Tomorrow marks the anniversary that we all – or, at least, all those of us who are Janeites – have been waiting for since 2017 dawned: the bicentennial of Jane Austen’s untimely death. Already, the occasion has been honored with exhibits, lectures, book releases, competitions, a specially commissioned statue, specially decorated money (both paper and coin), specially decorated benches, frequently invisible public art . . . you name it. Amid the circus of commemoration, it’s easy to lose sight of what this is all about: Six books. One extraordinary artist. Yesterday, my local chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America gathered to honor Our Jane in our own way. We met in an austerely beautiful historic church, ate cake decorated with strawberries, and toasted Jane Austen with iced tea and Diet Coke, thanking her for welding us into a community of fans and friends.
But the heart of the occasion was our performance of scenes from all six of the novels, as well as a bit of the Juvenilia and excerpts from Cassandra’s moving account of her sister’s death. We reveled all over again in Lady Catherine’s pique (“Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”), Fanny Dashwood’s selfishness (“People always live forever when there is any annuity to be paid them”), and Catherine Morland’s charming naivete (“Oh! Mr. Tilney, how frightful! --This is just like a book!”) None of us is likely to win any acting prizes – well, except for the for-real actress who joined us from JASNA’s New York City chapter – but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get back to what started all of this – the words, and the woman who wrote them. Six books. One extraordinary artist.