An Analysis of Pamela Aidan's Fitzwi

Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy Canon, Fantext, and Creativity: An Analysis of Pamela Aidan‘s Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman as a ―Fanfictional‖ Response to Jane Austen‘s Pride and Prejudice. Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of ―Master in de Supervisor: Taal- en Letterkunde: Engels – Nederlands‖ Prof. Dr. Jean Pierre Vander Motten by Veerle Van Steenhuyse May 2009 Van Steenhuyse i Acknowledgements I am particularly grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Vander Motten, who supported me in my choice of subject, in spite of its unconventionality. In addition, he read through my drafts, and alerted me to stylistic flaws and obscurities. I would also like to note that my understanding of American popular culture was shaped by the classes of Prof. Ilka Saal. I am no less thankful to my family, who encouraged me when I needed it. Pamela Aidan, too, deserves my thanks, as she supplied some facts about her fic‘s history which I could never have found on my own. Margaret D, of the Derbyshire Writers‘ Guild, also deserves a special mention here, because she directed my search to new areas in cyberspace. Finally, I would like to thank the fan writers and readers of the Austen fandom, particularly of the Republic of Pemberley and the Derbyshire Writers‘ Guild, for creating something as wonderful as fan fiction. Van Steenhuyse ii Contents 0. General Introduction 1 1. Fan Fiction 1.0 Introduction 5 1.1 Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman 7 1.2 Fan Fiction: Terminology 9 1.3 A History of Fan Fiction 13 1.4 The Singular Nature of Fan Fiction 17 1.5 Conclusion 21 2. Canon 2.0 Introduction 24 2.1 Austen Fans‘ Fidelity to Canon 26 2.2 Fitzwilliam Darcy in Jane Austen‘s Pride and Prejudice 31 2.3 Fitzwilliam Darcy in the BBC/A&E Adaptation of Pride and Prejudice 35 2.4 Conclusion 39 3. Fantext 3.0 Introduction 42 3.1 Janeitism and Comfort 44 3.2 Adaptation Fandom and Stylistic Transparency 49 3.3 Pamela Aidan‘s Interpretation of Fitzwilliam Darcy 54 3.4 Conclusion 59 4. General Conclusion 63 5. Works Cited 67 Van Steenhuyse 1 0. General Introduction According to Time journalist Lev Grossman, 2009 is witnessing ―one of the greatest economic and technological transformations‖ in centuries, one which will turn the novel ―into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever‖ (54). Increasingly, he insists, novels are ―shrugging off their expensive papery husks‖ and are ―transmigrating digitally into other forms‖ (54). As a consequence, they are also ―becoming detached from dollars,‖ which is a very first ―in modern history‖ (54). To illustrate this trend, Grossman refers to ―fan fiction, fan-written stories based on fictional worlds and characters borrowed from popular culture—Star Trek, Jane Austen, Twilight, you name it‖ (54). He remarks that the number of stories online is so ―staggering‖ that fan fiction could already be treated ―as a literary form in its own right‖ (54). It is no wonder, then, that his vision of future fiction shares some of its formal features: it is electronic, episodic, and ―ravenously referential and intertextual,‖ with high-paced narratives aimed at easy processing and ―immediate gratification‖ (55). Relying on precedent, moreover, Grossman predicts that authors who want to publish their work will self-publish, while publishing houses will ―monitor the performance‖ of such books, and buy only those that prove successful (55). On the basis of two existing trends, then, Grossman announces a reformation of the literary marketplace. While it is impossible to say if Grossman‘s trends will really push through, his article illustrates that popular media have picked up on the fan fiction phenomenon. Typically, however, journalists have only discussed the genre because of its unconventionality: just as Grossman focuses on fan fiction‘s revolutionary form, other ―mainstream journalistic representations‖ centre on ―m/m (male/male) slash‖ fics (Busse and Hellekson 17; Pugh 91), stories in which ―the sexual orientation of characters is altered from straight to gay to suit the fan‘s needs‖ (Jones, ―Shooting‖ 264). According to Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse, academics have likewise preferred to study ―slash fiction‖ (17), even to the extent that the ―history of fan fiction studies, for the most part, is a history of attempting to understand the Van Steenhuyse 2 underlying motivations of why (mostly) women write fan fiction and, in particular, slash‖ (Busse and Hellekson 17). In actual fact, slash fics are less numerous than other types of fan fiction (Pugh 91), more specifically than ―het‖ fics, featuring heterosexual relationships, and ―gen‖ fics, which do not feature sex (Pugh 90) or even romance (Driscoll 83-4). As this is especially true for Austen fan fiction (Pugh 104), which is my object of study here, fanfic scholars have often overlooked stories based on Austen. While fan fiction studies have, for the most part, ignored Austen fan fiction, Austen scholars have come to see how such stories can provide new insights into Austen‘s current reception. As Deborah Kaplan notes, research on this subject has, until recently, focussed on ―highly literate groups such as 19th-century reviewers for periodicals or early-20th-century women novelists‖ because other readers do not usually ―create a written record of their responses‖ (―Pride‖). To broaden their perspective, ―some scholars have gone directly to the products of Austenmania, the film and television productions‖ (Kaplan, ―Pride‖). These responses, however, are the responses of ―filmmakers, some of whose views of the novels were influenced by academic scholarship‖ (Kaplan, ―Pride‖). Fan fiction, by contrast, can offer researchers insight into the motives of a wider range of ―real-life readers‖ (Kaplan, ―Pride‖). Rather than simply ―alluding to Austen Web sites‖ and ―various online conversations about the novelist,‖ Kaplan insists that scholars should write ―sustained explorations of the numerous responses that have been collecting in cyberspace‖ (―Pride‖). My master paper is an answer to that ―call for papers.‖ As such, it is part of a larger project, in which Austen fan fiction is examined to determine how the novelist‘s work is currently received in non-academic circles. While my conclusions, then, will not go beyond the narrow scope of my work, I aim to provide material for future research—and, considering the unique nature of fan fiction, perhaps also an example. As my object of study is, in the first place, fan fiction, I have based my approach on recent trends in fan fiction studies. This discipline has its earliest roots in the 1980s, when Van Steenhuyse 3 scholars began to discuss slash fics in the context of ―feminist pornography debates‖ (Busse and Hellekson 17). It was not until the early 1990s, however, that ―three studies‖ introduced a number of ―central readings and theoretical approaches to fan fiction‖ (Busse and Hellekson 17- 8). Firstly, Henry Jenkins‘ Textual Poachers (1992) approached the genre from ―audience studies,‖ highlighting fans‘ ―resistance to the seemingly all-encompassing force of commercial media‖ (Busse and Hellekson 18). Secondly, Camille Bacon-Smith‘s Enterprising Women (1992) took ―an anthropological approach,‖ and researched ―the community of women and their interaction and ties‖ (Busse and Hellekson 18). Lastly, Constance Penley‘s ―Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture‖ (1992, 1998) investigated fans‘ identification processes from a psychoanalytic point of view (Busse and Hellekson 19). While these early studies focussed primarily on offline fan communities (Busse and Hellekson 19), more recent works represent fan fiction first and foremost ―as an interpretative gesture, thus using fan fiction to gain further insight into a particular source text‖ (Busse and Hellekson 20). Although most of these build on the theories of Jenkins, Bacon-Smith, and Penley (Busse and Hellekson 20), some scholars have ―tried to use different paradigms and methodologies‖ (Busse and Hellekson 21), most importantly by ―letting fans speak for themselves‖ (Busse and Hellekson 21), or, if they are also fan writers, by analysing ―their own writing practices‖ and ―experiences‖ (Busse and Hellekson 21). Necessarily, such studies draw on, or add to, the ―corpus of literature‖ fans have written about their own activities, and which they have posted on sites like ―the Fanfic Symposium‖ (Busse and Hellekson 23). In general, recent research has incorporated Nicholas Ambercrombie and Brian Longhurst‘s ―new model of the consumer,‖ which represents consumption as active rather than passive (Busse and Hellekson 22). As a result, it has moved ―away from studying the community to studying the individual fan, in particular her underlying motivations and psychology‖ (Busse and Hellekson 23). Unfortunately, this also means that some researchers have failed to take into account ―the specific particularities of the fannish community‖ (Busse and Hellekson 23). Van Steenhuyse 4 Even more recently, scholars have pointed out the analogies between fan activity and academic research. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse claim, for instance, that ―the act of performing fandom parallels the act of performing academia,‖ and that a familiarity with both practices can help scholars ―to see a more comprehensive picture of fandom‖ (25). Similarly, Juli J. Parrish emphasises how the ―analogy between fan writing and student writing‖ (153) can make the latter more attractive (149-51). These trends have determined my approach in two ways. Firstly, I will examine only one fic by one fan, namely Pamela Aidan‘s Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman. I have chosen this particular fic because it was self-published before it was discovered by Simon & Schuster—making it a prime example of Grossman‘s ―New Publishing‖ (55). Not only did this make it more practical to discuss her text, but it also ensured that her fic was not changed drastically when it appeared offline.

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