All Roads Lead to Austen: A Year-long Journey with Jane

by Amy Elizabeth Smith

  Thanks to a late departure from the United States, I missed a connection in Chile, was put on a different flight, and arrived in Buenos Aires seven hours late. I couldn’t find Hugo anywhere in the airport, so I took a taxi to my apartment, utterly exhausted, and crashed on the king-sized bed. An hour or so later reception buzzed me that I had a visitor. During the time it took the elevator to ascend to my room, I scrambled around madly to put on clothes, untangle my hair, and get a bit of color on my lips.

  There, when I opened the door, was Hugo, apologizing profusely for having missed me at the airport. I’m going to invoke the standard Austen veil of discretion over that reunion—I’m still more Elinor than Marianne. Suffice it to say, we were happy to see each other. Very happy. And yes, Dear Reader, I finally got my kiss.

  ***

  When the right moment arrived a few days later, I asked the question that had been bugging me for the better part of a year: “Why did you walk out of my room last summer without even trying to kiss me?”

  Hugo nodded solemnly; he’d been expecting this. “I was afraid I’d never hear from you again after I did that. It would have completely offended most Argentinean women. But I just didn’t want to start something when you were leaving the next day, and who knew if I would ever see you again? I don’t take relationships lightly. Ever. That’s just the way I am.”

  One of my favorite episodes of Sex and the City is called “Are We Sluts?” In it, Carrie Bradshaw begins power-fretting when Aidan, her new love interest, doesn’t immediately hop into bed with her. He wanted to take things slowly. I hadn’t necessarily expected that night with Hugo the year before to end in bed, but the sentiment was the same. Aidan was a gentleman, and so was Hugo. Given that Hugo’s father had been a nightclub musician, Lady Catherine de Bourgh might not think so, but I certainly did.

  While I’d been traveling in Latin America for a year I’d made silly assumption after silly assumption. Clueless on two continents—that was me. When Hugo had walked away from me a year ago, I’d assumed he wasn’t interested in me romantically. Maybe that seemed like a safe enough assumption. After all, don’t other episodes of Sex and the City teach that “he’s just not that into you” if he doesn’t vault the stairs into your bed once you’ve dropped a hint?

  But I didn’t ride that assumption out, and my gut had been right after all. Chalk it up to the Elinor in me. Even when Lucy Steele showed up, flaunting her secret engagement, Elinor just knew that Edward couldn’t have been playing her false. She trusted her feelings, despite appearances. I hadn’t given up hope when Hugo walked away. I just knew, somehow, that he cared for me. And sure enough, he did.

  “Did you know right away that you liked me?” I asked a few days later as we returned to browse the bookstores on Corrientes. Conflicting emotions crossed his face. “To be honest, no,” he finally answered, setting down the book he’d been looking at. “I thought you were a little irritating.” Then he took me by the shoulders, right there in the bookstore. “But it didn’t take long, you know, when I began to suspect you were interested in me. Are you mad at me for saying this?”

  “For being honest? Never. I don’t ask questions unless I want to hear the answer.” I smiled and kissed him. “But for the record, I knew the day I met you that you were special. Right away. I really did.”

  “Well, thank god you didn’t give up on me even after how grumpy I was the second time you came by the store. I can’t believe how close I came to ruining everything!” He squeezed my hand and shook his head in alarm at the disturbing thought.

  If he asked me directly, then I’d tell him. Honesty needs to cut both ways. But since he didn’t ask, I didn’t explain that he’d never really been in danger of ruining anything. I was too darned stubborn to cut and run because of a little grumpiness. Catherine Morland, goof that she is, hangs in there with Henry Tilney through some rough circumstances. The narrator of Northanger Abbey wryly confesses that although Henry came to love Catherine, it didn’t happen at first sight: “A persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought.” Something of an insult to a heroine, to be sure, but if Catherine could survive it, so could I.

  The weeks flew by. Shortly before I had to return to the States, Hugo and I walked to the Plaza de Mayo. We settled in on a bench in front of the famous Casa Rosada or “Pink House”—Argentina’s equivalent of the White House. This was the square where tens of thousands of Argentineans had gathered from around the country to demand the release of Juan Perón from military prison, an event that led to his becoming president and to his wife Eva Perón achieving worldwide fame.

  On that day with Hugo, I couldn’t think about all of the history that had been made in that important square, ringed with colonial architecture and attractive cafés; all I could think about was how I was getting on a plane again very, very soon.

  Shall I invoke Austen once more? I adore the ending of Northanger Abbey when the narrator steps in to point out how there can’t be much more suspense over the fate of her hero and heroine since the readers “will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity.”

  Austen is famously cagey about marriage proposals—she leaves her couples to their privacy in that most sacred of moments. But what the heck, I’ll share. Ours went like this:

  Hugo: I know you don’t want to give up your job, so I want to tell you now—I’d be willing to come with you to the States.

  Amy: That’s wonderful! The easiest way for that to work would be for us to get married.

  Hugo: Then let’s get married.

  Amy: Okay then.

  And there you have it. Nobody happened to have a ring on them at the moment, but we worked that out later. The legal details turned out to be a lot more complicated than either of us could have imagined, but details are details. The most important thing—we’d found each other. Even if I had found him a bit faster than he’d found me. Even if we lived 6,000 miles (and a lot of immigration paperwork) apart.

  Hugo’s parents had both passed away years ago, so he would be able to move without too much complication, although leaving close friends behind would be hard. As for my mother, she was thrilled that I was getting married. She was even more thrilled when I made it clear Hugo would be coming to the United States, and not vice versa.

  “I’m not sure how I would have managed if you’d moved to another country!” she said frankly. Once the big details were settled, it didn’t take her long to ask, “So, does Hugo know how to dance the Argentine tango?”

  ***

  The day I met Hugo, here’s what I wrote in my travel notes: “And how is it, that of all the bookstores in the bookstore capital of Latin America, I happen to walk into one with a guy who says, ‘Why Emma? Why not Northanger Abbey?’”

  Despite the echo of that famous line from Casablanca, we didn’t get a Casablanca ending, with a wrenching, permanent good-bye on a dark airport runway. We got an Austen ending. I’d had a beautiful visit with Diego, a solidly good man—a Bingley who deserved his very own Jane (and who, I felt sure, would find her).

  But with Hugo, I was home.

  Austen’s happy endings aren’t dopey. They’re not fairy tales, as Teresa had pointed out during the Buenos Aires group. Anybody who’s read Sense and Sensibility carefully knows that Elinor and Edward (and their cows) will struggle financially for the rest of their lives and that Lucy Ferrars, wealthy sister-in-law, will be twice as aggravating as conniving Miss Lucy Steele was. As for Emma, Emma and Mr. Knightley will keep getting into arguments—especially while they’re stuck under Mr. Woodhouse’s roof—as will Darcy and Lizzy from Pride and Prejudice, for sure. Lizzy will continue getting crap from Mr. Darcy’s snooty aunt and continue slinging it back, as well (and sending Lydia off to a distant county isn’t going to prevent that bad penny and her rotter husband
from turning up to mooch money when things go sour, and they will go sour).

  Believable happiness—that’s what’s in store for Austen’s protagonists. They all find love, but it’s love embedded in situations we can identify with: money woes, frustrating relatives, unavoidable personality clashes. That, I think, is why people keep coming back to Austen. That’s why Austen resonated so richly for Nora, Élida, and the other ladies in Guatemala, who kept their faith in love despite gender discrimination that might make weaker women cynical. That’s why Diego and his friends in Mexico, all struggling financially but doing it with strength and optimism, were so happy, above all, for patient, virtuous Elinor. That’s why the members of the Ecuador group, with their literary director and their broad-ranging reading experiences, were still impressed with Austen’s psychological realism. Wanting some believable happiness is what frustrated the Chilean writers when Austen ties things up so quickly between Marianne and Colonel Brandon; disliking Emma too much to want to see her happy kept the Paraguay readers from making it to the end of the book (and I’m afraid those young ladies, busy no doubt with family and with their own students, never did get back to me on Emma).

  As for Argentina—ahhh, Argentina! The readers wrangled and tangled and argued so much we barely made it to a discussion of the novel’s end. But did they find it believable? Absolutely.

  I’d set off from California as a teacher and quickly realized what a student I still was. Austen’s lessons about patience and careful reading had seemed so clear in my comfortable California classroom. I hadn’t realized how my trip would really be a road test of values and beliefs I thought I had already absorbed from Austen: Don’t judge too hastily; not everyone wants the same things out of life; people’s circumstances color how they respond to everything; we’re not all speaking the same language, even when we’re speaking the same language.

  Theoretically, I could have shown up in any six countries and had a great experience learning with Austen. But I was glad I’d chosen Latin America, and not just because that’s where Hugo awaited. I was glad because now I could speak the most common second language in the United States. Now I knew one country from another south of the U.S. border, and I’d clued in to the many family squabbles among them, some lighthearted, like their soccer rivalries and the popularity of “arrogant Argentinean” jokes, others much more politically serious. I now knew better than to call myself an “American” in Spanish, since we’re all Americans—South Americans, Central Americans, North Americans. In English, I’m an American; in Spanish, an estado unidense or “United States-er.” Sounds better in Spanish, doesn’t it?

  I love teaching because I love learning, and none of us is a finished product. Ever. If I showed up in Germany or Thailand or Bora Bora with some Austen novels, I’d go through the same trial and error (emphasis on the “error”) all over again, albeit not on the dating front. Learning is fun, as any book nerd knows. Maybe Germany or Thailand or Bora Bora wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all; I never did get to find out what folks outside of the United States think of Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and my personal favorite, Northanger Abbey. It might also be fun to start a new hunt for Nancy Drew—and maybe learn a different language along the way.

  And for those of you with a good memory, yes, Mr. Dudgeon got his Jane Austen article for the JASBA newsletter. When Hugo and I recently attended his ninety-seventh birthday party in Buenos Aires, we brought him a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. His response? “Isn’t that just lovely! And about our next newsletter—you’ll write another piece, won’t you, my dear? We must keep busy, you know.”

  I agree. Introducing Hugo to his new home in the United States (and to his enormous new family!)—that happy beginning will keep us both very busy indeed.

  Reading Group Guide

  1.While reading All Roads Lead to Austen, did you learn anything new or surprising about Jane Austen’s life or about her novels?

  2.The author chose to read three Austen novels two times each. What differences did you notice between the reactions of readers in Guatemala and those in Ecuador to Pride and Prejudice? How did the Mexico and Chile groups differ in their discussions of Sense and Sensibility? What were the most noticeable differences in how the Paraguay and the Argentina readers reacted to Emma?

  3.The author mentions early on that she considers herself a feminist. Do you think this affects any of her interactions with people as she travels? Do you see any changes in her attitudes about gender issues in Latin America by the end of the book?

  4.The author discusses how nervous her mother was about the author traveling alone in unfamiliar countries. How would your family members react if you decided to embark on an extended trip? Would they be nervous? Supportive? Maybe a little jealous?

  5.The author describes a run-in with some anti-Americanism in Argentina, when a young woman called her a “Yankee tourist.” Do you think this is common problem for American travelers abroad? If so, what are some the causes? Is it worse in some parts of the world than others? Have you ever experienced it yourself while traveling?

  6.The students the author taught in Chile were Americans and Canadians studying abroad. Do you believe that study abroad programs are important and valuable? Why or why not?

  7.Translations of Austen’s novels are available in every major language. Which other countries would be interesting places to read Austen’s novels with local groups? Do you think there are countries or regions of the world where her stories and characters might not translate as well as they did in Latin America? If so, where? And why do you think so?

  8.In the preface to the work, the author mentions that someone criticized her project for “superimposing” European literature on Latin American readers, a concern that her fiancé found patronizing. What is your opinion of this issue?

  9.Which reading group discussion did you find the most interesting, memorable, or surprising—the one in Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile, Paraguay, or Argentina? Why?

  10.The author discusses how her serious, lengthy illness made her behave impatiently at times with people she met. Have you ever had a similar experience?

  11.What are some of your favorite moments from the book? Who are some of the most memorable people the author meets during her travels and in her reading groups?

  12.Does the author seem to be changed in some ways by her experiences in Latin America? Does she grow and mature? If so, how? Does her relationship with her mother change? If so, how?

  13.If you could spend an entire year traveling and reading Jane Austen novels with people in new places, where would you go?

  14.Overall, the readers in Latin America enjoyed Austen’s novels and identified with her characters. Do you think this would have happened if the author had shared other authors with these same groups of readers? Would the readers in Mexico or Chile, for instance, have enjoyed Charles Dickens as much? Or Emily Brontë? If you are in a book group, are there authors you’ve read who might not translate well into Latin American cultures?

  15.What similarities or differences do you see between Diego and Hugo? What did you like about each of the men? Why do you think Hugo won Amy’s heart in the end?

  16.The author mentions at the end of the section on Mexico that meeting the readers made her realize she’d had certain preconceptions about Mexicans that her experience led her to reconsider. Did the novel challenge you to reconsider any stereotypes or preconceptions you might have about Latin American countries or people who come from Latin American countries?

  17.Does reading All Roads Lead to Austen inspire you to want to travel to Latin America? Why or why not? If it does, which countries seem most appealing, and why?

  Acknowledgments

  I have so many people to thank for my Austen year—most of all, each and every reader from the groups in Guatemala, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile (Fernando, forgive me for revealing your Elinor secr
et!), Paraguay, and Argentina. Writers tend to say modest things like “I couldn’t have done it without x, y, or z,” and in this case, it’s completely true. I’d like to thank Betsy and her husband and Martín and Dorrie for being such great hosts. Various colleagues helped along the way, including Katie Golsan, Luis Figueroa, Gene Bigler, and David Schmidt. As for the real Larry from Pittsburgh, I loved our Austen conversations, and thanks also to the adventurous students from Chile!

  All of my wonderful Jane Austen students from the University of the Pacific have been an inspiration as well, especially those whose projects I mentioned here—Jamie Cunningham, Caleb Draper, Katelyn McGehee, Megan Olhasso, and Alyssa Soboleski.

  Friends and family have been a huge help with elements of the project and with the manuscript, including Dolly Blair, Laurie Brady, Martín Camps, Cynthia Dobbs, David Dobbs, Anne Gossage, Susan Harman, James Lewis, Hannah Myers, Cindy Ostberg, Traci Roberts-Camps, Shawn Smith, Pat Thomas, and the fabulous travelin’ Cheryl Wanko. Jaque Lyman went above and beyond to help—thanks so much. (I can’t wait to return the favor with your next novel). Folks from the Writers Unlimited group in San Andreas, California, supported by the Calaveras County Arts Council, gave me good direction as I was finishing the work and designing the website, especially Rachel-Mikel ArceJaeger and Monika Rose.

  I want to thank Caroline Cox not only for braving the earliest, shaggiest forms of the chapters, but also for introducing me to Lisa Adams, my wonderful, supportive, and very patient agent. Thanks, too, to Shana Drehs, my editor, as well as Deirdre Burgess, for helping an uptight Elinor try to get in touch with her inner Marianne.

  As for Rob Hume—I owe you so much. I know this isn’t the kind of book you trained me to write, but I hope you’re not too horrified. And as for my mom—you were there, every step of the way. I hope your church friends don’t give you too much grief for some of the stuff I admitted to doing here…