In case you missed it in the comments, I received another message from the President of the Jane Austen Society of North America (or Lady Catherine de Bourgh as some of us are affectionately calling her, for I feel just like Lizzy being taken to task - in my case, for polluting the shades of the offices of JASNA, I suppose).
I will share her additional reply here, along with a few comments and then we are getting off the crazy train and back to the business of this project! Which, lest you forget amid the sturm und drang of this drama, is not a battle with the US version of the Jane Austen Mother Ship.
Here you go:
My dear Miss Stewart,
I understand that, after receiving my message last night, you sent a kind repsonse to the JASNA web master thanking her for providing reading suggestions for your project. I'm sure you appreciate that JASNA could not put you in touch with our 4,000+ members, whose privacy we respect.
Your response regarding my message is very much in the spirit of Marianne Dashwood before she married Col. Brandon and began her course of study. Jane Austen satirizes Marianne's conviction that it is her right to display her feelings in public without restraint and that to do otherwise would be artificial and false. Marianne is rude to Mrs. Jennings without compunction and abuses Eleanor for acting withing the bounds established by polite society. Austen makes it clear that, as Marianne matures, she learns to value the advice of others and abandons her former conduct.
Pardon me if I note that you could benefit from Austen's message about Marianne. If you stand back and review the tone of your postings, you may see on whose side the rudeness lies.
I remain your humble servant,
Marsha Huff
I will not be replying personally again as this has gone far enough. I do have a few things to mention, though:
1) You started it.
2) Um, we live in the 21st Century. Just a friendly reminder.
3) JASNA is not the CIA. I didn't ask for the membership email list. I asked for my message to be emailed or added to a newsletter or sent to whoever might handle inquiries of its kind.
4) A blog is public and usually personal. That's the nature of them. (Perhaps this is an unresolvable misunderstanding as a result of us clearly not dwelling in the same century. See Item 1.)
5) I am not your Dear Miss Anything.
6) Because I am a nice person, despite the not-so-thinly veiled suggestion to the contrary: no hard feelings.
Moving on!
I am to attend an English Country Dance this evening at St. Mark's Church, hosted by the Baltimore Folk Music Society (www.bfms.org).
I'm excited to go, terrified to make a fool out of myself, and wishing I had something new to wear.
Actually, I'm more nervous about completely screwing up and throwing off my partner and the nearby couples in the line. I suppose that if that is even possible, they've experienced that before, know how to handle it, and all will be well.
I'm off to review the dance scenes in P&P, just in case.
Speaking of Lizzy Bennet, I will borrow her words as my final comment to Ms. Huff and anyone who agrees with her: "I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me."
Email. Such a minefield of misunderstanding. So easy to take offense at a comment that seemed innocuous to the writer. I thought the volunteer's original response, while it may not have completely satisfied you, was not inappropriate. It sounds like she had no way of knowing how far along you already were with assembling your reading list.
And yes, you're right: the world of blogging, just like the world of email and those annoying people with cell phones who carry on very personal conversations while standing right next to you, calls for a whole new set of etiquette guidelines. Perhaps you might take a stab at it? Wouldn't etiquette research be an appropriate area of study? I have two books: a 1945 Emily Post and a _1915 Encyclopaedia of Etiquette_ by Emily Holt. Neither discusses email, but the Holt book has illustrations.
Oh, and you were GORGEOUS on the dance floor. Flawless.
Posted by: Barbara | 09/08/2009 at 07:49 PM