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I can't have been more than eleven at the time, but I was already quite well-read. The classics, of course -- Austen, Dickens, various Brontës -- and some newer works as well, though unlike my peers I never really took to Pierce's early work. Bold, outspoken young woman with purple eyes in control of her own destiny? Check. But I'd rather read about someone who works behind the scenes, who shows others her light to bend them to her mind's designs, than some knight who spends all her time covered in blood.
It was, then, when I was eleven, if that, that my mother decided to have company.
This was more of a singular event than it might seem, for my mother, in her own way, was almost as reclusive as I, and though we had a house large enough to entertain dozens, guests as rare as bottom-shelf liquor. (That is to say, they occasionally turned up for reasons neither of us could articulate, they were rather vile, and my mother sought to dispose of them as efficiently and swiftly as possible.)
But on that day in April, a woman, whose acquaintance my mother, in town for a computing conference, had made at a bar in Phoenix, arrived with her daughter. (I still don't know how "met in a bar" translated to "fly several hundred miles to visit". I suppose they might have slept together, but that seems unlikely even for my mother. More probably, she slurred something like, "You gotta come out sometime, meet my baby girl, here's my address," after her fifth tequila.)
I don't know what they talked about, for no sooner had the two arrived that the elder had taken hold of my mother's arm, and, chattering away, proceeded to usher herself into the kitchen for what promised to be a long, inebriated exchange. I sought to make conversation with the girl, but we'd barely got past the stage of, "My name is Rose Lalonde; may I inquire as to yours?" before she gave me a puzzled look and started staring out the window.
It was then that I made a horrible misstep, for I mentioned, trying to hold up my end of the conversation, that I had recently finished Finer Details, a romance novel that my mother had bought for me under the mistaken impression that it was a needlework text, that I had rather enjoyed it, and had she read it?
She hadn't, of course, but it seized her attention, and was more than enough to get her off on an imposing deluge of how, like, there was this, like, amazing writer, and she, like, wrote the most dreamiest (yes, she said that; I bit my tongue) guys ever, and, like, she wished there was a movie, so she could, like, subject them to the unremitting gaze of her adolescent longing. (She may not have phrased that last bit precisely as I did.)
It was then that I realized that if this kept up I would not escape with my sanity, and quickly said, "There is a lovely novel, Sense and Sensibility -- Austen, of course -- that might appeal to you, given the tastes that you've intimated to me; might I suggest that, rather than continuing this somewhat incomprehensible discourse, we view the recent adaptation?" Upon receiving a look even more puzzled than before, I sighed, and rephrased: "One of my favourite novels, a romance, has recently been adapted to film. Would you care to watch it?"
Her expression cleared, and she nodded happily as I searched for the disc. I was rather pleased with myself; watching Emma Thompson is hardly a chore, and it was incomparably more pleasing than continuing such an inane conversation. My companion sat in blessed silence, giggling girlishly on occasion or letting drop little coos of contentment, but not subjecting me to her words.
Finally the film reached its end, and she turned to me. "Wasn't it sweet?" she exclaimed, and, smirking just enough to be noticable by someone substantially more attentive than her, I concurred.
Then, it happened.
"Edward was so handsome and dashing and -- and wonderful," she sighed. "I hope my story will have its hero be someone like him."
I gazed at her in consternation. Surely she couldn't--
But it seemed that she did. Cautiously, I asked, "You don't mean to say that you regard Edward, of all people, as the hero do you?"
She stared at me, scandalized. "How could he be anything else? He's dashing and handsome--" (yes, I thought, we know, please proceed) "-- and he saves her from unhappy spinsterhood! Why, it was about him much more than it was about Elinor."
My consternated gaze had become a horrifed stare. No. No, I couldn't let this pass.
"How can you say such a thing?!" I burst out. "A man, the hero of an Austen novel? It's ridiculous! Running through her whole oeuvre is the concept that women are at the center of stories no less than men; to claim Edward as the hero erases everything important about Sense and Sensibility!" Hyperbole, I knew even as I spoke it, but not inaccurate.
"Hmph!" she snorted. "If you see it that way, how are you ever going to land a man?"
I opened my mouth to reply, but then a call from downstairs cut through the thickening tension like a katana through a meteor.
"Isabella! Isabella!" It could only have been the girl's mother. "We're leaving!"
"Perhaps we'll speak again," I said instead. "It's been quite the pleasure making your acquaintance."
I dipped a slight, ironic curtsy in her direction as she took her leave; she returned it with total sincerity. I watched through my room's window as they climbed into their car and drove off.
I sometimes wonder what became of her. Did she 'land a man'? Did her life turn into a romance novel, as she seemed to hope?
I don't know, and I don't care to. But every so often, I wonder about Miss Swan, and fume a little about her horrific misreading of Jane Austen.