Saying Farewell to Northanger Abbey

Conversations with Jane once again met at our house. I didn't go all out for authentic snacks this time...we had store bought cookies LOL. Well, I did make some chocolate chip cookie bars and some rice pudding. The rice pudding was an authentic snack, but though it tasted fine, I thought the texture was a little too mushy. We still had tea! There is just something special about tea in a small china teacup. Earl Grey with French Vanilla creamer and sugar. Delish! Hadley and Sarah missed out on today's meeting. Both were loaded down with work. College finals come before Jane Austen.

We met today to bid farewell to Northanger Abbey. Our discussion included excerpts from our Miniatures and Morals book as well as our What Jane Austen Taught Me About Love and Romance book. We took a look at The Art of Adaptation from the PBS Masterpiece Theater's The Complete Guide to Teaching Jane Austen. The pdf had comments from Andrew Davies, the Screenwriter for the newest PBS Northanger Abbey film. Our task was to read the comments from Andrew Davies on adapting Jane Austen's novel for film, then to read an excerpt from the novel, the same excerpt from the Andrew Davies screenplay, and finally watch that scene in the movie. It was fun to see his adaptation and discuss whether or not it enhanced the story or detracted from it.

Before beginning our activity, the girls shared their blog projects. Once again I was impressed by what they came up with. Victoria and Elizabeth have already posted their projects, Calleigh and Skyeler will be posting theirs soon. It was then time to begin our project. Our Regency activity was to make a personalized fashion plate. I chose this activity for Northanger Abbey because of Mrs. Allen's preoccupation with the current fashions in Bath. Once again we used this site. Each of the girls picked a favorite fashion plate and I printed it on cardstock. They used an exacto knife to cut out the portions of the plates that they wanted to fill in with fabric. Then they taped the fabric to the back of the cardstock. It turned out to be a nice little picture.

We will take a break from Miss Jane's main novels over the holidays. The girls will be reading Lady Susan and we will just meet for tea and discussion during December. We will begin again in January with Mansfield Park.

Skyeler sharing an excerpt from Miniatures and Morals. Doesn't Calleigh look thrilled :)

All of the girls working on their fashion plates.

Calleigh's finished plate. She only cut out one of her dresses, but she matched the fabric very well with the hat :)

Angel