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visualization   Written by Katy B (4/29/2007 7:19 p.m.) in consequence of the missive, I work in a school, and we are always, penned by BrendaB
Are you new?

Yes, and details help in the comprehension strategy of "visualization" which is something I always emphasize with my students - they miss so much of this unless they are constantly reminded.

But it's interesting, because JA is rather economical with these details of objects - she doesn't describe objects with great detail, so those of us removed from her world in time and place may have some difficulty with visualizing. She relied, I think, on an audience with familiarity with the things she was writing about. Also, perhaps it IS enough to know that Bingley wore a blue coat and rode a black horse, because that is the significant part - typical of adolescents, they fixate on superficial details regarding what people wear, what they drive (or ride!) or how they act. And JA is writing this part from the point of view of teenaged girls who are observing Bingley from a window.

On the other hand, JA's economy of style did not fixate on descriptions of places and things, in general, but much more on characterization. When Jane and Elizabeth are talking about Bingley after the assembly, (again a typical activity of young girls, to discuss at length every detail of an event) I noticed how an observation made by Lizzy soon turned into a narrative fill-in with details about the characters' background that most likely Lizzy and Jane didn't know, but JA has the narrator tell us at this point, because it fits into the theme being discussed by the characters:
Jane says, in chapter 4, about the Bingley sisters, "Certainly not -- at first. But they are very pleasing women when you converse with them. Miss Bingley is to live with her brother, and keep his house; and I am much mistaken if we shall not find a very charming neighbour in her."

Elizabeth listened in silence, but was not convinced; their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgment too unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them.
(MY question here is, are the following details things the girls found out at the assembly, or the narrator's voice?) They were in fact very fine ladies; not deficient in good-humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of being agreeable where they chose it, but proud and conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank, and were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others. They were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune and their own had been acquired by trade.

Mr. Bingley inherited property to the amount of nearly an hundred thousand pounds from his father, who had intended to purchase an estate, but did not live to do it.... (The narrator's voice then continues here, filling us in about Mr. Bingley's circumstances, important to understanding his position in society).


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