Jane Austen's Fight Club

Sooo...we're kinda famous now. First it was Mashable, then TIME, Glamour and CBS news. Every time I open my mailbox, there's another article about our little video. It's like Christmas! Now we're in The Huffington Post and NPR and I figure it's about time I posted it, too.
The video posted to YouTube only last Friday, and in a week it has nearly a million views. We filmed it thinking it would be fun to send to our friends, but weren't expecting it to be picked up outside of that- and certainly not to this degree! It's been funny to read the responses and ultra-serious reactions to something so clearly meant as a parody. Through all of this, not one actual contributor to Jane Austen's Fight Club has responded- which makes the rumors of who we are and why we did it all the more hilarious.

It's beautiful how well Chuck Palahniuk's lines translated into Jane Austen's heroines bursting to live fully from out of a repressed society which would tell women they were merely decorative property to be passed from their father's to their husband's estates. Tyler Durden's speech in "Fight Club" was perfectly suited for these women as a reminder of their true identity, "You’re not how much money you’ve got in the bank.  You’re not your job.  You’re not your family, and you’re not who you tell yourself.  You’re not your name.  You’re not your problems.  You’re not your age.  You are not your hopes.  You are the strongest and the smartest men who have ever lived." Can't you just hear Lizzie Bennett or Fanny Price reminding her desperate household of sisters of their true identity? "You are not how much money that is in our estate. You're not your father's name. You're not the name you marry. You're not your petticoats or your cottage or the latest fashions from Paris. You're strong and smart and you may live as you choose."
The comedy of manners has always eluded me. How these heroines survived swishing their hoop skirts though a mine field of polite propriety by wit alone never connected with me. I've always been more of a Bronte fan, myself. Give me a man ripping his shirt off and howling at the moon in the moors and going mad with elaborate plots for vengeance any day.