Guest Post and Giveaway: Christina Dudley of The Beresfords

The Calico Critic offers a big welcome to our guest blogger Christina Dudley, author of The Beresfords.  As fan of Austenesque fiction, I myself am looking forward to reading this nod to Mansfield Park in the near future.  In the meantime, here are a few thoughts from Christina and a nice giveaway!

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Although Austen described Emma Woodhouse as “a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like,” as the centuries have passed, it turns out far more abuse has actually been heaped on Fanny Price of Mansfield Park. Yes, Emma may be interfering and snobby, but Fanny—! Even Austen’s niece Anna Austen LeFroy “could not bear” her, and Austen’s own mother deemed Fanny “insipid.” Why the hate?

Anna Austen Lefroy,
Fanny-Hater

I think Fanny suffers from the Not-Elizabeth-Bennet Syndrome, just as MP suffers in readers’ estimation as the Not-Pride-and-Prejudice. Fanny doesn’t sparkle and enchant; she watches from the wings, observing all but acting little (pun intended). When Mary Crawford comes along, sparkling and enchanting like an Elizabeth Bennet gone to the Dark Side, she steals Fanny’s horse, Fanny’s health, Fanny’s beloved Edmund, and Fanny’s emotional well-being, without Fanny lifting a finger in defense. Fanny Price has nothing, it seems, but the power to say No. Yet much of the novel turns on this power of Fanny’s. With her No to the amateur theatrical and its attendant misbehaviors, and with her No to the wiles of Henry Crawford, Fanny alone emerges with her self-respect and integrity intact.

Maybe if we let her hair
down and give her pouty lips
and cleavage, people will warm to her..?

Besides its passive heroine, Mansfield Park has two more strikes against it for modern readers: Fanny’s sincere religiosity and Edmund’s unsexy career choice. For their book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam analyzed 15,000 Harlequin novels and came up with this top-ten list of romance hero professions:

1. 

   Now there's a hero.

   Doctor
2. Cowboy
3. Boss
4. Prince
5. Rancher
6. Knight
7. Surgeon
8. King
9. Bodyguard
10. Sheriff

But wait! They left off “clergyman”! Exactly. Now, I know Harlequin novels are not Austen novels, but they, like all the Austen adaptations and sequels and updates, are descendents of her work. The hillbilly cousins who show up to the family reunion.

So given all poor Fanny’s disadvantages, why did I choose to write The Beresfords, a modern update of Mansfield Park? Four reasons:

1. Mansfield Park is one of my favorite Austen novels, P&P and Persuasion being the others. MP features some of Austen’s best humor (not to mention the only dirty joke in her entire oeuvre, courtesy of Mary Crawford!), richest characterizations, and most detailed windows into her time and place.
2. Given Fanny’s religiosity and Edmund’s career choice, faith issues play a natural, integral role in a re-envisioning of the story. My whole reading life has been spent on “secular” books, and I don’t think of myself as a writer of Christian fiction, per se, but I get tagged as such because I often write about churchgoing characters and things they wrestle with. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but in contemporary secular fiction, churchgoing characters tend to be either (1) closet molesters or, (2) hypocritical as all-get-out. There are exceptions, of course, but not many. The exceptions prove the rule.
3. I wanted to give Fanny her own voice, to make her more sympathetic. Recently, MP was made into an opera, and as the Austenonly blogger who attended noted, “…the internalized dialogues of Fanny Price are simply crying out to be translated into arias when she can address us, her audience, with some passion about the dreadful goings on around her.” The best way to make a potentially unsympathetic character sympathetic? Let her tell her side of the story, as my “Frannie” does.
4. And finally, I was ticked at dear Jane for the ending of Mansfield Park. After all that Fanny has been through, things turn around for her in one sentence?! (And not even a very detailed sentence!) Fanny suffers more than any other Austen heroine, with the possible exception of Anne Elliott in Persuasion, but Anne gets a delicious conclusion, complete with detailed, heartfelt confession by Captain Wentworth. How could Austen so phone it in, when it came to Fanny? This absolutely had to be remedied.

So meet The Beresfords.

Raised with four older stepcousins in a conservative, churchgoing family, Frannie Price teeters on the brink of adolescence in the summer of 1985. Her timidity and awkwardness make her easy to overlook, yet she has one true friend in her cousin Jonathan. Jonathan, her childhood champion and the best person she knows. But when the Grant twins enter her life, Frannie’s world turns upside down. Not only does the sly and charming Eric Grant set her girl cousins against each other, but his flirtatious sister makes off with Jonathan’s heart.

Only Frannie sees the faults running beneath the family landscape—not that anyone’s asking her opinion. Not her strict Uncle Paul, not her beloved Jonathan, and certainly not the Grants, who, after having their way with the rest of the Beresfords, turn their sights on her. What’s a girl to do? And why does she feel, in this uncharted territory, like God left her at the border?

With sympathy, humor and more than a nod to Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, The Beresfords chronicles Frannie’s coming of age, when all around her is coming apart.

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Probably only a small percentage of my reader base have read Mansfield Park, so if I can’t convince you to love the Austen novel, don’t let it stop you from spending time with my Frannie!

A misleading Venn diagram, in which the author’s
readership appears disproportionately large.

But you get the idea.

And finally, if you live in the greater Seattle area, I will be reading from and signing copies of The Beresfords at University Book Store Bellevue, Wednesday, July 18, at 6:30 p.m. Come talk Austen with me, and invite me to your book club!

Christina Dudley's Website

E-Book Giveaway of The Beresfords!

Now that Christina has piqued your interest in The Beresfords, she has generously offered to give away a Kindle edition of her book!  Remember, even if you don't own a Kindle, you can still read these versions on Kindle's Cloud Reader on your computer, or even on a Kindle app for your phone or iPad. Be sure to read the guidelines below, enter via the Rafflecopter widget, and good luck!

• The contest period ends at 12:01am EST on July 29th, 2012.
• Contest is open to those with an Amazon.com account to receive contest prize.
• Make sure you leave your email address in the one required portion of the Rafflecopter form. Should you win, I will contact you on Sunday, July 29th.  Please take measures to ensure that my email will make it past your spam filters, lest you miss my message. (CalicoCritic@gmail.com) You'll have 72 hours to respond before I pick another winner.  This email address must be the same one you use to log in to your Amazon account, as it is where the e-book will be sent.
• All entries must go through the Rafflecopter form.  For example, if you leave a blog post comment and would like it to count toward your contest entry, be sure to indicate this through the "Leave a Blog Post Comment" button on the form.
• You may tweet about the giveaway once per day for bonus entries. Please report the direct URL to the tweet in the Rafflecopter form.
• Entries will be verified.  If a fraudulent entry is detected for the winning name, another winner will be drawn.
• After contact is established with the winner via email, the results will be published in the Rafflecopter widget below, and in a post on The Calico Critic's Facebook group wall.

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try clicking on the "Read more »" link

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