Imagine the shock you’d feel if you were a sheltered lady from 1813 England who woke up one morning in twenty-first-century Los Angeles. In another woman’s body. A woman named Courtney Stone. Who is, like you, unmarried. But who is not, like you, a virgin.
For Jane Austen, who is that lady from 1813 England, discovering that you are suddenly “a ruined woman” is far more shocking than fast-forwarding two hundred years into the future. Far more bewildering than landing in a world illuminated by electric lights, overrun by speeding horseless carriages, and stuffed full of too much information from a multiplicity of electronic devices undreamt of in Regency England.
And even more unnerving than being a ruined woman is the fact that it isn’t unusual. Not one bit.
“I’m finding out that this is not much discussed in Jane Austen’s time,” says Courtney to Jane, “but we’re not virgins when we get married here.”
“I suppose we really are talking about this,” says Jane, mortified that anyone would ever have such a conversation.
Meanwhile, Courtney is getting a do-over of sorts because she has landed in Jane’s life (and body) in nineteenth-century England.
But is Jane Austen’s world everything Courtney dreamed of while reading “Pride and Prejudice” over and over again and watching the movie till the DVD started skipping?
“As much as there’s glamour to the real estate and the clothes and having servants,” says Courtney, “I feel somewhat confined. Stuck in the drawing room with my mum.”
Which is clearly a deterrent to fooling around with a man.
It’s no wonder Courtney feels compelled to give advice to the lady who has taken over her life in the twenty-first century.
“You should have as many partners as possible,” she says to Jane. “Take the car out for a trial run.”
Can a 200-year-old virgin survive the morally challenged modern world? Find out
in episode 11 of SEX AND THE AUSTEN GIRL. Only on Babelgum.
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Guest blogger Laurie Viera Rigler is the author of the time-swapping novels RUDE AWAKENINGS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT and CONFESSIONS OF A JANE AUSTEN ADDICT (available from Plume/Penguin Books and Bloomsbury), which inspired the Babelgum original comedy series SEX AND THE AUSTEN GIRL.
