“It is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.”
Mr. Woodhouse, to Emma regarding her portrait of Harriet who is so dangerously sitting outdoors!
Emma, volume 1, chapter 6
Category Archives: Nature
Oh, danger…
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Filed under Emma, Emma Woodhouse, Mr. Woodhouse, Nature
On walking the high downs
“‘Is there a felicity in the world superior to this? Margaret, we will walk here at least two hours.'”
Marianne on her walk with Margaret, when it looks like rain, just before she meets Willoughby
Sense & Sensibility, volume 1, chapter 9 (emphasis mine)
Love this little gem of Marianne’s enthusiasm…
Filed under Margaret, Marianne, Nature, Sense and Sensibility
Glorying in the sea
“Anne and Henrietta, finding themselves the earliest of the party the
next morning, agreed to stroll down to the sea before breakfast. They went to
the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze
was bringing in with all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted. They
praised the morning; gloried in the sea; sympathized in the delight of the
fresh-feeling breeze-and were silent;”
Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 12
Sent to me by reader friend Bonnie, who says “I love words and those always come back to me each summer
when heading to the beach. Jane wrote those sentences almost like worship.”
I agree. I’m still in North Carolina recovering from all the activity of the holiday. My favorite thing is my daily stroll on the beach, now with my lab Bess in tow, who rolls and runs and buries her little nose in the sand.
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Filed under Anne Elliot, Henrietta Musgrove, Nature, Persuasion, the Sea
The last smiles of the year
Fall has always been my favorite season (although now — and I have to laugh at myself — spring and summer are competing for the title. Winter occasionally as well, if it weren’t for the horrible darkness). I love that Anne loves fall as well.
“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeing.”
Anne, on walking with the whole group at Uppercross
Persuasion, volume 1, chapter 10
I’m out for a walk to view some of the last smiles of the year with my new girl Bess.
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Filed under Anne Elliot, Nature, Persuasion, Poetry
The Jane Austen Guide to Life: Thoughtful Lessons for the Modern Woman (May, 2012)