All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey with Jane Read online

  “You all laughed a lot during the movie,” I offered, somewhat flummoxed. Given my novice Spanish and my desire not to influence the group’s responses more than I could help, I’d hoped to do less talking and more listening.

  She shifted tack. “Why did you pick this particular book for us?”

  “It’s her most popular novel—people really love this story.”

  “But it’s also important because it’s about her life, right?”

  “Not really,” I began, wanting to clarify this complex issue, when she cut back in.

  “No? It isn’t about her life?”

  Finally, another member of the group joined in and opened up the conversation; Ani suggested mildly, “It’s about the time she lived in, about her epoch. Maybe some parts of it might be about her life, but it doesn’t all have to be.”

  “Okay, what I want to know is if this is similar to her life, to how things were with her family,” Mercedes explained.

  “The biggest difference we know for sure,” I said, “is that Austen stayed single.”

  “Ah,” cried Flor, “an old maid!”

  The word I’d used was “soltera,” which means single. The word Flor used was “solterona,” which also means single but with a negative connotation. There’s no way to translate it exactly, although “old maid” or “spinster” are close.

  “Please, for Austen’s sake,” I smiled at Flor, “soltera sounds better!”

  We all shared a wry laugh over this bugbear of labeling for unmarried women. “People do use solterona here,” Élida acknowledged, “but it’s not very nice.”

  Mercedes persisted in connecting the novel to Austen’s life. “So she was single. But surely, she wanted this kind of love, right? With an intelligent man, one who could respect her? This story is about love, about what love really is.”

  “About a love strong enough to overcome the prejudices on both sides—they both had prejudices,” added Élida.

  “They’re such a good couple, Elizabeth and Darcy,” Mercedes responded. “They’re good for each other. And they’re both intelligent. Austen was intelligent; you can see it. Whether she had a formal education or not, she was as intelligent as any man.”

  Nora, who’d been offering noises of agreement at various points, officially joined in. “She must have read a lot—it always makes a difference, reading.”

  As I nodded, Élida frowned and said, “The father, he was intelligent, but he read too much. He was careless with educating his daughters. Look at Lydia and Kitty. And that mother, that Mrs. Bennet. All she’s got on her mind is finding husbands, improving their position.”

  Agreement and dissent erupted all at once.

  “Definitely empty headed!”

  “What’s she supposed to do? She’s a mother!”

  “Something I noticed,” Nora attempted to calm the storm, “is that the film focuses more on just the two oldest sisters. The book lets you see more about the whole family, how they all interact.”

  With an eye to Mercedes’s interest in the life/works connection, I took up this line, “Yes, and Austen had one sister, with whom she was very close her whole life.”

  A rash of cross-talking broke out again, the others still interested in either defending or attacking Mrs. Bennet, until Mercedes cut back through it to say, “Hasta la fecha, mothers have this concern about the reputation and status of the family.”

  This was the first use somebody made of the expression “to this day” (or literally, “to the date”), but it wouldn’t be the last. I had deliberately avoided any questions about how the book might connect to their own lives, wanting to see if, when, and how the question might come up naturally. And here it was.

  “Unfortunately,” Élida added, “lots of them are more concerned about status than they are about the happiness of their children.”

  On this point, there was no dissension. “And when a ladino marries a Maya, watch out!” Ladino is the word often used to describe Guatemalans of Spanish, nonindigenous descent. While not all indigenous people are Mayan, many Guatemalans use the term “Mayan” broadly to mean indigenous.

  “It’s the big prejudice we have here! I’ve actually heard people use the expression ‘Hay que mejorar la raza,’” Mercedes said indignantly. “‘We’ve got to improve the race.’ We shouldn’t mix with the Maya. But we’re already mixed, we’re all a mezcla!”

  Élida echoed, “Hay que mejorar la raza,” shaking her head sadly while the others nodded yes, they’re a mix, una mezcla.

  “Ask anybody here and, of course, they’re pure Spanish. Nobody wants to admit to being Mayan,” Mercedes added. “Why are people ashamed of this? Look at how sophisticated their civilization was. Students are always interested in the Maya, and they ask us so innocently, ‘Are you Mayan?’ They don’t understand what that means to people here, how angry some people get if you ask them that!”

  “It’s so common, this prejudice,” Nora and the others agreed. Given the role of race in Guatemala’s civil wars—indigenous people were systematically oppressed by the various military leaders—the discussion took on a somber feel until Mercedes moved us into more neutral territory.

  “Too many marriages are just like contracts,” she said. “They’re for appearances, for status. Hasta la fecha, it’s what happens here. That marriage between Charlotte and Mr. Collins—terrible! I don’t like that a bit.”

  A chorus of “me neither’s” filled the hotel lobby, along with variations on “Money’s not going to make you happy,” uttered simultaneously. Their disapproval of the match was so strong, I couldn’t resist playing devil’s advocate.

  “But look how it helps Charlotte’s family,” I pointed out. “And now she’s got her own household.” Heads were shaken and brows were furrowed; they weren’t buying it.

  I was surprised by their attitude. Parsing through my reaction, I confronted an ugly assumption—not the first one I’d made in Latin America (and, unfortunately, not the last). As the conversation swirled on around me, I realized I’d assumed that their frustration with men would lead them to, well, get a little cynical about relationships. If men see women as lesser beings and objectify them, then why not objectify men right back? Why not marry the man who’s going to inherit Longbourn? What’s the difference between one provider and another, as long as he’s providing enough?

  But these women hadn’t fallen into the trap of objectifying the objectifier, however much they resented being taken less seriously than they deserved. I knew that two wrongs don’t make a right, so why would I think that these women would behave as if they did? Badly done, Amy.

  Sheepish but still curious about the relationship question, I waded back in with arguments I’d heard from former students, since the Charlotte/Mr. Collins match always finds defenders in California. “Can’t there be more than one kind of marriage? Why do we have to assume that everybody’s looking for the same kind of thing in their married life?”

  Still not buying it. “Without love, it’s not a marriage,” Flor pronounced bluntly.

  The other four defenders of love concurred. Then two began to waffle.

  “Her husband is a preacher, after all, and that’s a good thing,” said Nora.

  “I hope for her sake Charlotte will grow to love him,” Ani added, a look of compassion on her kind face. There it was, again, just like I’d seen over and over again in the States—Austen’s characters bursting the seams of her novels as if they were real people. I couldn’t help but smile, thinking about my students (and a slew of Austen sequel writers, eager to chronicle Charlotte’s fate).

  “Love doesn’t work that way,” Flor insisted firmly, moving forward in her seat for emphasis. “In a couple, if from the outset one doesn’t love the other, they’re never going to.”

  That love is necessary, all agreed. But the ques
tion of whether love can grow provoked yet another flurry of debate.

  “We’ve all had our different experiences here,” Mercedes declared. “Me, I’m a widow. And you’ve been divorced, you’ve been divorced, you’ve been divorced,” she pointed in turn at Nora, Élida, and Flor. “And Ani, single. We all know now that when it comes down to it, you’ve got to ask yourself, how will I feel by this person’s side?”

  “Can you really live with them?” seconded Élida.

  “The biggest problem here is that we all worry too much what other people think about our decisions,” Mercedes said. “We say we shouldn’t, but we do.”

  As for Austen, she was fading further into the background, but I had no intention of steering us back. I didn’t want to turn this into a lecture; I wanted to see where Austen would lead us.

  “But it can be hard to make good decisions about men, because we grew up with so little information,” Mercedes continued. “I didn’t spend any time with men until after I finished school. That’s how we were raised here, right?” Nods all around. “My very first school was a convent!”

  Flor giggled and the rest joined in, sharing memories of conservative Catholic schools and encounters with nuns.

  “My school was so strict,” Nora said. “But actually, I wanted to be a nun!”

  As Flor laughed even harder, Mercedes added, “I did too! I really did! But my grandmother talked me out of it. She told me to make sure that I understood the commitment.”

  “Yes, since it’s like a marriage,” I offered.

  Suddenly five sets of eyes were fixed on me. “It’s not like a marriage,” Ani said gently but firmly. “It is a marriage.”

  As much as we had in common, I was reminded with a jolt, we came from different worlds. I’d been raised Catholic but not in a Catholic country. I wondered how many combinations of five women you’d have to pull together in the United States to produce a group in which not one but three had seriously considered becoming nuns. Quite a lot, I suspect.

  We transitioned from how little interaction they’d had with men while growing up to how one adjusts to living with the troublesome creatures (male readers, please reverse the genders here). Our conversation then began fracturing off into chat between pairs. Somebody began a juicy story about somebody’s sister getting pregnant by some real so-and-so, and would you believe that—

  Suddenly Mercedes put on the brakes.

  “That thing, that recorder—is that still on?”

  Knowing I could never keep up with the whole conversation, I’d been taping us. We all laughed in mutual acknowledgment that we’d come quite a way from Austen.

  “Time for dinner,” I said, shutting off the recorder.

  ***

  As somebody completed the story about somebody’s sister and the so-and-so—off the record—we made our way to the restaurant, La Fonda de la Calle Real. It was noisy and festive, crowded with happy weekend diners. We had trouble finding a table for six but at last located a spot in the open central patio area.

  “Ah, those musicians, I know them!” cried Mercedes, indicating two guitar players and a singer circulating among the tables in a side room. “They played a serenade for me on my birthday!”

  We ordered drinks, enjoying the music and gossiping. After we hit one of those moments of companionable silence, again Mercedes took the initiative. “Did you have any more questions for us? What else should we talk about?”

  Glad to return to a thread I’d wanted to pursue, I asked if they had any thoughts on the differences between the novel and the film.

  “I liked the film,” Nora said, “but the message, the idea that appearances can be deceiving, is clearer in the book. It also made me think more about how all of these problems the characters faced are exactly the things we all face in our lives and our relationships. The novel is set in England, but it’s just the same as if it were here. It could all be happening here.”

  This is exactly what I had been wondering, and I was glad to get this response without any prompting. Before I could pursue it, however, Mercedes added, “I liked the emphasis on families and romance. I don’t want anything to do with stories with blood and crime; we’ve got too much of that here.”

  I exchanged a look with Nora and recalled her story about the gruesome earring (and ear) snatching, as well as another she’d told me a day or two before our Austen group. Six armed gunman had stormed her daughter’s school on the day parents paid tuition, in cash (public schools are so terrible that many people work two jobs to pay for private education). They’d ordered the kids to the ground, roughed up the terrified secretary, and bolted with the money. Armed robberies are a common enough occurrence that store delivery trucks carry guards armed with machine guns; even the brightly painted rural “chicken buses” full of low-wage commuters get ransacked periodically.

  If indeed many of Austen’s contemporaries enjoyed her books as a respite from all the talk about Napoleon and the war, ugly realities beyond their immediate control—likewise, in Guatemala.

  “In this novel, love conquered pride and prejudice both.” Ani’s contented look as she spoke suggested that she’d had this point in mind for some time. “Despite all the things that could have prevented a happy ending, love triumphs.”

  “The book’s also a demonstration of good behavior,” Mercedes said. “Young people today have such bad manners.”

  The others nodded agreement, relishing the perennial middle-aged complaint, apparently not unique to the United States, about “young people today.” She added somewhat archly, “I’ve seen plenty of people who are supposedly well educated but are very rude and others, people with no formal education, who are very courteous.”

  I had the feeling Mercedes was hedging a bit on who some of those “very rude” people might be, so I baited her: “I’m sure none of the U.S. students at La Escuela have bad manners.”

  All eyes were on me. Humor is hard to pull off in another language and sarcasm in particular, because it relies so much on tone. Tone is not something you can learn from a book.

  Since Nora knew me best, after a beat she nudged me, laughing, and the others joined in. I may not teach in the same school, but I was a teacher, after all.

  “Yes, it’s true, there are norteamericanos at the school who aren’t very polite,” Mercedes said. “Let’s face it—our students are living at a different economic level from us, a better level.”

  “And some are arrogant, very arrogant,” Élida murmured as Mercedes talked, unable to resist seconding the point.

  Nora overlapped her as well. “Rich people sometimes actually have the worst behavior, like Darcy and Bingley’s sister at that first dance. Other people were just trying to be nice to them!”

  While I let the conversation unfold naturally, there was one specific thing I wanted to ask. “Are there any elements of this story that are specific to England, things that wouldn’t happen here?”

  Élida shook her head. “There are some differences with our lives today but that’s more because of the times, not culture, I think. People back then were much more formal and ceremonious.”

  “We’re courteous but not so formal,” agreed Mercedes. “Even husbands and wives referred to each other then as Señor, Señora.” I was glad I’d asked, because before our food could arrive to shut down conversation, the roving musicians did.

  “‘You’re like a thorn in my heart,’” Nora leaned over to translate the lyrics of the ballad. “I think this song is Mexican. A lot of the best songs are.”

  “Well, anyway,” Mercedes again took the initiative as the talented musicians moved off to serenade other diners, “I wanted to say that I like how Austen shows you that some pride is good, like pride in your accomplishments or your family. But you can’t let pride make you think you’re better than others.”

  “That’s o
ur problem here,” Nora offered. “That’s exactly where discrimination comes from. Whether it’s because of money or because of race, it’s no good.”

  Élida, Flor, and Ani nodded agreement, and we fell into a satisfied silence. The flow of our discussion had led us there, it seemed, as a kind of conclusion about the novel’s themes and Austen’s contemporary relevance. I thought back to Larry and to my California students and the many connections they’d drawn between their lives and Austen’s romantic entanglements and family dramas. While no one in Antigua had offered to smack any of the characters, they’d certainly enjoyed seeing Mr. Collins knocked down to size by Lizzy and Charlotte.

  And it was clear that for these women, Austen’s world—however far from Guatemala—was still familiar territory.

  After the meal, as we savored our coffee and desserts, I noticed Flor surreptitiously check her watch. Better get to the presents. The whole evening I’d been toting along a large paper bag with string handles, which each of the ladies would eye at random moments. One by one, I removed smaller festive bags from inside and placed them on the table.

  “Flor, this is for you!” I started with her, and soon each member of the group was carefully removing tissue paper and probing into a package.

  If you’re really an Austen fan, a true Janeite in the nerdiest sense, you know that there’s quite a lot of Jane stash out there. Before the Internet, to get it you had to visit hot spots like Bath, where she lived for a stretch, or Chawton Cottage, her last residence, or Winchester, where she died. Now from the comfort of home you can order Austen coffee cups, tea cozies, aprons, kitchen towels, key rings, pens, necklaces, notepads, mouse pads, pillows, bobbleheads, and for the adventurous fan, the Jane Austen action figure (complete with quill pen and paper). I’m proud to say, however, that every goodie I’d brought to Guatemala came directly from hallowed ground, either from the Winchester Cathedral gift store or the shop at Chawton Cottage.

  “Wow, thank you, how adorable!” cried Flor, holding up her Austen key chain, a small portrait of Jane carved onto a delicate oval of wood. Soon an Austen tea towel was revealed and passed around to be admired, then some Austen stationery, a set of Austen coasters, a fancy Austen pen.