On Friday, I offered a short history of sequels to the novels of Jane Austen and novels that situate themselves in Austen’s “world”; for simplicity’s sake, let’s call them all sequels. I began down that path by wondering how this trend of sequel-writing had progressed to pairing Jane Austen with zombies, vampires, and sea monsters.

But perhaps first the question to be asked is why Austen’s novels are open to creative adaptation at all. The obvious answer is that two of them were left unfinished; and indeed, the first two sequels published, written by two of Austen’s nieces, endeavored to provide endings for Sanditon and The Watsons. However, there have been only seven (that I can find) novels responding to The Watsons and five to Sanditon. There are dozens to Pride and Prejudice.

marriage

Emma Tennant, whose Austen sequels include Pemberley and Emma in Love, says that it is because Austen always ended with marriage that the books are open to sequels. Beside the intrinsic happiness in the occasion of a marriage, a marriage promises children, and therefore a new story.

But while this theory might explain most sequels, it does not explain Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, nor does it offer any clues as to why sequel authors choose to show us Mr. Darcy’s Daughters and not Beatrice and Benedick Four Years Later, or Isabella Marries the Duke (two imaginary titles for sequels to Shakespeare plays that might prove just as entertaining, I think).

Austen’s novels are not just about marriage. To many Janeites, her novels represent an attractive system of morals, decorum, and good taste, which they believe is lost to modern society. As a writer, Austen is admired for her masterful use of irony and realism; she is often compared to Shakespeare.

shakespeare

For shock value, zombies can do nothing better than to attack a world with this sort of reputation, both social and literary. At the same time, perhaps the paranormal genre, by allying itself with Austen (doesn’t Pride and Prejudice and Zombies list the authors as Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith?) makes a statement about its own standing as literature. Or maybe not.

Shakespeare’s plays also have a rich history of inspiring sequels and novelistic commentaries. Some are created to honor the original plays; some to appropriate their literary status; some to satirize them. Maybe Austen’s supernatural sequels are the modern equivalent of the latter.

Austen’s novels are unique in being claimed by popular and high culture alike. They belong equally to the realms of book club and graduate seminar. It is perhaps both an embrace of the first and reaction against the second that makes Austen’s books so attractive to zombies.

your turn

It’s difficult and perhaps inane to formulate a theory on a topic like this. I could have missed the mark completely—what do you think?

There have been about one hundred and fifty literary works that adapt and build upon or even complete Austen’s works, including a collection of imaginative essays, a handful of short stories, and a one-act play. What has become a tradition was kicked off by Austen’s own relatives: her niece Anna Austen Lefroy completed Austen’s manuscript of Sanditon in the 1830s or 40s; and in 1850 Mrs. Catherine Hubback, née Austen, another niece, published The Younger Sister, a completion of Austen’s other fragment, The Watsons. Austen’s great-grandnieces are still publishing derivative works today: Joan Austen-Leigh, a great great grandniece of Austen who lives in Canada, has written A Visit to Highbury and Later Days at Highbury, both of which explore the world of Emma.

The first true sequel, however, appeared in 1913: Sybil G. Brinton’s Old Friends and New Fancies, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, which has far and away the largest numbers of sequels and is followed by a pretty even number for Emma and Mansfield Park. Old Friends and New Fancies tells of the later lives of Georgiana Darcy, Kitty Bennett, and Colonel Fitzwilliam, but Elinor Ferrars becomes the confidant of Elizabeth Darcy when Edward Ferrars becomes rector at the Pemberley church; the Darcys meet the Wentworths when on vacation in Bath and Anne and Elizabeth become fast friends; and the Crawfords and the Knightleys also make appearances.

The publication of sequels was slow but steady until 1949, when three novels and one play appeared; then for nearly twenty-five years no further sequels appeared. Although it is difficult to make judgements as to causes, it seems likely that the comparative glut of Austen sequels in 1949 might have been a late reaction to the first-ever movie adaptation, Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. But perhaps so many Austen-inspired novels glutted the market for the next two decades. The next sequel appeared in 1973.

Things picked up again in the mid-1990s, and this time it is easy to see the relationship between the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, the Emma Thompson adaptation of Sense and Sensibility of the same year and the upswing in sequel production. There have been close to one hundred sequels and derivative novels since then, including Bridget Jones, The Jane Austen Book Club, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, and a series of mystery novels by Stephanie Barron that feature Jane Austen herself as detective.

On Monday I will post a follow-up article on why I think this sequel trend has led to zombies.

As we walked into the bistro, dressed in our graduation finery, one of my aunts remarked that she, herself, hated to spend very much money on a meal, or a bottle of wine. “It’s gone so quickly, you can’t really enjoy it,” she said. “I’d rather spend my money on something I can hold in my hands.”

My aunt hit on what might be two basic varieties of consumer:

• Those who seek to purchase an experience, which is often synonymous with aesthetic quality.
• Those who prefer to spend on objects that can be accumulated, shown off, and enjoyed repeatedly.

Type one consumers might be people who enjoy wine, fine food, and travelling. Type twos collect Hummel figurines, have large jewellery boxes, and rarely own a car for longer than five years.

In case you already are penning an indignant and/or witty comment, let me assure you that the above distinctions (and those about to be made) are tongue-in-cheek and in no way scientific. I establish this binary in order to produce a theory on a related topic. In fact, while I myself exhibit many of the tendencies of a type one consumer, I also accumulate books at an alarming rate and have, in the recent past, caused quite a few chuckles when I remarked that a pearl necklace was a smart purchase as an “investment piece.”

Book buyers are type two consumers. We struggle against the impulse to save money buying books online because we covet the experience of stepping into a familiar bookstore, padding quietly between shelves, running fingers over spines to feel the prettiness of the covers. Find a possible match, open it and smell the paper, the ink; turn the pages and admire the chapter titles, make the commitment and stand at the cash register feeling—nervous, excited, hopeful, longing—walk home with it safely tucked under one arm, into purse. We choose both bookshelves and bags and sometimes homes and boyfriends based on the amount of books that can fit into them. Our favorite volumes are arranged at eye-level so we can show them off but also draw comfort from their presence.

For all of this, I am happy to pay $30 (or £30) for a book. But for an e-book? Here I pause. What would I pay for that?

Perhaps e-book buyers are type one consumers. Collecting objects is not as important as purchasing an experience. They are happy to pay a higher price for a better quality (not a product, really, but) experience. Perhaps the difficulty in convincing consumers that some e-books ought to cost more than $10 is really a difficulty in convincing them that some e-books can provide an experience worth, say, $30.

But how do you do that? My theorizing is at an end for today, but I would love to hear your comments.