The morning air at the Bennet household was loopy with the pungent scent of fresh teenagers, especially on Mother\u2019s Day. The girls were predictably full of themselves, looking the other way at mom and dad\u2019s stuffy take on the annual break from real life and otherwise salivating about hottie neighbor Charles Bingley. Hormones raced from one room to the next, defining an evolution unseen at the Bennets before or since. But we\u2019ll never know all this for sure, because Mother\u2019s Day wouldn\u2019t be Mother\u2019s Day for another century or so. Besides, the household is a fictional product of Jane Austen\u2019s “Pride and Prejudice,” from 1813, in which protagonist Elizabeth fights a sometimes losing battle discovering what life\u2019s about. As Mother\u2019s Day 2016 approaches, one La Jolla writer can relate. In fact, she\u2019s dubbed herself the Elizabeth to Austen\u2019s mom character, who doesn\u2019t have a first name: “When you\u2019re younger and read \u2019Pride and Prejudice,\u2019 everybody identifies with Elizabeth. When you\u2019re older, it\u2019s time to identify with my Mrs. Bennet.” So says Dori Salerno, author of “Mrs. Bennet\u2019s Sentiments: Pride and Prejudice and Perseverance,” a de facto Mother\u2019s Day tribute to Salerno\u2019s mom, who passed away at the age Salerno is now. The English Mrs. Bennet\u2019s odd and ungainly foibles, a favorite target for young Elizabeth, found their way into real American life, with a youthful Salerno feeling an oat or two at mom\u2019s expense. With the passage of time has come a new perspective, as Salerno is a mother of two herself. In a perfect world, her mom would have lived to see publication of this book “so I could say I get it… now!” Salerno is also a figure in another medium \u2013 the legitimate stage. As co-founder and artistic director of La Jolla-based Vantage Theatre, she has a boatload of experience with the written word, as her company has traversed several local spaces and has a stint in London under its belt. So how come she didn\u2019t immortalize Mrs. Bennet onstage? “Everybody was asking me that,” Salerno said. “In a book, there\u2019s a little more exposition and a little more of the show-and-tell balance. There\u2019s more description and more inner thoughts of the character. No matter how good an actor you are, you can\u2019t duplicate that. I just thought the book form made Mrs. Bennet more readable.” The fact that Mrs. Bennet already has a place in a classic novel (whose 19th-century setting is left intact here) arguably didn\u2019t hurt. Meanwhile, Salerno said, “There\u2019s a method to her madness,” vastly hidden under her hypochondria and inconsistent behavior and fishwifery and general boorishness. “This is a story,” Salerno explains, “of the reasons she does what she does.” To wit: In Austen\u2019s novel, boy-crazed Lydia, 15, runs away from her Longbourn home after taking up with one Mr. Wickham, whom at first she doesn\u2019t marry. Upon the prodigal\u2019s return, Mrs. Bennet throws a coming-home party, which appalls the other daughters. Ma\u2019s at it again, they sizz, replacing expected behavior with her usual eccentricity. “Of course Mrs. Bennet was ashamed of the whole thing,” Salerno said, “but in my book, she threw the party because to show she was mortified would bring shame on the family. Ridiculous thing to do, but it saved the daughter\u2019s reputation.” And Mrs. Bennet\u2019s unexplained aches, pains, itches, hysteria and generalized yuckiness? “Menopause,” Salerno said with a straight voice. “I enjoyed flipping that.” “This all came about,” Salerno explained, “from observing all the mothers I know, looking at all the mothers trying to do the best for their daughters and their modes of mothering.” The key component in her research? “We were all mothers of teenage daughters that roll their eyes at us.” Salerno started on the book in 2010, taking time to raise kids, mount plays and gather grist for her characters. She initially submitted the manuscript to an East Coast editor at Sourcebooks, who returned feedback on the solicitation in 24 hours and encouraged her perseverance. Salerno decided to self-publish through amazon.com\u2019s CreateSpace, a testament to the merits of today\u2019s technology climate. Whereas today\u2019s mainstream publishers accept three of every 1,000 book proposals, the self-publishing phenomenon puts the writer in control as the novel trade burgeons anew. “Mrs. Bennet,” Salerno explained, “is a comic character who\u2019s got to manage a household with five girls and take care of her husband\u2019s man-cave. There\u2019s a lot on her plate. But (my character) also has a certain skill that allows her to move in and out of homes in London and that kind of thing.” There\u2019s more to Mrs. Bennet than Mrs. Bennet, Salerno says, deferring to some character-building memories. “Maybe,” Salerno concludes, “my book will help some other daughters get it.” You can find out if it will by visiting amazon.com and searching the title. The CreateSpace book number is createspace.com\/6197005.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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