The Seasons Manor House

Somewhere in New England, there sits a house - a mansion really - where young men, whose lives are on the fast track to disaster, are sent to have their attitudes adjusted and their futures turned around. Ms. Jane Thompson, owner of this Victorian style mansion, takes on these young misfits and serves as their tormenter, teacher, disciplinarian and spirit guide as they learn other, more socially acceptable ways of dealing with their darker emotions than violence or rage. 

In 1989, an author naming himself Joel Lawrence published a story called "Seasons of Change" to an electronic bulletin board. The story revolved around this very unique woman and a teenaged boy named Michael.

Michael was the son of one of Jane's college friends, and something of a wild child. He was on the brink of being expelled from his very prestigious, very exclusive Ivy League boarding school because of his inability to behave in a suitably gentlemanly manner. The solution, and Michael's only chance to be allowed back into the school to finish his senior year, is for him to go to his "Aunt" Jane and learn well the lessons she has to teach him.

 Just what are these lessons Jane Thompson uses to achieve such signficant turn-arounds, you ask? Well, the fact that her home is Victorian in styling is not entirely coincidental. Ms. Jane Thompson's methods involve the use of her own variation of an old Victorian disciplinary practice to strip the boys of their overly macho self images and false pride, so that they can begin to learn a new self worth based on real confidence rather than arrogance. Simply stated, Jane forces her boys to learn to behave and to dress like proper young women of a bygone and gentler era. Fearing the humiliation of discovery more than they hate the public situations she forces them into, Jane's "girls" quickly realize that, in order to avoid being publicly unmasked as boys in dresses, they must learn control, good manners, grace and deportment as self defense mechanisms. Only later do they begin to understand and to appreciate those new behaviors for their own sake.

The original story was left unfinished, and my first major story writing effort (ever!) was to attempt to finish the tale. In so doing, I "discovered" facets to Aunt Jane that I had not recognized in my reading of Mr. Lawrence's story. However, it became clear to me that these "new aspects" to Ms. Jane Thompson had to be there if she really had been operating as long and as successfully as the original story indicated. Clearly, there had to be something more to her purpose than mere, gleeful pleasure over her "girls'" embarrassed and terror-struck reactions to her programs little torments.

Since my first story starring Aunt Jane, I have written five more stories about her and her students. Both she and I have grown and changed over the more than two years of our association. My purpose for this site is to share the Aunt Jane stories that Tiggers like best. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I have.

warm furry hugs!

Tigger

 There are at least as many answers to that question as there are authors writing stories in the Seasons of Change Universe. My own little corner of that Universe began in late 1998 when I wrote "A Losing Season" and markedly departed from the original "Seasons of Change" story. Thus, "my" Aunt Jane has also moved away from that original image of Jane Thompson.

Recently Brandy Dewinter and I compiled a character study/analysis of Aunt Jane Thompson as she appears in the stories I have written including and subsequent to "A Losing Season". If you are interested, you can find the character study of Tigger's Aunt Jane here.