ABOVE: The 1813 Cruikshank caricature of The Prince of Whales: The Fisherman at Anchor.................. Read Colleen Sheehan's articles (including the footnotes) for the amazing Jane Austen connection:

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol27no1/sheehan.htm

AUSTENMANIA HAS COME TO MIAMI-DADE AND BROWARD COUNTIES FLORIDA

On Sunday January 23 2011 at Alvin Sherman Library Nova Southeastern U. (NSU) in Davie NSU English Prof Suzanne Ferriss and I finally gave our presentations (she about Austen film adaptations and other modern cultural reactions to Austen's writing and I of course about Jane Fairfax the shadow heroine of Emma) and nearly two hundred Janeite "needles" were irresistibly drawn to our "magnet". Within the next month I will start a new blog for our new Miami-Dade/Broward Janeite community as soon as I can catch a breath! Our huge turnout arose primarily from....

THIS WONDERFUL ARTICLE ON THE (ENTIRE) FRONT PAGE OF THE TROPICAL (LIFESTYLES) SECTION IN THE SATURDAY MIAMI HERALD

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/01/21/2025048/for-the-love-of-jane.html

AND THIS IS MY EARLIER BLOG POST ABOUT MY ASPIRATIONS FOR MY EVENT WHICH WERE ALL EXCEEDED:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/austenmania-is-coming-to-miami-dade-and.html

ASIDE FROM MY TALK AT NOVA MY MOST RECENT PRESENTATION WAS....

...on Halloween weekend 2010 when I addressed the JASNA AGM in Portland Oregon on the topic "Remember the country and age in which we live": The Covert Death-in-childbirth Anti-parody in Northanger Abbey"

http://www.jasna.org/agms/portland/breakout.html

AND MY NEXT TO LAST PRESENTATION BEFORE THAT WAS...

...0n May 1 2010 when I addressed the JASNA-NY Regional Group on the topic of The Shadow Story of Emma: Jane Austen the Secret Feminist:

http://www.jasnany.org/pdf/may1.pdf

WANT ME TO GIVE A PRESENTATION TO YOUR JASNA REGIONAL GROUP?

I'll be addressing JASNA groups in Gainesville Fla. on 02/05/11 and later in 2011 in SF LA Portland and Sacramento on one of my Austenian shadow story topics. I want to present to other JASNA and other Austen-oriented groups in 2011. Email me at arnieperlstein@myacc.net if you're interested!

AND FINALLY PROF. FERRISS & WILL REPRISE OUR JOINT PRESENTATION AT THE NORTH REGIONAL BRANCH MIAMI-DADE PUB. LIBRARY ON SAT. SEPT. 17 FROM 1-4 PM....... MORE ON THAT LATER WHEN I START THAT OTHER BLOG!

I have been very fortunate to have experienced hundreds and hundreds of wonderful serendipities in the course of my many years of obsessive literary sleuthing. However today two seemingly unrelated discoveries coincided in time so as to lead me to connect dots that I otherwise might not have connected for many moons. As I will explain to you below I cant think of a serendipity more uncanny and lucky than this one and I hope youll agree it is not even that complicated to explain (for a change!).

Recall first that I posted the following at the end of last week about the allusion rotating around the words watch and ward which I discovered in Mansfield Park that point unmistakably to Shakespeares Troilus & Cressida:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/04/warding-watching-in-troilus-cressida.html

Then completely unrelated to the above (in fact thinking of it as a break from my Austen and Shakespeare intensive research) I went to see the new Jane Eyre film adaptation and posted yesterday about the multiple allusions to all of Jane Austens novels including but not limited to Mansfield Park in Brontes novel:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/04/jane-eyreairheireyerausten.html

At no time did it occur to me till an hour ago that these two posts might actually be connected thematically in the most remarkable way. But then I was following up on one of the puns I detected (never having noticed them before) in the name Eyre which I made the basis of the title of that second post i.e. Jane Eyer meaning Jane who eyes or watches everything around her and lightning struck.

It was when I realized what an important word watch was in Jane Eyre that I suddenly made the connection across the chasm of these two posts and it dawned on me that the allusion to Mansfield Park in Jane Eyre _also_ included that striking parallel between Fanny and Jane as being quintessential watchers!

That would have been exciting enough. But the coup de grace came when I searched through the text of Jane Eyre to look at all the times that Jane is described by the narrator as watching and watched (just as I had just done last Friday searching through Mansfield Park). I noted all the times Jane is watched and also all the times Jane Eyre is described as being watched by othersfrom Mrs. Reed to the teachers at Lowood to (most of all) Rochester who watches Jane as much as she watches himindeed that is at the essence of their intense mutual attraction they each cannot take their eyes off the other from the moment they meet and even after Rochester is blind!

The coup de grace however was the following agonized line spoken by Rochester in the church just after his wedding to Jane has been abruptly interrupted and shut down by Masons lawyers explosive revelation:

You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder Wood; but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there _under watch and ward._

...under watch and ward!!!!! At first I could not believe _my_ eyes because I had just written the first above-linked post only last Friday about _both_ of those words and had even put them both into my title (Warding and Watching in Troilus & Cressida and Mansfield Park) having absolutely no idea that watch and ward was an idiom in the English language going back (it turns out) at least a century _before_ Shakespeare wrote Troilus and Cressida in 1604!

From what I quickly gathered from contemporary sources readable online watch and ward was a term of art in the feudal world describing the function of the guard who stands watch at the gates to a town or castle.

And fresh from a quick reread of vast sections of Jane Eyre during the past few days I immediately realized that this was why the Reed residence where Jane is abused as a child is named _Gates_head Hall! And also why we hear a lot in the novel about gatesthe gates to Thornfield Hall the gates of hell that Rochester describes Jane as standing at when she watches Bertha Mason Rochester in horror for the first time etc etc.

So it all suggests to me that among other things:

Brontes already complex and beautiful allusion to Mansfield Park was even more complex and beautiful by the addition of the key thematic words watch and ward as so pointedly symbolic of both Fanny Price and Jane Eyre;

And it was also probable that Bronte who was like Austen a very accomplished Shakespearean scholar had recognized the allusion to Troilus & Cressida in Mansfield Park and was tipping her hat to Austens allusion to Troilus & Cressida in the way JA used the words watch and ward; and

It was also almost certain that Shakespeares repartee between Pandarus and Cressida on watch and ward had another layer that I had not previously seen which was that of the necessity that Cressida keep a very vigilant watch over her own gates so as best to be able to ward off any Greek (or Trojan) horses!

And there must be even more jewels to be fetched from the depths of this complex literary matrix when I have time to let it fully sink in.

Cheers ARNIE

P.S.: I almost forgot to add one additional layer this one being the icing on the allusive layer cake.

I had long ago previously noticed (and then was not surprised to learn I was not the first to notice) that there was a complex beautiful but very mysterious allusion to Jane Eyre in an even later novelistic masterpiece Henry Jamess The Turn of the Screw (which I had also previously also identified as being very allusive to Austens Emma in a number of striking ways).

It would require a whole additional blog post to unpack Jamess veiled Brontean allusion but for now I mention it only because I became curious to know whether Henry James might have noticed the words watch and ward and look what Wikipedia revealed to me:

Watch and Ward is a short novel by Henry James first published as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly in 1871 and later as a book in 1878. This was James' first attempt at a novel though he virtually disowned the book later in life. James was still in his apprentice stage as a writer and Watch and Ward shows predictable immaturity. It's an odd sometimes melodramatic tale of how protagonist Roger Lawrence adopts an orphaned twelve-year-old girl Nora Lambert and raises her as his eventual bride-to-be. But complications ensue sometimes in a bizarre manner.

In other words it appears that the young James already had Jane Eyre on the brain in 1871 so much so that he made it the allusive source for his first novelistic attempt! And it seems that he never let Jane Eyre go but returned to it for one of his mature masterpieces. ---ALP

[The 80-ish Mary Watson of the Puget Sound chapter commenting on the 2010 JASNA AGM]

"...Two sessions were outstanding: Juliet McMasters on the more subtle deeper meanings of "Northanger Abbey" and a Darcy-like young lawyer Arnie Perlstein who revealed his very plausible theory that the "shadow story" behind much of Jane Austen's work is the horror of multiple childbirth and women's deaths. I am a Jane-Austen-as-feminist person and this really resonated with me!"

Thank you Mary!

"Arnie's theories [about Austen and Shakespeare] may strain credulity but so much the greater his triumph if they turn out to have persuasive force after they are properly presented and maturely considered. That is what publication is all about"