Tuesday, September 17, 2013

An accomplished woman

In Pride and Prejudice Mr.Darcy adds one critical component to Miss Bingley's list of musts of an accomplished woman -- "improvement of her mind by extensive reading"

In this original watercolor you can see Elizabeth Bennet, who loves a good book, reading one by a sunny window. She is wearing a yellow day dress and a blue ribbon in her hair.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

A good novel

This watercolor was inspired by the passage in Northanger Abbey where Jane Austen defends the novel. I smile every time I read it. So in this watercolor you see Catherine, absorbed in a good novel and in the background an excerpt from the Northanger Abbey, unfortunately the whole text didn't fit, but here is the rest of it for you to read:
"Oh! it is only a novel!" replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. -- "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;" or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.