Hello my friends,

You’ve been through a lot this with us this October - our month of horrors has explored the haunted halls of Mansfield Park, the monstrous mousiness of Fanny Price Ultimate Conqueror, the Drawing-Room treachery of Jane Austen’s parlors, and now we cap it off just in time for Halloween weekend, with this special post and podcast episode featuring professor and writer Maria DeBlassie.

For Dr. DeBlassie, ordinary life is full of dangers, threats from the real and every day, and what she calls ordinary gothic. Everyday treachery is everywhere and it haunts Jane Austen's novels, where our heroes are forced to face down drawing room dangers even among so-called polite society. But Dr. DeBlassie also has an answer to this problem. She says everyday magic, and the empowerment and joy and romance found in nature, in the power of stories, and in yourself, can help you slay the everyday demons.

So, for this special Halloween edition of the Austen Connection we're having a conversation about gothic romance, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, feminism, bodice rippers, witchery, and everyday magic. 

And somehow Professor Maria DeBlassie ties all of this together in her work and in her life. Dr. DeBlassie is on the faculty at Central New Mexico Community College and teaches in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. 

In her teaching, her writing, and in her brujeria practice, Dr. DeBlassie is all about finding joy and empowerment, especially as women, as a women of color, and from indigenous or marginalized backgrounds. She says magic, witchery and reading Jane Austen can help you form a magical path forward from trauma and fragmentation based on marginalized identities and to conquer that ordinary gothic that we all face at times. 

And when you think about it, Jane Austen's characters are all about conquering the ordinary gothic -  Fanny Price, Elinor Dashwood, Catherine Morland - they are constantly conquering the everyday treachery of people around them. Think of patriarchal Sir Thomas, Sir Walter, Henry Crawford, the Thorpe siblings, John and Isabella. 

These characters and the dangers they bring can relate not just to the everyday but also the political, the cultural society, and the world we all share. 

But Dr. DeBlassie also teaches the romance genre, and she believes that Jane Austen has an awful lot to say about our everyday relationships. 

Here’s our conversation about ordinary gothic - the disturbances, toxicity, danger, and general creepiness surrounding us - and finding a path forward through story, and everyday magic. 

Enjoy! 

Plain Jane

So let me start with: I saw you on Twitter talking about your work, as a professor, about Northanger Abbey, bodice rippers. What is the title of the class? And what's in it? What are you teaching in it?

Dr. Maria DeBlassie

So the title of the class is “From Bodice Rippers to Resistance Romance,” or something like that. And it's looking at courtship novels, bodice rippers, and historical romances, and really thinking about how the courtship novel in the 18th century, 19th centuries, really developed this beautiful form of storytelling that centered women's lives, that centered the domestic sphere, and people's emotions. 

So we look at that and how that genre really inspired the modern romance novel, particularly the historical romance. And then there's a real, spicy couple of decades, where we get the bodice ripper in the sort of ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. And that's when people introduce sex. And you know, it's really colorfully described sex scenes into the historical romance. So the bodice ripper is really what most people think of when they think of romance novels. They think of the sexy clinch covers, and Fabio, and now and then we end up the class looking at contemporary historical romances that are really thinking about centering people with marginalized identities, in stories about happy endings. And I think it's incredibly powerful to have those stories, so people of color, people from the LGBTQ-plus communities, people with disabilities, they get to see themselves having happy endings, and seeing it in stories that are set in the past. Because I don't think people realize that the past is a very complex space. It tends to be whitewashed and heteronormative and ableist. Like the way we talk about that history. 

So when we look at historical romances that center people of color, for example, it's really reclaiming that space and undoing a lot of that historical erasure. 

So that's kind of what we look at in the class and it's a lot of fun. You look at sex positivity and gender, politics, and all sorts of really fun things with it.

Plain Jane

What comes out in these discussions that delights you? Or surprises you? I'm a teacher too. So I know you learn from your students. What do you learn from them? And what do they what do they surprise to hear from you in these conversations? 

Dr. Maria DeBlassie 

For me, it's always funny because I'm so steeped in this world of reading romances already. So sometimes I forget what it's like to be someone approaching the genre for the first time. So it's always fun to see students engaging with it and being pleasantly surprised that they can analyze and think critically about a really joyful genre that they can have fun, when they're analyzing and unpacking things. 

And then, genre that's really considered pretty much fluff has a lot of really interesting, complex, intense, problematic ways of framing things historically. You know, we have issues of imperialism, colonization, race - all these things are playing out in these stories. And it's really fun to show them how that's working. 

I think it's incredibly powerful to have those stories, so people of color, people from the LGBTQ-plus communities, people with disabilities, they get to see themselves having happy endings, and seeing it in stories that are set in the past. Because I don't think people realize that the past is a very complex space.

So even a frothy fun book is actually pretty loaded and charged and doing a lot of different things. Sometimes it's really positive stuff. Sometimes it's not so positive. 

And I had to laugh, because when we did, we read The Pirate and the Pagan by Virginia Henley for the bodice ripper. And it was the first texts we read that have sexually explicit content. And there's a moment where students were like, the stories that center our emotional lives or sexual lives or romantic lives - they're so charged, they're so over the top. And yet, they're really saying such beautiful, important things that affect us in our day-to-day lives. And it's it's beautiful to see students engaging with that, responding to things that really gave them wonderful ideas about their own lives, their own relational lives.

And also how they will catch things that I don't catch. 

So one of my students thought there was a character in The Pirate and the Pagan who was queer coded. And I was like, “That's amazing. That's so brilliant.”

So they bring their own interpretations to things, which is so powerful. I think that that's great. But do we ... start the class with Northanger Abbey. We watch the 2007 BBC film adaptation of it, because I think it just does an absolutely wonderful job of looking at why readers - particularly young women - are reading these kind of lurid over-the-top, you know, scandalous stories.

Plain Jane

Well, let's unpack that a little bit. Northanger Abbey. I guess that's probably the Andrew Davies adaptation, which really, I think starts with or has kind of embedded in it all these fantasies. Catherine Morland's fantasies depicted, which is a great thing to do for the screen, I think. And it makes it in some ways more Gothic than the novel feels. 

What do you unpack and what do you talk about with Northanger Abbey?

Dr. Maria DeBlassie

So I love that film adaptation because I think it takes the novel and really pops out the conversation that's being had in it. Northanger Abbey isn't as popular [in] the Austen canon. But I think it's because a lot of people don't know about Ann Radcliffe and all those sorts of stories that young Catherine Morland is reading. If we situate it within its historical context, people are reading it, and they know just what kind of juicy content Catherine Morland is reading. 

So, I really love the film adaptation because of those fantasies, we really get to embody and experience all this excitement that's going through Catherine's mind. And I teach it to my students in terms of a young woman's sexual awakening and the real power of the ravishment fantasy. And so that's where it can become a little bit tricky territory because, you know, we're talking about the Me Too movement, we're talking about, consent is mandatory in all things. Their old-school bodice rippers have really problematic rape scenarios or sometimes it's euphemistically called “forced seduction.” So we're really thinking about, Why are all these things playing out? ... I think it's really about seeing these books as a safe space to explore your sexuality and really understand the difference between a ravishment fantasy versus what you want to see happen in real life. 

One of Catherine's first fantasies in the movie is being abducted by highway men. And it's such a funny scene because it ends with her, like, in the highway man's grip, and she has this terrified [look], but it slowly shifts to pleasure and excitement. Of course, you know, that's the moment where you realiz