(And we don’t mean the thoroughly delightful film!)

Alert Janeites Sumita and Dae each wrote to tell us that Newsweek has published the apparently earth-shattering news that hey! We Middle-Aged Austen Whores have a chance to get married, too! And they even take Jane’s name in vain.

Not everyone wants to marry, of course. And we’re long past those Jane Austen days when being “marriage-minded” was primarily a female trait; today many men openly hope for a wife just as much as women long for a husband.

As Dae said, “Of course. Because Jane Austen never ever hinted that her male characters hoped for a wife. Oh no. How silly.” Very true!

Sumita added, “Not sure whether I fully agree that men never thought of marriage in Austen’s world. In fact I think it was considered a man and woman’s duty to society to marry a suitable mate e.g. thus it seemed that Mr. Knightley’s one deficiency was erased by marriage to Emma.” Well, Mr. John Knightley had secured the succession, so the responsibility was more or less off the elder brother’s shoulders. Remember Emma’s aversion to cutting out little Harry, unless she were the one doing the cutting out!

You know what we think Jane Austen would say to that article? We think she would say, “What makes you think we middle-aged spinsters all want to get married in the first place?” If Jane Austen had married and had children (as was inevitable in those days, barring fertility problems), she most likely would not have written her books. Do not wish that upon her, or upon us for that matter!

Can one apply the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness to a magazine?

Dorothy! Dust off the Cluebat! It’s been much too quiet around here.

Alert Janeite Mandy sent us a link to the new Bloomsbury edition of Pride and Prejudice, marketed to teenagers, as should be obvious by the cover and the introduction by Meg Cabot. The cover is fairly dreadful, though we could learn to live with it if, as Mandy pointed out, it would be attractive to teens; after all, we wore five and ten light blue eyeshadow when we were that age so we probably shouldn’t judge; but the cover blurb is just insupportable!

In a remote Hertfordshire community, the Bennet family has a sensitive enterprise - Mr Bennet must marry off his five young daughters if any of them is to inherit his estate after he has died.

We understand that they are marketing this to the younkers, but is it necessary to turn it into a tale from the Brothers Grimm? “If they don’t get married by the time they are one and twenty, Longbourn will go POOF! and Mr. Collins will turn into a frog! Oh wait, that already happened…”

And none of them are going to inherit his estate whether they get married or not! ARGH! *beats silly book into primary colored pulp with Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness*