Lessons from a Jane Austen inspired book

🙊▼Spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.▼

I recently finished reading an Advanced Reader Copy (ARC) of The Austen Affair and was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. No, I didn't go into it expecting to hate it or to find it barely tolerable. When I started reading it I found myself in a gray area where I wondered if I'd like a contemporary take on the regency era where Jane Austen is involved, and looked forward to how the modern-day characters would react to life in that time period. Basically, I knew it would go either way.

It's been a few days since I finished it and posted a review for it (which you can find here) and I'm still thinking about the parts of the book that can be applied to life, that can be called "lessons" on how to grow and improve our view of what we have. In my review, I found myself raving about the characters realistic behavior, and I must say that while I don't usually like a too-realistic-that-it-becomes-annoying character, the main characters, Tess and Hugh, were okay in that aspect. Just like real people I did not love everything that they did, but their growth as fictional characters made me think of how we can continue to grow as people. Who says that we can't learn anything from rom-coms?

Navigate through grief, but don't let it control you.

Tess and Hugh are, whether I liked to admit it while I was reading the book, both sides of the same coin of grief. If such a thing exists; if not, I'm coining it. Tess is someone with grief from her mother's death, which is something that happens in her past, while Hugh holds grief for what he is aware will inevitably happen soon, which is the death of his ill father. Despite the usual behavior that has been ingrained in many of us, these characters don't ignore the grief until it goes away by itself (honestly, we know it doesn't go away, it sometimes disguises its ugly face as something else that we try to ignore until it comes running to tackle us down at Walmart while we're shopping for laundry detergent because something sparked a memory. Where are the tissues?). 

Through at least a dozen chapters filled with laughter, tears, and conversations with new friends and 200-years-removed family, the protagonists realize that grief is not the arrow that they should follow in life, because it isn't allowing them to live fully as who they are and can be. Tess sees that she can't continue aiming for what her mother would've liked to see, and Hugh accepts that he needs to use the time that he has left with his father.

What happened in the past can no longer be changed, and the future will come nonetheless, and the grief reserved for it becomes self flagellation when we allow it to guide every decision that we make. It needs to be seen and untangled, for us to live life in our own terms.

Let other women know when someone is trying to play them.

There is a scene in the book that I quite enjoyed. Tess warns another woman about a regency fuckboy man who clearly has no good intentions with anyone. He had been flirting with Tess and even put her reputation on the line by cornering her and making advances while the family was just a few rooms away. Luckily, she escapes and manages to mostly avoid him afterwards. He moves on to another young woman who has become smitten by his attentions and appears to be falling for whatever he is telling her during a lively event with music and dancing (a fuckboy's hunting grounds).

Tess holds her hand gently and tells her clearly that this man is not someone with good intentions for her nor for anyone else, and luckily the other woman admits that she was sensing a bad energy from him and hears the advice. It's such as a small part of the scene, but it filled me with joy. Tess did not like the other young woman, as she is not very kind to her younger sister, but she saw that a woman's life was at stake and intervened, because I'm sure she'd liked someone else doing that for her. I am aware that the recipient of such advice may not always take it kindly, but speaking up is what should be done, afterwards, we may only hope that they realize what we mean.

Watch what you say and whom you say it to.

It wouldn't be a regency novel without the gossiping sessions and passing gossip casually as one gets measured for a new dress. In multiple scenes, I saw how Tess just couldn't hold her mouth with a few people and manages to undo the work that she and Hugh have achieved between themselves and with other characters around them. Not only is she imprudent, but she can be careless and needy for attention, which is a horrible mix that leads to a spiral of chaos.

As a word of advice given the scenes in this book, not everything needs to be said, and if you feel like some piece of gossip is really bouncing around inside you and can no longer be held, think of who you're talking to. Some people may easily hear you and then turn around to share with others what you said in confidence, giving you some unwanted attention from those who are not your friends.

Don't let the ghost of someone dictate your life.

This point is similar to the first one except that the aspect in which grief was mentioned was in matters of death, while when I say "the ghost" of person here, it can be someone who still lives but no longer holds a space in our lives. In this case, it is the former romantic partner of Hugh that has become the ghost that haunts him and whispers in his head. Her words became constraints on him, making him self-aware of his vocabulary, behavior, and even of his posture until he cracked and couldn't recognize himself beyond what she had told him.

I loved seeing his growth and realizing that the words of his ex only have as much power as he gives them, that he is more than how she described him. Just like Hugh, releasing the weight of a ghost can allow for growth and remove the blindfold that was placed on us.

Collect the present to have it as history.

Journal! Make videos! Take pictures! Because you will want to admire your great-grandmother's face when you are in your 60s and surrounded by your own grandchildren as you tell them the story of how the behind-the-scenes of that picture. In just a few generations, the stories that we know as boring, but that shaped our homes and traditions, may be forgotten and erased from our family histories, leaving our future generations without much clue of where they came from and who their family members were.

Don't allow yourself nor your family members to become only a name and two dates in a headstone; the media you make and stories you gather now will help the future of your family know you as the person you where and what you had to say.

An rival might not become a lover, but they can become a friend.

Some people may classify The Austen Affair as an enemies-to-lovers and I can say that they are wrong (they are not enemies!). Tess and Hugh are work rivals  (that barely know each other) with lots of tension and flowering hatred that gets stronger as the scenes are filmed on set. Through banter, dialogue, and the need to survive as well as protect each other in the 1800s, they grow closer and realize that they are only humans with high walls and distorted self-perceptions because of what has been told to them by their exes or is being spread by the media. Their rivalry is exposed as tension to survive in the Hollywood scene and be taken seriously.

Tess and Hugh's relationship becomes romantic, but not all rivalries should go that way. In a world where people are struggling to survive and deal with the constant bumps of life, a friendship with a former rival can go a longer way than a romance. 

So, have you read The Austen Affair or plan on reading it?