“What Kitty Did Next” — Fanfiction by Carrie Kablean — Review
By Ashyle Cota
This novel-length, published fanfiction is a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice by Australian journalist Carrie Kablean. As Austen’s works are being introduced to another generation, being referenced in young adult offerings such as After and Swiped, where young women still identify with her heroines, What Kitty Did Next is a timely, well-researched Regency story focusing on the development and misunderstanding of Catherine, or Kitty, Bennet. She’s the least dwelt upon sister out of the four other notorious Bennets, at best portrayed as a mindless follower of the younger Lydia, or those who might take her by the hand. Labelled as ‘silly and ignorant’ by her father, she now strives to improve herself, gains new experiences, and learns she can be respected and liked outside the shadow of her family circle.
The novel centres on her visits to London and Derbyshire, a the contrast between city and country. The author has taken many turns of phrase from and some liberties with the original novels she has gone into detail of historical living, such as music, shops, ladies’ publications and university student ranks, at a level that is not explored in them and which enlighten a modern reader. Freeze fairs, skating, an elephant on the Thames and a bear in a shop in town are new to most fans.
Kitty forms a fast friendship with Georgiana Darcy, sister-in-law to Lizzy who makes a misplaced attachment a second time, and Miss Fanshawe who sports a short hairstyle and dashes on horseback without a side saddle when no one is looking. Kitty herself is wrongly embroiled in a scandal, but not one of an amorous nature.
Indeed, romance is not to the fore of the plot. When she does get engaged, it is merely a footnote compared with the progression she has made in society, in knowledge gleaned from her father’s library and the Bingleys’ reading material, and as a soon-to-be-published author. She possesses a similar wit as her sister Elizabeth but is the only one who has literary tendencies like the author in depicting caricatures of the people around her. The death of Mrs Bennet leads to a contemplation of her role, restricted as it was by society, in marrying off her daughters and the ultimate love from which it springs
Characters like Elizabeth and Darcy were not given their full reign and it felt like they undid the lessons they had seemingly learned previously about prejudice.
What Kitty Did Next gives agency to a young women of her time. What the title suggests is that Kitty, who was blamed for being complicit when things went wrong and thoughtless all the rest of the time, does things people do not expect. She proves herself worthy of praise and is proven innocent.
