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Article: Jane Austen's relics and the treasures of the East Room.(Essay)
- Article from:
- Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
- Article date:
- January 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Jane Austen Society of North America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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ON THE FACE OF IT, there is something disconcerting about the spectacle of Chawton Cottage--something misleading, or at the least profoundly wishful. This squat brick dwelling wears its two commemorative plaques awkwardly. Topped with five ungainly chimneys and fronted with an implausibly short picket fence, it is certainly not the kind of cottage Marianne Dashwood might envision. Its many traces of windows and doors bricked over, moved and modified disrupt the symmetries they still imply without evoking the quaintness that we associate with irregularity in its more idealized, picturesque forms. Neither thatched, shuttered, nor covered with honeysuckles, the house is ...