Pride and Perjury
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen fans might secretly wish for undiscovered chapters in the lives and courtships of her heroines. Alice McVeigh offers this in short stories of Jane Bennet’s other admirers, granular detail of Miss Bingley angling for Mr. Darcy and Lydia’s for Wickham. We get downstairs takes on the Bennet household, and inventions of the matrimonial adventures of Anne de Bourgh.
There are risks with this effort. First, most readers know Austen’s plots and resent alternative endings, thus eliminating suspense. Second, the subtle wit of Austen’s prose is nearly inimitable. McVeigh’s scenes can be charming, but they aren’t Austen’s. Third, much of her focus is on Austen’s foil characters who tend to be silly (Lydia), slimy (Wickham), or mildly pathetic (Anne). Time with them can get tiresome. However, beneath the flirting, hat trimming, and courting dances was the agonizing truth of the early 1800s—respectable life required marriage, youth was fleeting, and many faced sacrificing love and happiness for salvation from penury, loneliness or disgrace. McVeigh shows us the desperate machinations of those not blessed with beauty, wit, family connections, or an appetizing dowry.
