For a while, some family members and I were watching Dickensian, a murder mystery/soap opera which bills itself as a sort of joint prequel to Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, Bleak House, and Great Expectations, with some characters from Our Mutual Friend, Old Curiosity Shop, and a couple of other novels putting in appearances. We persevered (with a bit of fast-forward) through the creepiness of the (soon to murdered) Jacob Marley,(1) a random nude scene with Compeyson,(2), a random bedroom scene with Compeyson and a woman claiming to be his wife, aaaaand, a random dog-killing, also committed by Compeyson. It was at this point that the second season of Andor started and we dropped Dickensian. There was an awkward moment where we were talking about Andor and calling Anton Lesser “Commander Fagin” because we could not for the life of us remember his Star Wars name, and didn’t care enough to look it up.

At any rate, one of the things which struck me strongly about Dickensian

was its portrayal of the early stages of the Bill Sykes/Nancy relationship. We can see that Bill is the kind of violent, possessive brute who will (spoilers for 180+ year old novel) end up murdering Nancy, but at the same time, we can see that she has a horrible life already and we can also see the 5.2 nanoseconds or thereabouts where being involved with Bill might look like an improvement from her point of view.

This in turn led me to thinking about Jane Austen novels, and how a prequel or series of prequels about how the parents of the Jane Austen characters met would probably look more like conventional romance novels than her own novels do. General and Mrs. Tilney would be some Jane Eyre(3) wannabe about a nice but strong woman and the possessive alpha jerk who loves her about as much as he’s capable of loving anyone but himself. The Dashwood parents would be a sweet second-chance romance, probably resented by the man’s son. And so on.

This is the introduction to an occasional series of posts trying to imagine what the “parental generation” of Jane Austen characters were like as young singles, at least the ones I am personally interested in. (Reginald De Courcy’s parents from Lady Susan are not likely to get much of a look-in). I use “Austenian” as kind of a shorthand label to nod to the series which inspired this idea. I have somewhat clearcut ideas on the Bennets, the Elliots, the Tilneys, the Woodhouses, the Vernons, the Brandons, the Ward sisters (of Mansfield Park) and their husbands. The Dashwoods, the Ferrarses, the Wickhams, the Lucases, and the Darcy-Fitzwilliam-De Bourgh lot might also get a look-in.

(1) who in this version is not at all the kind of person who would end up in some kind of purgatory of repentance, expiation, and intercession for his living friend Scrooge, which is what the novel more or less implies.

(2) this is the guy from the Great Expectations backstory who jilted Miss Havisham. There are plenty of nasty people in Dickensian, to the point where greedy, scruffy-looking money-lender Scrooge seems almost human by comparison, but Compeyson is a special kind of evil.

(3) Minus Bronte’s brutal but highly justified defanging of Rochester, where he becomes disabled after trying to save his attic wife from a fire.