Virtual Region: Pride and Prejudice (Virtual)

Spotlighting Pride and Prejudice

Join JASNA's Virtual Region for an afternoon of Pride and Prejudice, featuring talks by two region members. 

Dr. Sarah Makowski will present two short talks on the following topics. 

• "We Take No Leave of You, Lady Catherine: The Rocky Realities of Female Aging in the Regency and Today"   
  Accustomed to being the center of attention, Lady Catherine de Bourgh is shocked at Lizzy Bennet’s indifference to her. Like many older women then and now, she has become invisible. (This presentation is less than 7 minutes and will be one of the mini-lectures included in the "Pride and Prejudice Potpourri" special session at the 2023 AGM.) 
• "Jane Austen's Troublesome Mums."
  Why are the mothers in Jane Austen’s novels either sensible and dead or alive and unreasonable? How much do characters like Lady Bertram and Mrs. Bennet reflect Austen’s experience? This talk explores Regency motherhood in fact and fiction and is a condensed version of Makowski's upcoming presentation at the Jane Austen Festival in Bath.

Dr.  Makowski, author of Bitches in Bonnets: Life Lessons from Jane Austen’s Mean Girls, frequently speaks at the UK Jane Austen Festival and has written for Persuasions On-Line. 

James O’Rourke will talk about"Narrative Indeterminacy and Connubial Felicity." In Pride and Prejudice, Austen uses the interplay of the narrator’s voice and the free indirect discourse of characters in order to provide the reader with multiple ways of understanding the marriage plot of Elizabeth and Darcy. Elizabeth’s belief in her union with Darcy as a model of “connubial felicity” is sorely tested by Austen’s talent for nearly imperceptible irony.  

James O’Rourke is Professor Emeritus of English at Florida State University. He is the author of three books and numerous articles on English literature and literary theory. His work on Jane Austen has appeared in Studies in English Literature (2014) and Persuasions (forthcoming).

Email Regional Coordinator Lynn Sherick for Zoom information.  Please note that the time listed is Mountain Time.