Perception vs. Reality (Or: Why Every Story Has a Thousand Versions)

Hello magical friends,

Two Books, One Big Question

I've been thinking a lot about perception versus reality lately—that slippery space between what we think we know and what's actually true. It's become the backbone of both books I'm currently working on, even though they're completely different genres.

In the fourth installment of the Natural Magic series (working title: The Enchanted Atlas of Fortune and Fate—I welcome your feedback on this!), I'm playing with the concepts of fact and fiction. Or more accurately: perception and reality.

The story revolves around an unusually perceptive witch for whom history is an ongoing conversation, and a somewhat staid trivia buff who puts (perhaps a little too much) stock in tangible facts. Toss in an Atlas that refuses to trade in destinations so much as deal out unsubtle nudges toward one's destiny, a pirate ship, a parrot who is not what she seems, and a mobile library packed into a magical 1970s Bluebird school bus—and we're ready to roll.

Who's excited? Stick around till the end of this newsletter as I'll share a passage from the work in progress.

The Much-Maligned Mrs. Bennet

But perception versus reality isn't just the theme of my cozy fantasy. It's also at the core of of The Much-Maligned Mrs. Bennet, my book that's currently out for queries.

My book asks the troubling question: "What if the mother in Pride and Prejudice was right all along, but nobody listened to her?" And what if that's why she seemed so crazy?

Who wouldn't be anxious with a checked-out husband who belittles his wife, invests only in his own pursuits, plays the part of the fun, cool dad with his daughters, while abnegating any responsibility to plan for his family's future?

Cassandra syndrome is a very real thing! And it's nothing new.

Being a mother in Regency times was certainly tough, and Mrs. Bennet had her hands full with her five daughters. But is it really any easier to raise daughters in the era of predatory lenders, global warming, influencer culture and overwhelming evidence of human trafficking amongst our leaders?

No I'm not about to get on a political soapbox. What I will say, however, is that am a mother of daughters, and I'm old enough to see where Austen may have done Mrs. Bennet a disservice. 

And then again, maybe she did not.  

Two Mrs. Bennets Walk Into a TV Adaptation...

This brings me to something I've been obsessing over: The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow has been adapted into a limited series currently airing in the UK on BBC. We Americans must wait till May to watch (which is very much killing me), but in the meantime we're being treated to a million promising clips and outtakes.

Many of which feature Mrs. Bennet.

The Mrs. Bennet of this story could not be more different than the Mrs. Bennet of mine. Hadlow has leaned into a version of the Bennet mother that is far less relatable and far more cruel. No longer the ridiculous butt of exasperated jokes, her character is revealed to be something far more awful and hard in this retelling. Through Mary's lens we learn Mrs Bennet's actions aren't motivated by benign anxiety and a wish to see her daughters safe and settled, so much as a Machiavellian need to secure her own place in society and control everyone around her.

She is the evil, manipulative, cunning smother-mother personified. Her beauty, in midlife, has faded faster than the wallpaper at Netherfield, revealing nothing but rot underneath. Her hold on her family is crumbling and she is going down—hard, we hope. 

It's impossible to shed a tear or spare any sympathy for this Mrs. Bennet. And perhaps this is how Austen intended us to feel about the middle aged mother who was the butt of everyone's jokse, all along.

Or perhaps not.

I find it fascinating that Jane Austen never gave Mrs. Bennet a first name, and I don't think that was an accident. It's such a tremendous oversight, particularly for an author who lavishes names on characters, sometimes giving them multiple variations, used by different relations. For such a central character to be without her own name, hardly seems accidental. 

I think she left it up to the reader to assign one, and in so doing, flesh out her whole character.

The Hydrangea Effect

It's fascinating and wonderful to me how different this other author's Mrs. Bennet is from mine—and how both versions of the story we've reimagined still work perfectly.

The beauty of Austen's Pride and Prejudice is how easily it lends itself to this kind of perspective shifting storytelling. The tale is like a hydrangea: it takes only a few small tweaks to the acid level of the water to change the blooming bush's color entirely.

In a moment where we're questioning the motives of our leaders, digging deeper to discover history from non-patriarchal, non-racist, and non-"traditional" sources, and scrutinizing pretty much every piece of media we encounter, it's easy to imagine narratives spinning off in entirely different directions on what feels like a dime.

The world loves an unreliable narrator at the moment. And the truth is, we are all unreliable narrators at times, are we not?

My Mrs. Bennet, while flawed, is far more humanized than Taub's version. My story is perhaps targeted at readers who have lost too many nights of sleep worrying about their children, their spouses, their aging parents, and the state of the world. Readers who understand that anxiety doesn't always look rational from the outside. But it's also aimed at the daughters who wish they could connect more with their mothers, and be understood. 

I hope that my whimsical take on this concept is one that resonates with my cozy readers as well as fans of literary fiction. And I hope that when you all finally meet Mrs. Bennet, you'll want to give her a hug.

I could use one too, come to think of it. It's pretty brutal out there!