Chloe Cullen's Blog, page 5

Lesson #3: The Revolution Will Not Be Muppetized

You’re probably wondering why I’m about to yap about Fran Leibowitz.

Leibowitz—who at first glance I would not put in Austen’s camp, but Team Jane has a big tent—says in the documentary short, “The Divine Jane”:

Any artist who has that quality of timelessness has that quality because they tell the truth. Obviously, details change, but writers who date date not because the details date. All details date. Writers date because their ideas date, and that means their ideas are wrong. Her perceptions ...

2. WUTHERING HEIGHTS: Catherine Earnshaw is a brat

My dreams have not been right since I read this book.

Normally, I snore to wake the gods and sift, unbothered, through a black sleep, teleporting me to morning.

Since I started reading this book on Monday, my dreams have become insistent.

In one dream, a childhood friend walked through an empty mansion where I hosted an intimate event. She smiled with forced politeness, and potentially disdain, and wandered into the tiled foyer, the rest of the party following her.

In another, my cousin, transforme...

Homework #2: Catherine Earnshaw is a brat

My dreams have not been right since I read this book.

Normally, I snore to wake the gods and sift, unbothered, through a black sleep, teleporting me to morning.

Since I started reading this book on Monday, my dreams have become insistent.

In one dream, a childhood friend walked through an empty mansion where I hosted an intimate event. She smiled with forced politeness, and potentially disdain, and wandered into the tiled foyer, the rest of the party following her.

In another, my cousin, transforme...

Lesson 2: Should Jacob Elordi be Heathcliff?

Today’s lesson looks at the context around the poet and novelist Emily Brontë, Gothic vs. Romantic vs. domestic novels, Liverpool’s slave trade, and Emerald Fennell. Let’s dig in, shall we?

The primary, maybe only, anecdote about Emily Brontë involves her punching a bulldog.

Her bulldog, specifically. With her bare fists.

In the biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), published after the Brontë children had already passed, Elizabeth Gaskell includes the Bulldog Anecdote ™️ as an insight t...

Lesson #2: Should Jacob Elordi be Heathcliff?

Today’s lesson looks at the context around the poet and novelist Emily Brontë, Gothic vs. Romantic vs. domestic novels, Liverpool’s slave trade, and Emerald Fennell. Let’s dig in, shall we?

The primary, maybe only, anecdote about Emily Brontë involves her punching a bulldog.

Her bulldog, specifically. With her bare fists.

In the biography The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), published after the Brontë children had already passed, Elizabeth Gaskell includes the Bulldog Anecdote ™️ as an insight t...

The Digest: No one’s coming to the party

I can’t get over a blinking paranoia that I am yapping the cartilage off innocent, well-meaning ears.

It started this summer under an outdoor tent for a college graduation party. The weather was clear, and the bartender served purple martinis named after the high school mascot of the graduates: a Crusader Cosmo. (Note: liquors that turn cocktails purple warrant your immediate skepticism, lest you want to vomit in the grass next to your aunt’s white jeans.)

This family friend comes from a family of...

1. PERSUASION: "Witty banter" & the courtship spectacle

Austen’s novels flatten time, pulling the strings of contemporary readers’ thoughts into the 17th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

The undercurrent toward the past evokes Shakespearean comedies, where the hijinks resolve in a conclusive wedding. At the same time, all my favorite rom-coms creep into my head, their lines rickrolling the longer sentences of Austen’s characters: Billy Crystal’s “when you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody” monologue; Hilary Duff’s zinger about rain in a dro...

Homework #1: "Witty banter," PERSUASION, & The Courtship Spectacle

Austen’s novels flatten time, pulling the strings of contemporary readers’ thoughts into the 17th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

The undercurrent toward the past evokes Shakespearean comedies, where the hijinks resolve in a conclusive wedding. At the same time, all my favorite rom-coms creep into my head, their lines rickrolling the longer sentences of Austen’s characters: Billy Crystal’s “when you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody” monologue; Hilary Duff’s zinger about rain in a dro...

1. "Witty banter”: PERSUASION & The Courtship Spectacle

Austen’s novels flatten time, pulling the strings of contemporary readers’ thoughts into the 17th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

The undercurrent toward the past evokes Shakespearean comedies, where the hijinks resolve in a conclusive wedding. At the same time, all my favorite rom-coms creep into my head, their lines rickrolling the longer sentences of Austen’s characters: Billy Crystal’s “when you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody” monologue; Hilary Duff’s zinger about rain in a dro...

Lesson #1: Happy 250 birthday to the anonymous spinster, Jane Austen

Welcome to Lesson #1, the column for paid subscribers where we discuss the biographic and historical context around this week’s novel.

To discuss Jane Austen’s Persuasion, we have the below sections:

the life & death of the unmarried queen of romance

class is in session—and it’s the socioeconomic kind

a quick pivot for Napoleon

the writers Jane Austen loved

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From August 8, 1815 to August 8, 1816, Jane Austen wrote Persuasion as her health declined.

At this point in her career, she’s publ...