Roasted

Turkey makes an appearance in more than one of Jane Austen’s completed novels—and, it turns out, in one of the unfinished ones, as well.

Given the fraught nature of Thanksgiving guest lists, perhaps it’s appropriate that this passage from The Watsons, the novel Austen abandoned around 1805, is also the tale of a guest from hell: Jane Watson, the sister-in-law of heroine Emma Watson. Like Emma’s Mrs. Elton, Jane Watson is a pretentious social climber masquerading, hilariously, as a simple, unpretentious young thing.

After chastising her husband, Robert, for failing to add extra powder to his hair while dressing for dinner, Jane moves on to a faux protest on the alleged lavishness of the meal that another Watson sibling, Elizabeth, has laid before her:

Dinner came, and except when Mrs. Robert looked at her husband’s head, she continued gay and flippant, chiding Elizabeth for the profusion on the table and absolutely protesting against the entrance of the roast turkey–which formed the only exception to “You see your dinner.”–“I do beg and entreat that no turkey may be seen today. I am really frightened out of my wits with the number of dishes we have already. Let us have no turkey, I beseech you.”—

“My dear,” replied Elizabeth, “the turkey is roasted, and it may just as well come in, as stay in the kitchen. Besides if it is cut, I am in hopes my father may be tempted to eat a bit, for it is rather a favourite dish.”

“You may have it in my dear, but I assure you I shan’t touch it.”

Happy Thanksgiving! May your turkey be well roasted, and may the Jane Watsons in your life decide to celebrate elsewhere.