#ReadingAusten

[piratekenway]

I’m reading Pride and Prejudice and guys. hear me out. the Bennets scan almost perfectly from an amazingly embarrassing Regency family to an amazingly embarrassing Dungeons and Dragons party. look me in the eye and tell me they wouldn’t.

clearly Elizabeth Bennet is a wizard and Mr. Darcy is also a wizard.

[bookjotter6865]

Winding Up the Week #389

An end of week recap “I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing: when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.” – Tove…

[bex-pendragon]

Thoughts on Mansfield Park

Part 2: Slim Pickings for Suitors

Okay so... I don’t care for Henry Crawford.

Sometimes I get the impression that this is an unpopular opinion. Edmund is boring, people say. He’s her cousin! (Yeah, that’s valid. I know people married their cousins in the time period this novel takes place, but NOPE.) He spends too much time talking about Mary Crawford! (Also valid. Why are you so obsessed with her, Ed?) The truth is, poor Fanny Price got the short end of the stick when it comes to potential husbands. She doesn’t get a Knightley, or a Darcy, or even a Henry Tilney (he’s the superior Henry in Austen-canon, fight me.) Instead, she gets these two jokers.

The problem is when everyone around Fanny starts talking about how great Henry is, and Fanny is just... not interested. She made note of his actions toward Maria and Julia and didn’t like what she saw. There’s one point where the nicest thought she has is that he’s a good actor (the scene where he reads aloud to the group.) Like... if that’s the only thing the guy has going for him, I can’t root for him. For me it’s enough that Fanny herself doesn’t like him. And the way everyone tries to push him on her is so shitty. Trying to make her feel obligated because he got her brother a commission. Mr. Darcy would never! That is not how you make a grand selfless gesture, sir! I’m still proud of her for not wavering. Mr. Crawford shows his true colours in the end. I just think some some readers are a bit too soft on Henry Crawford. He’s not as bad as a Willoughby or a Wickham, but I just can’t get on board. I can see why some might think him a problematic fave, but if I have a problematic fave in Austen-canon, I’d go for Frank Churchill myself. I blame Ewan McGregor for that.

I’m happy Fanny ended up with the guy she wanted, but I found Edmund so much more annoying this time around. He really can’t shut up about Mary! But at least he actually valued Fanny as a person and cared about her opinions. The guy has some redeemable qualities. But the cousin thing... *Karen Smith voice* but he’s my first cousin!

Yeah, overall I wish Fanny had been given some better options.

[mollysmonsters]

Northanger Abbey is probably the book I was most looking forward to in this year-long group. I’ve only read it once before, but I adored it.

I think it’s Austen’s most underrated book and I also think it’s her funniest. Cathy Morland is a great protagonist who you sometimes want to, as my grandmother said once, “grab and shake the sense into her” (this is a quality I love in a protagonist).

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Reading Mansfield Park

I have seen some amazing posts about this novel already, so I feel like my direct approach to “the flesh of the text” as a professor liked to say is a poor thing, but here it goes, anyways.

Mansfield Park seems to be a long commentary on the Latin adaggio “Quod natura not dat, Salamanctica non praestat” (what nature doesn’t give, the University of Salamanca cannot provide). Each character embodies a case of study for the nature vs. nurture debate.

Henry and Mary are seen as creatures of education, but of their early education, and one that once fixed, cannot be corrected. Henry’s inconstancy is learned, as is Mary’s calculating and playful approach to life, and these things are the ones to ruin their chances at love with Fanny and Edmund. Both may be naturally warm and even kind (they genuinely care more for Fanny than all her Mansfield relatives except Edmund), but their upbringings harmed irrevocably their prospects of real happiness.

Then you have Mr. Rushworth, rich, adored by his mother, but who lacks any natural talents: He has no memory, no social awareness, and barely any intelligence. If he had noticed what everybody else except Edmund noticed about Maria and him, he would have probably avoided his disastrous marriage.

None of the Ward sisters seem to have inherited or acquired any common sense: Mrs Bertram is beautiful, and nothing more. Mrs. Norris thought Maria and Mr. Rushworth could make a good couple, and didn’t see nothing wrong with the theater. As long as she can imagine herself important and useful, at little to none expense, then everything is perfect to her. Mrs. Price marriage and management of her home and her relationship with her family show poor judgement too.

The miss Bertrams were taught every appearance of virtue, but not to live virtuously. The brothers, educated the same way, go in opposite directions: Tom not only lacks the principles that would make of him a good, useful member of society, but rejects even the appearance of it. Edmund, on the other hand, cares for virtue and for the appearance of virtue, but his vanity is his downfall.

Even Dr. Grant exemplifies an education that made of him an unwise erudite, versed in the dangers and sinfulness of gluttony and wrath, and seemingly unaware of the manifestation of those vices in his own life.

Paradoxically, the characters that are shown as models in some way are the ones whose education was most neglected: Fanny and Susan. 

Fanny is in many ways Edmund’s creature. More than the basic things she could get from Maria and Julia’s governess, her education was provided by him, and his influence was great because he was the one that actually treated her with kindness and consideration. In the end, however, Fanny’s judgement is better than Edmund’s, precisely because she has present to her the notion that she may be wrong about things. Edmund is persuaded of his own moral and intellectual superiority, and this persuasion blinds him. Fanny, in turn, is used to observe the behavior of others and be aware of her own feelings and impressions, and use this information to continually update her judgments about people and the world. 

Lt. and Mrs. Price have an unconcealed preference for their sons over their daughters, and Betsey being the youngest girl and the one most like her mother, Susan finds herself in the last place of her family (this girl deserves a novel all about herself, I insist). She’s intelligent, though, and she can see how things are being done the wrong way and fights to make things better. Fanny admires Susan because below her “coarse” exterior there’s a strong sense of justice, an affectionate heart and an earnest desire for improvement.

I think Mansfield Park is a gloomy psychological novel, not only because of the abuse Fanny endures, or how she hardly ever can do or does anything to move things forward, but because of a dark observation about the power of education. If nature didn’t give you intelligence and/or memory, you will most probably end up at the mercy of others (Mr. Rushworth, Mrs. Bertram). If you have been well endowed by nature in that respect, a bad education can ruin your chances at happiness anyways (Henry, Mary), the same way a good education may fail to teach you the things that are actually important --be good, not just appear as good-- (Maria, Julia), or fool you into thinking you are always right (Edmund) or fail to teach you anything at all (Tom).

in the end, what seems to be the only hope, is a sincere desire to improve oneself, paired with some heavy struggles early on in your life, as shown in Fanny and Susan.

[holdouttrout]

Mansfield Park

This is not going to be a coherent, well-thought-out essay, because I don't have time for that but I do have Thoughts, especially about the ending.

That ending.

Well. I suppose if you've already spent hundreds of pages detailing exactly how Edmund feels about Miss Crawford, despite them being completely unsuitable for each other, then you might as well spend only a few sentences on how Edmund realizes that Fanny is a much better option and marries her. That's definitely, totally, completely satisfying, right?

Spoiler: No.

I don't remember disliking Mansfield Park when I read it before, so I find myself completely surprised by how little I enjoyed it this time through. I felt like the first half was interesting, but the character growth in the second half just wasn't quite enough to pull it together into a satisfying ending the way that Pride and Prejudice or Emma does. 

Even more than the fact that the ending is so quick, I think my main gripe with it was that Edmund sees that Miss Crawford's character is bad, and not that he realized that she wasn't interested in marrying a clergyman and would never be suited to be a wife for him with the life he had planned. I didn't even feel that she needed to spell it out in that letter: "Oh, Edmund. Please keep quiet about the scandal and also, so sorry about your brother, hope he doesn't die but if he dies then you'll be rich enough for me, love, Mary." 

At least Mr. Crawford was always that much of a cad. 

(I know, I know. Mary’s badness was just more subtle.)

I do ADORE Fanny’s refusal to have anything to do with Mr. Crawford’s proposal. I wish she would have explained herself more but also understand why she didn’t feel she could. That part was excellent. And for her to avoid giving in when he comes to see her as she’s visiting her family and she can truly see what he’s offering materially? Excellent.

Also, while I understand that the theater was regarded very differently, and that it wasn't appropriate for young people (especially unmarried ladies) to participate, having a whole section of the book and a main plot point revolve around how bad an idea it was to put on a play, at home… just feels odd. Like, I understand how scandalous it might have been, but it's just… not scandalous feeling. 

Also also… there's a lot of like… moral judgyness. Which I mean, there is in Austen's other books, but in this one it's just… a lot. Especially when Fanny goes to visit her family for a couple of months and she spends the whole time trying to improve her sister and giving up on her younger brothers and sister as lost causes. Like, wow. Your mom is worried about all these kids she has and is managing to keep them fed and clothed with a husband who isn't… great… and she barely has servants and you're over here, judging her because her house isn't quiet enough. Okay.

I also found Fanny's early life to be horrifying. She's an object, a pet project, but not a real friend, sibling, or daughter. She's constantly belittled and, possibly worse, dismissed as unimportant and uninteresting. I felt like the Bertrams coming around to like her and appreciate her was nice, but too little, too late. At least Bertram acknowledges that it might be so.

That being said, I think I'm more interested in reading commentary on this one because I didn't like it as much. Maybe I'm missing really interesting ideas and asides and themes!

[darthmelyanna]

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

A list of famous opening lines will almost certainly include this one, but if you take it at face-value, it will lead you astray. Austen yanks the rug out from under her audience in the very next sentence:

“However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.”

It’s a statement so patently absurd that you have to go back and reassess the sentence preceding it, and find it to be the nonsense of the neighborhood rather than the marital designs of any rich man. These two sentences are the roadmap for the book before you. Nearly all the conflict of the story centers around clashing points of view.

Pride and Prejudice is a novel about perception and assumption. It is a novel full of snap judgments and false impressions. It demands that you interrogate received wisdom. It requires you to reexamine its heroine, one of Austen’s most unreliable narrators. You find that you have to unlearn what you know about her, because she doesn’t know herself as well as she thought.

[timtamsandtea]

A moment for Elinor

I’ll admit that I have retained very little from my first (and only) reading of Sense and Sensibility, but I can’t account for how I completely overlooked Elinor.  This line basically sums up why I don’t feed trolls.  

Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. 

Maybe I was blinded by the Marianne and Willoughby saga, or maybe I was put off by all that inane talk of cottages. 

@readingausten

[readingausten]

Welcome to the @readingausten readalong!

I’m @darthmelyanna, organizer of this readalong.

This is intended for people who’ve never read Jane Austen, people who’ve read all the books multiple times, and everyone in between. If you’re interested in reading Austen’s work, you are more than welcome!

How do you participate, you ask? Read along with us, post on your blog, and tag it, either @ing this blog or using the tag readingausten. Anything tagged with either method will be reblogged here. You can also send asks with questions and comments.

I have also set up readingausten at Pillowfort, so if you want to use that platform instead, please feel free to join that community and post there.

At present, the plan is to spend two months in a novel, with the last couple weeks of every period for fic recommendations and discussing adaptations. If this turns out to be too fast or too slow, we can change it.

The (tentative) schedule is as follows:

January/February: Pride and Prejudice

March/April: Sense and Sensibility

May/June: Emma

July/August: Mansfield Park

September/October: Northanger Abbey

November/December: Persuasion

All six novels are available at Project Gutenberg, as well as other sources of public-domain digital files. LibriVox has free audiobooks of all of them as well, although I can’t vouch for their being unabridged. And there are multiple annotated versions you can purchase if you like, but it’s by no means required.

If you’ve got questions, feel free to send me an ask, whether here or at my main blog. Follow this blog for further updates, and reblog this post!

[and-margaret]

@readingausten I have to say my favorite part of S&S that always gets cut from adaptations is Mrs. Jennings thinking Brandon asked Elinor to marry him when he actually is going to give Edward a living, and her and Elinor having whole conversations for like two chapters without realizing the other one has no idea what they’re talking about.

[thestraggletag]

thatvermilionflycatcher replied to your post: RMC anyone?

I have been proposing to watch Emma’s adaptations to the readingausten participants. Was going to begin with Miramax’s Emma this Friday at 9 our time. IDK. (I remember your comments about Jeremy Northam XD)

Oh, that’d be fun! I’m in, if that’s okay.

[saxgoddess25]

Just waiting on my Kindle to get charged up and then I can start on Pride and Prejudice for the @readingausten read-along, now that I’ve finally finished reading Spinning Silver. :)  Woot woot!

[bex-pendragon]

Thoughts on Mansfield Park

Part 3: My favourite adaptation

Yes, I’ve already started Northanger Abbey, but I realized I forgot to make my last posts of thoughts about Mansfield, so here we go!

I wasn’t very keen on the film adaptation of Mansfield Park, but I’d like to draw some attention to a lesser-known adaptation: Kate Watson’s Seeking Mansfield. This book is contemporary YA retelling in the vein of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (except in book form, not webseries. And with less humour, as some of the subject matter is darker.) Much like LBD, Seeking Mansfield updates the classic characters to a modern-day setting and adds some much-needed diversity. The Fanny Price character - now called Finley - is a biracial Latina. Instead of being the cousin of the Bertrams, she is now the goddaughter of Mr. Bertram. The Bertram children are now Tate, Oliver, and Juliette (poor Maria and Julia got mashed together into one character.) Their father was the roommate of Finley’s father at college and the two man were life-long friends until Mr. Price, an actor, dies and the Bertrams take Finley in after her mother loses custody of her. Instead of living with the Bertrams from a young age, Finley has only been living with them for two years.

Mild spoilers for Seeking Mansfield follow:

This retelling leans heavily into the theatre aspect of the original text by making Finley’s father an actor and having the Crawford siblings (now called Harlan and Emma) actors as well. Finley is also interested in the theatre, but her dream is to be a director. She’s just afraid to pursue her dream because she’s still dealing with her father’s death and her mother’s spiral into addiction. The book does not shy away from the abuse that Fanny suffered in the original novel: Finley is berated by Aunt Nora in addition to being mistreated by her mother. She is grateful to the Bertrams for taking her in and eager to prove herself, so she ends up being a bit of a doormat, taking care of her chronically ill Aunt Mariah while the rest of the family doesn’t raise a finger to help.

Like in the original, Edmund, now Oliver, is Finley’s greatest champion, until he’s distracted by the arrival of the Crawfords. Emma Crawford is almost an amalgam of Mary Crawford and Emma Woodhouse when she tries to make Finley over, taking her on as her personal project the way Emma took on Harriet Smith. Another interesting thing is that Finley actually gets involved with Harlan Crawford for a while... but if you’ve read the original, you all know how that turns out. I believed that Harlan’s attraction to Finley was genuine - more than in the original book - but his worse qualities and defects of character win out in the end, leaving Finley to confront her true feelings for Oliver. The novel also spends some chapters on Oliver’s point of view and his gradual realization of feelings for Finley is well-crafted.

Overall Seeking Mansfield strikes the right balance by updating the characters and major plot points to a new setting without losing sight of the original. It is still a coming-of-age story and seeing Finley Price come into her own and learn to stand up for herself is just as satisfying as seeing Fanny Price do the same.

[mollysmonsters]

Is Mansfield Park even Fanny’s book?

[thatscarletflycatcher]

Last notes on Mansfield Park

Every re reading I feel more pity for Henry and see less and less whatever Fanny sees in Edmund. Don’t get me wrong, I��m not saying Fanny should have chosen differently. It is just that we are told Edmund is this great man... just because he used to be kinder to Fanny than the others? Because he taught her principles? Well, yes, I won’t deny that’s something, but it doesn’t make him such a great man as he is supposed to be. 

Look, on the other end of the spectrum, Mr. Knightley. Mr. Knightley isn’t only a good preacher of principles: he is a man that lives those principles in a clever way, and worries and is kind not only to Emma, but to pretty much everyone else he sees he can be of use to. When do we see Edmund, besides his treatment of Fanny, actually think of others farther than his duty to his father and siblings?

If the root of all sin is pride and vanity, then Henry is that much worse than Edmund only because of the social consequences of his actions (which I don’t think are to be downplayed, of course), and not because of virtue Edmund acquired by himself.

En fin. Fanny has suffered enough and I will let her have what she wanted all along.

I think Mansfield Park is the closest a Jane Austen novel is to a Cinderella story: a girl in poverty, always looked down by her richer relations, triumphs in the end through her courage and kindness.

Though this time around I found some flaws in Fanny I had not seen before. For example, she sees ill intention and competition in Mary Crawford, when in reality Mary wishes her good. Mary has no way of knowing Fanny was in love with Edmund, and any suspicion of the kind wouldn’t have been a good thing coming of her. Her feelings for Edmund were real, even if her temper and ways weren’t the best, and her selfish consideration of his actions as only relating to her were unjust. Fanny even kind of blames Mary for Edmund’s stupidity and that’s... She also had a very unrealistic idea of what she would find at Portsmouth.

Even this somber novel has some peak comedy moments, like sir Thomas thinking he’s getting rid of Mr. Yates for good, the butler picturing Mrs. Norris being addressed marriage proposals by Henry Crawford and her not getting his meaning at all, Edmund and sir Thomas preventing Mrs. Norris from spoiling William an Fanny’s meeting, or the irony of Fanny getting to open a Mansfield ball with Henry (getting everything her cousins wanted but that she didn’t want at all).

Another thing I noticed is that characters as opposite as Fanny and Emma get to express out loud the same feeling: who said women must accept a proposal just because it is offered to them?

I love William and Susan Price... a lot. Like, these two deserve their own novels. William’s story at sea, and then his sweet relationship with Fanny (planning on saving to buy a cottage to live together in their old age!); and then Susan with all her common sense and choleric temper and thirst for learning and doing and being useful... She deserves her own romance. (I may or may have not begun written one for her, crossover with PotC sorry for those who read the first chapter I swear I’ll go back and write more sorry). These Price siblings deserve more love.

[darthmelyanna]

Uh, so @readingausten moves on to Sense and Sensibility on Friday and let me just say this is the one I was dreading.