Thanksgiving | DeborahYaffe.com

The Line of Thought

. . . to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.

--Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

The sound of silence

Ah, Thanksgiving traditions: Turkey , mashed potatoes , pumpkin pie —and brutal political arguments among loved ones! With this year’s...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 28, 2024

As my family and our guests gather around our Thanksgiving table today, the menu will include a roasted carrot salad discovered in a...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 23, 2023

Like many of us in the Age of COVID, I’ll be hosting an unusually small Thanksgiving party tonight – just the four members of my...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 26, 2020

As we sit down to our turkey tonight, perhaps in company with relatives or acquaintances whom we carefully avoid the rest of the year,...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 28, 2019

Thanksgiving Day may seem to be a holiday with no connection whatsoever to the works of Jane Austen. True, her major novels include the...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 22, 2018

Thanksgiving Day is upon us once again, and once again it’s time to search the works of Jane Austen – who, as an Englishwoman who never...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 23, 2017

In her fiction, Jane Austen was acutely aware that the duty of gratitude can sometimes be weaponized: think of Sir Thomas Bertram...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 24, 2016

For last year’s Thanksgiving Day blog, I amused myself by searching out Austen references to turkey. (As it happens, there are two – one...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 26, 2015

As I contemplated my holiday cooking earlier this week, I found myself wondering whether Jane Austen ever mentions The Bird – our...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 27, 2014

As a concept, gratitude is important to Jane Austen: Elizabeth feels it for Darcy when she learns what he's done for Lydia; Sir Thomas...

Deborah Yaffe

Nov 28, 2013