If you're new to this series, let me explain a little about it:
What is the ‘Bennet Wardrobe’? Well it’s literally a wardrobe, but it’s no ordinary piece of furniture. It can transport people of the Bennet bloodline forward in time for a period, and then transport them back to their original time. The time traveller doesn’t get to choose when they travel to; it’ll take them to a period that will teach them something they need to know.
Let's look at the blurb for The Avenger, and then pass over to Don Jacobson for his guest post.
Bennet looked at his wife’s swollen lips, softly bruised from several deeply loving kisses, and her flushed complexion, as alluring when gracing the countenance of a woman of four-and-forty as that of a girl of nine-and-ten. He was one of the lucky few to have fallen in love with the same woman at both ages.
Thomas Bennet, Master of Longbourn, had always counted himself amongst the few educated gentlemen of his acquaintance. But, he had to travel over 120 years into the future to discover how little he knew about the woman sharing his life.
Once again, the amazing Bennet Wardrobe proved to be the schoolmaster. Tom Bennet’s lesson? Mrs. Bennet had been formed especially for him. Yet, t’would be the good lady herself who taught him the power of the Fifth and Sixth Loves: Redemption and Forgiveness.
Fanny Bennet also would uncover deep wells of courage and inspiration as she stood by her man’s side in the bleak years after World War II. Together they would lead their descendants in pursuit of the beast who had wronged every member of the Five Families.
The Bennet Wardrobe series stands alone…
The Avenger takes us on a new journey through The Bennet Wardrobe – an alternate universe rising from Don Jacobson’s vivid imagination and based upon the immortal Pride and Prejudice. The Avenger is another important step leading to the culmination of this enchanting trip: one that has drawn us into its reality to travel side-by-side with richly sketched characters. Each book has left us wanting more.
The Bennet Wardrobe series stands alone as a unique result of originality focused on beloved characters as they move—and grow—through surprising plotlines.
Lory Lilian, author of Rainy Days
Guest Post by Don
Jacobson for Babblings of A Bookworm
As
we read Pride and Prejudice, we come
to understand that everyone in the book—from Elizabeth to Darcy, from Jane to
Bingley, from Mr. Bennet to Mrs. Bennet—exhibit behaviors that demand
remediation. However, during the magisterial novel, only the romantic tetrarchy
is shown to learn enough to alter their inherent natures. The remaining
characters, while crying out for change, are never allowed to grow past their
dramatically-necessary caricatures. Caroline sneers. Mary glowers. Mrs. Bennet
flutters. Mr. Bennet ignores. Lydia flirts—or worse. And, Kitty coughs.
The
Bennet Wardrobe grew out of my sense that the people populating the original
novel, and toward whom the main characters reacted, deserved some form of
redemption. Perhaps deserved is not
the best word. If I were to reframe my motivation as a question, then I would
ask What sort of person would __________
become if allowed to overcome their inadequacies? Have you ever wondered
that as you read the Canonical books?
My
device to allow an exploration of the growth of the secondary actors was the
Bennet Wardrobe. On its surface, the Wardrobe allowed each to find a possible
outcome that was rooted in both Miss Austen’s original sketch as well as my own
suppositions about the structure of their psyche.
I
have treated with Mary and Kitty Bennet in The
Keeper and The Exile (parts 1 and 2).
In
The Avenger, I consider the state of
Longbourn’s father, Thomas Michael Bennet.
Bennet’s
need is clear. He is described, at best, as an indolent man and an indifferent
father. As we imagined that Mrs. Bennet would calm after Jane and Lizzy marry,
so, too, did Mr. Bennet begin to change after the double weddings.
By
the time we come upon Bennet in late 1814 (the earliest point chronologically
in The Avenger), he has had nearly
three years of Fanny Bennet’s moderated nerves, has spent considerable time
engaging with Mary now a socially-conscious woman, and has encountered the loss
of a daughter who could not survive, let alone thrive, one more moment in
Longbourn’s precincts. All of this has prepared the ground for change but is
not the frame within which a new picture of the Master of Longbourn can emerge.
Yet,
he cannot do anything without another. And, that becomes the center of this
novel: a revitalized love story wrapped in an adventure full of noir themes.
Just
as Tom Bennet cannot change without another, neither can Fanny Bennet. While
she is not a child of the Wardrobe, that cabinet has determined (yes, we do
begin to see the Wardrobe as a personality unique unto itself) that for Mr.
Bennet to change and grow, so too, must Mrs. Bennet. The couple must rediscover
their love which was first ignited in a Meryton parlor in 1789. With that love
comes new-found respect.
I
also use the story within The Avenger
to explore something which is even more important to me; my belief that the
Wardrobe Universe, nay, our universe,
is powered by love. Not just any generalized sort of affection, but rather ardor
which carries specific freighted meanings. I use Tom and Fanny Bennet as the
primary vehicles to explore this.
I
refer you to my extension of C.S. Lewis’ Four
Loves (Storge, Philia, Eros, Agape).
To me, the Wardrobe is powered by two additional loves: The Fifth Love (Exagoras agapis—the love which drives us to be the best versions of
ourselves) and The Sixth
Love (Synchotikí agape—the love
which forgives). These transcends the other forms, in my opinion, because these
are active forms driving humanity rather than states of being. Perhaps they
could be considered those forms which must be undertaken by the Bennets to
re-ignite their agape.
Jane
Austen wrote using, without articulating, the Fifth and Sixth Loves, so I do
not feel like I am moving too far away from the Austenesque formulation.
Consider the work Darcy does to make himself a better man to win Elizabeth’s
regard. Likewise, consider the way in which Elizabeth explores her notional
constructs and grows beyond her adolescent surety to overcome that which has
prevented her from seeing the goodness in the center of the Derbyshire
gentleman. That is the Fifth Love!
As
for the Sixth Love: once Bingley has
shaken himself loose from his dependence upon the opinion of others (a Fifth Love process), Jane uses the
forgiveness that is the Sixth Love to
allow them to share a lifetime of happiness. So, too, with Darcy and Elizabeth.
Only
after Tom and Fanny Bennet find their agape
after moving through the Fifth and
Sixth Loves, can they join with their
descendants to avenge the terrible wrong committed against their family.
I
do hope you will enjoy this excerpt from The
Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament. I look forward to your
comments.
&&&&
This excerpt is ©2018
by Don Jacobson. Any reproduction of this excerpt without the expressed written
consent of the creator is prohibited.
T’is late-July 1947, about two weeks
after Mr. and Mrs. Bennet have translated from 1814. Bennet had drugged Fanny to
allow her to move unawares through the Wardrobe. His wish? To fulfill her
desire to see Kitty whom she believed was at seminary in Cornwall but had left
the earlier timeline for the future. But, as Lydia Fitzwilliam had noted, “The Wardrobe has a nasty sense of humor.”
The Bennets had arrived three years after Kitty’s death. In this chapter, the Bennets leave Longbourn
House to seek privacy for the conversation they must have about the Wardrobe,
the where/when, and Kitty’s fate. But, some items must be discussed before
others.
The path along the side of
Oakham Mount gradually rose away from Longbourn’s fields and wound gently up
through the ancient deciduous woodland. The undergrowth along the furrowed
slopes bore testament to the benign neglect that had been the watchword for at
least the last two decades. The economic calamities before and then after the
most recent war had dictated different priorities for the current Master of
Longbourn. That six-year long cataclysm had, itself, been a great winnowing
that had stolen away and never repatriated great tranches of young men who
might otherwise have been put to work by a competent forester clearing away the
brush and juvenile trees that burdened the hump. Thus, the timberland had
undertaken that which it had always: exercising its wooded privilege of entropy
by reclaiming what Man had sought to turn to another purpose.
The two figures toiling up
the slope would have appeared, to a Twentieth Century observer, to be
play-actors stepping directly from the sound stages at Gainsborough Studios in
Shepherd’s Bush.[i] Their quaint and stifling
garb—she in a long-sleeved muslin gown, gloves, and a broad-brimmed straw
sunbonnet and he decked out in pantaloons, waistcoat, and topcoat…as well as
his planter’s hat—were redolent of a sesquicentennial celebration honoring
Jervis’ great victory.[ii] The mid-summer heat
simmered in full intensity above the leafy canopy. However, the couple was
shielded from its glaring worst by shadows thrown by massive branches flying up
and away from equally colossal trunks. The air beneath eased and freshened as
the pair moved further up and away from the manor house now hidden by thickened
forest. The great arbor dwarfed both the Master and his Mistress in all but the
enormity of their contemplations.
“I always wondered how Lizzy
could possibly wear out boots and slippers at the pace that she did,” gasped
Fanny Bennet, “And, now I know. That girl was up top of this knob at least five
days out of seven! And this trail…t’is new to me, but, and please correct me if
I am mistaken, t’is also surely age-old when you consider how deeply it has
been worn through that ledge up ahead.”
Bennet marveled at Mrs.
Bennet’s powers of observation for he had never considered her able to leap
beyond household matters where her knowledge and management skills were
unparalleled. Here again she offered another compelling argument against his
earlier estimation of her mind. This was no foolish female, but rather someone
with a laywoman’s appreciation of natural philosophy and longue durée history.[iii]
He, himself, had penned a
monograph in which he had employed the findings from excavations of the ruins
atop Oakham.[iv] His colleagues at Cambridge
had been perplexed to find old strongholds or watchtowers using even older
stockades as foundations; stacking fortifications like so many pancakes.[v] Bennet had demonstrated,
through the use of recovered artifacts, that the Romans as well as certain
predecessor Celts had taken advantage of the full-circle field of vision
afforded from the crest, effectively pushing the history of the Meryton region
back by 2,000 years.
Thus, Fanny had the right of
it, almost as if she had read his essay. Not only had the dainty booted feet of
Elizabeth Rose Bennet trod this path, but also those sporting medieval English
clogs and imperial Roman sandals. Perhaps the leathery bare feet of Wessex
warriors were the first to ascend the chalky slopes. Oakham’s prominence above
Longbourn’s rolling fields gave its owner control of the reaches of the Mimram
Valley as it coursed through the alluvial deposits between the shire and the
Thames.
Bennet stopped for a
moment—as much to catch his breath as to respond to his wife—and asked, “Have
you been listening at the door as Lizzy and I talked about archaeology?”
At his wife’s look of
reproof, he raised his hands in defense and quickly added, “I was simply
teasing, my dear. I was offering what turned out to be, I am afraid, a
backhanded compliment. I am afraid, Fanny, that I will have to relearn proper
behavior. I have been lax, and you have been the victim.
“Let me try a ‘forehand’
compliment.
“As you said, you have never
climbed Oakham through all the years of your life. Yet, you just offered a
sophisticated reading of the apparent antiquity of the path beneath our feet.
“You may recall my journey
up to Cambridge in ’03. T’was then that I delivered my paper Considerations on the History and
Pre-History of the Mimram Valley in Roman and Celtic Hertford to the
fellows at Trinity.[vi] You may have heard me mention the late
Professor Gibbons. I thought to revise his assessment of the historiography of
the scholars of the last century…”
His voice tailed off when he
almost heard an audible <click> as she rolled her eyes in response to his
rambling soliloquy. Bennet glanced expectantly at her. Those blue to near
purple orbs peered up at him from beneath the brim of her hat; its lip
fetchingly bowed down beside her ears by a broad azure ribbon tied neatly
beneath her chin. A small smile played across her lips and showed a hint of
even teeth.
She asked coquettishly, “And
the compliment?”
Bennet stammered, having
lost his ability to speak when she had speared him with those sparkling beams
emanating from her orbs, “Uh…I meant to say…that…you sounded just like
Elizabeth. Oh, no, not that…rather that Lizzy sounded like you! No…uuuh.”
He stopped talking, and,
using his long legs, loped up the hill a few paces, leaving Mrs. Bennet
standing where she had halted. He then
arrested his flight, and froze in place, his back to the lady, one fisted hand
planted in the small of his back, the thumb worrying the forefinger as he
sought to regain his composure. Mrs.
Bennet, using the wisdom earned through a quarter century of managing her
husband, waited for his assured return.
After two or three minutes,
during which she closed her eyes and focused on the sounds of the birds calling
to one another across the forest, he rejoined her.
At first, a solemn Bennet
faced his wife. Then the façade cracked to allow the wry Thomas to escape. He
had begun to smile before long. Finally, he spoke to her.
“I thought I had become
immune to your arts and allurements,
so long has it been since I have appreciated you as an object of desire. Yet,
when you turn those lighthouses of your soul…your incredible eyes…my way, I
nearly forget how to breathe.
“Miss Frances, for now I
address you as such because you sparkle much like the girl who poured me tea in
her mother’s parlor facing out onto Meryton’s High Street, you are nonpareil. You are an original. You are
the woman without whom I would not have become half the man I am today.
“Wait, that statement is not
well put for you may believe I am implying that I became the indolent man I am because of you.
“On the contrary, I would
have only become more lackadaisical and more withdrawn in my own anguish and
pain if you had not found your way Home from whatever ring of Hades where you
had found yourself after that horrible day in the Year Zero. Only the good Lord
knows what would have happened to our girls if you had withered like a bloom
way past its prime.
“Even though you were
distracted, you found the path back to becoming the Mistress of my house and
the truest, fiercest, and, might I suggest, only defender of our daughters.”
He paused, grief coloring
his hazel eyes as he recalled all those years he had closed his heart to the
woman he had loved for nearly a dozen before.
In a voice thick with
emotion, Bennet continued, “As you so aptly noted earlier, I have the ability
to convince myself of the veracity of my acts. And, upon reflection, that is
what I did with you.
“T’was easier to ascribe
your uneven moods to nerves or silliness. That allowed me to ignore my responsibility
to you—for did I not vow to protect you that day you changed your surname to
mine? However, what did I do to help you ride the waves of loss?
Nothing…absolutely nothing!”
He shook himself like a
sheepdog as if doing so would rearrange his turbulent feelings around his
longish frame.
“Frances Lorinda, you are
the soul that makes my life meaningful. I had forgotten that singular fact and,
instead, began to find all the ways I could moderate and diminish my respect
for you because I had lost my own self-respect. And convincing myself that you
had a second-rate mind was the worst of my transgressions!
“True, you are unschooled as
are almost all women in England. And, unlike Madame de Staël, you never had the
advantage of a parent who would see to your informal education.[vii] That you bravely entered
Longbourn, the estate of a Cambridge don, as the younger daughter of a country
solicitor, and meekly submitted to instruction from first Sally Hill and then
our current Mrs. Hill, speaks volumes about your modesty and self-effacement.
“Every step of the way you
never asked what was best for you, only your family and Longbourn. I could not
be prouder of you or your list of accomplishments that, I assure you, would put
any female of the ton to shame. I
imagine they would succumb to fits of vapors if they had to undertake half of
what you have done since ’89!
“Now, all that remains is
for me to beg your forgiveness and pray that I will live long enough to earn
it.”
There amongst the softly swaying
blades growing in the shade of Oakham’s boughs, Mrs. Bennet forgave Mr. Bennet
in the tenderness of her wifely embrace.
[i] From the filming of,
perhaps, The Young Mr. Pitt (1942).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Young_Mr_Pitt accessed
3/31/18.
[ii] The Battle of Cape
St. Vincent (February 1797) is considered to be one of six fleet actions (the
others being the Glorious First of June—1794, Howe; Camperdown—1797, Duncan;
The Nile—1798, Nelson; Copenhagen—1801, Parker/Nelson/Graves; and
Trafalgar—1805, Nelson) across the 25-year long war that confirmed British
naval supremacy and enforced the Blockade against Napoleon’s Continental
System.
[iii] See
Fernand Braudel who
argued that the regularities of social life altered almost imperceptibly except
over vast stretches of time: centuries or even millennia. http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/62451.pdf
[v] Not an unusual
situation in human construction. See the ruins of Troy discovered by von
Schliemann in the 1870s where he found over one dozen distinct cities built
atop the ruins of the previous town.
[vii] A leading French
intellectual of the Napoleonic era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germaine_de_Sta%C3%ABl
The Avenger is available to buy now in kindle or paperback - Amazon UK / Amazon US / Amazon CA / Add to Goodreads shelf
Here is the link to the whole Bennet Wardrobe series - Amazon UK / Amazon US
Don Jacobson has written professionally for forty years. His output has ranged from news and features to advertising, television and radio. His work has been nominated for Emmys and other awards. He has previously published five books, all non-fiction. In 2016, he published the first volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series—The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey, novel that grew from two earlier novellas. The Exileis the second volume of The Bennet Wardrobe Series. Other JAFF P&P Variations include the paired books “Of Fortune’s Reversal” and “The Maid and The Footman.”
Jacobson holds an advanced degree in History with a specialty in American Foreign Relations. As a college instructor, Don teaches United States History, World History, the History of Western Civilization and Research Writing.
He is a member of JASNA-Puget Sound. Likewise, Don is a member of the Austen Authors collective (see the internet, Facebook and Twitter).
He lives in the Seattle, WA area with his wife and co-author, Pam, a woman Ms. Austen would have been hard-pressed to categorize, and their rather assertive four-and-twenty pound cat, Bear. Besides thoroughly immersing himself in the JAFF world, Don also enjoys cooking; dining out, fine wine and well-aged scotch whiskey.
His other passion is cycling. Most days from April through October will find him “putting in the miles” around the Seattle area (yes there are hills). He has ridden several “centuries” (100 mile days). Don is especially proud that he successfully completed the AIDS Ride—Midwest (500 miles from Minneapolis to Chicago) and the Make-A-Wish Miracle Ride (300 miles from Traverse City, MI to Brooklyn, MI).
Connect with Don
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Don is giving away 4 eBooks of The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament. To enter, please use the rafflecopter below.
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We all hope that Mr and Mrs Bennet would improve and change for the better
ReplyDeleteThe Wardrobe needs the Bennets to begin to execute its greatest mission...one which will be developed as we move forward in the Series. Look forward to your review and comments.
DeleteEnjoyed the excerpt and am glad that this story focuses on Mr and Mrs Bennet.
ReplyDeleteYes, I needed to rehab each of these two so they could move forward into the depths of the plot.
DeleteI enjoyed this post. Your continuation of the four loves to include the fifth and six is quite fascinating. You have made that reality a true part of the loves. I will always consider the extra two from now on as they are essential. This series of books is phenomenal!
ReplyDeleteWhat is core to me is that the Fifth and Sixth Loves are actually processes rather than states of being.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations Don and great cover Janet! You pull at every heart string with this novel!
ReplyDeleteAppreciate your thoughts. look forward to your review!
ReplyDelete