Past Activities

Gala to Feature Heroic and Not So Heroic in Austen’s Legacy

The 2007 Gala program, “Heroes, Heartbreakers & Heels: Looking at Plot and Character through an Austen Lens,” will feature two remarkable speakers and another production of the GCR Readers Theater. Please get out your calendars and ink in April 28 at the Allerton Crowne Plaza Hotel on the Miracle Mile in Chicago.

Elisabeth Lenckos, who is always stimulating and entertaining, will discuss heartbreak (and heroines) in her talk, “Jane Decided that She Was Really Much More Like Emma Woodhouse: Plots of Love and Heartbreak Borrowed from Austen.”  I can tell you the “Jane” in question is not Austen. Here is a hint to work out the puzzle: it is a reference to a novel that, like Emma, has a Miss Bates.

Our second speaker is a great JASNA favorite, Sarah Franz. Professor Franz is on the faculty of Fayetteville State University in North Carolina; she will take the “Heroes” portion of our theme. She has published extensively on Austen and is particularly interested in such topics as how women writers create male characters. Her talk, "Following Fitzwilliam and Frederick: Austen's Heroes and the Romantic Novel," will show Austen's influence on subsequent writers.

The third presentation, a performance by our GCR Readers’ Theater Group, relates to the “Heels” portion of the Gala theme: "The Manipulative and the Vicious: Lady Susan in the Best of the Worst of Company." The central figure is arguably Austen’s most morally reprehensible character, Lady Susan Vernon, from the early novel written when Austen was only 19. Laugh at the farce created by Lady Susan's manipulations and the gossip and complaints which follow in her wake.