Did you enjoy Little Women? Did you ever read anything by Jane Austen? She is one of most interesting writers of her age. She lived from 1775-1817. She was an English writer. Yes, another British artist! Alas, I have no originality where the British are concerned. I just love everything British. Anyway, when I was in England, I visited a town she lived in when she was alive: Bath. What a lovely place. She lived in Bath with her aunt.
Emma is one of the last books she wrote. It is about a girl named Emma who is rather rich. Therefore, she has little to do but go around trying to make love matches amongst her friends. Wouldn’t it be nice to be so wealthy? But Emma gets herself into several scrapes throughout the book. Even rich girls have it rough sometimes. But, they are also human and can be good people to be friends with. In this scene, Emma is helping her friend, Harriet, move on from loving someone who does not return her love. We girls do silly things like this, don’t we? Holding onto little tokens to remember someone who was once important to us. We do this long after the affection he felt for us has vanished. In her book, Persuasion, Jane writes:
“All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion
A few years ago, books started to be published that used Jane Austen’s books as story starters. Examples you may have seen in the movie theaters include Austenland and Jane Austen Book Club. That’s where I got the idea to start our own little book club. In Jane Austen Book Club, the modern day characters mirror the characters in Jane Austen’s books: Emma (the matchmaker), Elinor and Marianne (two sisters who are VERY different), Fanny Brice (who never stops loving her sweetheart) and Anne Elliott (who has to win back her beloved when she spurns him for having no money). Even the kind and misunderstood man is in many of Austen’s stories is represented – but I wont tell you which one he is. Anyway, the book club starts with Emma first. Here is chapter 1 of Jane Austen’s Emma. The language can be difficult, but keep listening with your girl’s heart. You’ll discover that being a girl (or a women) hasn’t changed much in the last three hundred years. Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/6cUGLSGxJ-M