A bit of satire ...

 So, I've been reading Jane Austen And Food, and then Jane Austen and Crime, which highlights her fascination with crimes like suicide in her juvenalia.  The popular trope of bad Gothic novel was the suicide of those blighted in love, still a crime in England, and a disgrace on the whole family. And I was moved to start my own satire. It will likely be a short, and unlike Castle Ravencrag, I'm playing it straight, no revenants or sparkly vampires, but I hope it will amuse. I'll leave the notes for continuation in. 

Meantime, I've been doing 3-4 chapters a day of 'fledglings' and I will feel myself able to publish that soon. And go on to Falconburg and Bess. 

Richardson was Austen's favourite author, but she still parodied him on occasion. And Goethe's 'the young Werther' was reckoned the cause of so much suicide across Europe that it was banned in places.

Laurana – a satire

 

Chapter 1

 

Our heroine may be found at first at the robust, if not entirely unladylike, sport of fishing. A charming vision in dimity with a villager bonnet mostly covering her effulgent locks, the fair Laurana concentrated on attracting trout to her line.  Her mother, a romantic, who had named her daughter out of ‘The History of Sir Charles Grandison’ by Samuel Richardson,  had recently expired of a wasting disease brought on by disappointment that the cheerful Laurana possessed none of the qualities of her namesake and showed no disposition at all for melancholy or suicide.  This distressing lack of sensibility was a plain fault in a girl who also had hair far too red to be romantically named ‘auburn’.  Laurana mourned her mother with due obsequy but was of far too buoyant a disposition to permit it to blight her life.

Indeed, Laurana could not but feel a mild contempt for her neighbour and admirer, Matthew Thomson, who dressed most romantically in yellow inexpressibles with top-boots, a blue jacket, yellow waistcoat, and wore his shirt open, in every way like Goethe’s ‘Young Werther,’ and made what Laurana described as ‘sheep’s eyes’ at her. She was pondering her problem of how to deal with the unfortunate youth’s infatuation. He had found her where she was fishing and was pacing up and down.

“I shall kill myself if you can give me no hope,” told her.

“Mattie, you are pulling such faces, I fear you must be constipated,” said Laurana. “Also, you are scaring the fish.”

“Fish? What care I of fish when the girl I adore spurns me?” he declared.

“You’d care if there was nothing to eat,” Laurana retorted. “As for killing yourself, I never heard such nonsense; you’d do better to take a liver pill.”

“You are callous and care nothing for my suffering,” said Matthew, mournfully.

“Of course I care for your suffering,” said Laurana. “But what you are suffering at the moment is mostly a figment of your imagination. You should exercise more.”

“You have no compassion!”

“None at all, if you will behave like an idiot,” said Laurana. “I worry about you, though; you are not acting rationally.”

“Rationally! How can I act rationally when the most beautiful girl in the world will not listen to my pleas for mercy, to be allowed to worship at your feet ...”

“Now that’s downright blasphemous,” said Laurana. “If you want to worship at anyone’s feet, you should go to the church to pray for a better frame of mind.”

“I will drown myself!” cried Matthew. He promptly jumped into the river.

His head appeared, followed by his torso as he stood on the bottom, spitting out a mouthful of water. His artistic dark curls were plastered over his face, and he dripped with slime and weed.  A small frog leaped from his shoulder and back into its watery domains.

Laurana managed not to laugh. She put aside her rod; there would be no more fishing today. She reached out a hand.

“Here, let me help you up, Mattie,” she said. “Dear me, I fear your nether garments will never be the same again,” she added, as his yellow inexpressibles, ineradicably soiled by mud, came on display as she heaved him out onto the bank.

“I didn’t know it was so shallow!” Matthew gasped.

“Just as well it is; you’re not much of a swimmer,” said Laurana.

“Maybe I should shoot myself,” said Matthew.

“Don’t do that,” said Laurana. “Doubtless you would fail to kill yourself properly, and then your father would be put to the trouble and expense of getting a doctor.”

“I should shoot myself in the head.”

“Really? You make such a fuss about the mess you call a hairstyle, wouldn’t it disrupt it?” said Laurana, who perceived that her childhood friend needed to be ridiculed out of his foolishness.

“My hair is always ... usually ... perfect!” cried Matthew.

“Well if you must shoot yourself, then now is the time to do it when you are already bedraggled, and can’t look a lot worse as a corpse,” said Laurana.

“I hate you!” cried Matthew. “I foreswear women!”

“Well, I wish you will do so without dripping on me,” said Laurana.

Matthew stalked off damply, dripping slime as he went.

“Well, with luck he is cured of that nonsense,” said Laurana to the fish she had already caught.

The fish were remarkably reticent with regards to this eventuality.

 

oOoOo

 

 Notes:

Laurana will meet a young man who is ebullient and can’t stand squeamish women, and proceeds to talk about boxing and his war experiences.  Laurana finds him too insensitive.

Matthew meets a girl who is so romantic she considers her mortality and finds her irritating.

 

They both get back together having learned more realistic outlook.