All Roads Lead to Austen (10 page)

“So,” I probed, “you don't think Marianne loves Brandon?”

“I've got my doubts,” she replied. “It's hard to believe she could change so completely after all the complaining she did to her mother about how old he is.”

“But think about what's happened to her,” Diego cut in. “That big disappointment she's had with getting jilted. He's a faithful man, and now she knows the value of a faithful man.”

Josefa continued to look dubious.

“A student in the United States once told me that this match seems like Austen's punishment for Marianne,” I said. “She's got to marry the old guy for causing so much trouble.”

“She's repented of her follies,” Josefa argued. “She's already
been
punished. She nearly died! But the good part, like you said, Diego, is that she gets to be close to her sister. Too often, you see sisters fighting, not getting along.”

“Well, you could definitely do a good film if you set the story in Mexico,” Diego offered. “I think Antonio Banderas would make a good Willoughby. And I'd love to see Salma Hayek, too, but I'm not so sure she's right for any of these characters.”

“Look,” Josefa said abruptly, seeing that we were about to shift gears and not wanting to let the Brandon subject pass just yet. “Let me tell you why I don't like this match. My other daughter's married to a much older man, and I just don't like it.” She let out a huge breath and sat back in her chair. There—it was on the table.

“Fifteen years,” Juan added with disgust, not at all surprised by his wife's outburst, presumably because the same thing was on his mind.

Josefa glanced at Candela, who'd been sitting quietly with a “please, please, don't call on me” look all evening. I'd seen that look before; it almost always meant, “Sorry, Professor Smith, I haven't done the reading!” I didn't want to jump to any conclusions, but I was picking up a similar vibe from Juan.

“Who wants a drink?” Josefa asked abruptly, perhaps thinking twice about criticizing one daughter in front of the other. She disappeared into the kitchen.

“Fifteen years,” Juan repeated, then shrugged. “
¿Quién sabe?
Who knows? Maybe when a couple's older, it's not such a big deal. But when the girl's twenty and he's thirty-five, that's just not good.” No one had told me how old Candela's sister was, but I had the feeling Juan wasn't offering hypothetical numbers.

“Well, anyway, it's a love story, and love stories never go out of style,” Diego said, taking the drink Josefa offered when she returned with a tray.

Josefa's flight from the table had shifted the mood, somehow, and the discussion became more casual and diffuse. Diego joked about casting boldly dressed
mariachis
in a film adaptation then we shifted topics to soap operas, to the number of
gringos
y
gringas
moving into their neighborhood, to the price of real estate in California. When it seemed we'd moved completely away from Austen for the evening, I turned off my digital recorder.

That's when Juan 'fessed up.

He hadn't finished the book. His admission emboldened Candela, who also confessed to giving up after six chapters, which was three more than Juan had read. Was it just their busy schedules or something about the book itself? Disappointed, I wanted to ask, but without sounding like a teacher about to hand out bad grades. As I pondered how to do this gracefully in my not-so-graceful Spanish, Diego stepped in.

“Well, Josefa, I can see you really liked it! And I loved it.” He then steered us back away from Austen. It would be rude, I got the feeling, to press for answers. They'd done their best; I couldn't take it personally. And I shouldn't have been too surprised. My California students almost never like
Sense
and
Sensibility
as well as the other Austen novels; many find it slow and “preachy.” But Diego and Josefa had liked how the novel promotes good values. Given how active both were in their church, I wondered how their frequent Bible reading, an issue Diego had discussed with me, might color their leisure reading.

Or—radical thought—was “leisure reading” too academic or restrictive a concept? Maybe for some people reading is reading, and they always look for the same things: lessons to be learned, examples to follow, cautionary tales to avoid. I tend to read two ways, either with or without a pencil in hand. Certain books I study and analyze, and others I read for pure pleasure. Tolstoy gets a pencil; I set the pencil aside and power down portions of my brain while savoring
Tomb
of
Dracula
comics or lewd pre-feminism “bodice rippers.” Perhaps Diego and Josefa were reading with a different filter, with different goals. For people who took their Bible seriously, perhaps applying moral analysis and reading for pleasure were one and the same thing?

Even with two readers who hadn't made it to the end of the novel, the group had been very interesting, although it had gone more quickly than the discussion in Antigua. As we left talk of Austen behind, I found myself checking the clock, still feeling extra tired and knowing that Juan had been up well before the sun. I pulled out my camera to get a group picture, only to discover the batteries were dead. Diego frowned and scanned the room. Josefa's kitchen clock had two AA batteries, which we pressed into service for parting photos amid hugs and promises of future visits.

I loved Diego's quick Plan B thinking. Brandon was Plan B for Marianne, as was splitting our group into two. But as Diego often would say,
así es la vida
. Such is life—as Austen well knew.

“Happy with the group?” Diego asked as we crossed the wooden footbridge spanning the river that separated Josefa and Juan's neighborhood from the center of Puerto Vallarta. He pulled me to one side of the bridge, out of the path of foot traffic, for an embrace.

“Happy,” I responded, folding into his arms.

And yes, with the group, too.

When I held my fortieth birthday party in Las Vegas, one of my closest friends arrived from Virginia looking dazed, even before the drinking started. In order to party with the girls, Susan had left her two small children for the first time since they'd been born. Periodically, in the midst of Vegas hijinks, I'd catch her with that faraway look.
What
are
they
doing
right
now? Will they get to bed on time? Did I leave enough juice? Do they miss me?

When Salvador and Soledad arrived at 9:45 p.m. for Group Number Two a few days after the first group, they were very sharply dressed—and had that same distracted air about them. This was the first evening Salvador Jr. and Juan were spending away from their attentive parents. We were starting up so late in the evening specifically because the couple wanted to put the boys to sleep then slip out, so as not to cause a panic.

“Everything's okay with the kids?” Diego asked as we settled in around the table and I passed around plates for delivery pizza; I'd felt too tired to cook, and Diego had been working all day.

The couple exchanged nervous smiles. “They're asleep. Everything will be fine,” Salvador said, as much to comfort Soledad as to answer Diego. Because there was very little beer in the house, I'd been about to make a run before they arrived, but Diego had assured me they didn't drink.

But thank god there were two bottles left because tonight, Mom and Dad both needed a beer.

“So did you like the book?” I usually don't start a discussion with such a subjective question since it puts people on the spot. For some reason, it just popped out that way, but what the heck, I was sure they'd liked it.

Dead silence from both.

Salvador cast a sideways glance at Soledad, who made a face, shook her head ruefully, and said, “Well, more or less.”

Salvador jumped in. “Yes,” he said firmly. “I really did like it. It was very interesting to learn something about the period when it was written, about a place that's different. I liked the character development, too. And especially,” he added energetically, “I
loved
the way the plot unfolded, all the surprises. I was so glad when it worked out that Marianne will have the same happiness as Elinor, after all she went through.”

“Diego mentioned while you were reading it that you were upset about Marianne,” I nodded.

“I was so upset about what that guy, that—” Again, the pronunciation problem, and it finally came out sounding like an insult. “That
Willoughby
was very cruel. I almost wanted to stop reading, it was so depressing. She was so sad when he left her! And that letter, that terrible, cold letter he wrote. That was very bad.”

Salvador cast a glance at Soledad, to see if she wanted to comment. She took a sip of her beer, so he went on. “This whole problem of people not keeping their word was important throughout the book. Starting with John Dashwood. What an awful brother, not caring for his sisters. And the way he lets himself get talked out of his good intentions by his wife, that was just terrible.”

Diego had actually read this passage out loud to me in bed one evening, laughing uproariously at Fanny's greedy machinations and John's slow crumble. The brilliant handling in Ang Lee's film brings out the vicious humor of the scene. But Salvador was not amused.

“Women do that here, too, talking their husbands out of their good intentions,” Diego chimed in, and I had to bite my lip. Only women do this? “It's a problem, I think, because people only have so much money, and it's basically a competition for resources. Sometimes the wife wants more money or attention for her own family, when he wants to share it with his. But that Fanny, she's just shameless. She's so greedy, she didn't even want the mother and sisters to have some nice china!”

As Diego, Salvador, and I laughed over Austen's eye for selecting the perfect detail to make a character ridiculous, Soledad finally spoke up.

“Well, I just kept reading and reading and reading,” she said somewhat impatiently. “I read and read, waiting for
something
to catch my interest. Finally, in the middle, it got more exciting when things started to go badly for Marianne.” I thought back to the question of the Bible and the lenses through which we read. Salvador was caught up immediately by the moral questions of the novel, such as John Dashwood's treatment of his mother and sisters. Had Soledad's time at the university influenced her reading habits? Could developing a taste for Juan Rulfo and similar writers make Austen's ethical dilemmas seem flatfooted—especially in translation? I waited for her to continue, but that was it.

I
hope
the
kids
are
still
sleeping
, I could practically hear her thinking.

While the first chapter can be a drag, most people are engaged quickly with the contrast between the sisters. “Have you got any sisters?” I asked, wondering if maybe this was the issue.

“Yes.”
What
if
they
wake
up
and
we're not there?

“Well, lots of my students in the United States have a preference right away for one sister or the other. Did you?” I asked, working to draw her mind back to Austen.

“Elinor.”
Did
I
show
Mom
where
I
left
their
favorite
toys
in
case
they
get
up?

“Why?” I prompted.

“Because she didn't let herself get carried away with her emotions, because she always tried to make life easier for her family,” she said, finally starting to warm to the subject and let go of concern for her sleeping sons, safe, after all, under the watchful eye of their
abuela
.

“I feel the same way,” Salvador seconded. “Actually, at first, I liked Marianne better for her sincerity, her openness. But after the first half I could see how giving in to her feelings was making things hard for her family, and I didn't like that. And there's something else, something I
really
didn't like—how that Lady Middleton wasn't taking care of her own children, how people liked to have someone else watching their kids all the time. Children need their own parents, not somebody paid to care for them. It's no wonder some of those kids in the book behave badly.”

I did a quick mental scan, trying to remember if any of my U.S. students had
ever
commented on parenting in the book. But with the talk on parenting, suddenly Salvador and Soledad both had that
are
the
kids
really
okay
look, so I switched gears again.

“Are there things in this novel that wouldn't happen in Mexico?”

Just as confidently as Josefa had several nights before, Soledad responded, “No, the book's really relevant. I'd already thought about that. Things then, in her country, are just the same way here and now. Look at Willoughby, taking advantage of women. Men here do that all the time. And Marianne, marrying more for the sake of getting married than for being in love. Women here are afraid to be single. It's very hard.”

“So you don't think that's a good match?” I asked.

“Well, maybe she'll come to love him, like the book says, but she certainly doesn't at first.”

“I think lots of marriages back then were more like contracts,” Diego said.

“Definitely,” Salvador agreed. “Think about Edward's mother, Mrs. Ferrars. That marriage surely must have been some kind of arrangement between families. Imagine being married to her.” Another score for Salvador. With the father out of the picture, I'd
never
thought about Mrs. Ferrars as a wife, only as a mother.

“What was it she wanted Edward to do for a living?” Diego turned to me. “She didn't want him to be a minister, right?”

“A soldier, a lawyer, something more grand, that's what she wanted.”

“Well, if his father had been around, he would have gotten him to focus better. Not having a father is a problem. He would have given him better motivation, helped him be more successful.”

“It's not just the fathers who want their children to be successful, you know,” Soledad said firmly.

“But they've got more authority,” Salvador began, and Diego cut in.

“Fathers are more convincing, like when your mother says, ‘Just you wait until your father gets home!'”

So this familiar threat is alive and well in Mexico, too; we all shared a good laugh.

We talked on for a while about parents and parenting styles, about some of the other twists in the plot, like Lucy's surprising but welcome defection to Robert and how furious Mrs. Ferrars must have been, thinking she was thwarting Edward, only to lose her favorite to Lucy! We got on to the subject of movie adaptations, too, and once again played with some Mexican casting choices.

Soledad, now definitely settled comfortably into the conversation, suddenly turned to her husband. “Was there somebody in the book you identified with?”

“Colonel Brandon,” he answered without hesitation. “He's reserved; he's serious; he's got good intentions. He never wants to cause problems, but he understands his duty. Like with that scene about the picnic. He really didn't want to leave, but he had to. He's never selfish, but sometimes you've got to choose between two responsibilities.”

They exchanged a quiet smile, then she turned to me. “What about you? Who do you identify with?”

I was pleased to see her taking the initiative. “Elinor,” I said. “She's always focused on other people, and she's not selfish either. I can't claim to be as good as Elinor, but of the two sisters, I've always liked her more. In all honestly, Marianne kind of irritates me.”

Nodding in agreement, she turned to Diego. “Who do you identify with?”

“Willoughby's pointer,” he responded, setting us all laughing again. “No, really, I like that dog! She's alert; she knows what's going on around her. And she doesn't cause any trouble, like all the humans are constantly doing. She enjoys nature, too—that's big for me.”

We drifted into an entertaining sidetrack about all the places to go hiking in the area, and again it was Soledad who pulled us back to Austen. “Something I think is interesting is how many authors never were famous during their lifetime but become more famous later,” she commented. “Was that true with Austen?”

The Austen background I routinely share with students in the United States was harder to explain in Spanish, but I muddled through. They were all surprised to hear that Austen never put her name on any book in her lifetime, instead inscribing them “By a Lady.” But eventually word got out, and Austen drew the attention of the prince regent, poised to take the throne when his father George III finally got around to dying. The prince thought it would be lovely if Austen would write a historical romance about his family line, or so his personal secretary implied in a letter to Austen. Her wry response is priceless. She insisted she couldn't do it “under any other motive than to save my life, and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter.” Pretty bold for a humble subject! She did bend enough to dedicate
Emma
to the prince, but the dirty dog never even acknowledged the honor.

“So basically,” I wrapped up, “she had some success in her lifetime, but nothing like the cult fame she has now with Americans and the British.”

“And Canadians,” Diego added. “I had the novel in the taxi, and one of my clients was surprised to see it. She told me Austen is very popular in Canada, too.”

I brought out my laptop. “Here are some photos of a seaside village she visited,” I said, showing them Lyme Regis. I also pulled up shots of Chawton Cottage. “Here's the house where she lived after her father died. It was officially a ‘cottage,' just like what the family in
Sense
and
Sensibility
moved in to, because it's the smaller property on a large estate. But you can see it's not so small.” Salvador and Soledad nodded, impressed. Their own neat little house would fit into Chawton Cottage several times.

“Here's Chawton House, where her brother Edward lived.” One of Austen's brothers had been adopted by wealthy, childless relatives. When they died he hit the inheritance jackpot, landing, among other properties, the entire Chawton estate. I explained how the mansion is now open to the public for the first time ever, thanks to a generous philanthropist who is also a die-hard Austen fan. She took a lengthy lease on the property from Edward's descendents, and now her pet Clydesdales, named after various Austen characters, graze the grounds. Officially, it's a research library focusing on women's literature with visiting hours for the public.