and Louisa show the same qualities; Caroline’s knowledge of Italian was what put her so constantly in Dr. Maddox’s presence that she married him. In Pride and Prejudice, Caroline Bingley was a snob, obsessed with fashion, stature, and putting other people down. Adding intelligence doesn’t contradict that. Even after she marries someone arguably below her station (though he was born well above her station), she maintains a certain edge absent in Jane and even Elizabeth. The important thing is that it isn’t directed at her husband and doesn’t bother him, and being married and settled predictably makes her a bit softer, as most of her cattiness in Austen’s work was due to trying to woo Darcy and shun Elizabeth, something she no longer has to do.

I’m supposed to end these guest blog posts with a question to start a discussion pertaining to my novel, but as this is the last stop on my blog tour, so I’ll ask this instead: Chicken or fish?

About the Author

Marsha Altman is a historian specializing in Rabbinic literature in late antiquity, and an author. She is also an expert on Jane Austen sequels, having read nearly every single one that’s been written, whether published or unpublished. She has worked in the publishing industry with a literary agency and is writing a series continuing the story of the Darcys and the Bingleys. She lives in New York.

Mr. Darcy, Vampyre starts on the morning of the wedding of Elizabeth and Jane to Darcy and Bingley. Austen always married her heroines off and ends with the wedding or the wedding on the horizon. I imagine that she wanted us all to dream of their happily ever afters. Austen had enough couples around her to know that not all matches ended in happiness — so she never went beyond the joyful anticipation of the wedding.

Jane and Elizabeth are nervous and ecstatically happy to be marrying men they love — that these men are also rich adds to the joy of the day. Immediately after the service Darcy and Elizabeth are to tour the Lake District. But once in the carriage, Darcy reveals that he has changed their plans and they are going to Paris. Elizabeth is surprised but not against the plan. However, as the days pass, she become uneasy as Darcy seems to be struggling with some inner turmoil. Even more troubling to Elizabeth is that he hasn’t yet come to her room. She fears that he’s regretting the match.

It’s hard to discuss Mr. Darcy, Vampyre — or even read it — without being reminded of Bran Stoker’s Dracula; though the author said she was more influenced by Dr. Polidori’s The Vampyre. Jonathan Harker kept a journal. It was the pages of his journal that let the reader and his dear Mina vicariously experience the terror of his ordeal. These journal entries, as well as the more familiar narrative and newspaper reports,  give Dracula an  immediacy and a sense of reality to unrealistic events. In Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, Elizabeth writes letters to Jane trying in her own way to share her fears and misgivings about her marriage, Darcy’s withdrawn nature, and their erratic travels, and the people that they meet.

Darcy moves them from Paris to visit a relative he wants to consult with. They travel through the Alps and beyond where people greet the carriage by hastily crossing themselves. There’s more journeys to Venice and then Italy. Elizabeth is sure that something more is going on than what she sees or hears, but she’s unsure what it means or what to do. Phrases that don’t make sense. Lady Catherine showing up to fight with Darcy over his marriage. No matter how much she begs Darcy to talk to her he demurs and puts her off.

Elizabeth is such a strong character in Pride and Prejudice that her confusion and insecurity is cause for alarm in the reader. The parallels with Stoker’s Dracula echo throughout the narrative — subtle but enough to cue readers into what’s going on even if the title has been Mr. Darcy and his Bride. The book is dedicated to Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey, but Elizabeth is no Catherine lost to her imagination and waiting to be rescued. Elizabeth’s “courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate” her. She stands up for herself making some difficult decisions. She doesn’t wait to be rescued she takes matters into her own hands.

Grange deviates significantly from the traditional tropes of vampire fiction. While the differences are significant there are other authors who have used some of these same deviations so a fan of vampire fiction would not scoff at the books –at least not until they read the ending. However, fans of Pride and Prejudice, with some exceptions, will be willing to forgive the deus ex machine ending simply because it allows of our favorite literary couples to continue their journey.

This is not a spoof of Gothic literature but a true melding of vampire fiction with a Pride and Prejudice follow on story. If you’re a Austen purists you probably won’t pick the book up anyway, but if you enjoy taking a chance on something a bit different, I think you’ll find the Darcy and Elizabeth of Pride and Prejudice working through some tough, and rather unexpected problems as they settle into their marriage.

The Plight of the Darcy Brothers begins several months after the ending of The Darcys & the Bingleys. Elizabeth has miscarried. She and Darcy are devastated but they have their son, Geoffrey, who is very much like his father, and they are assured that there will be more children.

Starting with such sadness, you’d expect this book to be much darker than its predecessor, but there is hope. Jane and Bingley live nearby and the visits are frequent. Elizabeth begins to come out of her depression. Even Mrs. Bennet surprises us with her common sense advice — who knew she had it in her.

Then a mysterious letter comes from Mary Bennet who has been studying in Paris, asking Jane to come to her in Brighton. It’s mysterious because it’s not like Mary to be so uninformative and secretive. Jane, of course, asks Elizabeth to come with her. When they arrive at the Fitzwilliams’ home, Mary isn’t there. They don’t know where she is staying or how to find her. But then Mary shows up and breaks her bad news. Jane and Elizabeth, while shocked to their core, immediately offer Mary all the assistance they can and the trio sets off for Chatton, Jane’s home.

The entire family gets involved and begins to come up with a plan to save Mary’s reputation. Someone must take charge and we all know that someone will be Darcy. He’d been looking for a way to help Elizabeth get over the loss of her child and the journey they must take would be the perfect opportunity. Also, it seems from Mrs. Reynolds that there is also some unfinished business of his father’s in France. Hopefully, they can handle it and Mary’s problem at the same time.

While The Darcys & the Bingleys, took us from the marriage at the end of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice to the two couples settling down and adapting to married life, The Plight of the Darcy Brothers moves us into unknown territory. Many sequels to Pride and Prejudice move us beyond the wedding, Altman manages to do so by adding additional characters and by allowing the characters to grow and change in accordance with the events that have happened to them since the wedding. Yet, she is still working with the characters that we have grown to love — she doesn’t deviate from the integrity and moral values that Austen imbued them with in her work. However, they’ve moved on–grown. Kitty and Georgiana have become friends with the result that Kitty is more calm and responsible and Georgiana is less shy. Caroline Bingley has found happiness with Dr. Maddox and lives in London.

This story, while about Mary, has Mary only as the driving force of the plot and mostly off the page. It’s Darcy and Elizabeth that take center stage. They are trying to save Mary’s reputation and, by extension, Kitty’s. They make some new friends and find some unexpected allies and family along the way.

Altman manages to move between the story lines — Darcy and Elizabeth in Europe and Bingley and Jane and the rest of the Bennets in Chatton, and Caroline and Dr. Maddox in London — deftly. As with the first book there is humor, always apt, sometimes silly but always fitting to the occasion and circumstances and, if we’re honest, resonating with our own lives. There are also some moments of extreme poignancy that actually brought tears to my eyes (even on rereading the book a second and then a third time).

Altman manages to stay true to the original characters, tell a whopping good story, make us laugh and cry in all the right places, and make us want to read it again and again. It’s that ability that makes her follow-ons to Pride and Prejudice, ones that we will impatiently await like the coming of a new season.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a wicked (in the New England use of the term) fan of Jane Austen’s works and avidly read and review many of the the books written by others to continue the story of the characters that Austen breathed life into.

On August 1st, Sourcebooks is releasing The Plight of the Darcy Brothers: A tale of the Darcys & the Bingleys by Marsha Altman. I reviewed her first book, The Darcys & the Bingleys: A Tale of Two Gentlemen’s Marriages to Two Most Devoted Sisters earlier this year. I’ll be posting a review of this new book this weekend, but first I’ve got some exciting news — can you tell I’m trying to build up the excitement?

Marsha Altman is going to be doing a blog tour to talk about her book. This is the list of sites where she’ll be talking about The Plight of the Darcy Brothers: A tale of the Darcys & the Bingleys:

July 23: Jane Austen Today
July 24: Fresh Fiction
July 28 J. Kaye’s Book Blog
July 29: This Book For Free
July 30: Debbie’s World
July 31: Grace’s Book Blog
August 3: Jenny Loves to Read
August 4: Stephanie’s Written World
August 5: A Bibliophile’s Bookshelf
August 10: Everything Victorian
August 12: A Curious Statistical Anomaly

So, if you enjoy Jane Austen, her books, her characters, and the world she allows us to peer into, you might consider checking out Marsha Altman’s blog tour. Check out my review of her first book, then check back for my review of this new book. I’ve enjoyed her take on these wonderful characters and her ability to maintain their integrity and personality while allowing them to grow and change as they live their lives within her world.

[Hyperion:] Gayle’s being a bit understated again.  Look at the August 12th blog listing, then look up a the title of the one you’re currently reading.  Take a second … okay …  now do you see why she’s excited?

Right up front, I’ll admit that I’m a Jane Austen fan and I love searching for those books that continue the saga of the people from Austen’s novels.

The Darcys & the Bingleys continues the story begun in Pride and Prejudice. The book opens with the two couples engaged and deep in planning for their weddings, then we have the weddings, honeymoons, and the two couples settle into their married lives. Altman, knowing that this material would be a bit thin on the ground for a full novel, is actually telling us the tale of Caroline Bingley.

As those who are familiar with Pride and Prejudice are aware, Caroline Bingley has been pursuing Mr. Darcy in the hope of being Mrs. Darcy. She hoped that with her brother being Darcy’s close friend and that her being with them would make his heart grow fonder of her and offer marriage. That didn’t happen, instead Charles Bingley married Jane Bennett and Darcy married Elizabeth Bennett. Now Caroline is nearing thirty, which at that time meant she was unlikely to get a good offer of marriage, and her age was against her. She was desperate and, returning to London after the weddings, she threw herself into the social scene hoping to find a good match.

Luckily for Caroline, she does find someone who offers for her hand. Charles is called to London to meet her suitor and to give his consent. It’s at this point that the book really takes off (not that the preceding scenes of the happy couples settling into their new lives wasn’t interesting). Needless to say, Bingley and Darcy find it necessary to vet Caroline’s suitor. In the process they learn more information about the suitor, about Caroline’s life, and the Bingley children’s childhood.

Altman writes with true sensitivity to the characters as developed by Jane Austen. Never does she violate the moral code or core characterizations of any of the characters. However, Altman does allow them to grow and change with the changing relationships that result as daughters marry, women become mothers, and men become husbands and fathers, and as the new relationships by marriage settle in place. I never felt that she twisted the characters core values and attributes, but she did give them strength and growth. Jane gains a spine. Darcy and Bingley become more like brothers than close friends. Jane and Elizabeth gain confidence and find that their sisterhood becomes even more precious to them. Many things change, but at heart it all grows out of Austen’s original story.

I must mention that Altman manages to tell a taut tale while following the template laid down in the original story, being true to the times while striking out into her own territory. That she manages to do this while also injecting a bit of humor, lively wit, crisp dialogue, and outstanding adventure with a few twists and turns makes the book even more exciting.

I’ve read a number of continuation tales where the authors chose to make the plot move by having the main characters complete change their character, morals, and values. So authors who manage to continue the story while maintaining what we readers loved so much about the original characters, while telling new stories, are to be commended and recommended. Give Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys a try, especially if you’ve been disappointed by other continuations — I believe you’ll agree this is an excellent addition to the continuation tales.