Fairy Revel

Recently, when I was looking for the extremely steep stairs leading to Atago Shrine in Atago, Tokyo, I happened upon a print shop counter displaying of some of the sweetest, most magical artwork I’d ever seen. Sachiko Takahashi is a woodblock artist whose many-colored scenes are full of fiddle-playing mantises, foxes in kimono, cat weddings, and rivers of stars. Her work is playful, but dark, too; not the darkness of death but the magical darkness of the forest at night.

Eventually I hope to be able to buy a real woodblock print by Takahashi-sensei, but for now, these postcards are cheaper and every bit as frameable!

Atago Shrine.

It’s goal setting time. (I like the word “goal” so much better than that ugly “resolutions.”) It’s not like I’m great at keeping them, but I like setting them anyway; I think I always get more done with them than without.

1. Listen to and read Japanese every day. After doing a straightforward language learning plan, I’m switching to what’s sometimes called the Input Method, where you get as much input from native sources as possible and use an SRS for repetition. So far so good.
2. Write a short story. This may seem like a ridiculously small goal since I used to make goals like, “Finish a novel.” But since I’ve never managed to do the latter (except for a fanfic and a couple of NaNoWriMo novels with sloppy, tacked-on endings), I think it might be wise to lower the bar a bit. I’ve written a few short stories, but most of the time they have the same problem as my novels: conclusions that make no sense. I would like to develop a process that I can use to consistently write stories with plots that fit together and wrap up neatly as only fiction can. I’ve decided to take writing one story at a time (though I will probably always have a novel in progress).
3. Read 50 books. The same goal we make every year, Pinky. I never actually hit the 50 mark, but each year I do a little better than the year before. Last year was especially busy and I read 18.
4. Learn to play the traditional harp (aka the folk or “Celtic” harp). I always need something tactile to do or I’m unhappy. I like knitting and will continue with that, but I love music, and want to try something that is less project-oriented and more focused on being in the present moment (you practice pieces, but once you learn one, you can play it anytime for instant gratification). I played the piano as a youngster and the times I’ve held a harp it felt very natural.

I tried to think of a fifth goal, but there’s nothing else I want this year that’s within my control. I have some wishes, but I think I’ll keep those to myself for now.

I hate to make my first post in ages a bragging post, but I need some way to break the ice. I’ve been waiting a long time to join the Folio Society. For my joining offer, I chose the four “Colored Fairy Books” by Andrew Lang, Victorian collections of fairy tales. These Folio editions pressed too many of my buttons (cloth binding, block-printed cover, magical tales, art reminiscent of the Victorian fairy tale artists) for me to say “no”. There are four more of these books and I intend to get them . . . eventually.

To the right of the Colored Fairy Books in the photo above is my first regular purchase from the Folio Society, Goblin Market and Selected Poems of Christina Rosetti, featuring suitably lush and sometimes eerie illustrations by Jillian Tamaki. Christina Rosetti is a poet I’d like more people to appreciate, so I was happy the Folio Society decided to publish this collection. The cloth binding is a loose-woven strawberry red that lets the purple paper underneath show through, giving it an iridescent quality. I flipped through the foreward, and I must be a nerd because a quick skim gave me a little thrill of delight.

Not new, but I’ll mention it all the same since it’s sort of on-topic, to the right of the Rosetti is Perrault’s Fairy Tales, a facsimile edition illustrated by one of my favorite Victorian fairy tale artists, Edmund Dulac. A lot of his illustrations are good examples of Victorian “Orientalism”, and especially interesting to me is the Beast’s Beauty wearing harem pantaloons and playing an oud.

So if you’ve been wondering where I am, I was in Tokyo for three months until the end of November, mostly to watch sumo and check out all the sights in the Shitamachi (the “low city” of Tokyo, where the craftsmen and merchant classes lived, and which is still known as being quieter and more slow-paced than the rest of the city). I’ve been home for a month now, but because of the holidays I’m just now sitting down to write a post. If you want to see my adventures in Tokyo, you can check out the blog I made for my family, Footprints in the Low City.

Oh, and that thingie in the sidebar below the LibraryThing widget? That’s a banzuke, a sumo ranking chart. It’s not pretty, but I couldn’t resist. Lots of my favorites have gone up in rank this time!

My sister, my niece, and I (along with about 16 other people, high school graduates and their keepers) recently spent one day at the Happiest Place on Earth. Yep, I was a senior-trip chaperone (though I think we were really trying to get away with a family trip). My niece’s camera, which had most of our pictures on it, was unfortunately lost at about midnight, when we were all about to drop from exhaustion. I did take a few “scenic” type photos on my own camera.

See the whole set.

One of the first pages in my sketch journal. I need to practice shading, but overall I’m pleased with how it turned out. This tree really was the most brilliant, translucent yellow-green, one of my favorite colors.

My sketch journal is a Daler-Rowney Cachet Linen Watercolor book, full of a good number of sturdy cold-press sheets of watercolor paper. This is apparently a beast that’s going extinct. I buy them whenever I see them, but they’re getting harder to find.

(Apologies for the lateness of this post, written for the Classics Circuit Duelling Authors Tour. I had a busy week, and this isn’t even the post I’d planned to write. Maybe another time I can go into class as it pertains to happiness in marriage in Emma, but I hope you enjoy my little musing on Jane Fairfax instead!

I’m not sure it’s necessary to include a spoiler warning on a book almost two hundred years old, but just to be sure, there are spoilers for Emma in this post!)

My favorite character in Jane Austen’s Emma is Emma herself, but I’ve always been intrigued by the character of Jane Fairfax. A foil for Emma, she is everything Emma is not: reserved where Emma is open and sincere, accomplished where Emma is unfocused and distracted, secretive where Emma is straightforward, detached where Emma is meddlesome.

Though she has grown up being acquainted with her, and hearing her letters read by her aunt, Miss Bates, Emma doesn’t like Jane; she finds her reserve off-putting, but Mr. Knightley thinks there is some envy at work: “It was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her.”

An orphan, Jane Fairfax was raised by her grandmother and maiden aunt, until a friend of her deceased father, Colonel Campbell, took her in to educate and raise her along with his own daughter.

The plan was that she should be brought up for educating others; the very few hundred pounds which she inherited from her father making independence impossible. To provide for her otherwise was out of Colonel Campbell’s power; for though his income, by pay and appointments, was handsome, his fortune was moderate and must be all his daughter’s; but, by giving her an education, he hoped to be supplying the means of respectable subsistence hereafter.

However, when she finally reached adulthood, the Colonel’s family couldn’t part with her, and so she remained with them until their daughter married Mr. Dixon, a man whose home is Ireland.

When Jane returns to Highbury for the first time in two years, Emma finds her as reserved as ever (“She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.”) Emma tries again to like Jane, but her reserve continues to repell her and make her uncomfortable (it’s often the case that the outgoing interpret the reserved as judgemental and snobbish, when ironically they are the ones passing judgement). The genial Emma sees such reserve as aloofness, coldness, and even perhaps as hiding a secret: Emma imagines a romance between Jane and her friend’s new husband, Mr. Dixon. She unwisely shares this suspicion with Mr. Frank Churchill, and their private joke is the cause of a lot of pain and embarassment to Jane.

But Frank Churchill should know better; he is the cause of her secrecy, a secrecy which more than once she seems on the verge of breaking. On the prospect of Frank Churchill’s father, Mr. Weston, planning a ball, Jane is effervescent with excitement:

[Jane] enjoyed the thought of it to an extraordinary degree. It made her animated—open hearted—she voluntarily said;—

“Oh! Miss Woodhouse, I hope nothing may happen to prevent the ball. What a disappointment it would be! I do look forward to it, I own, with very great pleasure.”

And when Emma discovers Jane making her escape from the strawberry-gathering party at Donwell Abbey, and the overbearing Mrs. Elton, who is determined to find a post for her as a governess with friends (who one may imagine have manners similar to those of “Mrs. E”, though with the way she imagines herself welcome in everybody’s society, it’s just as possible they are decent people she’s pushed herself upon) Jane almost speaks out.

“I am,”—she answered—”I am fatigued; but it is not the sort of fatigue—quick walking will refresh me.—Miss Woodhouse, we all know at times what it is to be wearied in spirits. Mine, I confess, are exhausted. The greatest kindness you can shew me, will be to let me have my own way, and only say that I am gone when it is necessary.”

Emma had not another word to oppose. She saw it all; and entering into her feelings, promoted her quitting the house immediately, and watched her safely off with the zeal of a friend. Her parting look was grateful—and her parting words, “Oh! Miss Woodhouse, the comfort of being sometimes alone!”—seemed to burst from an overcharged heart, and to describe somewhat of the continual endurance to be practised by her, even towards some of those who loved her best.

In her brief lapse of reticence, it’s easy to see Jane’s frustrations with her lot. Nowhere can she escape from the obnoxious voice of Mrs. Elton or the perhaps less-unwelcome, but still incessant, voice of her aunt. What is not so easy to deduce from these words, at least for Emma, is the true story, and that is Jane’s engagement to the charming and duplicitous, if harmless, Frank Churchill. He seems to be drawn to her reserve, to find her mysterious, but he causes so much pain to her unnecessarily, and has so much amusement at her expense, one wonders if they can be truly happy together. He does seem to really love her, however, and at the very least, he makes possible her narrow escape from life as a governess: a shadow-life, not quite lady, not quite servant, unable to marry for as long as she is employed, no conversation except with children, and all of that most likely for very little pay.

Once the truth comes out, and Emma is in on Jane’s secret, she begins to see Jane Fairfax in a new light, and at the end of the book it looks like Jane could be the good friend Emma was looking for in Harriet Smith, the good friend she could have been all along, if circumstances had been different, or if Emma had been patient enough to look through the reserve for the real Jane Fairfax.

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