#It might have been modern of Jane Austen

[bethanydelleman]

A Full Defense of Lydia Bennet

Lydia Bennet is not a villain, but she gets a lot of hate for carelessly running off with Wickham and possibly ruining her sister’s lives. The narrator and characters, however, do not blame Lydia very much and I don’t think the author meant for us to hate her. She was failed by her parents, who did not teach her how to properly behave and did not ensure she was properly protected.

Obviously, the real villain is Wickham.

The most vicious takedown of Lydia is put in the mouth (letter) of a character we should not respect, Mr. Collins. We already know that his morality is skewed, as he seems to view the collection of tithes and sucking up to Lady Catherine as his primary duties, he writes this of Lydia, “I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age.” (Ch 48). However, even he mentions the real cause, “a faulty degree of indulgence”.

Elizabeth feels this cause strongly, and lays out a good argument for her father on why Lydia should not go to Brighton, “She represented to him all the improprieties of Lydia’s general behaviour, the little advantage she could derive from the friendship of such a woman as Mrs. Forster, and the probability of her being yet more imprudent with such a companion at Brighton, where the temptations must be greater than at home.” (Ch 41). Mr. Bennet dismisses all these great arguments because he is too lazy to deal with Lydia’s disappointment. He’s been a lazy parent and continues to be.

Mr. Bennet then takes on the responsibility for what happened, ““Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it… No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have been to blame.” (Ch 50). Lydia has been allowed to run around flirting with officers for months, without any check on her conduct. She does not act within the rules of society, and while Elizabeth and Jane have tried to correct her, Lydia knew they had no real authority. She needed parents and neither of them did their duty. 

Mr. Bennet also acknowledges that he failed his daughters by not saving money for their future provision, “Had he done his duty in that respect” (Ch 50).

Mrs. Bennet shares this guilt, little as she will accept it: Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes’ conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villainous conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage; blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the errors of her daughter must principally be owing. (Ch 47)

Lastly, Lydia was failed by Darcy, who talks about his share of the blame here: “Wickham’s worthlessness had not been so well known as to make it impossible for any young woman of character to love or confide in him. He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and confessed that he had before thought it beneath him to lay his private actions open to the world.” (Ch 52). We see in Sense & Sensibility Elinor asking everyone who knows him about Willoughby’s character. Character references were important, that is how women knew they were safe in a man’s presence. Darcy knew the truth and he left Meryton and the Bennets in danger.

Lydia did make a choice (and certainly the wrong one), but she does not deserve all the blame for what happened. The narrator makes it clear that no one should be surprised by the outcome. Lydia was not taught was what right, she was not taught to control her impulses, and she was put out in the world too young, as Colonel Brandon said in Sense & Sensibility, “But can we wonder that… without a friend to advise or restrain her… she should fall?”

Related posts: Lydia too young to be out, Should Darcy have warned Meryton?

[starpros-sunshine]

If I loved Wataei less I might be able to talk about them more....

[igotanidea]

More than blood: batboys x bat!sister

Dick was not the first one who was adopted by Bruce.

Y/N was.

And if you talk about the eldest daughter complex she was the perfect example of it.

Y/N was so much like her adoptive father. Quiet, observant, seemingly emotionally cold yet charming and enticing when circumstances called for it. Smart like hell. She knew exactly how to take care of herself, and yet, Bruce being himself was always hesitant to let her out into the streets of Gotham at night. But she fought for it. Hard. She had no natural talent for fight, but she was fast, flexible and imperceptible in the shadows. Slowly, but steadfastly she gathered enough strength and skills to become the very first Batman’s sidekick. She was not a fan of a traditional way of training. Boxing, weight lifting and throwing punches wasn’t exactly her style, but she was extremely good with skates and rollerblades and all the moves that involved a bit of dance-like moves. So that was how Bruce trained her. Three-turns, brackets and rockers just came naturally to her, both on ice on the ground and she was soon the best of the best. When she was ready to come on patrol,  Bruce created the most cliche name for her.

Batgirl.

Which she instantly refused, instead choosing to go by the name of Cover. After all, that was what she was doing. Covering.

At first, it was only Bruce and Alfred she was taking care of.  Never pushing anything but always finding a way to make sure they did the right thing. Listening carefully to their every word, getting her head around any possible situation and just being there when they needed her. She was not a people pleaser and definitely wasn’t going out of her own way for them (and that was the hot spot between her and Bruce), but in times of need and crisis she was the best possible support. Unwavering. Strong. Persistent.

And then, Dick came in. Of course, having younger brother (even if there was barely half a year age gap) put a lot more pressure on her shoulder. So she did her best to connect with him. It was hard, no denying. Dick has just lost his parents and he was harsh and murky and  a bit unpredictable. But she did not give up making sure he will finally warm up to her. And maybe Bruce.

“What are you doing?” one day, after particularly rough training with Bruce he came across her while she was working out

“Oh, you know. I was never good with all those flips” she lowly lifted herself from the floor, rubbing sweat from her forehead, her hair being a total mess. “Bruce insisted I learned some, but I was always better with my speed, skate figures and fast-thinking than actual acrobatics. However” she raised an eyebrow at the boy “I heard you are the master in the field. Care to show me a few tricks? Unless you prefer to sulk in the corner….” She smirked

And so they connected. Creating a lot of inside jokes during the year, being the support for each other. Of course, as older sister Y/N had no problem in literally smacking his head when he did something stupid and as younger brother he had no inhibitions in scaring her potential boyfriends away, but yes, they were close.

And then, Jason came in. The rowdy kid from the Crime Alley and she had to figure out another way to reach him. It didn’t take a lot of time to notice he was interested in literature, so she started leaving books around in the manor. Mostly classics, like Jane Austen and Shakespeare, but from time to time she risked more modern writers. He always took them from the place they were and returned a couple days later. He was a fast reader. One night, when he returned from patrol, all fuming and on the verge of breaking, he noticed a light coming out of her room and due to some crazy feelings took a few steps towards there.

“Hello, Jason” he might have been quiet, but she was the first trained by Bruce, so the poor boy has no chance not to be noticed.  She turned in her chair and smiled lightly “It’s good to see you.  So it happens I got tickets for a midsummer night’s dream. Two tickets. Would you maybe ….”

“Yes. Yes, please, take me with you.” his eyes was glistening with so much hope she would choose him, it made her want to cry and laugh at the same time. Pushing aside the urge to hug Jason (it was too early for that and he would not appreciate) she just nodded. And there was the connection.

And then, there was Tim. The Brainiac. Coffee addict. Sleep deprived. Constantly working, cracking cases. And being quite successful at it, even if sometimes he took the long road instead of connecting the dots to create the shortcuts.

“How’s the case going?” she asked at breakfast one time, noticing Tim’s tired eyes and disheveled hair. He wasn’t sleeping well that night, but what’s new.

“It’s not.” he groaned pecking at his food not really eating any of it “and stop making fun out of me because of it!”

“Fun?” she almost choked on her toast “Really, Tim? I’m not happy at all that you are missing the most obvious piece of the puzzle.”

“The most ob….? You were compromising my work?!”

“I was …. Checking your work” now, she had to be extremely careful with words “And what I found out is that you definitely have a criminal mind. But” she raised a hand stopping him before he could say a thing “you are also awfully messy, Tim. You splattered some coffee on the sheets and blurred the numbers. And that is why you couldn’t reach the conclusion.”

“I…. What!?”

“Hate to break it to you, champ.” She shrugged taking a sip of her own coffee “but apart from that, you did a really good job with the task.”

And with a couple more cases like this they got into real sibling relationship.

Damian was the hardest one. Trained by the assassin, treated like a threat and a menace, far more tough than Jason, cruel and with no moral compass. Not by his fault. He was the one who needed some soft care most of them all, but would never accept. So there were two options, get to him with fighting skills or by using his art adoration. She couldn’t just leave art supplies for him like she did with Jason and books, but she got one more idea, which required a bit of Alfred’s help.

‘Rough night miss y/n?” the butler asked when the girl emerged from the batcave, covered in bandages and patches.

“You have no idea, Alfred” she yawned “At first B had me running around the streets creating some sort of diversion for him, since none of the Robins where available “ a quick glance towards her three brothers “and when I got back I got lost into my latest painting…..” she trailed waiting for Damian’s reaction. Seemingly nothing has changed, but she looked carefully enough to notice his eyebrows lifting slightly and his body shift towards her to hear better. Gotcha!

“The castle?” Alfred asked, curiosity in his voice

“Yes. I’m almost finished  and I think I will need some help in hanging it in the living room soon. Will you be so kind with it Alfred?”

“Of course, miss Y/N.”

A couple days later, the painting did hang on the wall and some Sunday afternoon she found Damian standing in front of it and looking it up and down.

“I could have used a bit more blue on the edges.” She said stopping by his right side.

“Not just blue.” He retorted

“Nighttime blue?” she asked

“Nighttime blue” he said at the same time and their gazes met.  She tilted her head slightly while Damian’s face showed a bit of surprise. He was so young and so wrongly treated it was almost unfair.

“I know, but it’s too close to the color of Dick’s suit. He would never let me live it through.” She let out a laugh and Damian smirked.

“I got an idea of how we can improve your next painting if you ever were to create another.”

“Oh, you think you are better than me in the art field?” she gasped grabbing her heart in fake hurt

“I know I am.”

“Wanna bet?”

And so he warmed up to her as well. It seemed like all of the batboys were prone to her silent charm. But obviously there were times when she had bad days. Being the one with the longest training, seeing most of the violent things and crimes and living thought her own tragic events sometimes, in the times of greatest stress she was just becoming completely silent. Not able to say a word, getting through the days like a ghost, wanting to disappear, getting lost inside her own head. Usually, it lasted up to four or five days, and it was normal. Just a sign for Bruce to put her off the patrol so she can get through whatever was going on inside her head. He wasn’t the one to actually talk a lot about feelings and emotions, but even Batman had to be alerted after two weeks of radio silence on her part.

From the little intel he had on her since she left the manor he learned that for the last days she wasn’t eating properly, struggling with her work, looking tired and worn out even though she was sleeping a lot. Something was off and the only people who could actually be of help would be her brothers.  Dick was in Bludhaven, Jason was running around the Crime Alley, Tim was busy with work for Wayne Enterprises and Damian, well…there was no way of figuring out what he was up to. Bruce groaned not really sure how to call the boys for rescue but it was about Y/N so he just used the unofficial channel and simply called all of them. He did not expect that they would gang up and show at the manor at the exact same time. Those stone walls haven’t; heard that much of a banter and silly fights for a while and despite everything, deep, deep inside Bruce was glad they came.

“Let’s be clear. I’m here only because of Y/n.” Jason stated bluntly “nothing more”

“thank god, I thought Red Hood was getting soft” Dick punched his arm playfully and was surprised with how hard his little brother’s muscle were.

“If you want me to show you…..”

“Where exactly is Y/N?” Tim interrupted his brothers fight, focusing on the most important matter

“And where are her paintings?” Damian frowned looking around.

“She moved out some time ago and took her works with her.” Bruce hissed. It was somewhat …. painful to admit that she left.

“Where?” Jason hissed

None of them cared that it was the middle of the day and their sister was probably at work. They had their own methods of getting inside the building unnoticed and years of training came extremely useful in that case.

Poor Y/N. Work was hard, as usual during the last couple days, she was tired and sad and dealing with a lot of thoughts. Even her usual way of blowing steam off while skating or rollerblading wasn’t helping.  She might have left her vigilante persona behind, but old habits die hard and when she climbed up the step to her apartment she could not fail to notice shadows on the floor and almost inaudible voices coming from the inside. Her instincts immediately kicked in when she put the bag down, bracing herself and busted through the door. Her first, perfectly aimed punch met with Tim’s stomach and the half-turn kick got Damian falling onto the ground. It took both Dick and Jason to stop her from making any more damage.

“Calm down Y/N! It’s just us” Jason calmed her down smirking, surprised with her skills that wasn’t gone.

“Will you behave?” Dick added making sure she wasn’t going to attack them again and only then letting her go

“What the hell?!” she hissed getting free of her brother’s grip “what are you four doing here?!”

“since when do you know how to punch?” Tim groaned “I thought that wasn’t your style?”

“I expanded my skill set. Out of everyone here you should be the one to appreciate it, Tim.”

“I would esteem it better if it wasn’t aimed at me.”

“Right. Sorry. But the question remains. What the hell are you doing here?! You know, I;m used to one Robin, or former Robin, come around from time to time, but this?”

“Father called upon us. He was worried something was off with you.” Damian spat getting off the floor, embarrassment visible on his face.

“Bruce was worried?” she laughed ironically “Right. Sure. He was the reason I left the manor. Should have taken example from you Dick and run the hell away ten years ago.”

“It was five….” Dick tried to chime in but she did not let him

“And now he’s so worried he won’t even visit me by himself. Instead he just send a rescue party?” she turned around and  slumped on the couch

“Y/N…..” Jason tried to reason with her “come on, tell your favorite brother what happened”

“For once I agree with Todd. Tell your favorite brother what is wrong. I mean, me, of course in case someone does not get the clue” Damian hissed taking a spot next to Y/N before anyone else could do it.

“Cut it guys, everyone knows I’m her favorite. I know her the longest of us all and I know everything about her.” Dick objected, crossing his arms with a wide smile, being so sure no one could threaten his position

“Everything?” Tim scoffed “You have no idea about half of the things she likes. I learned them. By myself.”

“Yeah, by spying on her. You call that a good relationship?”

“I do not spy!”

“Cut it, replacement. We all know the most bonding thing are inside jokes. And we have plenty since we read the same books. You wouldn’t even get half of our quotes!”

“Let me get my gear and I’ll show you how half of a quote look like. Art is what connects people and you all are just nonentity in that area. Not like me. Besides, I was training with her the most, so…..” Damian interrupted and at this moment all four boys were just shouting at each other while their sister was sitting on the sofa watching the scene in front of her eyes without any word.

“Get out.” She finally said. Quietly, but they heard her and stopped immediately “All of you. Get out. Now. “

“Y/n….” Dick was first to notice his sister’s pale skin and shaking hands “Please….”

“No.” she shook her head “I;ve had enough. This is exactly why I was always making sure you won’t show up at my place at once. You just can’t seem to fight who’s better or stronger or smarter or more skilled. It’s been like that all our time together. You just try so hard to outdo one another. “

“Well, I mean, she’s not wrong” Jason smirked running a hand through his hair and was instantly met with four pairs of reproachfully eyes “sorry….”

“Is that what bothers you?” Tim asked silently bending down to look into her eyes.

“What? No. Hell no. Why do you think something bothers me?” she stood up abruptly heading to the kitchen to grab herself a glass of water. Shit, Tim was always the one to crack her faster than others.

“You have cuts on your forearms.” Red Robin pointed and she tried to cover them quickly

“And a bruise on the neck.” Damian added following her

“Those kind of traces that does not come from skating.” Jason poked at her skates thrown on the floor in the corridor

“And that means you….I mean, Cover, has been active again.” Dick finalized. “Why?”

“Oh, come in….” she was getting more and more nervous with every minute “is this an interrogation now?”

“No. This are four brothers concerned about their sister well-being.  Does that sound better.”

“Vaguely.”

“Why did you put on the suit again?”

“Because I wasn’t feeling enough!” she spat and immediately covered her mouth to stop the sob coming next

“What?!” Jason hissed and grabbed her hand which made her flinch “oh, so you hurt your hands as well.  Not so much about expanding your skills in punching, hm?”

“Shut up.” She hissed back at him, sticking her tongue out

“That’s a very mature behavior for the oldest one” Damian pointed “but Grayson’s question is still on. Why did you pick up the mantle again? You said you were done?”

“I was. Until one night I heard the weeps and screams of my neighbor being beaten by her boyfriend.”

“Y/N….”

“And the other time, when I heard on the news how Nightwing got beaten while protecting people who were trapped in the fire….”

“I did not…..”

“Oh, and that one time when some little bird brought the news about Red Hood getting in trouble in the Crime Alley and almost dying? Again.”

“ok, it wasn’t even half as bad…..” Jason tried to defend himself

“And then, Red Robin and Robin. Running loose without batman. Dealing with criminals on their own accords and getting involved in the shooting?”

“It was Drake’s fault!” Damian cried out and Tim just punched him lightly

“Stop it.” Red Robin hissed at his younger brother “let her make a point, because it’s not it.”

“Then what is?”

“Come on, sis, tell us” Jason crouched next to her and squeezed her hands lightly

“I…. I can’t”

“Of course you can. There’s no shame in anything. Safe space. And as your big brother, I have duty to make sure you are all right.”

“You are younger than me, Dick.”

“Barely younger. And still, the oldest brother. “

“Come on, Y/N. Just spit it out.”

“Fine. Fine. Just quit looking at me like that. It’s creepy. I… I might have gotten into a bad relationship…..

“WHAT?!”

“Calm down, Damian. It wasn’t that serious. I kicked his butt first time he came at me….”

“WHAT?! I’m gonna find him. I’m gonna find him and…..” Dick caught his younger brother before he could get out and really find and eliminate the guy.

“It’s in the past. But you know, all that got me thinking. About who I was in the past. The cover. And how you guys were always out there, putting your lives at risk while I was just sitting at home, watching and doing nothing…..”

“so you thought it would be good idea to just go out on patrol by yourself.” Tim threw his arms in the air in frustration “Y/N, you know better than that.”

“Come on, what was I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. Call me….” Jason said, but corrected himself due to Damian poking him in the ribs “I mean…. Us.”

“How could I?” she rolled her eyes.  “You guys have enough on your plates without me.”

“This is unbelievable” Tim scoffed

“You never patrol alone and we would never let you do it” Damian added

“What do you mean without you?” Dick narrowed his eyes at their sister “do you think you are some sort of burden?”

“Well…. I…. um…..”

“Are you insane?” Jason was the first one to burst. “Are you insane?”

“You do realize we are family, right?”

“This is a pretty crazy family.”

“Sure, but at the end of the day we watch each other’s back and that’s why we are all….alive.”

“Ekhem….”

“Sorry, Jayson, but we are alive. Some of us get to be alive more than once, but still.”

“I hate you, Dickhead”

“Look Y/N, no matter what you need to know you are important. You were the one to always take care of all of us, so, just for once, let us do the same.”

“But isn’t that what the eldest sibling of the family is supposed to do?”

“Since when do you care about supposed to do?”

“Never did. But I care about you guys and…..”

“Let us help Y/N. You are not alone. “

“I know. “

“So why are you crying?”

“I’m not crying!”

“You are!”

“Stop it! It’s just …. Nice, to know someone cares about you, all right? That is… new.”

“Come here, you silly one.” Dick crushed her in a bear hug to the point where it was nearly impossible to breathe “you’re not doing it again alone, you hear me?”

“So, what are you suggesting?”

“I’m thinking.….. just for the sake of all times…. A little night patrol with all your crazy brothers?”

“Dunno. Is Red Hood ready to work with the bats?” she smirked at Jason.

“Just this once. And we stay out of the Crime Alley.” He shook his head in disapproval but his words were contradiction to his action.

“How about our little Robins?”

“I’m not little!” Damian yelled

“Neither am I, but still I’m down. It’s been a while and I’m wondering if you really did enhanced your fighting skills.” Tim smiled

“So, it’s settled. Everyone meet me here at the dawn?”

“You sure you can handle four vigilantes in your tiny apartment?”

“I’ve been doing it my whole life. And I can always ground you. Big sister privilege.”

She smiled at her brothers and despite their protests she was now feeling so much better. Just knowing that she had someone (more than one) to rely on made her feel valued and cared for. This family was more than blood and they were protectors of each other as much as of Gotham.

[lizzy-bonnet]

I love Jane Austen's work and I love podcasts, so naturally I follow several JA podcasts (please drop recs in the tags). I'm enjoying Live from Pemberley from Hot and Bothered, but a comment from literally the first episode of the series has been circulating in my brain since I listened to it several months ago: one of the hosts expressed surprise (and disappointment?) in the fact that when we first meet Lizzy, she is "employed in trimming a hat". This comment literally comes right after a conversation about how Austen tells us so much in the very short space of Chapter 1; without wasting any words, we know exactly who Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are (lightly toxic relationship), understand their family situation (need to marry well), meet the main driver of the first act (rich man in the neighbourhood), and understand a social dilemma (girls can't meet him if Mr. Bennet does not make the first overture). So what is Austen telling us when we meet Lizzy in the employment of trimming a hat?

We so often read a sort of modern girlboss feminism into Lizzy because she is smart and stands up for herself, but I think that's something that really gets embroidered on to the text. Lizzy trimming a bonnet is telling us several things about her:

She is frugal - new hats and bonnets are really expensive (my casual hobby is shopping for reproduction bonnets and this remains true), because the straw is braided by hand, the bonnet shape is assembled and blocked by hand, feathers have to be gathered from real (living or dead) birds, ribbons and flowers are hand-finished, the whole situation is fuck expensive. Lizzy is most likely putting new trim on a straw or wool bonnet she already owns to make it work better for this season's fashions, or a new dress, and possibly recycling trimmings from other hats. Contrast this with Lydia's spending all her pocket money on an ugly hat in Chapter 39, just so she can reduce it to parts, even though she acknowledges she'll also have to buy some extra satin too, to finish the project.

She cares about fashion - we don't get a lot of information on sartorial choices in Austen's work, and when characters are discussing fashion, it tends to be a framework for explaining something about their characters; Miss Steele's need to know how much Marianne's dresses cost (rude, crass); Mrs. Bennet's loving description of the lace on Mrs. Hurst's gown (shallow); Catherine Moreland's agonizing over what to wear to the Assembly (young, a bit flighty); Bingley wears a blue coat (has probably read The Sorrows of Young Werther, is fashionable). The fact that Lizzy is trimming a hat tells us she is fashionable, but paired with the fact that she will get a petticoat muddy in order to see her sister, and does not spend a lot of time worrying after fashion like Lydia tells us that she does not live and die on fashion.

She is creative - I've trimmed various hats and bonnets over my years of interest in historical fashion and honestly it's not easy. It's quite fiddly to get a nice ribbon edge, a ruched lining takes forever, and getting sprays of florals and feathers to be nicely shaped and all in a complementary palette is quite fussy. Getting a nice looking bonnet requires some thinking and planning. But it's also great fun! The Regency era is, in my opinion, a particularly good period for hats.

She is normal - I think Austen wants the reader to understand that Lizzy is a young woman with normal cares and concerns. She doesn't have cash for a new bonnet, she wants to look nice, she knows how to put an outfit together, she's not frivolous like her sisters, and she engages in the typical pursuits of someone who is not yet one and twenty who does not have a specific occupation.

A lot of modern readers are expecting Lizzy to be striding around the countryside unconcerned with "girly" things, or reading a clever book because we have come to think of her as proto-feminist in a way that suggests she might be a bra (corset) burner, but I think that comes from an outdated feminist lens that still wants to tell us that girly things are bad, or at least, a bit weak, and I don't see that in the text at all (I think some of this trickles over from the adaptations). Lizzy walks enthusiastically, she enjoys reading (but not to the exclusion of other employments), she dances very well and plays with mediocrity, she cares deeply about her friends and family, she has excellent manners, and dammit, she trims hats.

[leiaorganicsolocup]

i'm 23, i have a degree in English Literature that included a heavy emphasis on both British and American 19th century novels, and i have never read or watched Pride and Prejudice

i'm a little over two hours into the audiobook and here are my current thoughts in no particular order:

Mr Bennett is a mood. if my unwanted house guest who was set to steal MY house from MY wife and kids when i died followed me into my library to brag about his OTHER HOUSE??!? i think i might have killed him, Mr Bennett is better than i

Mrs Bennett sending Jane to Bingley's with the intention of her staying the night so that she could flirt, only for Jane to get so sick she doesn't see Bingley for over a week is so funny to me

i'm incredibly surprised at how easy Austen's prose is to read and comprehend from a modern standpoint. granted i am listening to it which helps, but i genuinely had to check if it'd been majorly edited. for something written so much earlier than most of what i studied, i expected it to be very different style wise

Bingley's sister(?) is such a pick me lmao

Darcy and Elizabeth's argue flirting is more delightful than i ever could have imagined!

Elizabeth: is muddy and out of breath. Darcy: she is exquisite. Me: oh he's down BAD

[anghraine]

Meanwhile, in one of my other main fandoms:

My post about reading a surprisingly good article on eighteenth-century economics and (tangentially) Austen showed up on my dash again, I think thanks to @ladytharen. Now that my mind is rather clearer, I remembered that the author (Robert D. Hume) had left a footnote in the brief Austen section saying that it was contracted from a fuller discussion he'd made in a previous paper. I'd meant to check the previous paper out and simply forgot at the time, but that reminded me, so I read the other article, dated to the previous year (April 2013).

This article is simply called "Money in Jane Austen" (much less of a mouthful!), but is similarly granular about details. In terms of the general argument, the abundance of historical and textual details very much works in his favor. But he does fall a bit into the "AustenTime" problem, unfortunately, in this one.

I know I have another post talking in more detail about this, but I couldn't find it! Anyway, "AustenTime" is a term I heard once and have never been able to track down again for an approach to Austen and the times she lived through as this sort of pocket universe in which everything is happening in the same eternal moment that's roughly associated with the Regency England of the 1810s when her novels were first published (and often even more with "the Regency" as codified by Heyer and the Regency romance writers who followed her). Hume's take is much less Heyer-inflected than the usual, of course, but given his general attention to very precise details, it seemed odd that he didn't distinguish more between economic data from the 1770s, 1790s, and 1810s while lumping all her novels into c. 1810.

That said, he did use okay numbers for the central arguments wrt P&P and built from Austen's own extreme and painful consciousness of just how far not much money could go, to the gulf between her circumstances and even characters like Elizabeth's, and then to politely disagreeing with the kind of characterizations of the Bennets' lifestyle you find in even normally reliable things like The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. His argument is basically that there's enough textual information to tell us that the Bennets are fairly wealthy by genteel standards, not minor struggling gentry—at about the level of typical baronets in terms of income/land/lifestyle (Mr Bennet's situation is certainly more comparable to a random baronet's than Darcy's). Hume goes into estimates based on explicit details in the novel about the Bennets' household staff etc and what that would signify at the time, all good stuff, so that he can express his true feelings.

And his expression of those was actually really cathartic to read, because Hume's true feelings turn out to be even more seething rage at how much Mr Bennet sucks as a father than I would have guessed from the other article. He's like—

"Mr Bennet sucks SO MUCH y'all, and you might think I'm being ahistorical in my rants about what a failure he is, no I'm not overusing italics he DESERVES italicized hate*, and I've got contemporary source after contemporary source to prove just how incredibly irresponsible and selfish this guy is by the standards of the time and how callous he is about his children's future and even about the ungodly amount of money that Darcy drops to fix Mr Bennet's failures, and maybe it's not clear to most modern readers just how much that would have been BUT I HAVE THE NUMBERS. I swear this character is such an asshole and I'm embarrassed for ever liking him, honestly, and just because Elizabeth doesn't fully condemn him—but hey, remember that passage where she clearly knows more than she's been saying about what kind of man he is—doesn't mean that Austen isn't doing so. Elizabeth doesn't end up paying for Mr Bennet's colossal failures as a father and human in the novel only by authorial fiat, aka Darcy, whose circumstances are almost unimaginably niche even for high-ranking peers—but that's the fantasy, you know? And Charlotte's there to remind us of the reality of just how dire this situation could be in more typical lives, even when we're talking about the women in the richest 1% of the population."

I had a few other nitpicks, but the combination of detailed economic breakdowns and unashamed raw hatred for a character I also despise was truly enjoyable. And it was also—um.

Despite my griping about various Austen critics, I have my own struggles with imposter syndrome, and always feel guilty about how much Important Academic Work In My Field there is that I just haven't gotten around to and how I always feel like I'm missing important information and blahblahblah. But I do feel it a lot more acutely with the seventeenth-century works I've studied, since I came to that a good 15 years after I started getting into Austen criticism. Even so, I was surprised by how soothing it was to read an Austen essay that's imperfect but good and that is punctuated by all these references to other scholars whose names and work I recognized, influential interpretations that I've already read, all that kind of thing. It felt a bit like coming home, honestly, and it was reassuring that everything was so familiar at this point.

---

*He did not actually say that Mr Bennet deserved italicized hate, but italics for emphasis are actually really rare in this kind of writing and there are quite a few of them in the Why Mr Bennet Is The Worst section. More power to you, sir.

[forumgamer]

A Jane Austen moment

I am currently re-reading Northanger Abbey (not my favourite Austen, but also not my least - probably rank 3-4 I'd say), and I was struck with the realisation how ODD the notion of Catherine Morland's trip to Bath would be to many modern people.

Here is a young girl (17), going on a trip to Bath with a rich older couple that are neighbours to her parents - not as an au pair or governess or whatever, but as a guest and companion. Taken along to have fun, as a kind gesture of favour and goodwill. And they aren't even her godparents or relatives or something!

And I find that notion so very charming.

Catherine is not like poor Fanny Price, rather abused than cherished, used as an indispensable companion for a very silly and lazy lady (though Mrs Allen certainly has her share of silliness and indolence...). From how their relationship is presented, the Allens seem genuinely motivated by wanting her to enjoy herself. They don't mind her meeting new people and spending time with them, and she in turn refers to them when she is unsure about how to behave in this to her completely new and exciting world. And rich as they may be, they also seem to spare little expense in taking her to Bath and there to balls and plays.

We have today a weird aversion to inter-generational friendships, or so it seems to me. Yet when I was growing up, in a semi-detached suburban house, I was always welcome at our neighbours' house and table. Sure, mostly because they had a boy my age who quickly became my friend, but even now, when we have both moved out, I rarely visit my parents without also checking in with their neighbours, who are like an uncle and aunt to me.

And as for myself, I have no children of my own, and will never have any either. Yet working as a teacher, I get to interact with younger people on a daily basis, and you guys, young people can be amazing company. Sure, some of their concerns appear trivial to me, but I remember they weren't that way when I was their age - just as some of my views or hobbies might seem odd or boring to them, yet they also know I have seen more of the world than they, and apply to me for insights into issues that they feel unsure about.

And guys... I get it. I get what the Allens feel. I might still be a bit young to QUITE get it (I assume the Allens to be in their 50es or so, which I am not for another decade), but... imagine taking a seventeen-year old teenager, that has never been able to travel so far, to a prime holiday spot! Showing them Paris, London, Prague or Rome, seeing their amazement and delight, presenting them the art, cuisine, culture and pleasures of such an unfamiliar site... to find new enjoyment in these things yourself by witnessing their effect on someone younger and more excitable than yourself.

I doubt I will ever have the option to do so, because a) times have changed and b) if Mr Allen had been a bachelor/divorcee like me, the book's plot could not have happened back then either, but... I think I might like it. I really would.

[dusty-daydreams]

Hi! Fic Anon here.

After seeing so many opinions on Eloise I just want her to hide behind me while I defend and protect her 😭. Like they accuse her of being a pick me or "not a girl's girl" or having the "not like other girls".

And these are all Penelope's fans. Seeing that make me dislike her even more. I like Penelope but as an anti hero or villain, she could have been so interesting.

Eloise has valid reasons for not wanting to get married and even if she doesn't understand why other girls would want to get married but she still respects it (as far as I remember).

It has been a while since I have watched s 1 and 2 (and I haven't even gotten started on 3 due to prior commitments lol) but many people accuse her of being a bad friend to Penelope, was she really a bad friend as many accuse her to be?

Have a nice day!

Hi Fic Anon!!!!!!

I don’t think she was that bad of a friend - I think she was a teenage girl who tend to be a bit self-absorbed. Besides if we are going to accuse Eloise of being a bad friend we have to do the same to Penelope, and that’s without evening taking her nasty alter ego into account because they are both equally self-absorbed in season 1 & 2. Eloise just talks at Penelope while Penelope doesn’t share anything with Eloise, their self-absorption presents differently so it’s easier for people to attack Eloise for being a bad friend. But as I said in my On Eloise’s Obsession with Whistledown post, the secrets Penelope kept from Eloise makes her a bad friend as well.

Like Eloise might talk primarily about herself and not ask after Penelope enough but Penelope has been known to abandon Eloise at events to spend time with other friends (e.g. the art gallery scene in season 1 that I made a bit more dramatic in my fic).

Eloise totally had extremely valid reasons for not wanting to marry, and the historical reality is that a lot of women of various means didn’t get married. Jane Austen didn’t marry, and she was impoverished gentry.

It is just that Eloise’s greatest crime is that she is a character that is anti-marriage in a romance show. A good chunk of the fans that are here for the fluffy fun are going to have their backs put up by a character who disdains the fluff they love so much.

But Eloise is not a pick me. Categorically. She is not interested in performing the hyperfeminity her society expects but she is absolutely not a pick me.

A pick me is a girl that pretend to like the things boys traditionally likes and disdains the tongs women traditionally like because she thinks that she will be more successful finding a boy to date that way.

Eloise is categorically uninterested in attracting a man. She is not interested in the limited feminine pursuits on offer, but unlike a modern woman who has a whole range of things she can do, Eloise’s movements and choices are hyper-restricted.

It is not being a pick me or not like other girls to be uninterested in music, drawing and decorative embroidery, the three main pursuits it was acceptable for a woman to have.

Further if you watch the show you will see that Eloise isn’t actually rude to other women. She is rude to Daphne, who is her sister so that’s a completely different relationship, and she is rude to Cressida because Cressida (as much as I love her now) is a bitch. But she isn’t rude to women.

She is loving and admiring of Penelope and her opinions, and she doesn’t really socialise with other women in season 1 and 2.

In season 3 part 1 she is actively trying to make friends, and while she isn’t interested in other women’s pursuits, she makes a witty comment, that all the other women find funny. And she treats Cressida like the grown intelligent woman she is, and is probably the first person to ever do so. Even the sister relationship we see this season is loving and respectful, Eloise wouldn’t make the choices Francesca is making but she respects the wisdom of her sister doing so and actively helps her to try and have the quiet functional season she dreams of.

No Eloise is rude to men. A man makes a sexist comment she leaves him on the dance floor. Theo assumes she is vapid, she insults his intelligence. A man makes a dumb comment about collecting books, she rolls her eyes and makes a passive aggressive remark.

How can she be a pick me pretending to disdain embroidery for a man’s interest, when she a) is genuinely uninterested in embroidery, b) tries to be polite when women discuss it and c) ISNT INTERESTED IN ATTRACTING A MAN!!!

Its just tiring Fic Anon, because all of these characters could be soooo rich, Eloise and Penelope and Cressida and Benedict and Colin - all of them, if the show and the fans treated them with respect and sincerity

But the show isn’t actually interested in making a good interesting show, they are interested in keeping people watching through simple but dramatic stories

Anyway, thank you for this message Fic Anon! I love when you message because I get to think about these things in detail

[slothquisitor]

Invisible String: Chapter Five

A Baldur’s Gate III Modern AU.

Chapter Summary: Astarion can't avoid Liv forever, right?

Read from the beginning.

Read on AO3.

__________________________________________________________

There’s something wrong, but Liv can’t figure out what it is. She hasn’t seen Astarion for more than a handful of minutes in days. His door is either shut tight or he doesn’t appear to be home whenever she is, and she’s not sure how their slowly emerging friendship has turned into this. She’s texted him a few times, little check-ins, an invite to watch Crown of Shadows , but his responses always read as terse, short replies. ‘No thanks’, ‘Busy tonight’, or her least favorite ‘k’. She’s spent the last few days trying to figure out what in the world she could have done to earn this level of indifference, to thrust them back into being strangers again, but she can’t think of a single thing. 

To make matters worse, FangtasticLover is ghosting her too. He’d called her dull when she’d finally told him what she did for a living, and she hasn’t heard from him since. That whole thing started about the same time Astarion started acting weird too, so she’s starting to wonder if she’s been hexed. Unlike with Astarion though, she has not messaged FangtasticLover. If he’s going to ghost her, well, that’s his prerogative, but she will not go about begging for his attention. 

So she goes to work every day and throws herself into creating her exhibition proposal, grateful for a distraction. It’s a more collaborative effort than she imagined. She thought perhaps it might be a competitive sort of thing amongst her coworkers, but instead, she and Gale help each other. She helps him catalog every Kafka-related work that they have in the archives as well as tracking a few that other institutions might loan to them. He tells her about a copy of Jane Austen’s The Watsons handwritten and then scratched out in the author’s own hand, showing clear revising as she worked that’s tucked away safely in the vaults. They email university professors and graduate students to see if they want to collaborate. Lae’zel suggests a few movie scripts that she knows of housed in the archives and marked up by the writers themselves, and Liv helps Gale brainstorm a portion of his exhibition that could be interactive, placing a note at the end if the viewer would have burned all of Kafka’s work or not. Slowly, their proposals begin taking shape. 

And days go by without anything beyond cursory glances and tense greetings between her and Astarion. 

She hates that there’s something familiar about it, the clear burying of whatever the issue is. It’s how her family always operated. Growing up, she and her siblings were always doing their best to avoid any unpleasant interaction with their parents. There was no rhythm to it, no identifiable pattern. One day it might be about grades or the chores they’d been asked to do, the next it was that someone had made them late to leave somewhere. The anger and frustration and yelling fell without warning and then disappeared like smoke in the ether. After the initial outburst, it was never brought up again, leaving Liv often wondering if she had imagined the whole thing. 

It had been that way with her parents after the news had come out. There had been the initial conversation and then a follow-up where she tried rather unsuccessfully to get her parents to apologize, to take some responsibility for the ways they’d wounded her. And then nothing. Sometimes it felt like it had only happened to her and no one else. 

And here she is, trapped in those same patterns with Astarion. Something is wrong, but she’ll just keep letting it fester. She knows that if he walked in the door and acted like nothing had changed, she’d be relieved. She’d probably let it happen. Every time he strides out of the apartment, she’s screaming internally at herself to say something , do something . But she’s not sure how to even begin. So she just lets him go and hates herself a little bit more every time. 

Tonight, she has her baking show on in the background while she sits with her laptop open, continuing to scour the library’s database for anything she can use in her exhibition when her phone pings. 

FangtasticLover: Hey sorry I’ve been MIA. Work got really busy. 

She stares at his message, anger and relief and frustration all warring within her. FangtasticLover isn’t her friend, and he owes her nothing. But she had expected more after days of radio silence. She doesn’t respond right away, lets almost two hours go by to ensure he doesn’t think she was simply waiting around to hear from him. It also allows her anger to dissipate. They are not friends. They are simply strangers who matched on a dating app and enjoy messaging each other. He’s clearly not even interested in her otherwise why wouldn’t he suggest grabbing coffee or something? 

She’s not sure how to respond anyway. Part of her wants to be angry, to call him out on this bullshit. But what’s the point of that? They don’t owe each other anything anyway. But somehow, sidestepping the hurt and not calling out the ghosting makes her feel like a failure here too. 

Books>People: No worries. All good now?

FangtasticLover: Yeah. What about you?

Books>People: All good here too.

She’s positive that the absolutely lackluster quality of this whole exchange is going to convince him to ghost her all over again, but then he surprises her. 

FangtasticLover: No more dreadfully dull dinner parties with your fellow archivists?

Books>People: You’re the only one calling it dull, you know. Let me guess, your meet-ups with your coworkers are always awful.

FangtasticLover: They might be if I’d ever had a coworker meet-up.

Books>People: Not a cozy office atmosphere?

FangtasticLover: Certainly not like yours. I imagine you positively surrounded by books stacked so high you can hardly see one another. Is that accurate?

Books>People: I wish. Our offices are quite ordinary. I have a little cubicle, and while there are some books at my desk most of them are kept safely within the archives. Besides, most of the work we do now is digital, deciding where things should be housed, how often they need preservation work done. That sort of thing. 

FangtasticLover: What do you like about it?

Books>People: I guess I like in retrospect you can see the way people and societies work, and as humans, we create things that we hope will outlast us. I like the idea that I’m helping shape those things, preserve what should be preserved. 

FangtasticLover: But how do you decide what gets preserved and what doesn’t?

Books>People: Well, that depends entirely on the institution housing the archive, the type of archive…and even then there are scholars sitting around and debating that somewhere in the world right now.

FangtasticLover: So it’s complicated. 

Books>People: Very. 

FangtasticLover: You’re glad you moved here for it?

Books>People: Yes. 

And she’s not sure what compels her to add the next part, but she’s alone in her apartment and she hasn’t wanted to tell Gale or Brelia or Lae’zel that things with Astarion have been off. And well,  if she can’t call FangtasticLover out, maybe she can at least process this piece with him so that she handles her real life better than the online one. 

Books>People: Even if my roommate seems to be mad at me. 

FangtasticLover: Your roommate is mad at you?

Books>People: I think so, he’s hardly said a word to me in days. I’m not sure if I did something wrong. 

FangtasticLover: I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong. He’s probably just an asshole.

Books>People: He’s not an asshole. 

FangtasticLover: What is he then?

Books>People: My friend, I hope. 

***

This is such a laughably stupid idea, and Astarion can’t find it in him to care. He’s been keeping his distance from Liv both virtually and in-person because he’d just needed time to figure this out, to know what to do about it. And he still doesn’t know what to do about the whole mess of a situation, but he does know that he misses talking to her both in the Weave and not. He’d fully planned to sever the connection in the Weave and text Karlach asking what a proper apology would look like for icing her out the last few days. 

But then, he does wonder what Liv thinks of him… what she sees when she looks at him…and he has the perfect means of finding out . All he has to do is get her talking about him. He’s alone in his co-op office staring at his phone and knowing that this is an absolutely terrible idea. He does it anyway, firing off a non-apology explanation over to her and waiting to see what she’ll say. When she doesn’t respond, he checks the shared calendar to see that she doesn’t have plans tonight, and she doesn’t…still it takes nearly an hour and a half before she replies, probably in an effort to keep him on his toes. Well, it worked. He got almost nothing done while waiting impatiently for her response to come through. 

He nearly fumbles the phone in his haste to read her reply, and instead of worry or anger or anything of the sort, she seems completely and utterly fine. Unbothered even at the lack of hearing from him. He’s almost offended and then he remembers he’s the one who ghosted her.

If he’s going to interrogate her about him though, he’s going to have to prime the pump so to speak. So, he asks her some deeper questions about her job which he already knows she loves talking about. But then she brings him up without him having to do a damn thing. It’s too easy really, to get exactly what he wants. He even calls himself an asshole to throw her off, but she defends him despite his awful treatment of her the last few days. 

And then the conversation doesn’t go quite as he expects. 

Books>People: My friend, I hope. 

He stares at the message. Friend. Liv thinks of him as her friend. That’s…good. Unexpected, but good. The temptation is too strong to resist, he types the stupidest, most obviously fishing question he could ask. 

FangtasticLover: What’s he like?

Books>People: Nocturnal, mostly. Obsessed with Crown of Shadows . Has far better fashion sense than me, but much worse taste in wines. 

All of those things are true more or less, but he does take offense to the last. But well, it’s a far more flattering picture of him than he was expecting. A far more flattering picture of him than he deserves, honestly.

FangtasticLover: He sounds like a rather good roommate.

Books>People: He is. I’m sure I’m blowing this whole thing out of proportion. 

FangtasticLover: I’ve never had a roommate before, is it typical to have little spats? 

Books>People: Sure. I think that’s inevitable when you’re in each other’s spaces all the time. The apartment belongs to him, so I’m still sort of trying to figure out where I fit. It still feels like I’m in his space.

He considers that for a moment, and she’s right. Beyond her use of the kitchen, the signs that she actually lives in the apartment are rather confined to her room, her space. That’s probably not normal, is it? 

FangtasticLover: Are you telling me your roommate doesn’t let you decorate?

Books>People: He did seem rather relieved I didn’t have any furniture to move in.

FangtasticLover: He probably just didn’t want to carry it into the building. 

Books>People: Which would have been fair. 

FangtasticLover: What else is he like? Devilishly handsome? Charming? 

Books>People: Wow, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to use me to get to my roommate. 

Hmmm. That might have been a step too far trying to bait her into telling him if she found him attractive. He moves off the topic of roommates and trying to get information out of her, lest she become suspicious. But every question he asks feels like taking a hit of the best sort of drug. He wants to keep asking her questions and hear everything she has to say about him unfiltered and honest. Especially if it’s going to be nice. But he is bothered by her comment about not feeling like she fits in his apartment, and well, she has her room but there’s nothing of her anywhere else. And he wants her to want to be there, he owes her at least that much after being an ass these past few days. 

And while he no longer avoids her on the Weave, he stays away another two days in person, lest she start making connections about him and FangtasticLover. He wonders if she’ll be as nonchalant with him as she was on the Weave. He probably owes her a proper apology, but instead, he makes her coffee one morning. He’s watched her do this enough times that it’s easy, and then he takes a seat with his e-reader in the living room. Waiting.  

Despite the aroma of warm coffee in the air, she doesn’t seem to notice the coffee is made until she goes to start it, before realizing it’s waiting for her. She stands there, her back to him for a few solid moments before turning around. 

When she speaks, her voice is even, a little gravelly from sleep but more annoyed than grateful. “Is this some sort of apology?”

Well, so much for nonchalance. “That depends entirely on if you believe you’re owed one.” He keeps his tone light, but there’s a question there he’s not willing to actually ask. 

She walks over to her usual chair, mug in hand. She folds herself into the chair, her legs tucked beneath her. Her pajamas are light blue, the silky material catching the light where the collared shirt hangs off her shoulder. When she finally speaks, it’s not what he expects. “You disappeared.”

He sighs. “I did.”

“Are you alright?”

He stares at her. She’s frustrated with him, he’s almost positive about that. But she’s not saying that, she’s not even making him feel like shit about it…well she is, but not because she’s trying to. She’s actually concerned, that much is obvious. “I’m fine. It wasn’t about you…I…I just needed some space.”

She nods and takes a sip of her coffee, considering. “Do I need to find a new place to live?”

“What? Why would you need to do that?” The panic in his voice is clear as day. 

She shrugs. “It just seems like maybe this isn’t working out for you.”

Gods, he’s such an idiot. This is not how he wanted this conversation to go. He doesn’t want her to leave . “It all had nothing to do with you, trust me. And it’s all good now; don’t start looking to replace me. So, are we good?”

She’s watching him, and he’s wondering what she’s thinking. He has the ridiculous impulse to pull out his phone and text her that very thing. He doesn’t.  

There’s a hint of uncertainty in her eyes, but she presses on, looking like it’s taking a lot of energy to do so. “Here’s the thing: I don’t ghost my friends. If you need space, that’s fine. Just tell me. You don’t owe me anything more than that, but we live together and your avoiding me just makes me feel unwelcome in my own home.”

Oh. He hadn’t considered how his behavior might make her feel. That she would be genuinely bothered by it. “I apologize. Next time, if there is a next time, I promise to say something.”

“Thank you. I was mostly bent out of shape because I've been dying to watch the next episode of Crown of Shadows and it felt like an asshole move to not wait for you,” she says, her smile disappearing behind her coffee mug. 

“I admire your restraint; I don’t know that I could have done the same. Shall we plan on that tonight?”

“Yes, please.”

And just like that, everything goes back to exactly the way it should be. 

***

It’s odd how quickly Liv’s life takes on a sort of easy rhythm. Most mornings, she wakes to warm coffee and Astarion in the living room. They chat before she goes to work, and then spend a few evenings a week watching Crown of Shadows or talking smack as they play stupid games on their phones together. She and Brelia talk a few times a week, and she makes plans with Gale and Lae’zel as the last wisps of summer bleed away into proper autumn. 

Baldur’s Gate in the fall is a thing of beauty. The vibrant reds and oranges and yellows of the trees make even the grayest skies seem like something out of an autumn aesthetic dream. This city is feeling more like hers, and every day as she wanders the tree-lined streets she grins as she remembers that it is. 

When she walks into the apartment for the day, she isn’t surprised to see Astarion sitting in the living room on his laptop. It’s hard to say if he’s actually working on simply scrolling Chirper, but she offers her a smile as she hangs up her coat. 

“Congratulations on making it through the week,” he says as she sits heavily in her favorite chair. 

“We made it to the weekend. Big plans?” she asks. 

He shrugs. “Not really. You?”

“Gale was telling me about the Highharvestide Festival at one of the colleges tonight. Apparently, it’s a pretty big deal, and I thought I’d go check it out.” 

“You’re going off calendar, good Gods,” he teases. 

She tosses a couch pillow at him, and he bats it away. “Well, I was going to invite you to come, but now you’re being the worst.”

He looks rather surprised. “Really?” But then he schools his expression. “I’m allowed to express my disbelief that you would be so impulsive as to go out without previously scheduling it.”

“I can be impulsive,” she replies, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. She’s not sure why she’s viewing this as a challenge, she’s about ten years too old to rise to such transparent baiting, but it’s fun with him for some reason. “I moved in with you didn’t I?”

“Was that impulsive or just desperate to get off Lae’zel’s couch? Besides, it’s worked out quite well, we make quite the roommate team, you and I.”

“Oh, now you’re definitely trying to get an invite tonight. Why else would you be so nice?”

“I can be nice,” he replies in much the same tone as she’d said she could be impulsive. It’s a silly little echo, and she knows the fact is not lost on him. 

“Then you can come. If you want,” Liv replies. “I’d like an hour to relax, but then we can head over?”

Astarion glances out the window and then at the clock over the stove. “I’ve got a bit of work left to do…might need to be closer to an hour and a half?”

“Sounds great.”

An hour and a half later, they are both bundled up against the chilly autumn night and on their way to the university. It’s odd retracing the steps of her commute this late in the evening, the train is strangely empty, mostly devoid of both students and tourists. They go one stop further than she usually does, still emerging on High Street but much further south than she’s used to. It takes just a moment to get her bearings before she leads them toward Torm College. 

“I’ve never attended this particular festival, what exactly are we to expect?” Astarion asks, falling into step beside her. His black wool coat is all sharp lines and exquisite tailoring, unlike her he’s foregone a hat even though the night is quite chilly. It doesn’t seem to be bothering him. 

“Mostly food stalls, local crafts, there’s supposedly music, oh and plenty of cider. At least that’s what Lae’zel told me.”

“Are we going to run into Lae’zel?”

Liv laughs. “You don’t seem to be enthused at the prospect.”

“She didn’t like me.”

“She was very proud of her ability to throw you off. I wouldn’t take it personally.”

“She seems like the type of woman to zero in on any weakness.” 

Liv considers that for a moment, but finds she agrees. “She’s secretly a big softie, and more sentimental than you’d expect.”

“Don’t tell me she’s harboring a collection of some random childhood toy in her apartment.”

Liv laughs at the image of Lae’zel secretly hoarding a collection of My Little Owlbears. “No, not that kind of sentimental. It’s more that she’s really touched whenever people do something for her. Like she doesn’t expect it. She’s got a little shrine at her desk of gifts she’s received from us.”

She thinks he makes a thoughtful noise at that, but the sound is snatched away by a passing bus. She’s about to say something else, but then the festival comes into view. Torm College is all stone spires and vaulted archways, but the festival is in the nearby meadow, an area Liv has walked through exactly once. It’s a beautiful stretch of green within the city, a small river quietly meanders through it, and tonight it’s all lit up. She can see the white tents and the sparkling mage lights, bobbing in the darkness. There’s music floating up towards the stars and she can hear the din of laughter and talking and life.

“Okay, this was a good idea.” She’s filled with a bit of relief, the worry she might have dragged Astarion across half the city for something subpar vanishes now that she can see it. 

“Well, what have we got here?” he asks with a grin. “Let’s go explore it.”

And so they do, wandering the stalls filled with local art and warm, cozy food. When she pauses at a stall filled with beautiful art pieces, he stops too, browsing through them with interest. 

“Oh, this is beautiful,” she says. The piece shows some mountain hills, dark and gloomy, but there are circles of bright color, beautiful in their simplicity, floating through the meadow. It’s almost melancholy, the mix of abstract and traditional landscape is unlike anything she’s ever seen before. The canvas isn’t very large and it’s priced criminally low for how beautiful it is. 

“I like that,” Astarion says over her shoulder. “The colors are nice. You should buy it.”

She glances up at him and realizes that he’s the best sort of person to take shopping. He’d encourage you to buy everything. “I’m not sure where I’d even put it.”

“It could go over the bookshelf in the front room, of course,” Astarion replies, as if he’s not casually conferring ownership of their shared space to her. 

She has to buy it then, for all it represents even beyond how much she loves it. It’s wrapped up by the artist themselves, who smiles as they wrap the canvas carefully and place it in a bag. 

After, she and Astarion make their way to the food stalls, the smell of kettle corn permeating the air and mingling with fall spices. They both buy warm drinks, a mulled wine for him, and a hard apple cider for her. Astarion insists he’s not hungry, but Liv buys a warm pastry of some sort filled with cheese and potatoes. She offers him some anyway; he declines, but that’s fine. 

As they start wandering over to the music stage, Liv hears her name called in the crowd. She turns to see Rolan approaching, Gale and two other tieflings trailing behind. “Rolan! Gale!”

Rolan and Gale’s clear excitement at seeing her here lights up something inside of her. It’s a palpable sort of acceptance…a welcome that she didn’t realize she needed. She feels suddenly at ease even as she meets Rolan’s siblings, Cal and Lia.

“This is my roommate, Astarion,” she says, gesturing at Astarion who stands at her side a little stiffly, as if he’s not sure about this whole interaction.

“I’m so glad to finally meet you,” Gale smiles holding out a hand that Astarion sidesteps. Leaving Gale awkwardly tucking his hands in his coat pockets. 

“You must be Karlach’s friend,” Astarion replies. 

Before Gale can respond, Rolan jumps in. “We’ve heard a lot about you, Astarion. I rather thought Liv was mad moving in with someone she’d never met, but it seems to all have worked out for the best, hasn’t it?”

Liv knows that Rolan isn’t trying to sound condescending, but he does anyway. Astarion’s smile never falters, but it does take on a sharper edge than she’s ever seen. “Oh, it has, though I’m curious what you’ve heard.”

“We haven’t heard that much,” Gale adds quickly, trying to defuse the situation. “Lae’zel was just under the impression she’d made you nervous.”

Astarion laughs. “Oh, it takes much more than Lae’zel to make me nervous.”

“Which is more than we can say for Rolan who nearly shit himself when he misplaced one of Lae’zel’s pens the other day,” Liv says. 

They all laugh, including Rolan and the tension bleeds out of the moment as Cal and Lia tease Rolan. Gale sides with her over Rolan’s protestations, and the awkwardness dissipates. 

“We’re headed over to the band, want us to save you a seat?” Gale asks, glancing between her and Astarion. 

Liv nods and smiles. “There was a booth we wanted to check out, but we’ll catch up.”

Astarion gives her a look of confusion as the group moves towards the stage. “A booth? Which one? I don’t recall that conversation.” His voice drops accusingly. 

“We don’t have to go with them if you don’t want to,” she explains. “I didn’t want to agree without checking with you.”

“And if I say no?”

She shrugs. “I’ll text them that we’re doing something else.”

“Oh.” He looks genuinely baffled by her response. “Well, lead on.”

“You’re sure?” 

He gestures dramatically toward the stage. “They’re saving us seats, after all.” But as she turns, she’s almost sure she catches him watching her with something that looks like gratitude.

[mosylufanfic]

Answer the Questions and Tag 5 Fanfic Authors

Tagged by @rifle-yes, the fool

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

See answer #3 below, but the short version is that I started writing and posting stories at the Derbyshire Writer's Guild, a Jane Austen fanfic site. And it's all been downhill from there.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

Oh boy. Hang on. This is a hard one because multiple of my fandoms are like, within a larger fandom? So there's a good amount under the Star Wars umbrella, and a bunch of Jane Austen, and a lot of DCTV. Going back and counting the major fandoms (the ones I remember being really into and doing several fics for, as opposed to just one or two to scratch an itch), I think it's seven. If you do count the one-offs, it's more like 12 or 15. Look, I've been on many fic sites and I'm still trying to get off my ass and archive everything on AO3. It's hard!

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

Pretty much since forever? I remember writing Little Mermaid fic in fourth grade, although I didn't really have that word for it at the time. And there was an epic (and epically bad) Star Wars sequel that I worked on for years in my tweens. I started posting fic online at 19 when I realized that was a thing I could do (see #1). So in terms of writing fic that I shared with other fans, 24 years.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

Definitely read, although there are times where it's a close run thing.

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

I think my worldbuilding has improved over the years. I never did it on purpose, but I see a definite uptick in how deeply I think about the worlds I'm writing in and the various implications of that for the characters.

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Oh so many things! I freaking love research. I think the most morbid (and mathiest) was trying to estimate how much air a man had available in a 10x10 space buried underground.

7. What’s your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

This is like asking what kind of cake is best, but I do love the ones that pick up on something I didn't even realize about the story. I had one recently that pointed out a shift in language that signaled deeper and more focused intimacy in the course of a smut scene. And I was like, ". . . huh. Well, I'll be. That sure did happen."

8. What���s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

I think probably the Space!Paperwork in Lost & Found was the fringiest thing I've ever done.

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

Oh, man, longfics. I often come up with an idea and I just know from the shape of it that it's going to be a a monster. And then I have to decide if I want to go through all the work of plotting and writing thousands and tens of thousands of words. That's why I have so many one-shots that are basically "pilot episodes" for longfics that will never be written.

10. What is the easiest type?

Modern AUs, especially high school AUs. There's so much there that's already known to the readers that I can just laser-focus on the part that's interesting to me.

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

I do a lot of my writing on Gdocs. I know they're the devil, but I might be settled down to work on four or five different machines throughout the course of my day, and half that time is on the public floor where I have to look available to help people. So to me, it's better to be able to quickly sign into a website and tap out that quick scene than to try and hide my phone under the desk and write on that horrible little keyboard. (I'll do that too, but only when I have no other option.)

Longfics get ported into Scrivener when they get too unwieldy for Gdocs, but I'm still more likely to write scenes in Gdocs and paste them into the Scrivener file when I'm done.

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

Probably some of the longfics that are knocking around in my brain, especially the ones that concern areas of the Star Wars canon that I never really got into.

13. What made you choose your username?

It's a nickname my mom used to call me when I was a teenager, and when I was picking my AIM screen name in college, that's what I went with. Actually, I had another one first that was objectively cooler, but I forgot the password to that account and either I was too dumb to reset it or there wasn't functionality for that. So mosylu it was. I also decided at the time that it would be my Internet Identity, and it still is.

Tagging @andorerso, @hedgiwithapen, @incognitajones, @colleybri, and @youareiron-andyouarestrong

[bethanydelleman]

George Wickham isn't bad in that way (which is the best thing I can say about him)

A lot of online discussions label Wickham from Pride & Prejudice as a pedophile because both of his victims, Georgiana Darcy and Lydia Bennet, were 15/16 years old. However, I am very certain this was not Jane Austen's point, and it also papers over the big differences between Georgiana's and Lydia's cases.

(This post isn't graphic but I'll put the rest under the jump)

Firstly, Georgiana's age was about her vulnerability to manipulation, not attraction. If Georgiana was older and out, she probably would have not fallen for Wickham and agreed to run away because she would have had other competing choices and more information about the engagement and marriage process. The time is chosen because she is ignorant, under the care of someone who is willing to betray her, and Wickham wants her money. I'm pretty sure he would have gone for her fortune even if he was adverse to her appearance.

Secondly, Lydia runs away with Wickham because she is following her mother's misguided, "husband at any cost" philosophy, there is no evidence in the book that this was a premeditated plan of his. The plot to elope with Georgiana was premeditated, but from everything in the book, Wickham was running away from debt and brought Lydia along for funsies because she offered. The point of Lydia's elopement is that she was too young, too ignorant, and not well protected. Her parents made a huge error in judgment allowing her to go to a place where she might fall victim to something like this. If it wasn't Wickham, it could have easily have been someone else, like Willoughby, almost the same thing happens to Eliza Williams under nearly the same circumstances.

Thirdly, the age of consent was 14 at the time and Lydia at least was "out". So culturally, he's going for people who would be considered "women" though most people at the time also would have thought they were marrying too early. So many people in the novel say Lydia is too young. (The average age of first marriage was 23.4 (Women's History of Britian, 2005)). Also, I think Jane Austen, who rarely describes anyone in detail, going out of her way to make Lydia the tallest of the sisters and also describing Georgiana as very tall, and describing both of them as fully developed, was her making the point that this wasn't Wickham having an attraction to prepubescent girls. Not that liking barely legal girls is great, but it's more like a modern guy dating 18 year olds when he's 30, more icky than illegal.

It was about how girls who are too young are far more vulnerable to mistakes, empty promises, and manipulation.

So yeah, Wickham is the worst, but he's not that bad. This is the most I will ever say in his defence. I hold out a fond hope that he died in battle and Lydia gets a second chance at life. Or ran like the coward he is and then was court marshalled.

[thethirdromana]

Jane Austen heroes, ranked in descending order of how capable they would be of surviving in the modern world

7. Edmund Bertram Edmund has a genuine vocation in his desire to become a clergyman. This is a job that still exists and has probably changed less than most other jobs that people had in the early 19th century. He's supposed to live off £700 a year, which is £47,000 adjusted for inflation. The average Church of England vicar today earns £30,000, but then the average modern vicar has a washing machine and dishwasher and not a maid-of-all-work. I think Edmund would cope just fine in 2024.

6. Henry Tilney Mr Tilney is another clergyman, so all the same arguments apply. He's a step below Edmund on this list, though, as Henry is definitely a livelier, more fun-loving soul than Edmund (read: more expensive tastes) and doesn't seem to have quite such a vocation. But still, Henry is capable of holding down a real job, and I'm sure he would find one in 2024 as well.

5. Colonel Brandon Brandon (no first name ever supplied!) came from a successful military career, inherited a heavily indebted estate, and managed to turn it around. Minus the inheritance part, this feels like a plausible career history for a modern-day management consultant.

4. Edward Ferrars Another clergyman, Mr Ferrars ends up with the job when he had been expecting an inheritance and a life of luxury. Even then, the role is handed to him, and I fear he might find it harder to exist in a world where jobs are something you have to apply for, and not just be given.

3. George Knightley Mr Knightley is a landowner and gentleman farmer, which is also a job that still exists. He has little spare money, which is the usual experience of farmers in 2024 as well. I suspect he's going to need to wake up a lot earlier and work a lot harder in 2024 than in 1815. Maybe he could diversify and open some holiday cottages?

2. Frederick Wentworth We do still have naval captains today, but I think that's changed a bit more than the role of vicar has since the Napoleonic Wars. Maybe Captain Wentworth could be ruggedly handsome at one of those tall ships holiday companies? But unfortunately that's less of a route to wealth and glory than capturing French prizes in the Caribbean.

1. Fitzwilliam Darcy Mr Darcy, get a job? I'm trying to imagine him doing a 9 to 5, having performance reviews and chatting about the Traitors by the watercooler but it's just not happening. But even if he still owns Pemberley in the modern era, Darcy's income of £10,000 - circa £700,000 adjusted for inflation - is not going to be sufficient to maintain the estate, let alone give him the kind of lifestyle that he's used to. Perhaps he could swallow his pride one step further, flog the estate to the National Trust, live in one wing and help give guided tours to visitors.

[pinkacademic]

Studying Literature

I'm starting things off with what I actually know about!

Ok, Lit girlies, let’s get it started! How in the name of Jane Austen do you actually study literature? The answer isn’t just “lol read?” but actually find your passion for it, and find connections between you and the person one, two, five hundred years ago who is feeling and struggling and trying their best alongside this same text.

This is going to be a series of three parts- Finding the Connections, Themes and Context, and Actusl Studying- starting today with connecting to literature written 100+ years before you were born because personally, that’s where I think the passion for classics is found.

How it applies to Real Life in Modern Day

If you’re struggling to connect to characters from classic literature, you need to reframe how you think about them. Consider- Clueless is just Emma, right? Therefore Emma Woodhouse (handsome, clever, and rich) is just a pretty rich girl who likes playing matchmaker and is perhaps a little bit spoiled. Similarly, 10 Things I Hate About You is the Taming of the Shrew and even features plenty of references to Shakespeare in the naming of people and places.

Let’s look at a couple of other examples of how we can find connections.

Dracula: Of course, Dracula Daily has been bringing Dracula to the forefront again, and has been bringing about modernisations in the form of calling Jonathan Harker a poor little meow meow. But why? Because he’s just so meow, that’s why Because people are finding aspects of his character relatable and amusing. He’s essentially a recent graduate being given an insane opportunity for travel, and a great degree of responisbility- how exciting! And he’s learning about other cultures and trying new food! And experiencing the horrors! How novel!

Wuthering Heights: Catherine Earnshaw- a hopeless romantic in many senses of the word: she wants the romance of true love, and she wants the romance of the wilderness surrounding the Heights. She feels trapped in the world of what everyone else wants her to be after realising that what she thought she wanted wasn’t what she wanted. Heathcliff- a man wronged in his childhood who lets his emotions become all-consuming. Would you be the same in his circumstances? Can you be sure you wouldn’t be?

The Picture of Dorian Gray: I’ll admit that I didn’t enjoy this one. I loved the premise, but I just struggled. But still, I understand Dorian being swayed and tempted as if by the devil, I understand unrequited love, I understand obsession. And, weirdly enough, I have been part of two forbidden romances… like two nickels isn’t a lot, but it is weird that it happened twice.

Let’s have a look at some Shakespeare, then, while we’re at it

The Merchant of Venice: (Did I choose this because its my fave and I’m biased? Yes!) Forbidden love! Romance! A sympathetic villain! What’s not to love? The courtroom scene is right out of Legally Blonde- featuring girlboss lawyers in disguise to boot! And Shylock’s badass monologue calls morality into question. Here’s my fave line “If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Hamlet: Yes, by god, it is LONG! Listen, 15-minute Hamlet by Tom Stoppard will help you for this one. And so will the Lion King. Make it easier for yourselves, loves! BUT Hamlet is one for the Buzzfeed Unsolved/Watcher’s Ghost Files and Mystery Files girlies! There’s a ghost right from the start! There’s a whole slew of murders, and there’s a man losing grip of reality. Hamlet himself is a student who has lost his father and is questioning the morality of revenge. He’s such an old character that he’s been interpreted and reinterpreted a hundred thousand times, and if you go through the Royal Shakespeare Company among others, you can surely find one you can relate to.

My point here is that, though some of the characters in classics might seem distant, you can find timeless themes in these stories, and if you just push the boundaries of how you think about the characters, there is going to be something you find relatable.

Go forth and have fun with classics, while I work on the installment on Themes… no, we are not shying away from problematic literature here! Also, feel free to pop me an ask, a comment, or a dm, if you have anything you want to see!

[13eyond13]

In honour of recently completing my 2023 challenge of reading 50+ books this year, here are 10 books that I enjoyed in 2023 in no particular ranked order. (My reading taste leans towards the atmospheric, dark, satirical, suspenseful, strange and horror-tinged, btw):

1 A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs

I'm currently in the process of reading this one (it's two small novels in one book), but I can already recommend it based just on the style and the quality of the first story. Somehow feels similar to me to catching an odd old foreign film on TV late at night when I'm the only person awake and then getting unexpectedly invested in it.

2 Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind

I'd read the first few chapters of this over a decade ago and they were so instantly memorable and vividly told that they remained burned into my mind ever since. Love the attention to detail in bringing this grotesque version of 1700s France to life, and how much the story made me think about my sense of smell and other familiar things in new ways

3 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Funnier than I expected! Almost more a comedy than a romance in my opinion. Just very pleasant to read in general. I laughed out loud several times

4 The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman

This was a childhood favourite of mine that I decided to revisit, and it actually held up very well. I found the dark and cruel and gossipy little village that Beetle has to try to survive in fascinating, and same with learning about all the weird (historically accurate!) shit that was involved in medieval midwifery

5 Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval

I've mentioned this one on this blog already, but it feels like a surreal and melancholy bad dream in the best kind of way. More going on here to think about than just being the "lesbian piss book" (though you will find a generous helping of both things in the pages haha). Sticky and unsettling to read, like living in a compost pile, and probably not for everyone. But also poetic and lush and tense and and yeah, kinda gay

6 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

As fun and compulsively readable as a modern thrillers while also being complex and atmospheric and literary all at once. Somehow I still didn't have all the twists and turns spoiled for me beforehand! A definite 5/5 from me

7 Come Closer by Sara Gran

A strange, unsettling and brisk little book about demonic possession that was very easy to fly through in less than a day. Might have benefitted from being left a little more ambiguous overall (imo), but still entertaining to read, and grabs you right from the first page

8 The Fisherman by John Langan

An extremely imaginative and detailed little universe is fleshed out here that includes some fascinating true-to-life history (did you know sometimes entire towns were vacated and stripped bare so giant water reservoirs could be built on top of them? And that the buildings are still just sitting down there under all that water sometimes? Well, you'll learn all about it here). Some very haunting imagery and characters and scenes that will easily burn themselves into your brain

9 Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Creepy science fiction that feels a bit like embarking on a D&D campaign with some companions you don't actually trust or know very well. This one grew on me more over time as one that continued to stick with me a while after I had finished it. The mysteriousness and ambiguity of what's actually going on can either spur you to finish the whole series or simply give you a ton of food for thought to mull over and dissect

10 Contact by Carl Sagan

ALIENS! A very timely topic considering the types of news stories we've been getting in 2023. I was already familiar with Carl Sagan because of his Cosmos TV series, and only recently found out he wrote some fiction as well. Very pleasantly surprised at how well-written it is and that he put a female protagonist at the helm, and how he can share his expertise and knowledge and theories in the books in an easily accessible and entertaining way

[valoeaera]

A Lady for a Duke - Alexis Hall

Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5

Ok, so I have so much to say about this one. I have owned this book for (and I just checked my email receipt) five months!! I put it down back in May as basically a DNF, but didn't grab it when I went to donate my other DNFs and I've never been more glad for my forgetfulness!

It was my second foray into queer historical romance (and historical romance in general. My first being another of those DNFs that I got about halfway through for the same reason. I just couldn't get over the additional suspension of disbelief because, in my mind, anyone queer before like last Thursday just got burned at the stake. But I gave this one a chance and author Alexis Hall brings up a really good point in their FAQ about this:

"...the question of what the real historical attitudes of LGBTQ+ people were in any historical period, unless that period is incredibly recent, are actually pretty hard to pin down. There’s a tendency to assume that historical attitudes to, well, everything are just modern attitudes to everything but getting linearly worse the further back you go, and that’s not true. Nor do we actually know how people who died a century or more ago actually felt about anything in their day to day lives. We can make guesses based on the writings those people (those people who actually had their writings recorded, so mostly the rich and powerful) left behind but guesses are all they are. Assuming that every conversation in a Regency household sounded exactly like a Jane Austen novel is like assuming every conversation in an American household sounds like an episode of Succession."

Once I got through my initial hangups about it, this story was super cute (and sexy!!). Putting aside my bias for a moment, this story is just that: cute friends-to-lovers and healing from trauma. But frankly, fuck being unbiased because this book has a transgender duchess!!! There's war, love, kidnapping, revenge, a sword fight, a "sword fight", and a pretty trans woman on the cover. There's nothing quite as validating as reading smut that portrays your identity as sexy and alluring and pretty and worth of a duke who could have anyone's attention.

I might be a convert to historical romance in all honestly. The drama, the political maneuvering, the pretty dresses, oh my!!

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Well, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing I could say that would make you believe you're beautiful. So I'm showing you. The way you show me - with your eyes and your touch."

"Viola..." Her name was a sigh. "You don't have to-"

"Oddly enough" - she kissed his throat, where it was rough with the beginnings of his beard - "I'm aware it's not an obligation."

It took gratifyingly little to rouse him to fresh passion.

I'm super excited to read more from Alexis Hall, and lucky for me they have many other novels!

[princesssarisa]

I thought I'd create a poll about how sick Jane actually gets, because I've read different opinions on it, and not being an expert on life before modern medicine, I don't really have an opinion myself.

On the one hand, Mrs. Bennet says "People don't die of little trifling colds," both Darcy and Caroline think Jane isn't sick enough to warrant Elizabeth walking for miles through the mud to see her, and Mr. Bennet is clearly being sarcastic as usual when he suggests she might die. But on the other hand, you often hear it said that "colds could kill" in the days before modern medicine. Both Elizabeth and Bingley are described as "anxious" for Jane, who is clearly in much worse condition than she pretended to be in her letter home, Caroline and Louisa pretend to be distraught over her, and at night she gets so much "worse" that everyone debates whether to send for the apothecary again, or even for a real doctor, and though they ultimately do neither, Elizabeth stays up all night by Jane's bedside. The last time I was sick enough for someone to sit up all night with me, it was when I had bronchitis, not just a cold!

Of course, Austen could have been playing with literary tropes, as she always does. So often in literature, a character (usually a pretty and delicate female) will fall ill, either she or her loved ones will dismiss it as "just a cold," but then she gets steadily worse, and either almost dies or eventually does die. Austen herself had already played this trope straight (in the "almost dies" variant) in Sense and Sensibility – in fact she uses the same phrase, "a violent cold," for both Marianne and Jane's conditions when they first get sick. So maybe she was teasing her readers, trying to make them wonder if this would be Marianne's dangerous illness all over again, only to subvert the trope by having Jane be much better the next morning.

Of course the fact that I'm asking about this in the first place could be just my own autism-brain paranoia about sickness. Any time someone I know comes down with a cold, or a skin rash, or anything, I worry that they might die, and I'm not living in the Georgian era!