happy little sigh

Do you suppose that as Prince William slipped the gold ring onto his bride’s finger last Friday that her mother might have turned to Kate’s father and whispered, “I was sure she could not be so beautiful for nothing!” just as Mrs. Bennett said to her eldest daughter Jane after the announcement of her engagement to the wealthy Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice.

Even more than we like the princess getting the prince, we do so like it when the Cinderella–the common girl–gets the prince, do we not? So long as she is good and worthy, of course, and from what we can tell, Kate Middleton–or the Duchess of Cambridge, I suppose we must now address her–does seem to fit the shoe very well.

As Kate stepped onto the Buckingham Palace balcony and saw the crowds waving and cheering below, her first word was “Wow.” I smiled to myself, for it gave me the tiniest glimpse of what it must be like to be in her real life princess shoes. To be suddenly moved from just another middle class girl to the wife of the future king. Wow indeed.

He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?" ~ I Capture the Castle

And speaking of first lines, how well-acquainted are you with some of our other favourite literary heroines? Can you identify the below novels by their first lines?

1. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
2. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.
3. Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow . . .
4. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
5. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
6. “The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all.”
7. The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex.
8. I wish I could write that I began my journey by train.
9. It is a truth universally acknowledged,  that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
10. To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood.
11. Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.
12. ‘HASTE TO THE WEDDING’ ‘Wooed and married and a’.’
13. When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen.
14. Thirty years ago, Marseilles lay burning in the sun, one day.
15. Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.
16. I have just returned from a visit to my landlord–the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
17. Scarlet O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.
18. No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine.

~ ANSWERS BELOW ~

1. Middlemarch by George Eliot

2. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

3. Anne of  Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

4. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

5. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

6. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

7. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

8. Beyond the Castle by Avonlea Q. Krueger *

9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

10. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

11. Emma  by Jane Austen

12. North  and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

13. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

14. Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens

15. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

16. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

17. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

18. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

*Ah, I couldn’t help but add the first line to my own novel, Beyond the Castle. My heroine’s name is Florence Elliot, and I think you shall like her very much. I hope to give you the chance to get to know her better in the weeks to come!

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Coming up in my next post, more on the life of Charlotte Bronte, author of Jane Eyre, as well as film locations and other information on the most recent adaptation of the novel.

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