My Jane Austen Year

Virginia State Arboretum

Sometime last year I joined a group that reads a chapter of Jane Austen a day. We started with Sense and Sensibility and kept going. Now we’re all the way to Emma, my favorite. But even the books I didn’t love I loved reading because isn’t the Jane Austen life the quarantine life we all wished we were living? Having tea with our bubble, taking walks in the shrubbery, and everything turns out okay in the end?

It has impacted my life too. Now every time Zoom tells me I have a poor connection I don’t rage about my WiFi, I hear it in a Jane Austen voice. “Poor connection.” And I think yes, all of these people on Zoom are poor connections. I should be doing something better.

When I walk with my kids in a beautiful location like the one pictured above I have been know to walk ahead of them while they talk about Minecraft so I can think about Mr. Darcy or whatever. I imagine getting dressed up in my petticoats and muslin and walking through the paths, and the worst thing that can happen to me is that it rains and I need to spend a week at Netherfield recovering.

Thank you Jane Austen for writing those books all those years ago that have kept me company this year. You made a bleak year seem a little less bleak.