We’re awkwardly aware of the age gap between Mr Knightley and Emma – 16 years makes us uncomfortable. It gets worse when Harriet develops a crush, a full 20 years, making Mr Knightley more eligible to be her father than her husband. His companions ar...

Lady Susan has an amazing ability to waltz into a situation and mess it up for everyone. Mrs Mainwaring loves her husband who loves Lady Susan, she is “insupportably jealous and so enraged against” Lady Susan that it is “time for (her) to be gone.” S...

RNZ “Afternoons” 27 March 2025 I was interviewed on the Radio! My thoughts:

Sunday Star Times 23/3/25 In the more than 200 years since Jane Austen published, people and society haven’t changed all that much (even though I’m writing this on a computer rather than with a quill). She may be dead, but the patriarchy (sadly) isn’...

Review of the Melissa Nathan novel Jasmin Field is, almost accidentally, cast as Elizabeth Bennet on stage after she uses her anger at being called the “ugly sister” to give the director (famous actor Harry Noble) a telling off (still on script) duri...

John Dashwood is an arse. It’s his responsibility, as a male and head of the family, to support the females as they are unable to work. He shirks his responsibility partly because he’s selfish, partly because his wife is selfish, and partly potential...

Catherine’s only 17 and Mr Tilney proposes (though does he in this adaptation?) When Catherine is thrown out of his father’s house, Mr Tilney isn’t there but he’s pissed when he returns and discovers what happened. Against his fathers wishes he goes...

Lydia and Kitty, Charlotte and Lizzy: best of friends Both relationships change dramatically by the end of the book/movie, the pairs are separated and only maintain contact through family relationships. It’s marriage that will separate them; Lydia’s...

Lizzy learns rumours of Mr Wickham’s behaviour in a letter from Darcy after his first disastrous proposal. She has a wee “struggle,” partly she thinks because he’d flattered her as Darcy had not, but realises she doesn’t know his “real character.” It...

A novel by J.C. Peterson My introduction to Jane Austen was the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (you know the one, it has Colin Firth in a wet shirt) on Montana Sunday Theatre. The family, like the rest of the world, was obsessed. We recor...