mirth and mischief
May. 16th, 2014 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliWas thinking about Goodreads's April's Fool thing -- the claim to have discovered a lost manuscript Mirth and Mischief by Jane Austen.
Mulling the title. How to do Jane Austenish novel by that title -- only with fairies or something because that's what my muse likes.
A couple of fairies giggling over dainty tea cups with roses painted on them, or possibly enchanted roses acting as tea cups. (Which one would be the mark of the richer, and which the poorer? Which old-fashioned, which new-fangled. . . then this was in the era of transition from the, ehem, Good Folk to the winged flower fairies -- so a crocketty old lady grumbling about all this conjuring up of butterfly wings, why in her day, the very poorest fae would had disdained such spells, they could always fly on yarrow sticks. . . and, a la Persuasion, a fae lord objects to his daughter marrying a selkie without a penny to his name or a drop of blue blood in his veins. . . .
Which lead me to ponder how the ideas seem to either sound Jane Austenish, or fit the title. Mirth and Mischief is not a very Austen attitude. Mirth might pass alone, like Elizabeth Bennet's wit, perhaps in Mirth and Manners. But mischief? Characters without the character to refrain mischief seldom have the wit to pull off any mischief that would fit the title. Certainly not mirthful mischief. Not all come to the stunning level of willful stupidity in Laura, Edward, Sophia, and Augustus of Love And Freindship, but certainly they tend toward the stupid. Even Elizabeth comes to realize that she had taken a distaste to Darcy for the chance to be witty at his expense, and so been unjust to him. . . .
Ah, well. One does have to sort one's ideas into stories where they feel the same. Play nicely together, if you like.
Mulling the title. How to do Jane Austenish novel by that title -- only with fairies or something because that's what my muse likes.
A couple of fairies giggling over dainty tea cups with roses painted on them, or possibly enchanted roses acting as tea cups. (Which one would be the mark of the richer, and which the poorer? Which old-fashioned, which new-fangled. . . then this was in the era of transition from the, ehem, Good Folk to the winged flower fairies -- so a crocketty old lady grumbling about all this conjuring up of butterfly wings, why in her day, the very poorest fae would had disdained such spells, they could always fly on yarrow sticks. . . and, a la Persuasion, a fae lord objects to his daughter marrying a selkie without a penny to his name or a drop of blue blood in his veins. . . .
Which lead me to ponder how the ideas seem to either sound Jane Austenish, or fit the title. Mirth and Mischief is not a very Austen attitude. Mirth might pass alone, like Elizabeth Bennet's wit, perhaps in Mirth and Manners. But mischief? Characters without the character to refrain mischief seldom have the wit to pull off any mischief that would fit the title. Certainly not mirthful mischief. Not all come to the stunning level of willful stupidity in Laura, Edward, Sophia, and Augustus of Love And Freindship, but certainly they tend toward the stupid. Even Elizabeth comes to realize that she had taken a distaste to Darcy for the chance to be witty at his expense, and so been unjust to him. . . .
Ah, well. One does have to sort one's ideas into stories where they feel the same. Play nicely together, if you like.