Hello my friends,You’ve been through a lot this with us this October - our month of horrors has explored the haunted halls of Mansfield Park, the monstrous mousiness of Fanny Price Ultimate Conqueror, the Drawing-Room treachery of Jane Austen’s parlors, and now we cap it off just in time for Halloween weekend, with this special post and podcast episode featuring professor and writer Maria DeBlassie. For Dr. DeBlassie, ordinary life is full of dangers, threats from the real and every day, and what she calls ordinary gothic. Everyday treachery is everywhere and it haunts Jane Austen's novels, where our heroes are forced to face down drawing room dangers even among so-called polite society. But Dr. DeBlassie also has an answer to this problem. She says everyday magic, and the empowerment and joy and romance found in nature, in the power of stories, and in yourself, can help you slay the everyday demons.So, for this special Halloween edition of the Austen Connection we're having a conversation about gothic romance, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, feminism, bodice rippers, witchery, and everyday magic. And somehow Professor Maria DeBlassie ties all of this together in her work and in her life. Dr. DeBlassie is on the faculty at Central New Mexico Community College and teaches in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico. In her teaching, her writing, and in her brujeria practice, Dr. DeBlassie is all about finding joy and empowerment, especially as women, as a women of color, and from indigenous or marginalized backgrounds. She says magic, witchery and reading Jane Austen can help you form a magical path forward from trauma and fragmentation based on marginalized identities and to conquer that ordinary gothic that we all face at times. And when you think about it, Jane Austen's characters are all about conquering the ordinary gothic -  Fanny Price, Elinor Dashwood, Catherine Morland - they are constantly conquering the everyday treachery of people around them. Think of patriarchal Sir Thomas, Sir Walter, Henry Crawford, the Thorpe siblings, John and Isabella. These characters and the dangers they bring can relate not just to the everyday but also the political, the cultural society, and the world we all share. But Dr. DeBlassie also teaches the romance genre, and she believes that Jane Austen has an awful lot to say about our everyday relationships. Here’s our conversation about ordinary gothic - the disturbances, toxicity, danger, and general creepiness surrounding us - and finding a path forward through story, and everyday magic. Enjoy! Plain JaneSo let me start with: I saw you on Twitter talking about your work, as a professor, about Northanger Abbey, bodice rippers. What is the title of the class? And what's in it? What are you teaching in it?Dr. Maria DeBlassieSo the title of the class is “From Bodice Rippers to Resistance Romance,” or something like that. And it's looking at courtship novels, bodice rippers, and historical romances, and really thinking about how the courtship novel in the 18th century, 19th centuries, really developed this beautiful form of storytelling that centered women's lives, that centered the domestic sphere, and people's emotions. So we look at that and how that genre really inspired the modern romance novel, particularly the historical romance. And then there's a real, spicy couple of decades, where we get the bodice ripper in the sort of ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. And that's when people introduce sex. And you know, it's really colorfully described sex scenes into the historical romance. So the bodice ripper is really what most people think of when they think of romance novels. They think of the sexy clinch covers, and Fabio, and now and then we end up the class looking at contemporary historical romances that are really thinking about centering people with marginalized identities, in stories about happy endings. And I think it's incredibly powerful to have those stories, so people of color, peo