Actually, that gives an incorrect impression that somehow I would have known the REAL chapter 1, if only I were a smarter, better, writer. What I should say is I realized that my current chapter 15 would be an EXCELLENT chapter 1 and that the book will be much much better for moving all the chapters around. It happens that that are currently only two chapters after 15. When I wrote my actual first words, they were a place for me to jump in.

NOW I can get to my post

Anyway, I’ve been working on Lucy and Thrale and thinking about them a lot even though because of all the interruptions I haven’t gotten in as many words as I’d like. And then I realized that I need a place for Thrale to live. I gave him a vague location in Lord Ruin, but now I need to know about the interior and his relationship to it.

This meant I pulled out my reference books to start looking at pictures and diagrams and about five minutes later I started getting annoyed at whoever deiced homes should be build with 8 ft ceilings instead of 10 or 12 feet and THEN I started wondering about the kind of ethos in which a class of persons, who cannot help but see people living in squalid homes, build themselves houses that big and that spacious.

Sometimes, when I’m staring out my window thinking about a plot point, or character issue, I think wouldn’t it be nice to be a bird? Because then I wouldn’t have to go to work. I’d just flit around all day looking for seeds or bugs or what have you. Plus, birds don’t stay up too late and then remember 4.5 hours later why it was a bad idea to keep reading :::damnalarmclock:::

And THEN I remember that birds also do not have grocery stores. They have to get their own food ALL THE TIME and there are predators who think of them as dinner.

There WAS such a thing as Bad Taste

And so, as I flip through the pages of my Lost Mansions of Mayfair, glad, after all, that I am not a bird, I see photographic evidence of people with a lot more money than most. Some of them built big houses and then decorated the decorations until you think your eyes might actually bleed. It is in fact, possible to go too far with the bling. Seriously. There must have been some snickering going on with people who thought bling is an additive property. MORE!! MORE!!! Byzantene Good. Rococo Great! Byzantine AND Rococo BETTTER!!!!!

Then again, suppose you hired cheap with the architectural work and when you come see your new home for the first time? GAHHHHH!!! And you blew your wad on someone who thinks there’s no such thing as too busy.

While I’m on the subject, sometimes I see pictures of period gowns and I think the dress is ugly. There. I said it. Some of those dresses had too much frilly crap all over the place.

Thrale’s Fate?

So, what kind of house does Thrale have? I think maybe his father had awful taste…..

ETA: Sorry about the late post! I put the wrong date when I scheduled it. Sheesh.

Lady Kendra has led a long fruitful life. But as a young woman, and in a major turning point of her life, her time with Charles Thomas was cut remarkably short. To ease her mind, she sends him a heart-filled note.

Dear Mr. Thomas,

I realize it is most inappropriate for me to send you this letter, but rest assured I have my husband’s utmost approval. It has been many years since I last saw you, and the memory still haunts my dreams I fear. I thought if I could enlighten you to my situation we might each finally move forward, where ever that might be for you now.

Since that most fateful day aboard the Cecilé, I married Joseph. True, he was a most successful magician, but I am pleased to say he has proved an even more devoted husband and father. We have four beautiful children. Our eldest and heir to Yarmouth named Charles for you, my dear friend. You would be most proud of Charles, for he is a brilliant scholar and benefactor of The School for the Poor and Unfortunate. The others fell closely in his footsteps in their efforts to realize your dreams. Aaron, our most athletic is an avid hunter and horseman. Our girls, twins, mind, Julia and Jane, followed in their father’s way with his magic. Oh, not that Joseph would allow them to tread the boards! But he taught them all of his silly parlour tricks on which the two took to perfecting and creating with havoc of their own.

For many years, I kept in very close contact with your mother, to her very end. I am proud she called me Friend. Finally, you will be most happy to know my husband reads a beautiful poem or story to me each and every night when we retire, and on occasion, I find I quite enjoy reading one to him as well.

I hope this note will offer you the peace that is descending on me as I pen it.

Yours forever, most devotedly so,

Kendra Frazier, Lady Yarmouth

From the back cover:  Lady Kendra Frazier is devastated. The love of her life just married another, and now all she desires is to be as far away as possible. Viscount Lawrie, Joseph Pinetti Gray, is facing financial ruin and needs a wealthy heiress. Luckily for him, Kendra’s impetuous nature has handed him the fortuity he requires to save his family’s downfall. But Joseph’s carefully cultivated plans come to a grinding halt when he finds himself falling in love for what should have only been a marriage of convenience. And how can an old cursed doll help?

The Oklahoma Romance Writers of America, through The Wild Rose Press, have a series of books. Each Tales of the Scrimshaw Doll book must meet a certain criteria. This criteria includes a tie to Oklahoma in some fashion, portraying the curse of the doll accurately, must be romance and the hero/heroine cannot have been married to one another previously.

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Kae Elle Wheeler has a BA degree from the University of Central Oklahoma in Management Information Systems that includes over forty credit hours of vocal music. As a computer programmer the past fifteen years, she utilizes karaoke for her vocal music talents. Other passions include fantasy football, NBA and musical theatre season tickets, and jazzercise. Because to quote Nora Roberts to a one time question, if she worked out? Her reply, “You have to get off your ass.”

Kae began has been a member of the Oklahoma Chapter of Romance Writer’s of America and the RWA since March of 2007. She grew up in the Dallas area and definitely considers herself a city girl. She does not limit her travels to Writer Conferences in San Francisco, Washington DC, Seattle, Dallas, New Jersey, New York City and Atlanta because Jazzercise has fun conferences too (Denver, Palm Springs and Orlando). You can’t keep her at home!

She is a member of several RWA Chapters, including DARA, The Beau Monde and Passionate Ink. She has held several positions in the OKRWA Chapter, currently serving as Programs Director. As an avid reader of romance and patron of theatre, her main sources of inspiration come from mostly an over-active imagination. She currently resides in Edmond, Oklahoma with her musically talented husband, Al, and their bossy cat, Carly.

In honor of release day, I’m giving away one signed copy of A Reputation for Notoriety to one lucky commenter chosen at random.

The back cover blurb of A Reputation for Notoriety

Raising the stakes…

As the unacknowledged son of the lecherous Lord Westleigh, John “Rhys” Rhysdale was forced to earn a crust gambling on the streets. Now he owns the most thrilling new gaming establishment in London.

Witnessing polite society’s debauchery and excess every night, Rhys prefers to live on its fringes, but a mysterious masked lady tempts him into the throng.

Lady Celia Gale, known only as Madame Fortune, matches Rhys card for card and kiss for stolen kiss. But the stakes are raised when Rhys discovers she’s from the very world he despises…

The Masquerade Club.
Identities concealed, desires revealed…

The first review!

4 Stars! “…It’s passionate, intense and seductive. The characters are lively with pulsating sexual tension and there are enough secrets, scandals and complications to make a lady swoon with glee!” — Maria Ferrer, RT BOOKReviews (read the whole review)

I wanted to write a gaming hell story and a story about a bastard son. Thus A Reputation for Notoriety was born. The question for me was what kind of gaming house did I want? I certainly did not want my hero to run a disreputable gaming house and I wanted one that society ladies could attend. The only way I could think of that a lady could attend would be in a mask, but I’d already used that idea in The Wagering Widow. I couldn’t repeat that idea.

Or could I? I decided to use the same gaming house that appeared in The Wagering Widow and to use the hero’s memory of the wagering widow as the idea for his house. I suppose this “proves” that all my Regency people really do live in the same “world.”

I like to think of it that way. I like to think that they all really existed and lived the lives I imagined for them. I like to think that they might pass each other on a Mayfair street or choose the same books from Hachards. While characters in one book are enmeshed in conflict, I like to think that others are living their happily-ever-after.

The latest of my Regency people will begin their story tomorrow. Look for A Reputation for Notoriety on bookstore shelves tomorrow or for sale from online vendors. The ebook version will appear June 1.

Do you like to imagine the people in books are real? What has been keeping you busy these days? Comment for a chance to win a signed copy of A Reputation for Notoriety.

Thanks to Myretta for always stepping in when I flake over here–which has been happening far too often (rhetorical question: Does life EVER slow down?).
I’d like to share the cover and the blurb for my novella, Baring It All, which comes out June 24th.

Megan Frampton turns up the heat on one bride-to-be and her oblivious bridegroom in this steamy and scandalous eBook original novella of Regency romance.

It is with great discretion that this columnist discusses the sensitive topic of undergarments. Some ladies, it seems, do not pay strict attention to what they wear under their gowns. A crucial error, my ladies.

Lady Violet knows Lord Christian Jepstow is interested in women. The problem is, he hasn’t seemed to realize that Violet is a living, breathing woman—a woman with needs. Which is a huge problem, considering the fact that Violet and Christian are betrothed. Violet has no intention of saying her vows without knowing if her husband has the capacity to love her properly, so she does what anyone would do in her situation—she steps into his study and offers to take off her clothes. What happens next could be an utter disaster . . . or it could be surprising, seductive, and sizzlingly sexy.

I’ve just gotten the edits back for my October full-length, What Not to Bare, and so will be immersed in that world for the next week or so (the edits are minimal, yay!).

And now back to writing, and battling ear infections (ugh!), and trying to convince a recalcitrant 13 year-old to brush his very long hair, and such.

Hope everyone is doing well!

Megan

I’m never sure where I fit in during discussions of the State of the Regency, because I never can decide just how much of a Regency writer I am. Back when the Golden Heart and Ritas had two separate categories for Regencies and other historicals, I used to angst endlessly about where to enter my books. What if I entered them in Regency and got marked down for not having enough ballrooms and dukes? Or what if I entered them in historical, only to have some judge see the “1811″ dateline at the top of the first chapter and think, “Hey! This is a Regency. I’m sick of Regencies. If I wanted to judge one, I would’ve signed up for that category.”

In the end, I entered The Sergeant’s Lady as a historical and its prequel, A Marriage of Inconvenience, as a Regency. Why? Well, The Sergeant’s Lady is set almost entirely in Spain during the Peninsular War with, as the title makes clear, a common sergeant as a hero. Despite its 1811-12 setting and British protagonists, it just doesn’t feel Regency. A Marriage of Inconvenience, on the other hand, is a house party story set in Gloucestershire, with a wealthy viscount for a hero and a poor relation cousin of a baronet for a heroine. Regency tropes everywhere you look.

My third book, An Infamous Marriage, is maybe a half-Regency. The hero and heroine are of the gentry rather than the nobility, and though they move in exalted circles in Brussels in the run-up to Waterloo because of the hero’s rank as a major-general, that’s not what their story is about. And my fourth book, A Dream Defiant, despite its 1813 setting is another non-Regency–it takes place in Spain in the aftermath of the Battle of Vittoria, the hero is a black soldier (the son of Virginian slaves who ran away to the British army and freedom during the American Revolution) and the heroine is another soldier’s widow, an ordinary village girl whose ambition in life is to take over her home village’s posting inn and make it famous for serving the best meals on the Great North Road.

I don’t want the Regency to die because I have such an insatiable passion for the opening 15 years or so of the 19th century. I mean, what would I do with all my research books if i couldn’t base my novels upon their contents?

But when I write my Regencies (or Regencies in year only, as the case may be), I’m trying my best to ground them in a specific place and time–and that’s what I’d like to see more of in the genre as a whole. I know a lot of writers and readers love historicals for the “Once Upon a Time” feeling, and the last thing I want to do is deny anyone the pleasure of the stories they like best. But for myself I don’t want once upon a time. I want 1812 at the Battle of Salamanca, or Seattle in the 1850′s, or Philadelphia in 1776. And I don’t want the only alternatives to Regency to be Victorian, Western, and Medieval. I want Colonial American historicals. I want more stories set on the West Coast, like Bonnie Dee’s lovely Captive Bride. I want a Civil War romance from the Union side. Given the role of women at the time it’d be tricky to pull off, but I’d love to see an ancient Greek romance set sometime around the Greco-Persian wars. And so many more. I want more history–in my Regencies and across the genre.

What about you? What unexplored corners of the Regency world would you like to see more of? And what other periods of history strike your fancy?

Janet is so incredibly lazy that she asked me to write today’s blog. She also took far too long to feed me today and has invited strangers into the front yard to take down her tree, thwarting any desire I might have to eat grass followed by recreational vomiting.

So, the Regency. Not a good time for cats. No reproductive rights, persecuted for our beautiful coats and tuneful intestines. Portrayed, as you can see, as grotesque gluttons or sneaky criminals.

Excuse me, I must go eat.

Where was I? Oh yes, the Regency. A time of persecution and–

OMG what is that on the ceiling?

Never mind. Hey, I bet you can’t get your leg up by your ear and do this.

Any other cats out there who wish to comment?

What I have continued to hear throughout my writing life is that Regencies sell and sell a lot. You can’t sell Victorian! ::::Courtney Milan:::: You can’t sell Edwardian ::::Sherry Thomas:::: You can’t sell Georgian ::::Jo Beverly:::: No more Scotsmen! And for God’s sake, not Culloden! ::::Monica McCarty::::

For a long while, the Angsty Historical was IN IN IN!! Right now, they’re a hard sell. Oh my GOD!! Nobody tell Cecilia Grant!  And what about lighthearted historical romances? Are they In or Out? The answer is yes.

Publishers will always buy more of what’s sold in the past, and they will keep doing that until 1) people stop buying them and/or 2) someone comes along with an extraordinary book that breaks with the past– because editors, while of course they buy what’s sold in the past, also, from time to time, buy a damn good book that isn’t like what’s popular. And should that damn good book break out, then of course publishers will buy more of that, too.

Now there’s self-publishing thrown in there. But first, what’s the one thing publishing DOESN’T do that every other company does? Yes. Market testing. Publishing doesn’t survey the end-user. They don’t focus group covers or (to my knowledge) A/B test anything. Publishers know next to nothing about what readers are inclined to buy. The traditional market, driven by middlemen who purchase for Big Stores, has removed publishers from the consumer who would, in the aggregate, buy more varied books except that the middleman (the stores who buy lots and lots of only a few books) has artificially whittled down the selection.

In other words, the genetic diversity required for a robust, healthy population withered away in the face of a dangerous inbreeding. The problem with limited diversity is you don’t realize it’s unhealthy until the offspring are dying. Or one of the studs or brood mares dies. In this somewhat tortured analogy, the offspring are the books, the studs and brood mares are the Big Chains.

One day, After All the Editors Went Home, the Slush Pile and an Abandoned Marketing Research Plan Partied Hard

Nine months later …..

A baby!!!

They named it Self-publishing. But all its rowdy friends call it Indie for short.

Because, really, what is self-publishing but one big genetically diverse market test for publishers? Setting aside all the missteps so far, self-publishing is a crucible from which shiny new kinds of stories emerge market-tested. Traditional publishers can watch what catches on, and place their bets with greater confidence than before. 50 Shades proved there’s a bigger market for erotic romance than they knew. “New Adult” showed up in self-publishing first. If publishers manage to get their Beer Goggles off, they may find they’re in a good place.

Oh, Historical, Where Art Thou?

As the publishing ecosystem continues its transformation, we’ll see Indie authors do riskier things with their stories — and they can do it because they don’t have to listen to anyone tell them they can’t publish a story with THAT in it. They can write in the mid-Victorian period if they want. And maybe that story will crash and burn because (all other things being equal) what readers want is a Regency. Or a Vampire. Or something else. But there WILL be new and different historicals.

So. What do YOU think?

She was born Jeanette-Francoise Julie Adelaide Bernard to royal notary Jean Bernard and his beautiful wife Marie Julie in Lyon in 1777, where she was educated at the Convent de la Deserte before the family moved to Paris.  The family’s fortunes went down during the Revolution, and she was married at the age of 15 to wealthy banker and family friend Jacques-Rose Recamier (the rumor had it that he had an affair with her mother and Juliette was his natural daughter, but this was never proven…).  Recamier himself said “I am not in love with her, but I feel for her a genuine and tender attachment which convinces me that this interesting creature will be a partner who will ensure the happiness of my whole life and, judging by my own desire to ensure her happiness, of which I can see she is absolutely convinced, I have no doubt that the benefit will be reciprocal …. She possesses germs of virtue and principle such as are seldom seen so highly developed at so early an age ; she is tender-hearted, affectionate, charitable and kind, beloved in her home-circle and by all who know her”

The marriage was never consumated, but Juliette kept herself busy with a popular salon that was crowded with artistic and political stars of the day.  Her health was never very good, so she often reclined on the low sofa now called a “recamier” in her honor, but that didn’t stop the conversation.  She had a long romance with Francois-Rene Chateaubriand, the writer, politician, and historian often considered to be the founder of French literary Romanticism.  She had other admirers, including the duc de Montmorency, Lucien Bonaparte, Prince Augustus of Prussia, and the baron de Barante.

But one person who didn’t admire her was Napoleon, especially considering her friendship with Germaine de Stael and her refusal to be a lady-in-waiting to Empress Josephine.  She was exiled from Paris, traveling to rome and Naples, and to stay with Madame de Stael in Switzerland (where they came up with a scheme for her to divorce in order to marry Prince Augustus, but it never worked out).  Sadly, she lost much of her fortune late in life, but still carried on her famous salon from her apartment at the convent of L’Abbaye-aux-Bois, until she died of cholera in 1849 and was buried in Montmarte.

Her style is still influential, especially to those of us who love the Regency period!  Everyone knows her image, even those who don’t know who she was…

A few sources for her eventful life:

Eduoard Herriot, Madame Recamier (1906)

H. Noel Williams, Madame Recamier and her Friends (1901)

Stephane Paccoud, Juliette Recamier: Muse et mecene (2009)

At the end of the blog Jane says:

I’m not going to launch a historical romance campaign.  I think I’m actively looking for the historical romance genre to die.  For Regency dukes to molder into dust.  For dashing  earls to be crushed.  Only then can the genre reinvent itself.  I don’t want to save the historical romance genre. I want it to die and from the ashes, maybe then, a new and fresh historical voices will arise unconstrained by both reader, editor and agent expectations.

Of the 122 comments, several remarked about being tired of Regency and blaming the “demise” of the Historical Romance on the fact that the vast majority are Regency. One commenter said:

I have tried writing Regency but, as you pointed out, there are no original plots and the readership for this period is so knowledgeable I wouldn’t dare get the slightest flick of a fan out of place!

No original plots? (and I try so hard….)

Other commenters complained about what we’ve discussed here many times, the “wallpaper” historical, one that puts the characters in costume but has them acting in 21st century ways. Can’t disagree with that personally, although I know some readers prefer this sort of Regency.

The discussion apparently began with a blog on All About Romance, asking Where Have All The Historical Romances Gone? with some of the same points made, especially in the comments.

Evangaline Holland joined the debate in her blog post, The Trouble With Historical Romance. In the comments she remarked that other romance genres ebb and flow with changing tastes and audiences, but she cited this parenthetical example:

(look at how quickly Harlequin’s contemporary romance lines shift and morph based on audience response, whereas Harlequin Historical–once in danger of being axed completely–shifts at a comparatively glacial pace).

I must remark that saying this about Harlequin Historical is a misconception. HH has never given up Westerns, even when other publishers did, and they’ve experimented with lots of different time periods and settings: Jeannie Linn’s Chinese historicals, Ancient Rome, Vikings, Irish Medevials, Amanda’s Elizabethans and more.

Suffice to say that I found all these discussions about historical romance very interesting. The various opinions about Regency Historical Romance was often daunting and discouraging–I also thought they were at least partially true.

That little anxious mini-me who lives inside my brain was wailing, “What’s the use!” Her chin was on the floor and she was halfway to believing that nobody liked Regencies anymore.

Until my dh and I went to Old Town Coffee Tea & Spice in Alexandria with a friend. We were there a long time, picking out lots of loose tea, so we were getting pretty chummy with the salesclerk, a woman in her 50s, I’d guess.

My dh asked her, “Do you read romance novels?” (I was as surprised as she was at the question. My dh is not usually my publicist!)

She responded, “Yes.” She paused for a few seconds. “But I only read Regencies.”

Next time we go, I’m bringing her a book!

So what do you think?
Do you think the Historical Romance genre should die so it can be resurrected into something better?
Do you think Regency plots are over done? If so, which ones?
Do you think the problem with Historicals is there is not enough diversity of time periods? If so, what time periods and settings would you like to see more of?

Mothers don’t often fare well in Jane Austen’s world. In fact, many have been buried by the time we meet their offspring. Emma Woodhouse’s mother has been long gone by the time we meet her managing younger daughter and, as Persuasion begins, Lady Elliot is a mere memory to poor Anne, left to contend with her self-involved father and sisters.

Of the living, in Mansfield Park, Fanny Price’s slatternly mother has sent her off to live with her aunts and uncle, most of whom see her as unpaid help (if they see her at all). In Sense and Sensibility, poor Mrs. Dashwood is deprived of her entailed home and comfortable income after the untimely death of her husband and goes to live in a cottage where she pretty much gives over the role of caretaker to Elinor, her eldest daughter.

Catherine Morland appears to have a loving and reasonable mother (a rarity among Austen mothers), but we don’t see much of her. She sends her daughter off with friends to visit Bath and then to Northanger Abbey. When, later, Catherine is unceremoniously dumped in a coach and sent home in the middle of the night, Mrs. Morland greets her with open arms and puts her expulsion from the abbey in the best possible light

“Well,” continued her philosophic mother, “I am glad I did not know of your journey at the time; but now it is all over, perhaps there is no great harm done. It is always good for young people to be put upon exerting themselves; and you know, my dear Catherine, you always were a sad little scatter–brained creature; but now you must have been forced to have your wits about you, with so much changing of chaises and so forth; and I hope it will appear that you have not left anything behind you in any of the pockets.”

This Mothers’ Day, however, we are sending flowers to Pride and Prejudice’s Mrs. Bennet of Longbourn, mother of five daughters, possessor of frayed nerves and querulous arguments, future mother-in-law to Fitzwilliam Darcy.

“Why?” you ask. Why send flowers to Mrs. B? She’s one of the most annoying creatures in all of Jane Austen’s novels, an assessment with which her long-suffering husband would probably agree.

Had Elizabeth’s opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort. Her father, captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good-humour which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown.

Yes, that Mrs. Bennet, the best mother in all of Jane Austen’s novels. Sure, she’s not the brightest candle in the chandelier. I imagine her voice to be like Alison Steadman’s in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth): high and screechy. She’s enough to drive her husband to the library with his glass of claret, and she makes the more intelligent of her daughters wince. Yet, she’s a mother who has the interests of her children at heart.

In a time when the state of women was inextricably tied to their husbands and in a household where there was not sufficient money for reasonable dowries for five girls, and living in an estate that will go to a distant cousin on the death of her husband, Mrs. Bennet wants to get her girls married and married well. How else can she take care of them?

Mrs. Bennet assumes that Mr. B. will pop off before she does, although he reassures her, “My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor.”

She doesn’t get a lot of support from that quarter. Within this household, the ditzy mother is the one who’s worried about her daughters’ future. For some reason, Mr. Bennet seems quite sanguine about the whole thing.

Granted, Mrs. Bennet does not go about the business of getting her daughters married off in the best of all possible ways. She tries to get Mr. Bennet to make Elizabeth marry Mr. Collins, the obsequious heir to Longbourn:

She would not give him time to reply, but hurrying instantly to her husband, called out as she entered the library, “Oh! Mr. Bennet, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him, and if you do not make haste he will change his mind and not have her.”

And when her youngest runs off with the ne’er-do-well Mr. Wickham without benefit of marriage, she first reacts in a typically Mrs. Bennetish manner:

Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected: with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villanous conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage; blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the errors of her daughter must be principally owing.

She recovers admirably when Lydia is recovered and a marriage is effected: “My dear, dear Lydia!” she cried. “This is delightful indeed! She will be married! I shall see her again! She will be married at sixteen! My good, kind brother! I knew how it would be. I knew he would manage everything! How I long to see her! and to see dear Wickham too?”

When Elizabeth snags the big one, Mrs. B. is not to be repressed:

”Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would have thought it? And is it really true? Oh, my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane’s is nothing to it — nothing at all. I am so pleased — so happy. Such a charming man! — so handsome! so tall! Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy! A house in town! Everything that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh, Lord! What will become of me? I shall go distracted.”

Yes, Mrs. Bennet, you’re a silly woman. You’re a trial to your husband and an embarrassment to your daughters but you’re a mother through and through. You want what’s best for the girls (and if that happens to be what’s best for you as well, that’s just icing on the cake) and by the end of the book you have three daughters married.  Happy Mother’s Day. Go buy yourself something nice. You know the best warehouses.