200th Anniversary P&P: Jane Austen and Women Roles

Good morning and happy weekend to you!  I just recently found out that this year marks exactly 200 year since the first publication of Pride and Prejudice.

I read some facts about Jane and her story that she is said to have treated just like her child.  I thought that was awesome.  As I pen a rewrite of the tale from the black perspective, I see the story as precious and my first baby as well.  I also, know that I am not alone in writing on my good days.  Especially when I completely lose my broken English and write words I haven't heard in modern society only to look them up and find it is a perfect fit. 

I also found out that Jane Austen sold the book for only a few hundred euros. :(  She would loved to read her book aloud in her house and had a great following while she was alive.  At least she was able to see the book be accepted, where some women like Emily Bronte died before seeing her tale "Wuthering Heights" become the success it is still in this day.  In fact, though it was a failure due to the harsh criticism of how mean her characters were, Emily was accepted by modern time.  She was born before her time.

Jane, I hope you are able to get some satisfaction through My Black Pride and the sequel.  Yes, that's right.  I already wrote the first chapter of the sequel and a subsequent outline just to see if this would work and I believe it does. More on that at a later date.

After 200 years, I wondered how would Jane have penned her tale if women's liberation happened in her time.

Yesterday, the "View" women spoke about the role of men and women in a marriage.  Elizabeth Hasselhoff's husband sat crunched between the women on the stage as the guest for the day.  She said that she admits she is not one of those women who go off about how they do not need a man, and she pointed to him and exclaimed she needed her man. 

Then Whoopi Goldberg, the forever bachelorette and outspoken woman said, "I like a man, I don't need a man'. 

If I remember correctly, Whoopi received more claps than Elizabeth if she even received any at all.  Then they spoke about men switching role and needing to help around the house with the traditional roles and with the children. 

Elizabeth's husband said that he knew he changed more diapers than his father and said that if he is responsible for cooking that it would be less than desirable.  Another host said that, "So, what if a man doesn't do it right, women need to be responsible for men's laziness?".  Overall, women want to split responsibility of the household duties with their husbands.

This is a far cry from the women in Jane Austen's era, and far from anything she wrote about in Pride & Prejudice. Except there were no children and everyone had handmaidens to take care of the traditional roles of cleaning and care of the house.  Hence, many people's number one complaint, if there is any, is that Pride is mostly about women talking a lot and walking around in rooms. 

I have seen people say this a lot.  Elizabeth, her mother and sisters never even had to worry about going to work.  I do not remember what the father's business was, but we don't remember mention of him going to his factory or employees or work-related speak.  This is what makes Jane Austen and many other 1800's novelist so desirable, they showed us and continue to give us a ghost's eye view of what it felt like to be at the top of society in that time.  The ideal. 

So,when I updated P&P with My Black Pride, I am making it more realistic, where actually my Elizabeth character must find work and does odd jobs just to accumulate money until she gets a job.  I placed in there that she has the traditional role of cleaning the house once everyone else is gone and the mother cooks for the whole house joyfully.  The father is the Mayor, so traditional roles are in play even in their relationships of husband and wives.

Have we really evolved so much from the Jane era when it comes to love?

I believe not so.  Despite the role reversals in several areas of married life within 200 years, love still takes place the same way...boy meets girl, boy and girl have affections whether one is first or second in initiating it and boy and girl fall in love forever. 

Jane 200 years ago knew the basics about love even if we never heard about any of her affairs.  True love is unchanging.  She knew about the true love that will always be cherished and felt throughout the ages, and conveyed it very well in the way Mr. Darcy fell for Elizabeth.  It is the same reason we still know who the novelist of Pride and Prejudice is exactly 200 years later.  Love is timeless and is liked and accepted by everyone. 

If we authors take this quality and add heart to every story, maybe we can hope that 200 years from now, someone will be writing about their story and cherishing it as much.  We dream.

Thank you everyone for reading and until next Saturday, smooches!

Enjoy the weekend,
Denise Morris 

Maybe many writers can attest to this, but when your environment does not yield for a quiet and sound mind, it is easy to write, but not to the best of your ability.  Be it that it was the holidays, I was steadfast in reaching my goal of reading and rewriting a few chapters from the beginning of Pride&Prejudice.  At least I was able to get the Epilogue completely rewritten.

Actually, I can't blame my noisy 20 hours a day environment and my restless heart.  Actually, this is the tough part of the adventure.  Reimagining all of the elements from your characters, their world, their situations, problems, and the whole point your book wants to make. 

That is where I am now.  This is actual work and a handful.  There are sooo many issues in which to deal with in Black Pride.

I have the woman's side of male hate, the men's side of black women prejudice, the uppity rich society's view of less abled blacks, the family issues of each sister and parent just too many angles in which to deal and juggle around in my mind. 

The epilogue needs ALOT of work if you have already read the first three.  They tell us screenwriters that if you don't grab them in the first 5 pages, you lose them.  Then others say grab them in the first page or lose them.  For a customer, if you don't grab them in the first paragraph, you're done. 
So, for the effort, I will be posting possibly 9 pages of the epilogue for your review. 

These pages represent all of Elizabeth's, or updated as Giselle, battles she will encounter and her history of men.

If you have read the current epilogue, in the rewrite I have cut out a lot of talk and added more of a set up - a reason for her invisible eye against black men and especially the kind like Mr. Darcy, or my character Mr. Washington.

Screenwriters use Setups as a foreshadowing of what the character must overcome and makes the payoff more richer when we see the character accomplish exactly what they want, or opposite of what they thought they wanted from the beginning.  In this case, Mr. Washington was the last person on earth she consider as a perfect match, but we know how that ends up.

That's it.  I'm a little disappointed and appreciate the blog views, because it keeps me on my toes about my bi-weekly goals.  Looks like by the end of February I'll have a clean enough copy to self-publish for interested reader's critiques, which is a month later than I thought. 

Thanks for reading and see you Saturday with the full updated epilogue.

Love and Ice Cream,
Denise Rochelle M.

Good and Prosperous Morning to all.  I actually was productive the total week.  As matters change in my life in relation to my Elizabeth character, Giselle, I have just sat back and played the spirit world of my version of Pride and Prejudice in my mind as an outsider. There aren't MAJOR changes, but some that will definitely make some P &P lovers heart skip a beat from not sticking too closely to the original.
Without giving away too much, well, just a little. 

For those who aren't as familiar with Pride and Prejudice, the main character is a strong English woman who has of course as the title a lot of pride and refuses to let anyone into her world especially men.  To me it seems everything about Mr. Darcy in appearance alone just made her angry. 

He was rich, he was good looking, he was arrogant etc. and she was against what she prejudiced him to be by appearance alone.  But in the Jane Austen version, Mr. Darcy gets rid of all of these character flaws to get closer to Elizabeth and pursues her twice after being rejected.  And through Mr. Darcy softening his heart, Jane changes her pride and accepts the one man she said she would never love.

Okay, with all of that said.  My story refuses for me to let Giselle, Elizabeth's bitter twin, off the hook.  I have added several scenes where Giselle struggles with her pride to let Mr. Washington (Mr. Darcy) know how she feels.  In fact, her father tells her that she already rejected him and unless she opens the door wide for him to know that he will not be rejected a second time, he would never walk through.  So sort of a spoiler, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy switch positions after her rejection where we focus more on Elizabeth trying to approach Mr. Darcy to open his heart.

So, the past few days I let Mr. Washington back off from Giselle and make her struggle with her own
character issues.  Jane Austen is awesome, but she made it too easy for Jane to accept him the second time without too much struggle for her own character to change.  I believe because I am telling it from a black experience point of view where there is hundreds of years of deep seated hatred between black men and women dealing with their pride, I made these changes.

I am again satisfied with my revisions.  I will be focusing from now on reading my story as if I have never seen it before.  I will be tweaking along the way, not trying to write grammatically correct yet or speak in high society manner.  I will leave all the little details for my final edit next month.
Because I see more the people visiting starting to pick up, be prepared to get a seven page blurb of Black Pride in the coming weeks.  Not soon though, I'm protective of my baby.  It is the very first scene we all get to see Mr. Darcy.  Yes, that one at the party.

Well, this is it for now.  I will see you Wednesday or next year btw. Cheers and Happy everything else.

Love,
Denise Rochelle M.

Pride and Prejudice Update: Ending Change

Wow, the holidays was less about gifts and 90% about the people in my life all across the world.  I actually might be growing up.  I was able to do a little writing.  I believe the literature is a living entity once it is placed on paper or in object outside of our minds, and there is so much I would like to have accomplished with my comedy rewrite by now, but ...  I was able to add and tweak only two scenes since Saturday.

My routine is I think of the story visually as scenes and feel which ones need it the most that day.  This time, I thought that the ending to Pride and Prejudice, yes, the lovely scene after Mr. Darcy's aunt comes and chews the heck out of Elizabeth and then Mr. Darcy comes to apologize to her.  That one.  The other scene is not in the original book, but is my Elizabeth character Giselle's epilogue which I posted, and is only the first layer and will go through two layers before the final release.

Let's first start with the ending.  I found strongly, that the way P and P ends for Jane Austen is beautiful and I ended it that way ... but the spirit of my book and the fact that my Giselle character is a strong black woman with strong prejudice against black men and strong pride to let love in, the story screamed to change it.  I won't reveal more, but the flow of this version, I guarantee that there will be some gripes with the change, but it is ingrained into my character's world.

That's another thing I found out recently that hundreds of screenwriting books and few classes and my screenwriting group never could drill in my head.

Every story creates a living reality, a spirit world of its own that as you read that story, you become part of that world.  If the writer is able to tap into their character's spirit and world it becomes a classic, because their world lives infinitely.  Jane Austen was able to do this.  Luckily, her character's spirit are easy to grasp like no characters ever before.

Secondly, I saw that my epilogue needs to set up a lot of changes that you P and P lovers will encounter.  First of all my character has a past, but she has let go of her baggage.  Secondly, she has dated before, where Elizabeth never dated or had a boyfriend.  I added references to how she became strong and too prideful to show her feelings toward men or let her heart be open so when Mr. Washington does all these things by being exactly opposite of her prejudices, it has more meaning.

So, I still have a lot more tweaks to do by Saturday concerning these same aspects.  I will let the comedy flow through from now one wherever as I don't see where else to put it for now.  So, as a writer, I am very satisfied where my story is right now. VERY.

Plus, I no longer feel guilty about my story not allowing me near it until my heart is straight.  Now, after a week off, I have a fresher understand of Giselle and her world when I started to read the story pieces after staying away from it.  Writers should be at peace with not always working for THAT particular project every single day.  Rest the eyes, stay silent and it will come, and like love you will have a higher appreciation for it once you resume.  I have rested a total of three weeks on Black Pride whereas other stories I worked on for years everyday trying to hammer out the problems.  I have never been this far along and unworried about my story world before after only two months of it coming to me.

Watch out world, another Pride and Prejudice redux is coming.

I love you sincerely across the globe,

Have sanctity in your words,

Love,
Denise Rochelle M.