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agwitow · 4 years ago

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P&P + Zombies (pt 2)

Read Part 1 Here

Leaning toward “Zombie Impressions” for an official title--though I’m using the term ‘ghoul’ instead of ‘zombie’ within the story itself. “Ghoul Impressions” doesn’t sound as nice though... maybe “Dead Impressions”???

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In seeking a distraction from Lydia and Kitty’s incessant suppositions about the newly arrived Mr. Bingley, Lizzy slipped into Mr. Bennet’s office, only to find it empty of any other person. Confused, but only a little worried, she left in search of Jane to ask:

“Is Father still abed?”

“Not at all,” Jane replied. “I saw him and Mother walking together outside.”

Appeased—for if he were taking a short walk then this was one of his better days—Lizzy decided she could simply ignore her youngest sisters while she trimmed a hat. It was much later in the day when the sound of a carriage drew the attention of those Bennet girls who were in the drawing room.

“Who could that be?” Lydia asked, rushing to the window. “Oh! It’s Father! He must have been visiting Mr. Bingley!”

Lizzy dropped her hat and rushed to windows. Sure enough, Mr. Bennet was slowly climbing down from their carriage. The sallowness of his skin and trembling of his limbs were signs of how tiring the excursion had been for him, but he still held his head high as he came in to the house.

He had barely removed his hat before Lydia and Kitty were asking him questions. He waved them off with a strained chuckle and declared, “Let me catch my breath a moment. Perhaps fetch your Mother and other sisters.”

Though neither girl wanted to do any such thing, they knew they were unlikely to get answers to the questions that had been burning in them all day until they had. So with more speed than their dragging heels might have preferred, they gathered up the rest of the family to the drawing room.

Lizzy fussed over Mr. Bennet as soon as he had taken his usual—though long empty—seat. Fetching a footstool, draping a blanket over his lap, and finding the plumpest of pillows behind his back.

He shook his head with a smile. “Lizzy, my dear, you need not fuss so much.”

“Your trip took much out of you.”

“It did,” he agreed. “But the number of pillows you surround me with will not change that. What’s done is done.”

“Why did you go? Surely we could have waited to be introduced at the next ball.”

“Ah, but that would have vexed your Mother greatly.”

She frowned. “Let her be vexed. It’s not her health at risk.”

He clasped her hand in his, giving it a little pat. “It only tired me, my dear. I will recover.”

Lizzy wanted to say more, but they were joined by Mrs. Bennet and the rest of the girls. They all settled into their seats and waited for Mr. Bennet’s news. No matter how tired he was, he could not but help smile indulgently at the women of his family.

“Though I have become quite settled in my ways, your doting Mother convinced me to make a new acquaintance on behalf of you girls. I must say, I was not overly impressed by the manners of Mr. Hurst.”

“Mr. Hurst? Who is that?” Lydia exclaimed.

“Why, the gentleman I was to meet, was it not?”

Mrs. Bennet made a choking sound and crossed her arms to glare at Mr. Bennet. “So Mr. Bingley is still lost to us.”

Jane was quick to put in, “You forget, mamma, that we shall be able to meet him at the assemblies. Did not Mrs. Long promise to introduce him for us?”

She sniffed. “I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing, no matter her promises. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.”

“No more have I,” said Mr. Bennet. “And I am glad to find you do not depend on her serving you.”

She opened her mouth to make some sort of retort when Kitty began to cough. Her ire quickly turned toward her daughter. “How can you be coughing so, Kitty? You hardly stir out of the house except to go to tea and buy ribbons! You cannot have gotten sick from so little.”

“I do not cough for my own amusement, mamma,” Kitty replied fretfully. “One of Miss Kingsley’s visiting relatives had a cough of his own. I must have got it from him.”

“Then no more outings until you are recovered.”

“But mamma! Lydia and I have been invited back for tea this very afternoon!”

Mrs. Bennet’s frown dipped towards a scowl. “It will not do for you to pass the cough on to anyone else. What would the neighbours think? One of my own daughters spreading an illness so carelessly! No. You will stay in.”

“I will tell you all about it,” Lydia said brightly.

“You will not. You are not going, either.”

“What! Mamma! Kitty is the one sick, not I!”

Mrs. Bennet’s frown softened, but she still shook her head. “Lydia, my love, Miss Kingsley should not have invited anyone to visit while her relative has a cough. It is very ill-bred of her.”

“It’s only a cough,” Lydia whined. “It’s not as if he were biting people!”

Jane gave a little gasp, then quickly dropped her eyes to keep anyone from reading the worries about Mr. Bennet’s condition in them. She hardly need have bothered, for all other eyes were focused on Lydia and Mrs. Bennet’s argument.

“He may have only coughed last time, but who’s to say it won’t be more this time?” Mrs. Bennet said, her tone shifting into something resembling reasonableness. Lydia was, after all, her favourite. “Every apothecary and surgeon declares a different set of symptoms to watch for. They have no real answer as to where it comes from, or how it is caught.”

“It was damp on their journey here,” Lydia protested. “That is where his cough comes from. We are only at risk of being overlooked for future engagements.”

“If it is a simple cough, as you say, then Kitty will be better in a few days. Then you may both go to whichever teas you wish.”

Lydia pouted, but she knew none of her sisters or Father would come to her defence. In such situations it was usually her Mother she would appeal to. Rarely were her whims curbed by her Mother, but on those occasions when it happened, there was little point in dragging out the argument.

Once silence had fallen again, Mr. Bennet offered, “Well, my dear Mrs. Bennet, you may have the advantage of your friend, and introduce Mr. Bingley to her.”

“Impossible, Mr. Bennet, when I am not acquainted with him myself. How can you be so teasing?”

“Ah, my dear, you are the spirit of modesty. A fortnight’s acquaintance is certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of such a short period. But if we do not venture, somebody else will. After all, Mrs. Long and her nieces must stand their chance, and, therefore, she will think it an act of kindness. If you decline, I will have to take it on myself.”

“What nonsense is this?” Mrs. Bennet asked, wringing the edge of her apron as her mind tried to unravel the mystery that was her husband.

“And who is Mr. Hurst?” Mary put in.

“Ah, I suppose I should have been more specific—I made the acquaintance of two gentlemen and the ladies accompanying them.”

“What? What is the meaning of this? Mrs. Bennet cried.

“Mr. Bingley is a very amiable young man, though his brother, Mr. Hurst, was not nearly as polite. Of Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst, I have little to report beyond that they look very much like their brother.”

For a moment, silence weighed heavily on the drawing room before Lydia and Kitty let out loud whoops and began to dance about the room. Mr. Bennet watched their exuberance with a contented smile until the day’s efforts began to bring about the pain is his joints and increase his fatigue so that only the noise of their merrymaking was keeping him awake.

Jane and Lizzy were quick to notice his decline and silently drew Mrs. Bennet’s attention to it. She nodded once, then turned to the three youngest and declared:

“A fortnight is not much time to make any changes you might want to employ for the ball. Let us see what we have to work with.”

Both Lydia and Kitty were quite happy to leave off their dancing and go upstairs to pour over dresses and ribbons and shoes. It took a bit more cajoling to get Mary to go along.

“Why are Lizzy and Jane not coming with?” Mary groused.

“They are the eldest of you all, and so have more to choose from. It will not take them as long to prepare their wardrobe.”

Once they had all left, Lizzy and Jane helped their Father out of his chair and to his office, where he might be able to rest without interruption. He murmured his thanks before falling asleep. Jane opened a window a little to entice a breeze into freshening the room while Lizzy wrapped a blanket around him to keep any chills away.

In the hall, Jane turned to her sister and whispered, “Did you feel how warm his brow was?”

“Too warm,” Lizzy agreed. “And his hands were too cold.”

For the first time since they had been told the truth of his declining health, Jane could no longer believe he might improve. “How long do you think he will… will remain?”

“Days? Weeks? Months more?” Lizzy shook her head and sighed. “I cannot even make a guess. But what are we to do when it happens? What if he rises?”

Jane shivered. “Let us pray he does not. No young man would take to wife a daughter of a ghoul.”

Mrs. Bennet made herself busy attending to every little whim of her youngest girls for the rest of the day. It did not deter Elizabeth from simply waiting until the others had turned in for the night. Jane suspected what Lizzy wanted to discuss with their Mother, but was too gentle to be able to make an argument for either side. So she bid her sister goodnight before retreating up to the room they shared alone.

“Oh! Lizzy! You mustn’t lurk like that! You nearly gave me such a fright,” Mrs. Bennet exclaimed.

“You certainly gave me a fright earlier today when you sent Father out. By himself.”

She tutted away the worry. “He is a doting father, you know. Ill or not, making acquaintances at our time of life is not pleasant. But we would both do that and much more for you girls.”

“And what if something had happened while he was out?”

“Nothing did.”

“This time.”

Mrs. Bennet and Elizabeth glared at each other, each completely sure that they were in the right.

“If he’d died on the way and come out of the carriage as a ghoul at Netherfield, do you really think there would be much point in having ‘made their acquaintance?’” Lizzy asked.

“Pish. If he’d died, they would have simply found a corpse.”

She blew out a relief breath. “So he is free of the walking virus.”

Mrs. Bennet shifted and would not meet her eyes. “Not exactly.”

“Does he, or does he not, have the virus?”

Mrs. Bennet stared at Lizzie for a long, silent moment. She gave her head a shake. “You are always asking questions and wanting to know more than you need. But I can see you’ll let me have no rest if I do not tell you more. Give me a moment to change, then we can go to the kitchen and enjoy a bit of tea while we talk.”

For a moment, Lizzy started to protest, but then she realized what her Mother had said. She nodded and headed down to the kitchen immediately. She wouldn’t wake Jane twice by changing and leaving, only to come back later. So while she waited, she fed the embers in the oven until there was enough of a little fire to warm the kettle.

By the time Mrs. Bennet made her way to the kitchen, the tea was ready and poured. Lizzy had put two spoons of sugar and just a splash of cream into the cup for her Mother. For her own, she’d only used half a spoon, a bit more cream, and a crushed clove.

“I know you think I should have brought in an apothecary or doctor to tend to your Father,” she said after taking only a single sip. “And I did, the first time.”

“First time?”

“It was a few years ago. Do you remember the year where nearly everyone had a cough that lasted through the winter?” At her nod, Mrs. Bennet continued, “Even after most had recovered, your Father’s cough still lingered. We talked to all sorts, hoping to ease the pain in his lungs. There were various things they tried. Some helped, some didn’t. But as soon as we thought he was better, it would return.”

“I think I remember that. You and Father went to town to visit my aunt and uncle, did you not?”

She nodded. “We did. We had heard there was someone in town who might help. And he did. But he warned that this illness had weakened your Father. His next illness would likely be his last.”

“That’s just what one man in town said.”

Mrs. Bennet sipped at her tea. “After being through so many painful and unsuccessful treatments, your Father was… not willing to go through it again. When he became sick this time, we worked to ease his pains and hoped time and rest would do what all those apothecaries and doctors couldn’t.”

“But it didn’t.”

“It helped at first. It was much easier to do things when the pain was not so… complete.”

Lizzy stirred her tea and tried to understand what they had gone through.

“Then, a few months ago, your Father had a… a little fall.”

“Little? He collapsed and knocked his head against his desk!”

Mrs. Bennet sighed and set her tea down. “Your father is not over-large, but still too large for me to carry. If that had not been the case, I would never have told you and Jane anything about his health. It is not for a child to worry about their parent.”

“How can you think to keep this a secret for much longer? What happens when he dies? Will he rise as a ghoul?”

“I plan to keep it secret at least until all of you girls are wed.”

Lizzy stared at her, dumbfounded. “It would be impossible for him to live that long.”

“If we can keep him confined for the first fortnight after he rises, then the worst of the danger will be past.”

“Whatever do you mean? Ghouls are ravenous beasts that attack any living creature they come in contact with!”

Mrs. Bennet smiled, a note of triumph gleaming in her eyes. “That is the common understanding, yes.”

Lizzy narrowed her eyes. “Is it not correct?”

“It is not the whole truth.” Mrs. Bennet paused, waiting for Lizzy to ask what it was, but eventually sighed when it became clear that Lizzy would do no such thing. “After death, it takes three to five days for someone with the walking virus to rise as a ghoul. Upon rising they are, as you said, ravenous beasts. If they are kept from… feeding… then their hunger abates after a fortnight. After which, they will try to resume their old habits.”

“What? If that is true, why are ghouls not simply kept secured until the hunger abates?”

Mrs. Bennet gave a genuine sigh of sadness. “It is only a semblance of life. They cannot speak, and they become easily confused. They are still dead, so their body will continue to decay. And if they are injured, or angered, they will revert to their ravenous state. So long as they do not eat living flesh, it will pass, but if they do, then they will be lost to that madness forever. For most, that is far too much risk for far too little reward.”

Lizzy was dumbfounded. It sounded strange and fantastical, but her Mother was not the type to invent stories. She could misunderstand things and draw fanciful conclusions—in fact, she often did—but to come up with something so beyond the norm? She shook her head. “And what reward would make having Father become a ghoul worth the risk?”

“Seeing you girls wed, instead of homeless, with hardly a penny to our name.”

“How did you learn about such things?”

Mrs. Bennet sniffed. “Your Father is not the only one who reads old books on occasion.”

This seemed almost as bizarre an idea to Lizzy as the thought of her Mother making it all up out of nothing, but no matter what further questions she asked, she would not say any more. As far as Mrs. Bennet was concerned, the matter was now settled. They would care for Mr. Bennet in secret until he died, keep him locked away once he did, then allow his ghoul to make just enough appearances to keep suspicions at bay. He hardly saw or spoke to anyone, so she did not think it would be much trouble to keep the charade going. Lizzy was much more doubtful of their success, but could see no way to explain it to Mrs. Bennet without beginning an argument that would leave them both angry and with no other solutions.

(Read Part 3 Here)

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rewolfaekilerom · 3 years ago

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why reread books?

//NOTE: This was originally posted to Wordpress on 04.24.2021//

I didn’t write last week. Whoops. I could come up with an excuse, but I don’t need to. I spent 7 years in grad school, and some 17 years before that in regular school; this blog is my way of reconditioning myself to love writing for the sake of writing and not to write out of some obligation or feeling that I’m not doing enough.

I work 40 hours a week, and most of that’s with writing in some way, shape, or form. I’m doing plenty.

So, today’s post.

I started reading P. D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley today. (I promise I’ll write about the Sookie Stackhouse series. I finished it last week and have so many thoughts, but I’m not quite ready to share them.)

The first few pages of Death Comes to Pemberley (this is about as far as I’ve made it) are a clever retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, because that’s what James’s book is based on. I read Austen’s novel ages ago–probably as a teenage and probably next to a pool. I think I was made to get a PhD because one of the challenges I set myself one summer as a teenager was to read all of Austen’s novels. I think I got through most of them, but I don’t really remember. I was a bit of an oddball and a nerd. My dad and I would go to the public library every weekend, and I went through a phase where I’d take out a stack of poetry books just . . . to read in study hall. Like I said, weird kid. I thank my parents for indulging my love of books, even if it meant that I was an overgrown child in grad school for too many years and filled their lives with sympathy stress.

Anyway. I think I mentioned in my previous post that I like to reread books. What I mean by this is a few different things, actually–or, rather, this rereading can come in a few different forms.

I, of course, mean it in the straightforward sense. I’ve reread Rebecca many times, and I’ve reread Barbara Michaels’s oeuvre many, many more times than I’d ever be willing to admit.

But by “I like to reread books,” I also mean “I like to reread books–sometimes immediately after I’ve finished them.”

I’m definitely not proud of this, but I reread both the After series by Anna Todd–you know, the One Direction fanfic that’s actually a really gross (in every sense of that word) depiction of a tremendously abusive and toxic relationship–and the To All the Boys… series by Jenny Han immediately after I finished them. Ironically, I wouldn’t have ever picked either series up if it weren’t for a podcast I started with two friends that will likely never see the light of day. In any case, Han’s series is genuinely good; I relate to Lara Jean’s character in the sense that she’s quite similar to how I was as a teenager; there’s a comfort there that’s coupled with a forced humility–I like laughing at myself, even when someone else is also laughing at me. And Todd’s series is . . . trash, which is probably what makes it compelling. It’s not a series you read to feel good about yourself or other people; it’s a literary car wreck, something you want to look away from because it’s terrible and you know it’s bad for you, but you also feel some inexplicable compulsion to stare it directly in the eyes and engage.

For all my bravado, I’m usually pretty good at picking my battles and not engaging, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t help but engage (and reengage) with the After series. Maybe I’ll delve into that in another blog post, though I’m thinking that’ll have to be something akin to a therapist visit, and it’ll most certainly be something I’ll have to work through repeatedly.

The most straightforward reason I can give for why someone might immediately reread a book is that they feel like they devoured it too quickly the first time so they need to go back and pay closer attention. I’ve done this with a few mystery books–Tana French’s The Witch Elm, for instance–because I’ve finished the book feeling a bit like I didn’t read closely enough and so missed out on some of the author’s brilliance. I immediately begin rereading in hopes of really appreciating what the author has to say and how they’ve said it.

I might also immediately reread a book because I feel like the ending came too soon–like I maybe didn’t get to spend enough time with the characters or in their world, like maybe I’m not ready to leave that fictional universe or to let go of that story. I think this is fairly relatable. I’ve read heaps of tumblr posts and heard from many friends that sometimes finishing a book is a sad experience because, as with any ending, there’s a certain degree of mourning that has to happen for the thing that has been lost. In the case of finishing a book, you might feel compelled to mourn the loss of a particular experience, world, space, or set of characters. Those things still exist on the pages of the book–hey, we write about literature using the present tense because those things continue to exist even after we’re finished with them–and they also exist in our minds. But the thing about finishing a book is that, though the memory of that reading experience stays with us, the experience of being guided through that fictional world ends. The author is, of course, our guide through their fictional world; when we finish a book, we lose that guide. Depending on how we feel about the author’s voice–or, perhaps more appropriately, the narrator–we may feel a greater or lesser sense of loss.

I don’t really Elizabeth Bowen’s or Alix Harrow’s writing styles (these are honestly the first two authors who came to mind; I know they’re very different–so, see, I’m well read!), so I don’t feel a great sense of loss when I leave their fictional worlds, however compelling they might be. But I do tend to like the types of narrators Emily St. John Mandel, Octavia Butler, or (the Janus-faced–multi-faced?) Carolyn Keene offer readers (again, it’s like I’m trying to pick completely unsuitable pairs, but I swear I’m not), so I feel a sense of loss when I’m forced to separate from those narrators because I’ve finished experiencing their physical manifestations–the bound collection of pages on which they live their finite lives.

Someone might argue that those narrators can live on in the reader’s mind just as the fictional world they inhabit gets taken up and finds new life in the reader’s imagination. I like that argument, but I think it overlooks the simple fact that the narrator’s voice isn’t all that matters here. That narrator is a puppet, and the author is the master puppeteer who directs what the narrator does, says, and conveys–that is, how the narrator guides us, the readers, through the story. So, again, when we finish a book, we lose our guide through–sometimes even our friend in–the fictional world.

To wax poetic for a second, when we finish a book, we get to move forward in time while the narrator is stuck back in time. There’s something so sad about leaving someone behind, and it’s especially sad when we have to leave someone in a not-so-pleasant world–even if it’s fictional. It’s the reason a story like Peter Pan is so sad–Peter is a nasty little tyrant, but we (or maybe just I) can’t help but feel bad for him because he’s left behind while everyone he loves and who loves him grows up, because that’s the natural course of action. As one of my grad school peers once pointed out, Barrie’s narrator begins the book by marking Peter as exceptional–as the exception–because he’s the only child who doesn’t grow up.

So, to get back to my point, when we reread a book, we’re trying to recapture and reunite with that guide, that friend, who we’ve had to leave behind because of the simple fact that we outlived them. After all, our lives continue to go on after theirs have ended. The operative word in that first sentence, though, is “try.” There’s a saying about how you can only experience something for the first time once, and I think that’s very true for reading a book. You can only be fully immersed in a narrator’s present moment and fully subject to the will of a narrator one time, and that’s the first time you go through their story with them. In every subsequent journey, you have the advantage (or disadvantage?) of knowing exactly where the story will take you, and so a bit of the mystery–or helplessness, or naiveté, or whatever–is gone.

That said, though, I’m not sure I’d go so far as to argue that you can only experience the story “as it’s truly designed to be experienced” one time–that first time. I’m sure this perspective has something to do with some deep-rooted prejudice I have against attributing meaning or intention to an author. I don’t want to probe that prejudice too much at the moment because I suspect it’s coupled with layers of anxieties that are all somehow connected to four years of graduate coursework spent feeling a bit like the dumbest person in the room.

I’ve read a lot of books (#humblebrag), so, naturally, I’ve read books in a lot of different environments, for a lot of different reasons, and in a lot of different states of mind. I like to think of myself as generally a pretty “good” reader–that is, in the sense that I’m able to appreciate stories for what they are and to suspend my disbelief, sometimes while a very distracting “real world” goes on around me. Again, that’s probably partially because of my training. I’ve read in silent libraries, backseats of cars and on crowded buses, at pools, in bed, in fields, at busy airports, in cabs, at bars and coffee shops, at house parties–and those are just physical places. I’ve also read in diverse situations, including while immensely happy, having just had a fight, while crying, because it’s assigned reading, while heartbroken, while trying to also keep a conversation going, during class, because this book reminds me of something else, while anxious, when very tired, during the middle of an argument, out of curiosity, while waiting, and the list goes on. The sheer volume of reading one has to complete (or at least try to complete) to keep up with a grad-level literature course means that one has to be okay with reading whenever and wherever. I’ve literally carried a book with me on a date and to the grocery story “just in case” I had some extra time.

To get closer to my point, this is all a very long way of saying that there are so many circumstances that can affect our reading experience that it’s impractical for an author or a reader to think that there’s only one way to read a story. Take a relatively broad circumstantial reading category like “beach reading.” There are so many different beach scenarios that an author–even one who’s willing to settle for a very broad interpretation of “beach reading” like “reading near a large body of water with some level of distractions but in a generally relaxed mood”–can’t attempt to predict. I’d honestly be surprised to hear that an author aiming to write “beach reading” would even try to get more specific than that. After all, we don’t really have categories like “tropical beach vacation with friends reading” or “rocky Maine beach on a solo vacation reading.” I doubt an author would attempt to get that specific because, after all, writing is a career and those who do it need to create a product that will be marketable to enough people to make it worthwhile and to secure a living. And for an author who isn’t writing professionally, it hardly seems worth it to even attempt to take the time to try to predict the circumstances that might surround their audience’s experiences with the finished story. There are simply too many variables, so the goal must be, to some degree, at least, to write a story that conveys something to someone in whatever circumstance they happen to be in at the moment they’re reading. That’s a monumental task. An author might, then, have an “ideal” reader in an “ideal” scenario or state of mind or whatever, but they can’t ever write to that “ideal” alone–and that’s even if they’re writing for themselves, since they don’t know what frame of mind they’ll be in when they experience the story again (unless, of course, they don’t intend to experience the story again, in which case nothing matters except the present, which is pretty interesting in itself but not what I’m talking about right now).

But something I’d also like to note is the simple fact that sometimes stories are better–more interesting, more effective, more whatever–the second time we read them. I’ve read books with perfect focus–in a quiet library, for instance–and not found them all that compelling; I’ve also gone back to those books later–once I’m in a slightly different place (mentally, physically, emotionally, without the pressure of reading for class, whatever)–and genuinely enjoyed them. I’ll readily admit that sometimes I’m just a better reader, and sometimes I’m a better reader of a particular type of book than I might be otherwise. As humans, we’re perpetually in flux. Books are more or less stationary objects that don’t really change. We’re what changes, so we might be in a better position to appreciate a book at one point in our lives than at another point.

So, I might reread a book to recapture that first reading experience. But I might also reread a book to have a different reading experience, to meet the narrator when I’m a slightly different person. My goal might be to relearn or refresh myself of the lessons I learned through reading that particular story, but it might also be to gauge how I’ve changed. Each time I reread a story, I have a different reading experience: I notice different things; I feel different feelings; I appreciate different characters or appreciate the same characters differently; I take away different ideas about my current world based on not only how my current world compares to the fictional world but also how my current world compares to the current (now past) world I lived in the previous time(s) I experienced the fictional world.

Oy, that was a lot. And I could complicate this all further by delving deeper into why we read at all–why we sign on to read a story, what we how to get out of the reading experience, and what reading actually does for us. But I already wrote a dissertation, so I’m not going to do that again. Also, we all read for different reasons and we each read different types of stories for different reasons, so there are so many variables that it’s hardly worth it to explore that topic in a really broad sense. Maybe a narrower sense would be more productive, but I’ve already written enough for today.

What I want to say is that I’m definitely not alone in rereading stories. There are ample reasons to reread stories, the most straightforward of which being that it can just be enjoyable to do.

And to think that this post grew out of the idle thought that I’d like to reread Pride and Prejudice. And I’m still only three pages into Death Comes to Pemberley! Well, okay, onward.

xoxo, you know.

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ljones41 · 4 years ago

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"PERSUASION" (2007) Review

"PERSUASION" (2007) Review When it comes to adaptations of Jane Austen novels, I tend to stick with a trio of titles - ”Pride and Prejudice”, ”Emma” and ”Sense and Sensibility”. Before this year, I have never seen a screen adaptation of any remaining Austen novels. Until I saw the 2007 adaptation of her last completed novel published in 1818, ”Persuasion”.

Directed by Adrian Shergold, ”PERSUASION” told the story of Anne Elliot, the sensible middle daughter of a vain and spendthrift baronet named Sir Walter Elliot. At the age of 19, Anne had fallen in love with a young naval officer named Frederick Wentworth. But due to his lack of fortune and family connections, Sir Walter and Anne’s friends expressed displeasure at the idea of her becoming Mrs. Wentworth. But it was a family friend named Lady Russell who persuaded Anne into breaking off her engagement to Frederick. Eight years later, the Elliot family found themselves in financial straits due to the careless spending of Sir Walter and his oldest daughter, Elizabeth. They ended up leasing their house and estate – Kellylynch Hall in Somersetshire – to an Admiral Croft and his wife. The latter turned out to be the older sister of the now Captain Wentworth. While Elizabeth and Sir Walter set off for their new residence in Bath, Anne remained behind to take care of further business in Somersetshire; including taking care of her hypochondriac sister Mary Musgrove, who is married to Charles Musgrove and living in a nearby estate. During one of his visits to his sister, Frederick re-entered Anne’s life. He had risen to the rank of Captain and has become rich from prize money awarded for capturing enemy vessels during the Napoleonic Wars. Frederick also became viewed as a catch by every eligible young woman – including her brother-in-law’s two sisters, Louisa and Henrietta Musgrove. But Anne suspected that Frederick had not forgiven her for rejecting his offer of marriage so many years ago. And both end up learning how to overcome their personal demons in order to let go of the past and find a new future together. Hands down, ”PERSUASION” has to be the most emotional Jane Austen tale I have ever come across. In fact, I would go as far to say that this tale literally had me squirming on my living room sofa in sheer discomfort during many scenes that featured Anne Elliot and Frederick Wentworth. Or . . . I found myself heaving with frustration – especially during the movie’s last ten to fifteen minutes, as Frederick made an effort to emotionally reconnect with Anne, while the latter’s family continued to put obstacles in her way. However, it eventually struck me that the main barrier between Anne and Frederick’s reconciliation came from the two lovers. I would probably go as far to say that the couple’s personal demons over the past broken engagement perpetrated the entire story. And I truly enjoyed this – in a slightly perverse way. Thanks to screenwriter Simon Burke’s writing and Sally Hawkins’ performance, I came away with a feeling that Anne had existed in a fog of resignation ever since her rejection of Frederick’s proposal, eight years ago. Aside from struggling to keep her family out of financial straits – despite Sir Walter and Elizabeth’s spending – I wondered if she had spent all of those years flagellating herself for allowing Lady Russell to persuade her into giving up Frederick. Her self-flagellation seemed to have continued during moments when Frederick either snubbed her or when their past connections came up in conversation. Frederick’s attitude did not help matters, considering that he spent most of the movie coldly rebuffing Anne or wallowing in resentment. This especially seemed to be the case after he learned that Anne had rejected another suitor after Lady Russell (again) persuaded her that he would be an unsuitable match for her. Frederick’s anger and resentment assumed a righteous tone following that revelation. His attitude ended up blinding him from the fact that his friendliness toward the Musgrove sisters – especially Louisa – had led many to assume he was seriously interested in her. At that moment, Frederick realized two things – his inability to forgive Anne had nearly led him to a marriage he did not desire; and that he still loved her. In other words, ”PERSUASION” had the type of romance that really appealed to me. I found it complex, difficult and slightly perverse. In the movie’s third act, Anne joined Sir Walter and Elizabeth in Bath. She became acquainted with an old friend named Mrs. Smith. She also acquired a new suitor – her cousin, the widowed and now wealthy Mr. William Elliot. Unfortunately, the William Elliot character proved to be the story’s weakest link. Many fans of Austen’s novel have complained that Simon Burke’s screenplay failed to adhere closely to the author’s portrayal of the character. I have read a few reviews of the 1995 adaptation and came across similar complaints. In the Austen novel, William Elliot happened to be heir to Sir Walter’s baronetcy and the Kellylynch estate upon the older man’s death due to a lack of sons. Fearing that Sir Walter might marry Elizabeth’s companion, Mrs. Clay, and produce a son; William set out to ensure his inheritance by re-establishing ties with Sir Walter and marry one of the latter’s remaining single daughters . . . namely Anne. I can see why many have criticized the movie’s portrayal of William Elliot. But I find it interesting that many have not considered the possibility that the fault originated with Austen’s novel. Think about it. Why did William went through so much trouble to court Anne? Could he not tell that she had little interest in him? Why not court the daughter who did express interest – namely Elizabeth? And why did William believe that a marriage to Anne or any of Sir Walter’s daughters would secure his inheritance of the Elliot baronetcy and Kellylynch? How would such a marriage prevent Sir Walter from marrying a younger woman capable of giving him a son? After all, the man remained a vital and attractive man at the age of 54. And even if William had prevented Mrs. Clay from marrying Sir Walter, there would be other eligible young women (preferably wealthy) that would not mind marrying Sir Walter in order to become Lady Elliot and mistress of Kellylynch. Personally, I feel that the William Elliot storyline in the novel was a contrived and flawed attempt to provide a romantic complication for Anne and Frederick. And instead of re-writing Austen’s portrayal of William or getting rid of him altogether, Burke and director Adrian Shergold decided to vaguely adhere to the literary version. Another problem I had with ”PERSUASION” turned out to be the supporting cast. Well . . . some of the supporting cast. Poor Tobias Menzies could barely do anything but project a bit of smugness and false warmth with the poorly written William Elliot character. And if I must be frank, I could not remember the faces of characters like Mary Elliot Musgroves’ husband and sisters-in-law, the Crofts, and Mrs. Smith. Mind you, it was nice to see television and movie veteran Nicholas Farrell in the role of the older Mr. Musgrove. Fortunately, I cannot say the same about those who portrayed Anne’s immediate family, Captain Harville and Lady Russell. The always competent Anthony Stewart Head gave a spot-on performance as the vain and arrogant Sir Walter Elliot. One can only assume that Anne had inherited her personality from her mother. Both Julia Davis and Amanda Hale were memorably amusing as Anne’s sisters – the equally vain and arrogant Elizabeth Elliot and the self-involved hypochondriac Mary Elliot Musgrove. Mary Stockley gave a subtle performance as Elizabeth's obsequious companion, Mrs. Penelope Clay. I also enjoyed Joseph Mawle's portrayal of Captain Harville, one of Wentworth's closest friend. I found his performance quiet and subtle in a very satisfying way. And Alice Kriege’s portrayal of the well-meaning, yet snobbish Lady Russell struck me as very complex and very subtle. Her performance made Lady Russell seem like a kind woman with a surprising lack of tolerance that ended up wrecking havoc on Anne’s life for eight years. For my money, ”PERSUASION” truly belonged to Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones as Anne Elliot and Captain Frederick Wentworth. I believe that both did beautiful jobs in breathing life into the two lead characters. Someone had once complained in another article that in ”PERSUASION”, the two leads exchanged very little dialogue with each other and other characters. This person also added that it almost felt like watching a silent movie. This only confirmed my belief that both Hawkins and Penry-Jones are more than competent screen actors. Through their expressions and very little dialogue, they managed to convey their characters’ emotions, demons and development. Not only did Hawkins express Anne Elliot’s resignation to a life as Sir Walter’s unmarried and overlooked daughter; she also revealed Anne’s despair and discomfort over dealing with Frederick Wentworth’s silent anger and contempt. And in the movie’s last half hour, the actress made it a joy to watch Anne bloom again under the attentions of her morally questionable Cousin William Elliot and Frederick’s renewed interest. One would think that Penry-Jones’ had an easier job in his portrayal of Captain Wentworth. Well . . . he had less screen time. Though his character did strike me to be just as complex as Anne’s. Penry-Jones took Frederick’s character through an emotional journey during the entire film; via anger, contempt, indifference, mild cheerfulness, longing, jealousy, desperation and joy. Some of his best moments featured Frederick’s struggles to keep his emotions in check. More importantly, both Hawkins and Penry-Jones had such a strong screen chemistry that most of their scenes that featured them staring longingly at each other had me muttering ”get a room” under my breath. I just realized that I have not mentioned a word about Anne Elliot’s infamous run through the streets of Bath. Many fans have complained that no decent young English lady of the early 19th century would ever do such a thing. Others have viewed it as simply a ludicrous scene that made Anne look ridiculous. I must admit that a part of me found the sequence rather ridiculous-looking. But I have managed to consider some positive aspects to this scene. One, it represented Anne’s desperate attempt to connect with Frederick before it was too late. And two, the scene provided colorful views of the very distinctive-looking Bath. Many fans have complained about the movie’s 93-minute running time. They claimed that ”PERSUASION” should have been a lot longer. Perhaps they had a point. After all, the 1971 adaptation had a running time of 210 minutes. And the 1960-61 version aired as a series of four episodes. On the other hand, some fans of the movie claimed that Austen’s novel was not as long as some of her previous ones. Also, the much admired 1995 version had a running time of only 107 minutes. The 93 minute running time for ”PERSUASION” did not bother me one bit. I really enjoyed this latest version of Austen’s novel very much. Granted, it had its flaws – namely the handling of the William Elliot character. But I believe that this flaw can be traced to Austen’s novel. Flaws or not, I enjoyed ”PERSUASION” so much that I immediately purchased a DVD copy of it after seeing the movie on television. In my opinion, director Adrian Shergold’s BAFTA nomination was very well-deserved.

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hollygoeslightly · 5 years ago

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1. I couldn't help but find Sydney's actions at the end to be very deceitful. As much as it's framed as a tragic choice where he comes out a bruised victim unintentionally hurting Charlotte, I feel that his choice is quite like Ms Champion's and he and the audience cannot actually claim that the exact same thing is any better than her cruel choice years ago. They both left their betrothed for money and we have no idea whether her circumstances were dire or not, yet she was painted as a villain.

2. And as much as I fell in love with Charlotte and Sydney, Sydney's actions at the end when it came to his treatment of her, were deplorable. Even Lord Babbington didn't kiss nor touch Ester in that society until he proposed, even when it seemed a sure thing. He respected her dignity in society and understood what it meant to take advantage of a woman before truly providing for her or making a promise. Thus when they finally kissed, it was celebratory.

3. I had a feeling when Sydney kissed Charlotte before asking for her hand, in a sense rewarding the audience prematurely, that it wouldn't happen. Simply because in that society and context, he knowingly skipped the steps of honoring a woman rightfully rather than using her. He made no promises before they kissed. He didn't propose. Also, speaking to Charlotte about marriage is too important to delay for a week later. The fact that he didn't spare a minute to finish their convo spoke ill.

4. All of these little things at the end of the season, the last episode, left a bad taste in my mouth and gave me the sense that it would end badly. Because as much as we know that Sydney loves Charlotte dearly, his actions were irresponsible and spoke otherwise. Even with money, there are many possibilities for something to come through. You don't barter with a person though, risk hurting someone you love especially after promising them a life, or leading them.The irresponsibility is likeOtis!

5. I know that in that society, Sydney is smart enough to know how much his actions would have consequences on a vulnerable young woman who doesn't even have money to her name. He knows that it's important to have promised marriage before touching her. He knows that making such a promise, he mustn't break it, because she will make arrangements pertaining to her entire life and wellbeing, resting on him. He's also experienced the same vile taste of that happening to him! What do you think?

6. Also just to be clear, I don't want to demand anything of you and I don't want to be negative. I love your meta and I put weight on your interpretations which is why I'm asking. I also love the character of Sydney, which is why I'm deeply disgruntled by this. Not the end, bc I saw that coming, but what the last few incidents mean for his character. I trusted that he'd understand his impact; all the parallels to scoundrels, the context of society, and the contradiction to Babbington is not good.

Hey!

Thanks for the question. I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to break down your question into parts in order to ensure my answer will make some semblance of sense.

Real Life and Reel Life

I’ve spoken about this before, but it bears repeating as it has a significant impact on how I interpret the show – I am not an Austen purist, nor am I a stickler for complete historical accuracy when it comes to my enjoyment of a particular movie or TV show. For instance, I know some people were frustrated by the historical inaccuracy of Charlotte wearing her hair down, but Charlotte’s modern hairstyle was never something that bothered me. Everyone’s mileage varies of course, but as long as the characterisation is cohesive and interesting and the creators have managed to convey the overall spirit of the period of time the story is set, I’m happy.

It’s also worth noting that while Jane Austen was a fairly historically accurate author, her body of work had a very narrow focus – middle class and upper class families in country villages in southern England. And while her body of work is historically accurate, it’s also intentionally sanitised. Regency and Victorian England was a time of significant social, political and economic change – beneath the shiny veneer of tea rooms and good manners was an underbelly of sex, drugs and gambling.

Why am I mentioning this? Because Sanditon was Andrew Davies’ attempt at expanding Austen’s focus – placing Austen’s signature study of manners against the backdrop of a fairly chaotic period in time. Personally, I loved this aspect of the show. Not only did Davies force the audience to confront their preconceived ideas of what a typical Austen character actually is, but it allowed the characters to push against issues outside of love and marriage. Don’t get me wrong, I swoon every time Darcy helps Elizabeth into the carriage after the ball at Pemberley or Anne reads Wentworth’s letter, but it was nice to have a slightly different interpretation of Austen’s work.

Finally, I firmly believe that part of the agreement you undertake when interacting with any form of entertainment is the suspension of some degree of reality. The amount of suspension is dependent on the work of course, but even true stories require some form of suspension (e.g. the amalgamation of characters, timelines sped up) to be entertaining. In the case of Sanditon, the characters inhabit a close approximation of Regency England, but not an exact copy (e.g. Charlotte wears her hair down, clothing is not always period appropriate). This is also the case when it comes to characters breaking a few of the social conventions that Austen routinely explored. For example, while Sidney kissing Charlotte prior to proposing to her in 1x08 would have been frowned upon in the real world, in Davies’ version of Regency England, Sidney kissing Charlotte is not a poor reflection of his character nor does it indicate that he knowingly took advantage of her – it’s simply a way to drive the narrative forward and create an entertaining story. This is supported by the fact that Charlotte’s reputation remains in good standing despite spending time alone with both Sidney and Young Stringer and that Esther faces no consequences for the exposure of her romantic/abusive relationship with her brother in 1x08. So while I understand that for you, Davies’ choice to overlook certain social conventions is frustrating, I think it’s important to acknowledge that the world Sanditon presents us is not 100% historically accurate, and for the purposes of entertainment, I don’t think it can be.

Sidney, Eliza and Otis

Following the fire in the new terrace apartments in 1x08, Sidney is forced to make a choice between love and money – his love for Charlotte and his desire to save his brother (The Worst) from debtor’s prison. Sidney is faced with an impossible choice and in the end chooses to sacrifice his own happiness (I think Sidney believes that Charlotte will be able to move on and find happiness again) for the well being of Tom, Mary and the children. As you’ve pointed out, this is a direct parallel to Eliza choosing money over her love of Sidney. However, I don’t think it’s accurate to claim that both decisions are equal in cruelty – doing so removes all nuance from the situation.

While I understand why some members of the fandom believe that Eliza could have had a valid reason for choosing money over love, I don’t believe the narrative supports that argument (whether this would have changed in S2, I’m not sure). Eliza is described by Tom (1x06) and Arthur (1x07) as intentionally betraying Sidney’s trust, choosing the safety of wealth over love.

Arthur – “Do you know, for years all I knew about my brother, Sidney, was that he was driven to the West Indies with a broken heart.”

Sidney – “And what’s your point Arthur?”

Arthur – “I admire your spirit of forgiveness that is all. If it were me, I do not think I could bring myself to trust her again.”

Arthur speaks of a betrayal of trust that he does not believe he could ever get past, a betrayal he is surprised that his own brother is willing to forgive. The reason Sidney is so damaged by Eliza’s betrayal is not because she was forced by circumstance to marry for money (if that was the case, it would be presented as two lovers torn apart by outside influences e.g. Sidney and Charlotte), but because by choosing to marry for money, she publically declared that Sidney was not enough. The love and future he could offer her was not enough. Eliza’s choice is so cruel, because her decision is so mercenary in nature – it’s a decision made out of choice, not necessity. She made the decision knowing what it would cost and she deemed that cost (Sidney’s self-worth) worthwhile.

This is also the case when it comes to Otis’ treatment of Georgiana. Otis made an active choice to barter with Georgiana’s name in order to extend credit for his gambling debts. He had multiple options available to him, number one being to stop gambling, but he made a decision where he would benefit and Georgiana would be placed at risk. On the other hand, the audience is made aware that Sidney is forced into a position where there are no right choices. Regardless of the decision he makes, someone will be hurt. He is the only one in the position to find the money to keep his brother out of debtor’s prison and as a result, Tom’s failure to insure Sanditon costs Sidney his future with Charlotte. Intention matters. Yes, all decisions lead to people being hurt, but Sidney is the only one who also suffers as a result of the decision he made.

While I understand the audience was upset by Sidney’s decision (I didn’t like it either), I also think an ending where Sidney and Charlotte marry while Tom is sent to debtor’s prison (most likely for the rest of his life) and Mary and the children are made homeless and shunned by society for Tom’s misdeeds, would have also been incredibly unpopular.

Sidney and Lord Babington

On the surface, I can understand why you’ve compared Sidney and Lord Babington. Both fall in love with feisty women and both intend to propose marriage to said feisty women – it’s an easy connection to make. However, I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Sidney’s actions are wholly bad and Lord Babington’s actions are wholly good simply because Lord Babington’s proposal ended in a marriage.

Let me give you another interpretation of Lord Babington and Esther’s relationship (not one I subscribe to, but one that can be drawn based on the narrative). Taken by Esther’s honesty and derision, Lord Babington makes Esther aware that he has feelings for her. Esther in turn rejects Lord Babington and tells him all further attempts on his part would be futile. Despite this, Lord Babington continues to pursue her, writing letters which she never answers – another clear indication that she is not interested. Lord Babington visits Sanditon with the express purpose of seeing Esther (1x05) and requests a private walk without a chaperone where he proposes marriage. Esther rejects his proposal. After hearing Edward speak badly of his sister, Lord Babington visits Esther in private, again without a chaperone present. Following Lady Denham’s recovery he once again goes on an outing with Esther without a chaperone. After discovering that Esther had a romantic relationship with Edward and Esther telling him that she doesn’t love him, Lord Babington proposes marriage for the second time and Esther finally accepts. They marry.

If S2 had gone ahead, I’m fairly sure Esther’s love for Edward and her lack of love for her husband would have been a major plot point. And while I think it would have all worked out in the end, that Esther would have realised she loves Lord Babington, what if it hadn’t? Esther may have come to resent her husband, trapped in a marriage by a husband who knows his wife does not love him, still pining for the one man she couldn’t have because of circumstances out of her control.

Again, I understand why the choice to ignore some social conventions may be frustrating, however in Davies’ version of Regency England, breaking these conventions do not have the consequences they would have had in real life. By judging the actions of the characters by real life rules, you are assigning intention and consequence where there are none.

I think it’s also worth noting, that apart from Sidney and Charlotte themselves, nobody knows that they kissed and only Alison, Mary, Georgiana and Young Stringer are aware that Sidney was intending to propose marriage. Charlotte’s heart may be badly bruised, but her reputation is still intact.

Charlotte’s Agency

Perhaps it’s because Charlotte’s agency is more quietly expressed than other characters, but I think the argument that Charlotte became passive in the final two episodes, overlooks the very active choices Charlotte makes in regards to her feelings for Sidney. Passiveness suggests inaction, and in 1x08 Charlotte chooses to act – she asks Sidney whether she can join him on his walk into town. This may seem inconsequential, but it is anything but. Because Charlotte is not only choosing to trust in her feelings for Sidney and in his feelings for her, but she is telling Sidney his feelings are reciprocated and those feelings are strong enough that they need time alone to discuss their possible future together. The agency lies with Charlotte the whole time.

We began with the scene with a rather inane discussion about the weather and Charlotte’s family – Sidney is both desperate to discuss their conversation from the previous night, but patiently waiting for Charlotte to indicate that this is something she wishes to do. She does, telling him she would rather continue their walk together than return to town for her dress fitting.

Charlotte – “We seem not to be walking into town?”

Sidney – “Ah, yes, your dress fitting. Forgive me, what a fool I am. Should we head back, perhaps?”

Charlotte – “No, there is absolutely no urgency about my dress fitting. A walk along the clifftops is much more to my taste.”

Sidney – “Good. My thoughts exactly.”

Sidney is willing to end their walk and the possibility of discussing their feelings at the slightest hint that this may not be something Charlotte desires. However, following Charlotte’s lead, Sidney admits that he wished to find time alone with her to discuss their conversation while glancing at her mouth every five seconds, and of course they kiss. What is important to note is that Sidney continues to check in with Charlotte at every point in the lead up to that moment. Charlotte only had to say no or ask to return to town for Sidney not to proceed, something she is well aware of and actively chooses not to do. Responding positively to Sidney’s actions is not the same as passiveness. You only have to watch as Charlotte stares longing at Sidney to know that she desired the kiss just as much as he did.

Why am I mentioning all this? Because in your question, you talk quite a bit about Sidney’s choices and actions, and the consequences they may have for Charlotte, without acknowledging that Charlotte is an active participant. Do I think that means she could have somehow prevented what occurred? No, but nor do I think it’s fair to remove Charlotte’s participation from her own storyline. She may be a victim of incredibly poor circumstances, but I don’t think it’s fair to say she is a victim of Sidney’s poor behaviour. Sidney and Charlotte not ending the season married does not cancel out Charlotte’s agency in choosing to pursue her relationship with Sidney.

Thanks for the question, I hope I made sense!

#askbox #sanditon #jane austen #sidney parker #charlotte heywood #lord babington #esther denham #sanditon meta #mine

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elcrivain · 6 years ago

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It’s time. You have to pick up that dreaded classic you have lying around. Maybe it’s Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, or even worse, William Shakespeare’s Richard III. Those things look terrifying with all that fancy bindings and annotations. But you have to read it anyway, either because some lame English professor assigned it or because you want to be well-read. Either way, you know it’s going to be hard.

Why do we struggle so? Why do such books make even the most avid of readers tremble in their boots? What is the problem with these damned things?

It’s all about the context. Or, rather, about how most modern readers lack the context to understand and appreciate classics. The boring dictionary definition of context is: The circumstance or setting in which an idea or even can be fully understood. If you don’t have context, an idea — such as the ones in classics — are liable to be misunderstood or outright overlooked. We, in all of our modernity, lack context for many classics in several respects.

The Context of Prose and Style

Language evolves. Sentence structure shifts. Words fall in and out of fashion. Even word meanings metamorphose.

It takes only a quick survey of English literature to see how much can change in a few hundred years (and we’re not even getting into translations):

A wys wyf, if that she can hir good,

Shal beren him on hond the cow is wood,

And take witnesse of hir owene mayde

Of hir assent; but herkneth how I sayde.

— Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath” in The Canterbury Tales (1475)

This isn’t the work of a drunken five-year-old with atrocious spelling skills. It’s Middle English, a variant of English spoken after the Norman Conquest in 1066 and before the 16th century. It bears some resemblance to modern English, but it’s gosh-darn hard to read without annotations (and alcohol).

To be, or not to be: that is the question:

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them? — To die, — to sleep.

— William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1603)

Now that we’re in Modern English — yes, Shakespeare is modern — the spelling is improving, but it’s still tough to get through. Shakespeare’s heavy use of figurative language flummoxes us, literal-minded modern readers. No, those slings and arrows aren’t real!

The ledge, where I placed my candle, had a few mildewed books piled up in one corner; and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, however, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small — Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff, and then again to Catherine Linton. In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw — Heathcliff — Linton, till my eyes closed; but they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark, as vivid as spectres — the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the obtrusive name, I discovered my candle wick reclining on one of the antique volumes, and perfuming the place with an odour of roasted calf-skin.

— Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)

Compared to Shakespeare, Brontë seems straightforward, except for one thing. Like many other 19th century writers, she uses long, flowing, and descriptive sentence structure that seems incongruous compared to today’s staccato sentence structure.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

— George Orwell, Nineteen-Eighty-Four (1949)

Now that we’re in the really modern part of Modern English, things are so much better. Orwell adopts the simpler, more direct style that we’re more used to. Whew! (Note that simple and straightforward prose doesn’t always translate into simple and straightforward meaning.)

Not all troublesome prose comes from old and dead white folks. Some contemporary authors eschew plainness for some flair in their prose. Whether you find that dazzling or confounding is up to you.

…I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire… I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

— William Faulkner, The Sound and Fury (1929)

Faulkner’s convoluted prose forces the reader to focus single-mindedly to follow along. Confusing as it may be, Faulkner’s marriage of the stream-of-consciousness writing of modernists and descriptiveness of Romanticism give a certain élan to his writing. Just don’t read him before bed as you’ll fall asleep without any memory of what you’ve read.

Now a member of the company seated there seemed to weigh the judge’s words and some turned to look at the black. He stood an uneasy honoree and at length he stepped back from the firelight and the juggler rose and made a motion with the cards, sweeping them in a fan before him and then proceeding along the perimeter past the boots of the men with the cards outheld as if they would find their own subject.

— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)

McCarthy’s combination of complex sentences and a disdain of punctuation gives his writing an air of inscrutability. Love or hate him, you have to admit that the dude got a style.

The Context of Historical Settings and Culture

Most authors write for their contemporaries, not for some unknown high school student 100 years in the future. They assume that their reader knows the social and cultural contexts. Once a book survives the test of time, this assumption fails.

Jane Austen’s books serve as a good example of how our ignorance of the social mores of early 19th century genteel society can lead the reader to miss allusions that would’ve been obvious to a contemporaneous reader.

“Are any of your younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?”

“Yes, ma’am, all.”

“All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the second. The younger ones out before the elder ones are married! Your younger sisters must be very young?”

“Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps she is full young to be much in company. But really, ma’am, I think it would be very hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to marry early. The last-born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth at the first. And to be kept back on such a motive! I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind.”

“Upon my word,” said her ladyship, “you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray, what is your age?”

“With three younger sisters grown up,” replied Elizabeth, smiling, “your ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.”

Lady Catherine seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Elizabeth suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.

“You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure, therefore you need not conceal your age.”

“I am not one-and-twenty.”

— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

A reader unaware of the importance (and meaning) of “being out in society” in Georgian gentry wouldn’t note how uncouth it was to have five sisters out all at once, a serious social misstep by the Bennets. (And no, “coming out” doesn’t mean the same thing as it does today.) They would also have missed how tactless it was for Lady Catherine to harp on this point and Elizabeth’s impertinence for evading Lady Catherine’s question. This is why an unschooled reader would overlook the biting satire in Austen’s novels, which is a horrible shame.

Many classic novels attack contemporaneous cultural, religious, and social conventions. If you don’t understand the norms under attack, you lose context to why the novel was so daring, so bold.

I made this mistake with Jane Eyre. Upon my first reading at 13, I dismissed it as melodramatic slop. When I revisited it at 18, I saw how Charlotte Brontë criticizes the prevailing religious belief of charity and how remarkably independent Jane Eyre is, a shocking thing for a Victorian woman. I, however, still think that the book has too many dei ex machina (overly convenient plot twists).

The Context of Narrative Conventions

Following or breaking it, many classics take a stance on narrative conventions. Thomas Hardy embraces the pastoral and tragic narratives in Tess of d’Urbervilles as James Joyce bucks the Realists’ more removed narratives with his stream-of-consciousness writing.

To understand a book’s attitude toward narrative conventions is to understand why certain writing, plot, or characters elements exist (or disappear) from a novel. These expectations ease the way for your reading. Really!

When I began reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles, I knew that it was a pastoral tragedy, which prepared me for two important things. First, since it was a pastoral, I knew Hardy would describe the setting to such detail that the town(s) would become characters in their own rights. So I was prepared for passages like these which would seem unnecessary and boring to the average modern reader (fairly enough):

The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor aforesaid, an engirdled and secluded region, for the most part, untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape painter, though within a four hours’ journey from London.

It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it — except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways.

— Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Second, since Tess is a tragedy, I prepared myself for many frowny-face moments. If you go into a Hardy expecting a happy ending a la Pride and Prejudice, you’ve taken a wrong turn in the 19th-century bookstore.

The Context of Symbolism

When you’re a high school student studying The Great Gatsby, it might seem like the teacher is inventing all those meanings from rivers and currents to justify their paycheck. You think, “Damn it, why can’t a boat just be a boat?”

English teachers’ flights of fancy aside, symbolism is a real thing. Under the best of circumstances, symbolism deepens existing themes and ideas already present in the novel. Problems begin when you don’t recognize the signs of symbolism.

Here’s an example: The last lines heard ‘round the world:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning-

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Scholars have quarreled over the meaning of this passage for decades, showing that there is no purely correct answer. Therein lies the subjectivity of literary analysis — but it remains vital that you understand the purpose of symbolism and are able to recognize it. (Hint: watch for recurrent motifs and ideas.)

The Context of the Original Publication (or Performance)

This oft-overlooked context can massively alter your reading of a classic. Many classics weren’t originally presented in the format in which it is read today. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales was performed in verse. Shakespearean plays were meant for the stage, not small English classrooms. And so it goes.

But those are well-known examples. The examples nobody talks about are these 19th-century epics, most of which were originally published in a serialized format where the author was paid by the word (Anna Karenina, A Tale of Two Cities, The Count of Monte Cristo). This small detail completely alters the structure and flow of those stories. The serialized format and the pay scheme encouraged such writers to write more, more, and more. This is why Anna Karenina clocks in at almost 1,000 pages filled with descriptive passages of Levin moving grass. The format also means that the author didn’t consider the “flow” of narration from chapter to chapter, creating a disjointed reading experience as the story hops from one perspective to another. These stories were never conceptualized as a novel in today’s sense. You might even benefit from reading in small bursts, just like these newspaper readers did more than 100 years ago.

If you happen to read a classic out of its original publishing context, be mindful of how that’ll affect your experience. To get the fullest and richest experience, you might want to revert back to the original storytelling form, such as watching a Shakespearean play or movie. (I recommend Much Ado About Nothing, just ignore Keanu Reeves.)

Context is everything. Without the right context, many classics appear inscrutable and downright mystifying. Most of us aren’t born with a knowledge of Middle English syntax and deep knowledge of manners among the English gentry during the Georgian era.

Where does that leave us, the befuddled readers? It leaves us with the hard reality that we need to investigate the context in which the classic was written. That means glancing at a Wikipedia page about the French Revolution before (and during) reading Les Miserables. It also means preparing yourself for a fantastical twirl through time in a South American village before you read One Hundred Years of Solitude. With some preparation, you can actually appreciate those dusty little classics.

N.B. I adopt the more expansive definition of classics as notable works of literature due to their excellence and significance, rather than the more traditional definition as pre-17th-century works of literature.

#classical literature #topic #classics #classic lit #classic literature #count of monte cristo #jane eyre #pride and prejudice #great gatsby #jane austen #les miserables #context #english #literature #studyblr literature #narrative #shakespeare #this is my first post #im sorry its so long

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fandom-imagines-stories · 6 years ago

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Light in the Mist

Dawsey Adams x Reader

Words: 1723

Summary: Before the Germans strike, Dawsey convinces his childhood friend to flee the island to live with relatives in England. Now that she’s back, old feelings and new fears arise.

Notes: This is one of my new favorite movies and I absolutely love Dawsey. I plan for this to have a few parts to it, but I don’t think it will be a full running series like Goodbye Riverdale or Needed. Just something fun for a great movie.

1940

The water was still and a thick fog hung in the air. The docks were quiet in the early morning and your heart felt heavy with sorrow. The thought of leaving the island made you sick to your stomach alone. But the thought of leaving him… you simply couldn’t bear it.

“I won’t go.” You refused, turning away from the water to face him. His tired eyes pleaded with you not to argue. “I cannot just turn my back on my home. Whatever happens, we can figure it out like we always have.”

“This is different.” Dawsey sighed. “The Germans are coming. No matter how much we pray, everyone knows it’s inevitable.”

“So you expect me to leave you here? You can’t fight them alone, Dawsey.” Tears had made their way into your eyes and, despite your efforts to blink them away, one began to fall down your cheek.

“I don’t want to fight them.” He brushed the tear away with his thumb. “I just have to to survive them.” Dawsey pulled you into his arms, placing a kiss on your forehead. “But I don’t think I could do that if something were to happen to you.”

“But why me?” You sniffed. “Why must I be sent away while Elizabeth will get herself into far more trouble?”

“You know why.” He pushed back just enough for you to look into his incredibly blue eyes, filled with such desperation and fear. But there was something else. Something that told you perhaps your feelings for your closest childhood friend was not unrequited. “Besides, you have family that will keep you safe. Away from their greedy, murderous hands.”

“And what if I still cannot escape them?” You exclaimed. “Or worse… what if you can’t. What if the Nazis take you away and I never see you again? How would I live with myself for leaving you here?”

“I’ll be alright.” He promised, but you could see the uncertainty in his eyes.

“I haven’t got all day!” The sailor hissed from the boat. “Is the lady coming or not?”

“Yes.” Dawsey answered at the same time you said, “No.”

“I won’t go.” you took his hands in yours. “Please, Dawsey. You cannot force me to leave.” The tears welling in his eyes broke your heart.

“I’m not forcing you, Y/N.” He tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “I’m asking you. Begging you. If you care for me or our friendship, you’ll go somewhere safe.” You closed your eyes. He wasn’t going to give up. Once Dawsey had his mind set on something, there was no convincing him of anything else.

“If I do this, you have to promise me something.” You couldn’t stop the tears now. They flowed persistently down your face and your lip quivered when you spoke.

“Anything,” Dawsey whispered.

“You’ll be here when I get back.” He nodded and leaned towards you, his face brushing against yours.

“So long as you come back to me.” As he pulled away, your eyes were locked on each other and all you could see was the fifteen-year-old farm boy who would bring you flowers every day after your father died. Who took on extra work to make sure you and your mother didn’t go hungry. You saw the fifteen-year-old boy that you had fallen so deeply in love with.

You quickly placed a kiss on his cheek before you could change your mind. You rushed aboard the boat. The suitcase Dawsey had tricked you into packing felt heavy in your arms. You couldn’t even bring yourself to look back until you were almost out of the bay. By then, all you could see was Dawsey’s lantern disappearing into the mist.

1946

Dawsey stood at the dock, as he did every morning since the war ended, carefully watching the passengers shuffle one by one onto the island. And, like every morning since the war ended, his heart sank with disappointment. He sighed, running his fingers through his hair as the last of the passengers exited the boats.

A small hand tugged on his sleeve, trying to pull him to a small cart selling flowers.

“Can I take the flowers to Amelia, daddy?” Kit asked, her face framed with pale blonde hair that he tucked behind her ear. He gave her a small smile.

“I don’t see why not.” She took his hand and skipped across the road. Dawsey looked over his shoulder one last time, seeing only unfamiliar faces and a cloud-filled sky.

All the while, just a few miles offshore, crewmen argued and blamed each other for the ship’s late arrival. They were nearly two hours behind schedule and would surely be scolded by the captain. Many of the passengers grumbled amongst themselves, but you sat alone, fiddling with the buttons on your jacket.

You weren’t sure which it was that made you so nervous. Seeing him again, or giving him the document tucked away in your suitcase, hoping that if you kept it hidden, it would mean it wasn’t real. Perhaps it was a combination of the two. Maybe he’d forgotten you. Six years was a long time, though it never dulled your dream of coming home, even though it wouldn’t be complete without her. You tried your best not to think about it.

You finally looked up from your lap and felt your heart soar. Guernsey. How often you had wished to return to the island and the people you’d grown to love. And now you were finally back.

As the ship drew closer to shore, the other passengers grew restless, eager to step back on land. You departed the main vessel on smaller row boats that rocked and swayed on the water. The morning fog began to clear and you could hardly breathe. There, hanging outside the post building, was Dawsey’s lantern. Tears filled your eyes as your feet touched the rocky shore. You were home.

As dearly as you wished to reunite with your friends, you needed to find a place to stay. Your mother moved to the continent years ago, but perhaps your childhood cottage was still available. Maybe you were just postponing the inevitable truth you would have to share with the people both you and Elizabeth are closest to. With your suitcase in hand, you started down those familiar streets that you'd’ walked down every night in your dreams. But they felt different, somehow. There was no denying that they were no the same streets you left behind. You would have to get used to that feeling.

Things were going to be different. You couldn’t escape that. While you were busy drinking tea and riding horses, the people you loved were imprisoned in their own homes, forced to live with their enemy. Even if the darkness of the Nazis had been lifted, a sorrowful shadow still lay upon Guernsey.

It was early afternoon, so many were working or tending their farms. Familiar faces passed by, though none stopped to greet you. You began to wonder if you’d been forgotten. As you came upon the cottage, you were surprised to see the state it was in. The interior, however, was torn apart. Furniture was knocked over and a thick layer of dirt and dust coated the entire house. You knelt on the grime-covered floor and sifted through papers and leaves until you found it. The night you left, you didn’t have time to pack it. It was little more than a pencil sketch, but it was one of your most prized possessions.

One perfect summer, Elizabeth had been visiting from London and you decided to have a picnic on your favorite cliff overlooking the sea. Elizabeth thought it was a wonderful idea and invited Dawsey to join you. She’d always known you fancied him. After eating, you and Dawsey fell asleep amongst the flowers. HIs arms were wrapped around you and your head was on his chest. It wasn’t until years later that Elizabeth admitted to drawing a picture of the scene.

“I just couldn’t help myself.” She had said. “You just looked so perfect together. I simply couldn’t let that moment be forgotten.” And it never was.

You clutched the framed picture, holding it close to your chest as you cried. You filled that the abandoned home with your sorrow, wishing more than anything that you could tell her how much you loved her. How she had been like a sister to you. And now this drawing was all you had left of her.

Picking yourself up from the floor, you brushed away the dust and the tears and got to work cleaning. You’d have to work quickly if you wanted a decent place to sleep.

The sun had set before you even finished the first floor, though it was starting to look like home again. With every cobweb swept away, you relieved another beloved childhood memory. Sliding down the banister with Dawsey, for which you were scolded often by your mother. Reading at the kitchen table with your father every morning over a perfect cup of tea. You stood, surveying the work you’d done in restoring the house to its former glory- or at least it was glorious in your eyes. It wasn’t perfect but it would have to do for now. You cleaned off the best you could and decided to go for a walk.

Amelia didn’t live too far from you. As a child, you often spent the day with Jane running about the garden. The two deserved to hear about Elizabeth first.

Your heart grew heavier and heavier as Amelia’s house came into view. Perhaps they already knew about Elizabeth. After all, it had been a few years since she died. Slowly and unsurely, you knocked on the door.

A little girl with pale blonde hair greeted you. At first, you thought she might be Jane’s daughter, but she looked too young.

“Daddy!” The little girl called into the house. “There’s a pretty lady at the door.” You gave her a smile that quickly faded as Dawsey appeared.

“Y/N.” He stumbled back in surprise. You looked down at the girl and then back at him. Then back at the girl, then back at him. Dawsey had a child?

“I see I have a lot to catch up on.”

#dawsey adams #the guernsey literary and potato peel pie society #Michiel Huisman

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francesderwent · 6 years ago

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The business of getting married which occupies the center of Pride and Prejudice is not understood by the characters as an end in itself - a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife, undoubtedly, but what remains in question is why. A marriage may be conceived as the means of achieving any number of goals - financial security, respectability, well-being of family, personal happiness, and so on. However, as each of these goods is abstracted from the others and taken to be an ultimate end (or at least the ultimate end of marriage), it tends to become warped: such inducements to marriage as prudence and affection take on different meanings if they are not held together in harmony with the rest of the whole, and in fact prudence and affection can only be most truly themselves when they are incorporated into the bigger picture.

Initially, it appears that prudence and affection, respectability and happiness can be very simply opposed to each other, with different couples landing on either side of the spectrum depending on their priorities. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet as well as Lydia and Wickham choose affection over every better feeling, but it is not as if either couple is able to save affection in the end. Chosen to the exclusion of all else, affection becomes something else entirely. Mr. Bennet realizes his wife is not worthy of his regard and his affection becomes contempt, and Lydia and Wickham’s affection is so shallow that it does not even deserve the name: Elizabeth muses that they were only brought together “because their passions were stronger than their virtue”.[1] This point is simple: to choose one’s own happiness above all can only be counterproductive if the happiness chosen is not rationally considered.

At the opposite end of the spectrum we find Mr. Collins and Charlotte.[2] Charlotte’s choice is entirely motivated by the goal of financial security; she doesn’t think highly of men or matrimony[3], is not romantic[4], and by no means expects her marriage to make her happy.[5] She makes the prudent choice - but prudence now lacks something, and ends up looking more like selfishness[6] (a transformation to which Elizabeth objects) or mercenariness. Moreover, even the basic peace between husband and wife which Charlotte is sensible enough to establish seems to be necessarily founded upon Mr. Collins’ delusion - he does not imagine that his wife sacrificed happiness for security, and rather supposes them to be perfectly felicitous, having “but one mind and one way of thinking”.[7] He is only satisfied with the arrangement because he is deceived as to what it is.[8] And although Charlotte does not ask for compassion,[9] when her situation is compared to those of others in the novel, it seems she still ought to inspire compassion. Elizabeth exclaims of Lydia and Wickham, “that they should marry, small as is their chance of happiness, and wretched as his character, and we are forced to rejoice!”[10], but it seems the same sentiment might be applied equally well to the Collinses. Both marriages are driven by necessity (Lydia’s a necessity borne of respectability, Charlotte’s of finances), and both brides make the only choice available to them - thus although the good of marriage as such must do something to ameliorate the evils of both situations, there is a tragedy that remains in the choice, and Charlotte’s does not seem to be less tragic because it is made with eyes open.[11] If her choice is so barely free, can it really be prudent, or isn’t it the case that just as choosing personal happiness above all else doesn’t make you happy, making the best and most “prudent” choice available to you with no regard for happiness doesn’t make you virtuous?

All these contradictions are shown to be resolved in a marriage which is truly happy, truly reasonable: Elizabeth and Darcy’s. Each pair of apparent opposites coexists, and each term is redefined in relation to all the others. Affection appears again - “if not quite so tender, at least as just and reasonable as what Jane felt for Bingley”.[12] What distinguishes Elizabeth’s affections from those her father once harbored and those which induced Lydia to throw away her life is that Elizabeth’s affections are based in reality, on true understanding of the person.[13] Prudence, also, acquires a new meaning - Mrs. Gardiner writes to Elizabeth that what Darcy lacks is liveliness, which he may learn if he marry prudently.[14] No longer mercenary, prudence too has to do with understanding, but understanding of self[15], and a desire to do what will allow one to improve in virtue. Even respectability undergoes a transformation - the only family members that are permitted to be intimately involved in the courtship of Elizabeth and Darcy are the Gardiners, because despite their lower social standing they are far more virtuous and sensible than either the Bennets or the de Bourghs.

The interdependence of each piece of the puzzle is demonstrated nicely in Mr. Bennet’s speech to Elizabeth towards the end of the novel: “You could be neither happy nor respectable unless you truly esteemed your husband.”[16] The trouble isn’t that Elizabeth wouldn’t have been happy if she had married Collins - for her father is precisely also not respectable as a result of being unhappy - nor that she wouldn’t have been respectable if she’d married Wickham - because of course she wouldn’t even have been happy if she were married to someone who wasn’t worth her respect. It all rises and falls together, along with Jane’s injunction “do anything rather than marry without affection”.[17] In light of all this, Elizabeth’s claim that she’s not looking to get “any husband”[18] is obviously not a proto-feminist wish for autonomy apart from the married state. Rather, it demonstrates that the bare minimum of marriage accounts for very little. You can have everything, held together in harmony, or you can have one thing, torn from the whole and corrupted. You cannot be happy with only a part of happiness.

[1] Chapter 50, p. 388

[2] Lady Catherine’s views tend in this direction as well - her plan for Darcy to marry her daughter seems to be entirely concerned with keeping the shades of Pemberley unpolluted. Whether Darcy and her daughter would be happy doesn’t seem to enter into the equation - and one cannot help but note that Lady Catherine doesn’t seem to be a particularly happy person herself.

[3] Chapter 22, p. 161

[4] Chapter 22, p. 164

[5] Chapter 22, p. 162

[6] Chapter 24, p. 176

[7] Chapter 38, p. 274

[8] Whether this is purposely done by Charlotte, making her vulnerable to the charge of cunning, or simply the consistent result of Mr. Collins’ being deluded about everything, is unclear.

[9] Chapter 38, p. 275

[10] Chapter 49, p. 378

[11] In fact, Charlotte’s being sensible would mean that she must eventually become self-aware, adding to her suffering - while there is little danger of that happening to Lydia.

[12] Chapter 53, p. 415

[13] Elizabeth’s musing in Chapter 46 on the difference between her immediate enamoured admiration of Wickham and her eventual respect and gratitude toward Darcy is significant here - but I do not think it implies that her feelings for Darcy are not genuine feelings. She does not choose him disinterestedly merely because she does not choose him blindly. Love can still be love if it is not at first sight, after all.

[14] Chapter 52, p. 404

[15] It may be possible to argue that Charlotte’s marriage was actually prudent in a similar way, since she knew of herself that she could “handle” Mr. Collins in a way her friend Lizzie certainly could not. I would want to resist such a reading, on the grounds that one couple is suitable due to complementary wisdom and virtue, and the other couple is only suitable insofar as the one sensible party is willing to overlook the other’s foolishness and vice. Charlotte is not looking to improve Mr. Collins, but only to tolerate him.

[16] Chapter 59, p. 468

[17] Chapter 59, p. 464

[18] Chapter 6, p. 35

#meta whine and rant #yes I included the footnotes #page numbers are from the boxset edition

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shannaraisles · 6 years ago

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Fire & Fidelity - Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no fandom can ever have too many Pride and Prejudice AUs. A straight retelling of Jane Austen’s P&P, based on the 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation, with a few tweaks here and there along the way.

Note - I have lifted characters and story elements from Dragon Age and placed them in Regency England purely in order to use the locations in P&P rather than confuse myself with making the geography of Thedas work for this story.

[Read on AO3]

Chapter One

Winter sunshine shone down on the breezy town of Meryton, illuminating the bustle of ladies and gentlemen as they went about their daily business.

It shone down particularly warm on one matronly figure as she rushed from the doorway of one of the more finely appointed houses, her turban mildly askew and reticule flailing wildly from her wrist. Excitement poured from her as her hurried footsteps took her down the main street and onto the lane that lead from the town itself, away from the bustle toward a lone house on a modest estate not more than fifteen minutes' walk away. All a-flutter, she rushed through the gate, raising her shrill voice the moment she reached the wide front door of the place she called home - Longbourn House.

"Hill! Hill! Oh, where can they be? Hill!"

A portly servant of similar age came into view, wiping her hands on her apron. Before she could open her mouth, the lady of the house had grasped her hands tightly, beaming as though the whole world was bowing down before her.

"Where's Mr. Trevelyan?" she demanded, shaking Hill's hands yet not giving the woman a chance to answer. "Oh, I have such wonderful news, you would not believe it if I told you here and now. I must tell the girls - where are they? Where is Mr. Trevelyan?"

Given opportunity to speak, Hill - who was very used to her older mistress' flights of fancy and excess - bobbed a curtsy as she answered.

"In the training yard, ma'am."

"Oh, yes, of course," Mrs. Trevelyan declared, as though she had known it all along. She pushed her reticule into the servant's hands, patting her madly before turning away. "Mr. Trevelyan! Girls! Such news!"

Longbourn had been built generations before by the Trevelyan family, adapted over the years to suit the changing times. The current Mr. Trevelyan, in particular, had added his own touches, including carving out a sizeable portion of the lawn and creating a weapons training yard upon which he had intended to teach his sons to bear arms. Unfortunately for his ambitions, he and his somewhat ridiculous wife had produced only daughters, yet that had not changed his plans. Where he had hoped to train sons, he now trained daughters daily - five vibrant young women who were only too pleased, for the most part, to please their father in embracing the means to defend themselves and those they loved. While it may not have been the fashion for young ladies to be skilled in the use of weapons, it was a useful skill to have, especially with the threat of another Blight always on the horizon.

Jane was the eldest, the beauty of their little group, golden-haired and gentle-tempered, the one on whom all their mother's ambitions for a good marriage rested with unrelenting weight. Elizabeth - Lizzie - came next, fiery and passionate, as lovely as her sister but overlooked more often for her darker coloring and forthright manners; their father's favorite, and the closest confidante for the sisters on either side of her. Then came Mary, quiet and studious, the one mage in their midst, who preferred the quiet and calm of music practice and knew herself to be plain and unlikely to marry at all. Catherine, too - Kitty to her family and friends - a prettier version of Mary yet not so lovely as her eldest sisters, inclined to follow rather than lead, her head full of unattainable romance. Lastly, there was Lydia, the wild child of their group; golden and vivacious, more interested in heroes and stories than she was in the realities of life and love, she was their mother's pride and joy, more alike the woman who had borne them than her sisters in every way. The Miss Trevelyans were the pride of Meryton, and though he rarely showed it, their father was proud of them all. He only wished he could give them more than the opportunity to marry well enough that the circumstances of his will would not hurt them too badly when he was no longer with them.

In the privacy of Longbourn's training yard, skirts looped up and tucked out of their way, the Trevelyan girls went through the motions with their father. Most of his attention was given to the younger three, to their posture and form, for they were still learning in a way that their elder siblings were not. Jane and Lizzie were allowed this time to spar, to test one another, to enjoy the exercise of clashing metal and bodies in motion, well-matched when it came to such pursuits.

And into this warm industry came bustling the over-excited Mrs. Trevelyan, waving her hands frantically to get everyone's attention.

"Girls! My dear! Oh!"

She stood watching them for a moment, and finally raised her voice into an even more strident declaration.

"Mr. Trevelyan, such news I have! Netherfield Park is let at last!"

Mr. Trevelyan straightened, raising his sword to signal that the girls should pause in their training, turning his cool eyes onto his wife.

"Is it, indeed?"

"Yes!" Mrs. Trevelyan beamed as all eyes turned to her, deeply pleased with the sight of her five daughters moving closer to hear what she had to say. "For I have just heard it from Lady Hawke."

Taking a cloth from her pocket, Lizzie handed it to Jane, exchanging a quietly amused smile with her elder sister as Jane gently dabbed the sweat from her brow. Lady Hawke was almost as much a gossip as their mother and Aunt DeLauncet, but her penchant for gossip could be excused due to her husband's close friendship with their father, and her childrens' friendship with them. Marian, in particular, was always a welcome sight at Longbourn.

"And do you not want to know who has taken it?" Mrs. Trevelyan was demanding of her husband, who had yet to show more interest than a slight raising of his brow.

"My dear, you want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it," was Mr. Trevelyan's response, offered to the tune of Kitty and Lydia's giggles.

"Why then, it is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England," Mrs. Trevelyan informed him, ignoring the amusement on her daughter's faces in favor of sharing the juicy news she had received from her friend. "A single man of large fortune, my dear! He came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place. His name is Theirin, and he will be in possession by Wintersend, and he has five thousand a year! What a fine thing for our girls!"

And there it was. Lizzie caught Jane's eye, both elder sisters quickly looking away from one another before their dismayed smiles could catch their mother's attention. Yet again, Mrs. Trevelyan had already convinced herself that her daughters were the only women in the entire countryside who would possibly catch the eye of the rich, eligible bachelor about to enter their midst. They knew what was coming next. Jane would be dressed up and pushed front and center, where she disliked to be, and Lizzie would be constantly at her shoulder, dominating the conversation where necessary to keep unworthy suitors from even considering asking for her sister's hand. Their father seemed to have come to the same conclusion.

"How so?" he asked his excitable wife, glancing over their daughters, two of which were trying not to laugh in dismay, two of which were giggling like the silly little girls they were, and the last of whom was trying desperately not to get too involved in the conversation because it was never meant for her. "How can it affect them?"

Mrs. Trevelyan stared at him for a moment before exploding in disbelief.

"Oh, Mr. Trevelyan!" She batted at his arm. "How can you be so tiresome? You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them!"

Mr. Trevelyan sighed, waving his hand to end the training session. The girls moved to unloop their skirts and resume their more modest appearance, sheathing weapons as their mother ushered them toward the house.

"For a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife," Lizzie muttered to Jane, but apparently not quietly enough.

Her mother glanced back at her with an attempt at wide, innocent eyes.

"Yes, he must indeed!" she agreed, tucking her hand into her husband's elbow to draw him into the house with her. "And who better than one of our five girls?"

Lydia snorted with laughter, rolling her eyes at the fond disapproval of the unladylike noise that emanated from her elder sisters. Kitty, on the other hand, was smiling brightly, excitement not unlike their mother's shining in her eyes.

"What a fine joke if he were to choose me!" she declared cheerfully, skipping ahead with Lydia into the house, leaving the elder three to follow.

Only Lizzie heard Mary's soft addition to that comment, buried as it was in the sound of feet on gravel and laughter ahead of them.

"Or me," the plainest of the Trevelyan sisters said quietly, hugging her bow to herself for a moment before handing it to the old poacher who was training her with it.

Lizzie paused, letting Jane move on ahead of them to fall back and wrap her arm through Mary's, nudging her sister's shoulder with her own.

"If he were to choose you, Mary, I would have a finer opinion of him than if he were to choose Kitty," she murmured reassuringly. "A man who chose to know you would be worth his weight in gold, I am certain of it."

"I will never meet him, Lizzie," Mary said, her expression resigned.

Lizzie shook her head with a smile. "Stranger things have happened, dearest," she reminded her sister. "Father married Mother, did he not?"

Despite herself, Mary giggled, squeezing her sister's arm with fond gratitude. She knew she was the odd one out in their family unit, but the constant affection from Jane, and from Lizzie, made certain she never felt quite as left out as she might otherwise have done. As a mage, she was considered a danger to society, yet her father's standing in the community had allowed for her to be trained at home by a Circle-appointed enchanter. Thus, she was allowed to move within society, and kept herself quietly from the notice of almost everyone, except when it came to music. That was where she truly shone.

Arm in arm, they followed the rest of the family inside, to where Hill was setting out tea in the parlor. Mr. Trevelyan stood in front of the fire, coat tails lifted up by his hips as he warmed his backside without a shred of shame; Kitty and Lydia were already arguing over who got the biggest scone as Jane served the tea for the rest of them.

"So that is his design in settling here?" Mr. Trevelyan was saying as he took his tea cup from his eldest with a fond pat to her hand. His eyes focused on his silly wife once more. "To marry one of our daughters."

"Design?" Mrs. Trevelyan rolled her eyes emphatically, handing off her turban and gloves to Hill. "Oh, how can you talk such nonsense, Mr. Trevelyan? But you know, he may very likely fall in love with one of them; therefore you must visit him directly he comes."

"Visit him? Oh, no, no, I see no occasion for that."

Lizzie caught her father's eye as she moved to take a seat on one of the chaise beside Jane, biting down on a rueful smile at the twinkle she found there. There were few things Mr. Trevelyan enjoyed more than antagonizing his wife - a pastime which, while highly entertaining for him, did not do much to instill his daughters with much faith in finding marriage to their liking.

"Go yourself with the girls," he continued, ignoring his wife's outraged protests. "Or better, send them by themselves.

"By themselves?"

"Aye, for you're as handsome as any of them," Mr. Trevelyan said with deadpan certainty. "Mr. Theirin might like you best of the party."

As Mrs. Trevelyan's mouth fell open, momentarily rendered speechless by her husband's ridiculous comment, Lydia burst out laughing, quieting only when she caught Jane's gently disapproving gaze.

"Oh, but Mr. Trevelyan, how could you - what will we - Oh, Hill!"

Wailing, Mrs. Trevelyan turned to her matronly servant, still waiting patiently to divest her mistress of the pelisse that covered her gown. At the table, Lydia and Kitty looked as horrified as their mother as the implication of their father's refusal sank in. Mary, on the other hand, had already pulled out a book. She, like Jane and Lizzie, was well used to these outbursts and had learned to tune them out a long time ago. Lizzie met Jane's glance with a quiet sigh. Which one of them was going to attempt to placate Mama this time?

"Hill, I am so distressed," the woman was declaring unhappily. "For Mr. Trevelyan says he will not visit Mr. Theirin when he comes!"

"Oh, there, there, ma'am," Hill comforted in her usual noncommittal way, removing the warm brown pelisse with practiced hands. "I daresay it will all be well."

"Mama, can't you reason with him?" Kitty demanded hopefully.

"I don't think it's fair that we're never allowed to meet anyone," Lydia cut in, pouting over her teacup.

"No, no, it will not be well!" Mrs. Trevelyan exclaimed, flouncing into her armchair like a spoiled child. "For he is bent on ruining us all!"

"Mama, I am sure he is teasing you," Jane spoke up, and beside her, Lizzie breathed a soft sigh of relief that it wasn't her turn. "He will call upon Mr. Theirin as surely as he would call upon any new neighbor of ours."

"No, no, Jane, how can you say that?" Mrs. Trevelyan was close to tears, the hysterics that came so easily to her threatening to make themselves known all over again. "You heard him yourself! And you know that your father has a will of iron."

"You are in the right, my dear," her husband agreed, "but I'll tell you what I'll do. I shall write to Mr. Theirin, informing him that I have five daughters, and he's welcome to any of them that he chooses. They're all silly and ignorant like other girls - well, Lizzie has a little more wit than the rest - but then, he may prefer a stupid wife, as others have done before him." He looked significantly at his wife, apparently unaware that he had managed to offend his two youngest almost as much as he had offended her. "There, will that do?"

"No!" The words came out in a rush from beneath scandalized eyes. "No, I beg you would not write at all if you -" Mrs. Trevelyan stopped, narrowing her eyes at her husband's warm grin. "Oh, you take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves."

Chuckling, Mr. Trevelyan shook his head.

"You mistake me, my dear," he assured her. "I have a high respect for your nerves. They've been my old friends these twenty years at least."

At this, even Jane had to look away, unable to keep the smile from her face at the fond teasing in their father's voice. Mrs. Trevelyan, however, did not seem placated.

"You don't know what I suffer," she accused him impatiently.

"Well, I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of five thousand a year come into the neighborhood."

She pouted at him, scowling at his light-hearted nonsense.

"It will be no use if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them," was her protest, but he was ready with a response.

"Depend upon it, my dear, when there are twenty -" He bent to kiss her temple affectionately, patting her hand. "- I'll visit them all."

As the mistress of the house opened her mouth to begin a fresh rant, Mr. Trevelyan took his opportunity to escape, nodding almost happily to himself for setting her off while stepping smartly from the parlor to seek out his study in which to enjoy his tea in relative peace. Deprived of the focus of her ire, Mrs. Trevelyan let out an exasperated, tearful breath, and turned to her eldest daughter.

"There, you see, Jane?" she declared, gesturing in the wake of the departing man of the house. "He will see us all ruined. We shall be cast out to live in the Blighted lands in poverty and despair. Oh, if only we'd been able to have sons!"

Lizzie felt her smile fade as she looked down at her teacup. It was an oft-repeated refrain in the Trevelyan household, and one she felt keenly. Jane was perfection itself, in her opinion, but Lizzie felt sure that she should probably have been a boy. Their father felt the lack of a son deeply; their mother blamed all their misfortunes - of which they had very few, to be fair - on the fact that no boy child had graced their marriage. With the estate entailed away from the female line, this relentless determination to get at least one daughter married off well was more a matter of survival than true desire. Mrs. Trevelyan lived in terror of the day when she might be turned out of her own home simply for being a widow.

Still, this set the tone of the day. It was a day of trips and falls, of dropped treasures and broken tempers, and Mrs. Trevelyan's weeping echoing through the house as she succumbed to her hysterics. Lydia sliced an inch or so from Kitty's long hair with her sword; the crying reduced Mary to a nervous wreck and resulted in her magic lesson with Enchanter De Fer becoming a lesson in dousing fires. Lizzie and Jane were left to mend the breaks and soothe the tempers, something Jane performed with far more ease than Lizzie herself. But at last night fell, and the house calmed as each went to their chambers.

Lizzie sat on the end of Jane's bed, tucking her wrapper close about herself as she watched her elder sister brush out the flowing golden hair she quietly envied. She herself was possessed of thick dark locks that held a curl more readily than most, her complexion a little darker than Jane's fashionable roses and cream. There was no denying that Jane was the beauty of the family, and possessed of a temperament to match her sweet looks, for she was one of the most agreeable people Lizzie felt could ever have walked on this earth. To have so many burdens placed on her delicate shoulders was unfair in the extreme. Yet she bore it silently, with a smile, and Lizzie felt sure her sister would be rewarded for her patient endurance in time.

"If I could love a man who would love me enough to take me for a mere fifty pounds a year," she murmured, watching the brush sweep through shining gold, "I should be very well pleased."

Jane's smile was sad in the reflection of the mirror as she agreed. "Yes."

Lizzie let out a sigh. "Such a man could never be sensible, and you know I could never love a man who was out of his wits."

She flashed her sister a wide grin, pleased to see Jane giggle in answer.

"Oh, Lizzie ..." Smiling, Jane let the brush fall still, her thoughts reflected in her eyes as that tender smile faded. "A marriage where either partner cannot love or respect the other ... that cannot be agreeable, to either party."

"Mmm." Lizzie rolled her eyes, her voice rich with a sarcastic drawl. "As we have daily proof. But beggars, you know, cannot be choosers."

Jane shook her head, gently censuring the implication and the harsh comment on their circumstances with nothing more than a look as she twisted in her seat, meeting her sister's eyes directly.

"We are not very poor, Lizzie," she said softly, drawing another smile to Lizzie's face at how easily gentle Jane's wish to comfort could be brought forth.

"With Father's estate entailed away from the female line, we have little but our charms to recommend us," Lizzie reminded her, hating herself for bringing that worry back into Jane's eyes. "One of us, at least, will have to marry very well."

This was the reality of their lives. No respectable gentlewoman could live the life of a spinster without family to support her; there was no prospect for them of joining the Grey Wardens, the last resort of the desperate and the criminal. To do such a thing was a scandal laid upon the family in its entirety, condemning the whole line and not just one person. With the training their father had given them, there might have been the prospect of joining the army, of raising their fortunes through battles against darkspawn and the Blight, but no ... there was no money with which to buy a commission, and again, no respectable person would enter the ranks. No, they had to marry, and marry well, or poverty would come for them when Andraste came for their father.

Lizzie smiled warmly at her sister, wanting to alleviate some of that worry.

"And since you are quite five times as pretty as the rest of us, and have the sweetest disposition, I fear the task will fall on you to raise our fortunes," she added, aware almost instantly that she had missed the mark by quite a wide margin.

Jane set the hairbrush down on the vanity.

"But Lizzie, I would wish ..." She sighed, looking down at her hands, and Lizzie knew her sister was about to say something that she thought was selfish and unworthy of her. "I should so much like to marry for love."

Lizzie rose from her perch, moving to embrace her elder sister tightly. What was wrong with hoping for love? Jane deserved it. If any of them deserved love in their marriage, it was sweet, gentle Jane.

"And so you shall, I'm sure," she declared firmly, slipping around to hug Jane from behind, holding her gaze in the mirror with a confidence she wasn't certain she felt. "Only take care you fall in love with a man of good fortune."

Jane laughed, her tension broken, and Lizzie felt herself relax, glad to see her sister's spirits rise once again.

"Well, I shall try," Jane assured her teasingly, "to please you. And you?"

Lizzie paused, resting her chin on top of Jane's hair as she considered the question at hand.

"I am determined," she said slowly, "that nothing but the very deepest love will induce me into matrimony."

They stared at one another in the mirror, each hoping deep in her heart that the very deepest love might one day belong to them both. A love that cared nothing for the lowness of their connections, or their father's lack of wealth. A love that could tolerate their parents' often immodest behaviors; that could offer a safe haven for the mage sister in their midst. It was a lot to ask of any Maker-fearing man, especially one of large fortune with a reputation to maintain in society. But there was always hope for Jane.

"So," Lizzie added in a brighter tone, "I shall end an old maid, and teach your ten children to wield daggers and play their instruments very ill."

She grinned at her sister, rewarded with a soft giggle as Jane leaned back against her, squeezing her hand for a long moment. Leaning down, Lizzie kissed the golden hair.

"Good night, dearest," she murmured, embracing one last time before leaving Jane to her bed.

She stepped out across the landing, glancing down into the hall below to see the flicker of candlelight still playing beneath the door to her father's study. Mr. Trevelyan sat up most nights reading or attending to the accounts, going up to bed well after his wife and daughters had settled in their own rooms. Lizzie sighed quietly, hugging her wrapper close over her nightgown against the winter chill seeping through the house, and knocked lightly on her mother's door.

She pushed it open, smiling sympathetically at the sight of Mrs. Trevelyan lying disconsolately in bed, her face red from the exertions of her hysterics all day.

"Good night, Mama," she called, unsurprised when there was no answering benediction from her mother, but merely a pitiful complaint about a lingering headache.

Pulling the door closed, Lizzie let her smile warm fondly, if in exasperation, at her mother's self-centered view of the world around them. Further along the landing, she could hear Kitty and Lydia talking, the door to their bedroom left wide open as the two girls pranced about in nothing but their shifts, playing with ribbons and swords, their earlier disagreement forgotten.

"Maker, I said, I wouldn't cross swords with him if he was the last man in Meryton," Lydia was declaring, her bright storytelling drawing an equally bright giggle from Kitty as the elder of the youngest pair threw herself onto the bed.

"Good night, Kitty; good night, Lydia," Lizzie called to them as she passed, laughing as two heads turned toward the door in surprise only to call out their own good nights.

And into her own bedroom, where Mary was already curled beneath the quilt and blankets, a single candle still lit to allow Lizzie to make her way safely into bed with her sister. Discarding her wrapper despite the brief shiver she felt in the cold, she blew out the candle and slid under the sheets, letting Mary's groping hand find hers by the pillow, always prepared to look after her mage sister at any time, day or night.

What a day it had been, and there promised to be others just like it soon to come. Meryton would soon be a-buzz with news of Mr. Theirin and Netherfield Park, and every eligible young woman in the neighborhood - and their mothers - would look upon him with ambition. Lizzie could only hope he had a strong constitution; all that hope resting on his shoulders might well buckle the poor man. But that was acceptable, so long as he was handsome and kind, and allowed Jane to be the one to bolster him. That wasn't so very much to ask, was it?

#fire & fidelity #pride and prejudice au #the bennets are the trevelyans #lizzie trevelyan #jane trevelyan #and family #introduction chapter #set up #netherfield park is let at last!#i wonder what could POSSIBLY be about to happen?

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teslagrams · 5 years ago

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An Austen Introduction

Summer 2019 Reading List 1/?

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Published: 1817

Genre: Classic/Comedy of Manners/Romance

Persuasion has been on top of my to-read list for over two years. I was binge-watching Gilmore Girls for the first time and stumbled upon a few Jess/Rory fanfics (by @rumaan btw x x) that implied that the novel was the height of Austen’s work, at least according to the two characters. I hadn’t touched an Austen novel since I was in high school when the only books I would touch were YA sci-fi and fantasy. Even then, I don’t think I ever finished Pride and Prejudice (unless you count binge-watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries).

Although I have outgrown my dislike of classical novels, when I decided to finally pick Persuasion up, my romance with it was almost as much of a slow burn as Anne and Captain Wentworth. I think this was because the introduction began with Sir Walter and Elizabeth, Anne’s vain and classist father and sister. It is only when I finally got to Anne that I really began to enjoy the novel. It took some reflection to realize that this intentionally mirrored Anne’s experiences in society.

Then, began the slow burn. And I mean slow. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jane Austen invented that term because eight and a half years is far too long for anyone to survive. But as a longtime fanfiction reader, it was so delicious. Once Captain Wentworth enters the scene, all Anne does is contemplate his well-being, wish his utmost happiness, smile at their memories together, throw longing glances his way, and finally list all the reasons she is undeserving of him. Anne Elliot is probably one of the sweetest characters written into existence (along with Jane Bennet, of course). Does Austen want me to die? She probably does, considering how she weaved all the hallmarks of a pair of people that function as a couple, such as the ability to have two conversations at once when she details body language, tone of voice, and the resulting interpretation.

A couple of things that I admire about Jane Austen as a writer was how she only details a conversation when it is vital. As a writer who struggles writing dialogue, it was assuring to see Austen summarize many of Anne’s conversation because it was the content that was relevant. Another gem was the fact that Austen starts with background, a strategy that I have been discouraged from time and again. In fact, Austen is a pretty formulaic writer (my friend and I often joke that to get our happy endings we need to reject at least the first two proposals), but it is her formidable and memorable characters and frankly modern observations that have made her novels timeless. We all want our Mr. Darcy’s, but be honest, all of Austen’s men have equally heart melting declarations (You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Captain Wentworth is clearly the bullet meant to do me in). Mrs. Croft’s defense of women’s equal sensibilities are heroic, and Anne’s confusion and embarrassment at the value her family places money and titles were so relevant to me as I returned from college to find that my baby sister is a regular at a nail salon and wears brand-name clothing almost exclusively. To each her own.

Even though it almost killed me, I am so happy to have been formally introduced to the world of Austen. Her novels clearly stay relevant for a reason. The literal only gripe I had with the novel was the mysterious perspective of Captain Wentworth throughout Anne’s pining. Even this is solved as Anne and the Captain confessed their feelings for each other. There is no shortage of the things I could say about this novel, but they get a little academic and that’s not my point so I’ll stick with these points.

Pairs Well With:

When We Were Young by Adele

A Quiet Night House-Sitting on the Mesa Overlooking the City

Confusion to Your Sister Suddenly Wanting To Spent Her Babysitting Money a Gucci Belt

Marry Mr. Darcy

The Recommendations Above x x x

#jane austen #persuasion #book rec #summer 2019 reading list #summer book rec #pride and prejudice #book review #anne elliot #captain wentworth #lizzie bennet diaries #jess/rory #when we were young #romance novels

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hitchell-mope · 5 years ago

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Dark curse season two episode list

The mob. After the curse everyone wants Uma dead. Evie forms a mob to get her (think Doctor whale at the start of season two of ouat)

The old man and the tyrant. Wilhelmina (Victoria Justicr) makes herself known to yen sid (Hugh Laurie). Who’s stuck in a nursing home.

Queen Clarion. Gradie Doug and jay ask the queen of the Neverland fairies (Kiera knightly) for help in escaping Neverland

Alone. Evie (still reeling from her husbands disappearance) completely washes her hands of Mal because the dark fairy queen refuses to kill Uma. The episode ends with Evie meeting Wilhelmina at a bar

Sisters. Evie is brainwashed by Wilhelmina to be just like her.

Through the looking glass. Gradie Doug and jay finally make it out of Neverland. Only to land in the middle of a battle between the Hightopp clan and the remaining playing cards in Wonderland

The cat. Spotlight episode for Chester/Leon Taylor (Zac Efron). Mostly trying to get Evie free of her sisters conditioning

A most violent death. Chaudrey spotlight episode. It ends with their death at evil Evie’s hands.

Four witches. This is a turning point in Uma and Mal’s relationship. Mal saves her from Evie and Wilhelmina. Via a massive two vs two witch battle. That only ends because Uma causes a cave in that almost kills Wilhelmina

Reunion. Gradie Doug and jay make it back to Auradon. Grant and Doug reunite with their cousins and Evie. Hadie makes a beeline for Mal. Jay goes to Carlos. Only to find that Carlos is now with Jane.

Audrey. In the underworld Audrey seeks out the help of Charon the ferryman (Colin Salmon) in order to help Mal defeat Wilhelmina. Mid season finale

Father. Chaudrey gets an audience with hades (John Barrowman). At the end of the episode hades and chaudrey burst into Auradon in electric blue fire scaring the pants off of pain and panic (Chris and Liam Hemsworth)

The modern Prometheus. Hades (Eva Green) fully resurrects Harry and the twins. While Uma has a tearful reunion with the children Hadie pulls his (fully amnesiac) brother aside and threatens to murder him in front of Uma and the kids should he look at Mal the wrong way. (Hadie still hasn’t learned his lesson)

The Vorpal Sword. Dizzy decides that the only way to save her mother is to kill her aunt. Even if she dies in the process. Her life being put in danger is what finally breaks Evie free of Wilhelmina’s control

The first mate. This episodes flashbacks show Harry’s childhood. From birth (IE. when James Hook realised he conceived a child with the lord of the underworld) to his less the happy childhood as the overlooked and under cared for middle child (his father blatantly calls him “the bastard mistake”) to hades (Eva Green) reappearing in his life to meeting Uma to meeting Gil. All the way to his halfassed resurrection at Hadie’s hands. In the present day an amnesiac Harry is still trying to remember who he is. Hades (Sebastian Stan) lets Hadie have it for bringing Harry and the twins back in such w cruel traumatising way

The Godmother. Wilhelmina centred. Her (the titular godmother), Arthur (Tom Holland) and Guinevere Pendragon (Saoirse Ronan) and Silas (David Mazouz) summon the tweedle demons (Daniel Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis) to indoctrinate Taran Hightopp (Charlie Rowe) into their inner circle

The children of hades. The flashbacks consist of hades (Sebastian Stan, Eva Green and Jesse L Martin) meeting, falling in love with and subsequently siring children with Danae (Anne Hathaway) James Hook (Robert Carlyle) and Maleficent (Charlize Theron). In Auradon it’s Hadie who gets Harry to remember with a very mean spirited speech “you are nothing. You have always been nothing. You will always be nothing. Well. Nothing except what your father far too generously described you as. The bastard mistake”. Then Harry slaps him around the face. And they fight. Nearly causing a town wide blackout in the process

The Merry Men. Evie’s in the prison along with Robin Hood. Both voluntarily. For the crimes they committed (Robin was a corrupt cop under the curse. Evie blames herself for the whole brainwashing thing) Silas visits them both. Commending Evie in her blandness. And saying that robin has 48 hours to locate his wife or she’s fed to the tweedles. This is where the Merry men come in

An oath on the Styx. Hadie, fed up with Harry being coddled and everyone seemingly forgetting that Uma cast the curse (She’s been hanging around Mal a lot recently trying to mend fences) forces pain and panic (now Abby Ryder fortson and Pearce Gagnon) to dispose of Harry in the most humiliating painful way possible. He doesn’t care what happens when hades finds out (probably renounce Hadie’s immortality) he just wants Harry gone and Uma to hurt. He makes the two swear on the river Styx. All three know that if it doesn’t happen. Terrible things will befall the pair

Taran Hightopp. Wilhelmina has been at it again. She’s successfully brainwashed her half brother Taran (Charlie Rowe) and has sent him to kill Uma. Taran dies at Harry’s hands. Meanwhile the subplot is about CJ Hook (Florence Pugh) and Sadie Meyer (Sabrina Carpenter) getting re-engaged. The flashbacks chronicle their relationship.

The death of Harry Hook. Hadie finally did it. He finally got his brother killed. The exact same way Wilhelmina killed Harriet. Sword to the gut and a heart rip. But this happened in front of the twins. So Uma tries to stab him with an in use fire poker. The episode ends with hades (John Barrowman) banishing Hadie to another realm. And Harry’s funeral. Which is only attended by Uma hades (Eva Green) and the twins

Rosemary. Wilhelmina sacrifices Arthur Pendragon to the Tweedles and brings her aunt (Rene’s mother) to Auradon from Wonderland Rosemary the former red queen (Jennifer Morrison) to help her kill Uma. In Arendelle Hadie seeks out the help of queen Eloise (Elizabeth Gillis) the daughter of Kristoff and Anna for help in getting back home and banishing his father back to the underworld.

#disney descendants #dark curse

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marveliciousfanfics · 6 years ago

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Walk With Me Part 2

This is my entry for @dinnafashsoldat POC Writing Challenge.

Prompts: “You’re not taking me to bed. Ever.” “Who said it had to be the bed?” and “I wasn’t lying when I said I loved you.” Mexican!OC

A/N: I am a Mexican girl so when I saw this writing challenge I had to get on board. It is going to be about a 5-6 mini series. I love Thor. He’s my favorite! Even over Bucky and Steve because he’s just so…perfect and needs to be protected.

“Since my dad is—was a musician music is a big part of our family’s party. He will most definitely sing a song to my mom it’s always Paloma Querida meaning Dear Dove. It’s their song,” I explained to Thor as we stood at the living area with the furniture pushed away to give us space. “But I wanted to teach you how to dance it since it’s tradition for all couples to dance to it. FRIDAY play Paloma Querida by Jose Alfredo Jimenez.”

“All right,” he clapped his hands and stood in front of me. He was a whole foot taller than me—maybe more, so this was going to be a bit hard. I positioned his left hand on my waist and his other hand with mine. I placed my free hand on his shoulder.

“It’s really simple. We just step side to side until we make a circle or something,” I led for the first few steps. “Okay now you have to take lead because that’s the way.” He did as I told him and he picked it up pretty quick. “You’re light on your feet.”

“Of course, I’ve danced many dances throughout the realms,” he grinned. Of course he had. “But this is nice.” He looked down to me and it was the first time I got a good look at his eyes and I knew why so many women swooned. But I couldn’t be just another one. So I turned away and pulled back.

“So that’s just a nice one, we’re gonna move on to Salsa, Cuban, Bachata and Banda,” I knew the last one was going to be a bit more challenging to explain. So I pulled up videos on my phone and showed him. Even that he got it pretty fast. I was so impressed with his willingness to learn. He paid close attention and wasn’t afraid to ask questions.

“Why did you lie to your parents about having someone? Is there someone you’re avoiding?” he asked when I needed a break and had accepted the bottle of water he handed over. I took a long sip before answering. It was best to be honest or as honest as I could without revealing too much about myself.

“My family is nosy. I know they mean the best, but they all have this notion that because I’m a woman I’m supposed to just get married and have kids. They figured this—“ I gestured around me, “would be a phase, but my mom started hinting that my ‘clock’ was ticking. I’m only twenty-seven and the youngest! So to…calm her nerves I told her I was seeing someone, but we couldn’t go public to keep me safe…so the first person I thought of was you.”

“I’m honored, Dulce, but do you plan to tell your family the truth? Unless we are planning a fake wedding as well,” he laughed.

I laughed too. “No, of course not. I figure after this I’ll just tell them we broke up and they can leave me alone for another six years.”

“I’ve known you for nearly four years and this is the most I’ve learned about you,” he placed his hands on his hips.

I shrugged. “No one bothered to ask, plus I’m easily overlooked. I just do research.”

“I believe me…I noticed,” Thor got closer until he has half a foot away from me. “You are very observant. You care deeply and you definitely keep in touch with your family because you want to not because it’s a burden.”

He was right. My family and I were really close, but it took tragedy for that to happen. I wasn’t ready to share that. I knew he was going to find out eventually, but that would be for later. It was odd to get compliments from a God. Especially one who had gone through so much.

“Well, that’s enough, I think. You know the basics. So we should have rules so we don’t end up doing something dumb.”

“Like what?”

“Um…sleep together.”

“Why not? You like me and I like you. Why can’t it happen?”

I laughed nervously. “You’re not taking me to bed. Ever,” I did my best to use a stern voice, but under his gaze it quivered. He leaned down until we were only two inches part. I took in his scent and memorized.

“Who said it had to be the bed?” And before our lips met I took a step back.

“Whoa, whoa, no need to do that, Thor. I don’t expect you to kiss me at all!” I held my hands up as protection because I didn’t trust myself not to fall for his spell.

“Your family won’t find it suspicious I’m not affectionate?”

“My family doesn’t approve of PDA—so we won’t have to worry. The most you’ll have to do is hug me or kiss me on the cheek.”

“What a shame,” he winked. “I’ll see you tomorrow at nine to go to the airport. Will they care that I don’t have a passport?”

I groaned. “I didn’t think about that. Fuck.”

“I’m sure Stark will let us borrow one of his many planes, right?”

“Uh…sure.” I didn’t even convince myself.

“Let me take care of that then. You should get your money back for those tickets.”

“Uh sure,” I wasn’t going to get a full refund, but oh well. I really should have thought about that. Thor kept his word and I got a text from Tony saying it was okay to use his plane. Also he wanted pictures of Thor dancing banda so he could use it as blackmail. I doubted Thor would find it embarrassing.

I packed at night and felt the nerves start to kick in. Not only was I bringing a ‘boy’ well God home, but he was also not Mexican, which my parents always wanted me to marry in my culture. My sister did, my brother is going to do it and all of my cousins did as well. I wasn’t sure how my dad was going to react. Thor and I had gone over our story about how we got together until it was engraved in our brains. To them they think I’m going to get back with Bruno. He had been older than me, but he had been nice when he asked me out. And I thought it had been love, but if I had loved him, it wouldn’t have been easy to end it and move across the country.

I hardly got any sleep, but I got up and did my morning routine. I got a text from Tony that the plane was ready to go in an hour. I got my suitcase and headed for my door. I opened it and Thor’s entire frame took the whole space.

“Good morning, Dulce!” he boomed. “I am ready!”

“Tony said it’ll be ready in an hour, so we have some time to lose. I’m getting coffee,” I told him. “Let’s go over my family’s names.”

“Your mother is Alejandra, your father is Alfredo, your brother is Junior, then it’s Camila and Betty. You have a nephew Charlie and a niece Elizabeth named after Jane Austen characters.”

I nodded impressed. We got to the kitchen. Steve was sitting down with a cup of coffee. I went to the cupboard and groaned when someone placed my mug too high for me. I was about to climb on the counter, but I felt Thor behind me easily reach for it. The whole front of his body covered my back and it woke me up faster than any cup of coffee ever had. He held the mug in front of me and I took it meekly.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered close to my ear.

“Th-thanks,” I mumbled back. He stepped back and I swore I heard him chuckle.

“Morning, Steve!” Thor boomed.

“Morning,” I could practically hear Steve’s smirk. I got my coffee from the pot and got my creamer from the fridge. “So you’re really going through with this?”

“It should be fun! A new culture and new faces. Plus I don’t think I’ve been to…where are you exactly from?”

I turned around to face them. “I guess I should have led with that. So, my family lives in…Watts. It’s a bit of a rough neighborhood, but they don’t want to move out of there.”

“Rough?” Thor’s body tensed.

“I mean, it’s not like it used to be, but my parents still hear a drive by every now and then. Not like when I was younger and it was every week we knew someone got shot or died,” I shrugged and sat down across from them and sipped my coffee carefully.

“I still think you should tell your parents the truth. The truth is always better,” said Steve and I knew he knew from experience.

“It’s a harmless lie, Steve, I’m not keeping deep, dark secrets from my parents,” I shot back and immediately regret it. I knew he felt bad for what happened with Tony, but he had no right to judge me when he hardly knew me.

“Things are going to be all right. It’s only a couple of days,” Thor tried to keep the mood up, but it was clearly not the same. “What can happen in just a couple of days?”

I gave Thor a blank expression and then he frowned. A lot could happen in a couple of days.

“Sorry, Steve, that was a low blow,” I sighed. “I’m just all wound up.” I rolled my shoulders.

“You’re all wound up because you feel bad for what you’re doing,” Steve pointed out and got up and walked out of the kitchen.

“It will be okay, Dulce,” Thor’s tone was softer now. I met his eyes and some how I felt that he was right.

“Again, thanks for doing this, Thor. I mean, what I’m about to put you through…” I shook my head. “Just be patient with my family.”

“They really can’t be worse than mine,” he grinned.

“No, my dad hasn’t told me of a sibling he incarcerated for thousands of years,” I joked lightly and he chuckled at that.

Soon we were on the plane. He sat across from me. I had taken the seat away from the window because if I looked outside of it, I would probably have a panic attack. Flying wasn’t my strongest suit. I didn’t really have to do it much working for the Avengers since I mostly gathered information and gave it to them in briefings. I worked on the ground and flying was one of the scariest things in the world. I literally had friends who could fly and I did not envy them.

Thor quickly picked up on it. He explained we were perfectly safe—well he said we would have been safer if he would have used the Stormbreaker. I just laughed which did help me distract me. When we hit turbulence, I closed my eyes and started humming. I felt a big presence beside me so I opened my eyes. Thor had sat next to me blocking the window so I wouldn’t be able to look out there if I was tempted.

In minutes I was more relaxed and then I must have fallen asleep because after what felt like half an hour—but it had actually been three hours—I was lightly shook. I fluttered my eyes opened and I had been leaning against Thor’s mighty bicep and there might have been drool because the corner of my mouth was a little wet.

Horrified didn’t even begin to describe what I felt. I needed to be swallowed by the Earth. Did I just drool on an actual God?

“Sorry,” I wiped my mouth.

“Don’t be. You looked so tired, plus you were adorable to watch with your little, soft snores,” he chuckled.

I held back an internal groan. “Did…I really snore?”

“Indeed you did, but it’s nothing compared to my great friend Volstagg after he ate a whole pig,” he laughed whole heartedly but then it died and he looked sad. I knew his friend had died defending Asgard from his sister. So I reached for his hand and squeezed it. He turned down to me and gave me a sad smile. “Put your seatbelt on.”

Sometimes it was easy to forget that Thor had lost a lot of people in his life. I held his hand after my seatbelt was on because it was time to land. I was able to squeeze his hand so hard that it wouldn’t even phase him, so I released a breath when we stopped. I hated that I was going to have to go through this in two days again, but if Thor was by my side again, I had a feeling it was going to be okay.

#luce’s first writing challenge #luce’s poc! writing challenge #thor x oc #thor #thor odison #marvel #marveliciousfanfics #tony stark #steve rogers

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misscrawfords · 7 years ago

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Sparkling like granite?

So ITV is making a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice which is going bring out its “darker tones”.

Here are my thoughts at considerable length (which nobody asked for) about this adaptation (which nobody asked for).

My initial response was mixed. On the one hand, I’m actually not averse to a new adaptation of P&P. Sure, it’s over-adapted and there are lots of novels which deserve a multi-part adaptation more than P&P. (Mansfield Park? The novels of Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Walter Scott?) However, P&P is one of the world’s most popular novels and there hasn’t been a straight TV adaptation of it in over 20 years. Adaptations of P&P often say as much about the time in which they are made as they do about the source material and a good adaptation, even if one doesn’t necessarily agree with the choices made, can make you see the book in a new light and provoke discussion. I’m not averse to that.

So there’s that response of muted interest. That warred with deep misgivings about the “darker tones” of Austen’s “adult” novel which is “much less bonnet-y” in an adaptation by someone who has apparently never watched an adaptation of the book, despite loving it. Really? Has she been living under a rock? P&P is so much part of popular culture that it seems impossible to adapt it in a way that does not pay homage consciously or subconsciously to previous adaptations. Can one avoid a “post-modern moment” as Lost in Austen so delightfully made explicit? I’m deeply sceptical. (Does one even want to? Intertextuality can add so much... but that’s a discussion for another day.) Anyway, back to the “darker tones”. My instinct is to say that this seems terribly wrong. Of all Austen novels, P&P is the most light-hearted, the most sparkling, the most comforting. Why oh why, would you want to mess with that? For goodness sake, let us have our romantic comedies and laugh out loud satire and implausible happy endings! Why must everything be marred with the brush of making things grim and dark and equating that grimness with gritty reality? Reality may be sometimes grim and dark but it is also sometimes hilarious and warm and full of love. Why must the former be prioritised? I have a massive problem with reinterpreting texts to “make them dark” as if that is a naturally good thing. But that’s probably also a discussion for another day.

So, mixed feelings. But naturally the purists are up in arms about this idea (and a part of me certainly wants to join them) and that makes me desperately inclined to take a second look and examine the possibilities of this adaptation and some of the potentially intriguing things the writer has said.

“Darker tones”

Okay, so firstly what does this mean? Does P&P even have darker tones? Surely you have to squint? Weeeeeell, yes and no. It’s a mistake to assume Austen never wrote about the nastier aspects of human nature and experience. The more obvious examples (leaving out Mansfield Park’s troubled potential references to the slave trade) are the fate of Colonel Brandon’s ward, Eliza; the decline of Mrs. Smith; the condition of the Prices in Portsmouth; the fate of Maria Rushworth; General Tilney’s treatment of his wife - and of course Wickham’s role in P&P. Just because Austen doesn’t write rape, seduction, abuse, death etc. explicitly on the page and just because her novels end (mostly) happily doesn’t mean she lives in a fantasy world untouched by these things.

Let’s look at Wickham. He attempted to seduce a vulnerable 15 year old girl who knew him and trusted him and used a woman in a position of authority to her to gain access to her. To use modern terminology, how long, one wonders, had he been grooming Georgiana? The elopement was prevented but only just. And while Darcy clearly thinks his sister’s reputation is intact (and her virtue), is it? Could Wickham have persuaded Georgiana to sleep with him before the elopement? I don’t personally think so - I think she would have somehow told Darcy if that had happened - but it is a possible and interesting idea, even if I don’t know where you would go with that except to show what an awful person Wickham is... which we know.

Wickham then successfully elopes with another 15 year old girl in a vulnerable position away from her family a year later - this is looking like a pattern of a rather unhealthy interest in underage girls (again to use modern theory, which is dangerous as an interpretation but sometimes useful). He’s the same age as Darcy after all - 28. Not an unheard of age gap in those days but still creepy considering the vulnerable positions of the girls in question. Lydia is ruined and by proxy, so are her sister’s chances. Wickham causes a LOT of problems by this one act. And all to get revenge on Darcy for refusing to give him money after he spent all his.

There is, moreover, the Meryton gossip: “He was declared to be in debt to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues, all honoured with the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman’s family.”

Is this true? Has he been seducing (raping?) respectable girls in Meryton? Who knows! This is the wisdom of Mrs. Phillips after all. But they are talking about it openly in the text, there is rarely smoke without fire and it would hardly be out of character.

Is this sufficiently dark? It’s certainly not exactly a riotous comedy. Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of a Meryton tradesman’s daughter who loses her virtue and her father his money would be a very different novel. Georgiana’s history bears close examination. As with Eleanor Tilney’s story in Northanger Abbey, a real Gothic tale right under Catherine’s nose which she doesn’t even notice, there’s something pretty horrible going on in P&P if you care to look.

Perhaps this is what the writer Raine means by “actually a very adult book”.

What else could that refer to? (Because I give her sufficient credit to assume she’s not going to add in random pornographic scenes for the sake of it. Honestly.)

Jane Bennet. Jane is basically depressed for the duration of the novel. Elizabeth constantly worries over her low-spirits and concern for her affects her own happiness. In fact, Elizabeth herself is miserable for a lot of the novel. She goes on a journey of self-discovery but that comes at a cost. She is affected by Charlotte’s marriage, Jane’s disappointment, her own disappointment in Wickham, the effect of reading Darcy’s letter, Lydia’s elopement and finally realising she loves Darcy and will never have him. That’s a lot to throw at even the most resilient, good-humoured and optimistic person. Just because Lizzy loves to laugh doesn’t mean she is not unhappy in some way or other for a lot of the novel. For example:

After disappointment re Bingley and Wickham:

“Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not much better. I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going to-morrow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.”

“Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment.”

(I am always struck by the great bitterness in Elizabeth’s humour in that scene. It’s often overlooked IMO.)

After reading Darcy’s letter:

...it may be easily believed that the happy spirits which had seldom been depressed before, were now so much affected as to make it almost impossible for her to appear tolerably cheerful.

The only other use of the word “depressed” in the novel also applies to Elizabeth.

When Lydia has returned with Wickham:

Elizabeth could bear it no longer. She got up, and ran out of the room; and returned no more, till she heard them passing through the hall to the dining parlour.

You’ve got to be pretty much at the end of your tether to run out of the room at the age of 20 because you cannot bear to hear your sister talking any more.

Elizabeth is not happy. Jane is not happy. Mrs. Bennet is certainly not happy. Sure, it’s a comedy and Elizabeth has the delightful ability to laugh at herself and others and Jane tries very hard to overcome low spirits and always sees the best and Mrs. Bennet absolutely must be a caricature or else the humour is lost and everything becomes terribly heavy and not like the novel at all, but we feel triumphant with Elizabeth at the end precisely because she has actually suffered so much along the way in very human ways - romantic disappointment, losing a friend to a lifestyle choice she can’t understand, family troubles... These are not the things of epic but that doesn’t make them unimportant. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries conveys this aspect of the characters so well without losing the comedy. It is possible. Certainly I don’t think any other period adaptation has succeeded so well and I would love to see an adaptation that does. It’s not graphic sex, but I would describe this as in the realm of adult themes.

“Much less bonnet-y”

Okay, I don’t really know what this means. I suspect it’s a dig at the period dramas of the 1980s and 90s with beautiful aesthetics and no dirt and everyone speaking very properly. I thought we got the reaction to that overwith in the 00s and I really don’t want more sackcloths and pigs in the corridors, please. Ladies in that period wore bonnets. Get over it. This strikes me as the most provocative statement in all the things that were said, but it is also largely meaningless without more context. Productions like Poldark and Victoria have made an effort with costumes and sets so I don’t see why this would skimp on them. Will it be set in the 1790s this time with more of a rompish Georgian feel than a neo-classical Regency tone? Time only will tell!

"I hope I do justice to Austen’s dark intelligence – sparkling, yes, but sparkling like granite.”

Now this intrigues me! This is what makes me curious and also hopeful. Because Austen pulled no punches and had a very good understanding of dark impulses and the awful ridiculousness of human behaviour - and she absolutely skewered it.

In Paragon we met Mrs. Foley and Mrs. Dowdeswell with her yellow shawl airing out, and at the bottom of Kingsdown Hill we met a gentleman in a buggy, who, on minute examination, turned out to be Dr. Hall — and Dr. Hall in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead.

Mrs. B. and two young women were of the same party, except when Mrs. B. thought herself obliged to leave them to run round the room after her drunken husband. His avoidance, and her pursuit, with the probable intoxication of both, was an amusing scene.

I give you joy of our new nephew, and hope if he ever comes to be hanged it will not be till we are too old to care about it.

How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!

You get the point. All expressed in very nicely balanced phrases and a genteel tone and they are very amusing - but what sentiments! In short, I think Raine’s description of Austen’s wit and intelligence actually very apt. Similar things are found in P&P as in her letters. Consider Mr. Collins.

You ought certainly to forgive them, as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.

Ouch.

“She had better have stayed at home,” cried Elizabeth; “perhaps she meant well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see too little of one’s neighbours. Assistance is impossible; condolence insufferable. Let them triumph over us at a distance, and be satisfied.”

A nice thing to say about your friends and neighbours...

Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is something to think of, and it gives her a sort of distinction among her companions. When is your turn to come? You will hardly bear to be long outdone by Jane. Now is your time. Here are officers enough in Meryton to disappoint all the young ladies in the country. Let Wickham be your man. He is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably.”

“Thank you, sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We must not all expect Jane’s good fortune.”

“True,” said Mr. Bennet, “but it is a comfort to think that whatever of that kind may befall you, you have an affectionate mother who will make the most of it.”

Such kind parental support!

Mr. Bennet’s sarcasm, Mr. Collins’ pomposity which is eventually revealed as truly cold-hearted, Elizabeth’s biting and often undeserved satire, Mrs. Bennet’s foolishness - all of these are funny and the adaptation must make them funny. The dialogue must glitter and shine or you lose the absolute light-hearted sparkling joy of the novel and everything becomes heavy. But there’s an edge to the humour, there really is. And you treat like the stereotype of Sunday night bonnets and swoonable men jumping in lakes to romantic soundtracks at your peril.

You know what, I’m willing to give someone who describes Austen as “sparkling like granite” a shot. Love and Friendship for the first time presented an Austen adaptation that took absurdity, satire and caricature as its starting point in adapting Austen and I would love to see an adaptation of P&P that did the same, with all the greater subtlety that this novel requires over several hours, considering that it is a beautiful love story as well.

Will this adaptation deliver? Who knows? And there are a lot of things to be concerned about in this endeavor. But it might be really quite interesting.

tl;dr Austen is uncomfortable funny, she has a dark side, but they can’t make the adaptation dark and grim because that misses the point.

#Pride and Prejudice #Jane Austen #period drama

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minervacasterly · 8 years ago

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On the 28th of January 1457, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, and future Henry VII of England was born.

His father was Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, a loyal Lancastrian who had been captured by Yorkist forces in 1456 and died not long after as the result of the plague. Margaret Beaufort was only thirteen at the time. Fearing for her unborn son's life, the young widow fled to Pembroke Castle in Wales where she took refuge in her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor's stronghold. While no one knows for sure if she fell pregnant in her last two marriages, it is safe to say that given that there is no record of any of them, she was probably unable to have any more children due to giving birth so young.

Henry VII remains an elusive figure, and as a result there are many misconceptions about him. Currently there are two prevailing schools of thoughts among many history fans. On the one hand who you have the Tudor fans who defend him without overlook his flaws (in contrast with his son and granddaughters), and on the other, you have those that hate him because he defeated their hero, the now popular, Richard III. Just who is right, Tudor fans or Ricardians? It is safe to say, that neither of them are. If there is one thing we can all learn from history is this: it is never a case about good and evil. Things are not always what they seem. What is recorded by the victor may not have been what really happened, but that doesn't mean that it was all made up. Historians, who are far more qualified than I, have elaborated on this on their books and countless documentaries. People's view of Henry changed because the religious landscape of England changed. England went from Catholic to Anglican to almost Protestant, to Catholic again and finally Anglican again. As a result, following the last Tudor monarch's death, and more radical Protestants wishing for a more Protestant country, Henry and his mother, once praised for their religiosity, became villains and ironically Richard (a man who was a staunch Catholic too and whose mother and wife were like most women of the age, devout Catholics) became the opposite.

Henry VIII, Henry VII's only son to outlive him, changed his father's narrative a bit, so it would justify his actions. In the famous 'Dynasty' portrait that he commissioned during the end of his reign, he and his father and their respective wives, Elizabeth of York and Jane Seymour (who was dead at the time Henry commissioned this) are seen standing next to either side of a massive monument that reads the following: "The former often overcame his enemies and the fires of his citizens" then adds, "the son, born indeed for greater tasks, drives the unworthy from the altars and brings in men of integrity. The presumption of popes has yielded to unerring virtue and with Henry VIII bearing the scepter in his hand, religion has been restored."

In short, Henry was saying something along the lines of 'my father overcame a lot of serious shit but I am still better because I stuck it to the Pope.' Henry VIII’s grandchildren were no different, especially his granddaughter. Although Mary Tudor was seen as the great Catholic hope when she became England’s first Queen Regnant, she soon proved that when it came to royal authority, she was every bit like her predecessors, especially her father. Her friend and Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole counseled her to return Church lands to the Church, and she pretended not to hear him. Mary looked highly upon her parents and paternal grandparents’ unions. Her grandfather’s narrative remained unchallenged during her reign. When her sister succeeded her immediately after her death, it was reinforced. Elizabeth I’s coronation procession saw several pageants that celebrated the union of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York, which was seen as the elixir that healed the nation from a dynastic warfare that had torn the country apart for over three decades. It was during her reign, that Shakespeare wrote his famous historic plays that also reinforced the image of Richard III as a man who was beyond redemption. But then she died and suddenly, even though they felt they had to appease their new Stuart overlords (who descended from Henry VII via his eldest daughter, Margaret), they no longer felt subject to look favorably on the first Tudor monarch and his mother. Suddenly, he was no longer the peacemaker but a despicable man whose mother was no better. The blame as to who was behind the Princes in the Tower’s disappearance was shifted from Richard III to Margaret Beaufort who became the mother-in-law-from-hell to poor, Elizabeth Plantagenet. To these chroniclers credit though, at least they pointed something true, that Henry was a usurper. And it is true, he was a usurper. But to judge him solely on that would be a bit hypocritical given that many celebrated kings and queens in English history were also usurper. In fact, not only were the two branches of the Plantagenet Dynasty, the houses of Lancaster and York, usurpers, but the founder of their dynasty, William, Duke of Normandy, also known as William the bastard and the Conqueror. His claim to the throne was based on nothing more than might and foreign support.

When you look at Henry VII's actions, you find that he was nothing out of the ordinary as far as ruling a country was concerned. He rewarded those who were loyal, and took an affront against him personally, and wasn't afraid to use full force to quell rebellions, even if some of them were well justified. His life is the stuff of legends. And while we live in a time where we looked highly on underdog figures (especially women), there is something about Henry, that religious propaganda following his granddaughter's reign, has been so successful in turning us against this figure to the point where we see him as a caricature rather than a man of his times.

For Henry Tudor, the price he had to pay for sitting on the English throne and wearing the crown of St. Edward, was a high one. The first monarch of the Tudor Dynasty had to live in constant fear, knowing that his claim to the throne (which came from his mother) was tenuous, and marketing his union to Elizabeth as this union of the red rose and white rose, few nobles bought into it, and as a result he looked on most of his new subjects with suspicion. He faced many uprisings, two of them the result of pretenders claiming to be Edward, Earl of Warwick, and the other, Richard of Shrewsbury, otherwise known as Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the tower. Not to mention his personal losses. At the end of the fifteenth century he lost his uncle, a man who had helped him on his rise to power, and who had been with him during his exile. Then in 1502 he lost his firstborn, Prince Arthur, the year after that, his wife and baby daughter. Henry was survived by his mother, who lived long enough to see her grandson well established on the throne, and then joined her son, buried in the same chapel he constructed for him and his descendants, at Westminster Abbey.

Images: Henry VII, recreation of Margaret Beaufort giving birth to him at Pembroke Castle in Wales and Pembroke Castle seen from above.

#Henry VII #Tudor History #England #Wales #Wars of the Roses #Lancaster #York #Birth

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