#mrs bennet critical

[anghraine]

I always find it interesting that no one in P&P has any doubt that Mr Gardiner could and would have shelled out ten thousand pounds to bribe Wickham.

Mr Bennet is determined (at least at the time) to eventually repay him, when he believes Mr Gardiner paid it, but he does believe that. Mrs Bennet simply shrugs off the vast sum of money that everyone believes was expended to preserve Lydia's reputation. Her justification is that she and her daughters would have inherited all her brother's money if he hadn't gone and got married and had children of his own (how dare!). His assurance that she's going to be fine is not an empty one.

Elizabeth doesn't seem to doubt it, either. And earlier, at Pemberley, she assumed that Darcy had mistaken the Gardiners for members of fashionable upper-class society—a believable mistake to make, apparently, and he is surprised that they're Mrs Bennet's relatives. (I mean. Fair.) Their summer trip is likely not a cheap one. They're doing quite well.

In any case, I do think the Gardiners' prosperity and its bearing on the Bennets' situation is kind of overlooked by the fandom.

[alicentsultana]

The way we see mothers in fiction reflects our relationship with our own mothers.

Unless we're going mommy dearest and similar works that show narcissistic mothers and problematic/toxic relationships and portrayals, those are undeniably horrible and bad.

However, when we talk about general mothers portraiture we're going to immediately judge also through what we live and experienced.

I have a wonderful relationship with my mom, though she had me hours after she turned 18, and of course, have committed errors, she still succeeded in parenting and raised me with the best of her abilities. Therefore, I tend to see mother-sons/daughters relationships in a good light, as as depth and development goes by, I can change and adapt my initial opinion.

Therapist and Psychology Professors oftenly remarks that mothers, in a way or another, have some parcel of guilt over how her kids will develop and turn out, some more, some less. Relapse mother? Troubled kids. Distant mother? Insensitive kids. Overbearing/Overprotective? Kids learn to lie, omit, rebel. So on and so forth.

Mothers do have a hand on how you deal with your life. But a loving mother, a zealous mother, a young mother, an older mother, a religious mother, a free spirit mother... All of them doesn't have to justify themselves beyond maybe acknowledging where they went wrong, because, after all, aren't all of them also bound by expectations, morals, time and beliefs? And weren't all of them doing what they thought was right? Weren't all of them dealing with motherhood differently and in their particular ways? With or without support, they did what they could.

But take a look at these mothers:

They made mistakes, do they have to justify themselves and ask for forgiveness? Because they did what they have to? To survive, to attend demands, to protect, to ensure their safety and success...

There are mistakes, and there is also another even greater problem: you have to grow up and learn how to deal with this pain yourself, talk, digest, transform it, but no one but yourself will have to learn how to deal with it, even when it was done with such toxic and cruel behaviors, you will have to deal with it. To love or to hate.

Now, let's focus on the love part.

Mary, Elizabeth, Isabel, Januaria, the Bennets girls, Khadija, Alicent, Hürrem and Rhaenyra's children, all of them wouldn't even ask for their justification, ask why they did what they did, because they all know their mother loves them no matter what, they did what they had to do. Distant or not, overbearing, hysterical, insensitive, and doomed by the narrative. They know, and eventually recognize that those actions were done by love.

So yeah, go on, ask your loving mother to justify herself, I dare you all. Ask your grandma and aunt too. Ask that one mother who pissed you off online too.

Also, don't forget that maybe, that parenting style was all they came to know about. And unless one breaks a very long and, shockingly, difficult to recognize cycle, they will unknowingly perpetuate it.

Anyway. That's how I see it. Because oh boy, I wouldn't even ask my mom to explain herself to me, no matter my grievances. But that's a me thing. How do you see it?

[ankahikoibaat]

KIND REGARDS AND WARM WISHES (2/?)

In order to bolster the spirits of the troops off for war, a scheme to pair up civilians to write to the soldiers anonymously is started. Mary Bennet is one of those civilians. Richard Fitzwilliam is one of those soldiers. The friendship they form through their letters lead to them finding what they did not know they were looking for.

this fic is being posted on AHA as well!

[penny-for-your-past]

I'm about to say something controversial I think, but I'm not really into the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. For me, the very premise of the show is a non starter, because I cannot BELIEVE that ANY version of Elizabeth Bennet would record people without their knowledge or consent and post those clips online to a large viewing audience. I'm not being a protagonist moral purist; if Lydia was our main character I'd totally roll with it. But it is, objectively, reprehensible behavior that would FIRMLY put Lizzie in a category with "the lack of propriety" shown by her parents and younger sisters. This is a woman who, in the original story, didn't even tell her sisters that Wickham was bad news to protect Georgiana, and you think she'd post Jane's private moments online??? No. Elizabeth has character flaws but invasion of privacy and airing other people's business are never part of them.

[firawren]

Except, he doesn’t immediately realize what an ass he's been, and we know that because he also never apologizes in that letter.

In his letter, he stands by absolutely everything he did, with the half-exception of deceiving Bingley about Jane being in London, and even that he can't muster an actual apology for. He's like, "yeah that was maybe sketchy, mayyybe, but oh well, it was for the best" (paraphrasing)

He won't even express empathy for Jane's feelings! He basically says "IF she's upset"—the man has the audacity to say 'if'—"I didn't mean to." He doesn't say he feels bad about it, he doesn't say sorry, he just makes a bunch of justifications for what he did

That's why he later tells Elizabeth "YEESH my letter was awful, I was mad when I wrote it, I hope you burned it" (paraphrasing again). And yeah, Elizabeth is like "eh, maybe part of it was yikes, but some of it was nice," but that's because she just got proposed to by the love of her life and she's mega happy and ready to overlook his past mistakes

You ever think about how Mr. Darcy gets his ass absolutely destroyed by Elizabeth, immediately realizes just how much of an ass he’s been, writes a letter apologizing for what he can and explaining what he stands by, then fucks all the way off while fixing what he can for her completely anonymously without ever once expecting any sort of reconciliation let alone reward?

[princesssarisa]

Pride and Prejudice adaptations with a modern setting – e.g. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Bride and Prejudice, Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-Day Comedy, Fire Island – seem to almost always save Lydia from Wickham in the end. Either Darcy stops the elopement, or the elopement is replaced with an online sex tape which is taken down. Wickham is either arrested or at least left behind permanently, and Lydia learns a lesson and gets a happy ending. Neither she nor the other characters have to live with her mistake for the rest of their lives the way they do in the original.

I've just been rereading several people's posts on this subject, and about Lydia's portrayal in general, which show some very different opinions about it all.

Of course, part of the issue is that in a modern setting, it's much easier to save Lydia. In most of the modern Western world, a teenage girl running off with a 30-year-old man would result in the man being arrested, not in their needing to get married to save both the girl's reputation and her whole family's. And even if they did get married, divorce is an option.

But I suspect the bigger issue is that Austen's original ending is considered cruel, unfair, and a product of outdated morals.

People view Austen as punishing Lydia for being a "bad girl" by leaving her trapped in a loveless marriage to a worthless man and always living on the edge of poverty, when by modern standards, she's guilty only of teenage foolishness. They accuse Austen of "making an example" of Lydia to teach young female readers how to behave, in contrast to the virtuous, well-behaved Elizabeth and Jane with their happy endings, and they call it anti-feminist.

Not only is Lydia's marriage bleak for her, it slightly mars Elizabeth and Darcy's happy ending too, as well as Jane and Bingley's. It means Wickham will always be a part of their lives, and for Lydia's sake, they're forced to treat him as a family member. Darcy is forced to financially assist his worst enemy – though at least he draws the line by not letting Wickham visit Pemberley – and even Jane and Bingley's patience is worn thin by the long periods of time Wickham and Lydia stay with them.

By modern standards of romantic comedy, this isn't normal. The heroine, the hero, and all their family and friends are expected to live entirely "happily ever after," while the antagonist – especially if he's a womanizer who preys on teenage girls – is expected to be punished, then never heard from again.

But of course, Austen didn't write simple romantic comedy. Her work was social commentary. Lydia's ending arguably isn't a punishment, but simply the only way her story could end without disgracing her or killing her off, and it arguably it serves less to condemn Lydia herself than to condemn the society that lets men like Wickham get away with preying on naïve young girls and forces their victims to marry them or else be disgraced forever. It also condemns the type of bad parenting that leads to Lydia's mistake. Lydia is the product of her upbringing, after all: between Mrs. Bennet's spoiling and Mr. Bennet's neglect, she's never had any decent parental guidance or protection. And our heroines, Elizabeth and Jane, both pity their sister and regret that marriage to Wickham is the only way to save her honor. No sympathetic character ever says she deserves it.

The fact that Lydia is trapped in a bad marriage, and that Wickham does go unpunished and the other characters will always have to tolerate him and even cater to him for Lydia's sake, arguably drives home Austen's social criticism. The fact that it adds bittersweetness to the otherwise blissfully happy ending is arguably part of the point. If we change it just to create a happier ending, or in the name of "feminism" and "justice for Lydia," doesn't that dilute the message?

Then there's the fact that by the standards of Austen's era, Lydia's ending is remarkably happy. She doesn't die, or end up abandoned and forced into sex work or a life of seclusion. Nor, despite Mr. Collins' recommendation, does her family cut ties with her: the ending reveals that Jane and Elizabeth regularly welcome her into their homes, and Elizabeth "frequently" sends her money. Other authors would have punished her much more severely.

But of course, that was a different time. While in Austen's original context, Lydia's fate might seem fairly happy and lenient, by modern standards it seems more cruel. And since most of the modern retellings that change her fate are screen adaptations, not books, maybe the difference in art form further justifies the change. I'm thinking of that post I recently reblogged, which argued that some of Austen's more "merciless" plot points would seem darker on film than in print, and therefore tend to be softened in adaptations.

So how should a modernized adaptation handle Lydia's ending? Is it better and more progressive when they save her from Wickham? Or for the sake of social commentary and retaining Austen's sharp edges, should the writers follow the book and find a way (not necessarily marriage to Wickham, but some modern equivalent) for her mistake to leave her trapped in a less-than-happy life, and add a slight bittersweet note to the other characters' endings too?

I think a case can be made for both choices and I'd like to know other people's viewpoints.

[tossawary]

To be fair to Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice", I would also probably appear rude, proud, and altogether snobbish if I was stuck with the knowledge that everything I said was going to be fawned over or criticized by Mrs. Bennet, Caroline Bingley, Mr. Collins, or Lady Catherine. Like, he IS being a genuine snob at points and rightfully gets called out for it, but it definitely doesn't help that for the majority of the first part of the book, most of Darcy's conversations with Elizabeth happen when they're trapped in rooms with some of the Most Annoying People Alive.

POV: You are Fitzwilliam Darcy and cannot help but be intrigued by Elizabeth Bennet, a young woman with fine eyes and a lively manner. You would like to get to know her better. Unfortunately, Mr. Collins is here too, and he will tell Lady Catherine literally Every Single Thing you say.

[beatrice-otter]

Such an exhibition

I have been thinking about the breakfast scene in Pride & Prejudice. You know the one:

“Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which had been let down to hide it not doing its office.” ... “You observed it, Mr. Darcy, I am sure,” said Miss Bingley; “and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see your sister make such an exhibition.” “Certainly not.” “To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ankles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to show an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country-town indifference to decorum.”

It strikes me that there are some nuances that people often miss when talking about this. The first is that Miss Bingley attributes this "conceited independence" not to a flaw in Elizabeth personally, but to the difference between the manners of the country gentry (such as the Bennets) and the fashionable people who live in cities (like the Bingleys). In town, fashionable and wealthy people did not walk long distances. Fashionable people either owned horses/carriages, or took cabs. They would walk in parks where it was fashionable to walk. But they rarely walked alone, especially women. A man might walk to his club alone, in the afternoon, but when walking home from his club that evening he would hire a man to walk with him to discourage pickpockets and muggers. Even in posh neighborhoods!

But in the country ... there aren't cabs, and while there were robbers on the highways who would stop carriages to steal from them, they weren't lurking along footpaths such as the one Elizabeth would have taken. Elizabeth didn't ride horses, and her father is of the lower gentry, which means that the same horses which pull the carriage also work in the fields, and thus the carriage is not always available. Even when it is available, she's one of five daughters. If her dad or mom wants it, they get it; if she or her sisters want it, they have to argue over who gets it. And riding in a carriage was jolting and unpleasant (bad roads and no shock absorbers). So Elizabeth, like many members of the country lower gentry, often walks when she wants to go visit her neighbors.

Then there's the "alone" part. Everyone can quote "six inches deep in mud" but we forget that part of what shocks Miss Bingley is that Elizabeth walked by herself. In Regency England, the more wealth and status a woman's family had, the less often she would be alone. And again, big difference between the city and the country. In the city, a woman of Elizabeth's family status would never go anywhere alone. Either she'd have a female relative with her, or a friend or chaperone, or a servant. For protection, and also to vouch for her propriety. In the country ... as long as she's going to visit another woman, or just going out to walk for the exercise, and she's not going too far, nobody bats an eyelash. This is true both at Longbourn and also at Hunsford. If she were wealthier, that would not necessarily be the case; both Georgiana Darcy and Anne de Bourgh have companions who are paid to go where their mistress goes. So it's not just that Elizabeth is walking that shows the difference between town and country manners, it's also that she's walking alone.

Miss Bingley is criticizing Elizabeth in particular, but she is also criticizing her class, as a way of asserting both that the Bingleys have better manners than country gentry (despite their money coming from trade), and by appealing to Mr. Darcy about it she is also positioning herself as closer to his sphere and manners than to anyone else's.

Then we come to the question of how much does Darcy judge Elizabeth's actions. Mr. Darcy says he wouldn't want Georgiana to do what Elizabeth has done (walk three miles alone through muddy fields), but there's a big difference between the upper gentry and the lower gentry. Georgiana probably has her own horse, and she's much less likely to have to worry about whether the carriage horses are needed on the farm, and also she has someone who is literally paid to go with her everywhere. Also, Georgiana is sixteen years old, has already been targeted by a fortune hunter, and is very shy and timid. So the fact that he wouldn't want Georgiana to do it doesn't mean he necessarily sees it as a big deal when Elizabeth (older, not as wealthy*) does it.

*People sometimes claim the Bennets were either poor or middle class. They were at the bottom of the gentry, but that is still quite wealthy. Mr. Bennet has an income of £2,000/year, which is peanuts compared to Darcy. However, let us compare them to other people in their day. William and Dorothy Wordsworth spent the 1790s with an income of about £170-£180/year, with reasonable comfort. P&P was written in 1796-1797, so about the same time.

[chocolatepot]

Very much agreed with the last post, and I'd also add that the idea of women "not working" is one that needs to be considered with a lot more nuance than it usually is.

Even above the level of artisans who participated in the family business (which was probably a bit socially higher/more prosperous than you think), women were active. They didn't clean or do the major cooking, they didn't do directly profitable work, but they had to be very wealthy before they could afford to hand over every domestic task to servants. And then on top of that ... I am running low on time right now, so I'll quote myself from elsewhere:

A large part of women's use of their needles when they didn't need-need to relates to the ideology around "women's work". Plain sewing was the quintessential womanly skill; a woman who couldn't manage a seam or a hem might be thought to be a frivol, inattentive to her duties. Spending too much time in idleness or pleasure-seeking was, if not sinful, a waste - not just in the eyes of society, but in their own self-opinions. Anna Larpent, an Englishwoman, left a diary of her own around the turn of the century that detailed her own sewing in even more detail than Anna Winslow Green's letters, and it shows that she was fairly constantly at work on sewing curtains, neckcloths, dust covers, and needle-cases, and embroidering handkerchiefs and chair cushions, as well as doing ordinary mending. In addition to providing the house and family with new or renewed items, this gave her a specific kind of pleasure: I can smile, I mended two shirts and two shifts ... and had it not been a duty how much rather would I have studied history or poetry, but I protest ... fulfilling my female duties warms my heart as much as Mental pursuits delights it ... * She also recorded that this work gave her time to digest and consider those mental pursuits that she had been pursuing earlier in the day. Regarding embroidery - there's another thing that tends to poorly-portrayed in pop culture, where it's made out to be a special kind of torture with no purpose. In reality, it's just the other side of the plain sewing coin, another type of womanly industry. The most basic embroidery, which served a necessary purpose, was stitching numbers and letters onto otherwise unremarkable undergarments and handkerchiefs, so that the owner ended up with them after laundering; this could be entrusted to children and any maidservants. Being able to spend valuable time on embroidering home furnishings and clothing (samplers and pretty pictures for the wall were projects for those learning the skill) was itself a privilege - and would result in something nice for the home or body. We can also regard it as an art like drawing or painting, though typically it isn't given the same respect as those two activities, which, of course, were mostly done professionally by men. A good way to understand sewing both plain and fancy is to compare them to modern-day DIY and crafting. It often saves a little money, but the real benefit is the feeling of accomplishment while working on the projects and using or looking at them after they're finished. There's a sense that what was created is better or more desirable not just because it's of a certain level of quality, but because it has the distinction of being made at home.

We consider all of this kind of thing "not work", but it was definitely considered "work" in the period for middle-class and even most gentry women. (Anna Larpent was the daughter of a British ambassador and the wife of a civil servant in the late 18th century. Her family rented a house in London and another in the country, and in addition to male staff she employed a housekeeper and multiple maids.) It was not like picking up an embroidery hoop, doing a few stitches, and putting it aside again a few minutes later out of boredom - it was like spending a day at the job of clothing the family (by making or at least cutting out their undergarments) or decorating the house.

A typical month's work can be seen in July 1799 when she "made three valences for the Eating Room Windows, and three pocket handkerchiefs for John, cut out four shirts for John and one for Mr Larpent, made a collar and sleeves for the latter, made a pair of mittens, finished a Hearth Carpet in X stitch, worked part of a gown for my sister, did much mending particularly chair covers old and worn which I patched into the pattern that they might be dyed."

"‘After they went I worked’ : Mrs Larpent and her Needlework, 1790–1800", by Mary Anne Garry in Costume, 39:1, 91-99 (2005)

* There is a lot to delve into wrt this quote and what it says about Larpent, her upbringing, and women's places in the world, but for right now in the present context it must suffice to say that this was in a private diary and should be assumed to be reasonably sincere. Other diary entries are straightforwardly positive about the relief she found in sewing.

This isn't hugely important to Bethany's point, as this would not bring in any money (but with the dowries and/or jointures and/or outright inheritances these characters have, they are in zero danger of needing to earn a living or being plunged into genteel poverty like the Bateses). It's just something I wish more people were aware of when they say that women didn't work or that women had nothing to do with themselves - it's important to be specific and talk about "working for a wage" or "being hired by an employer", because this kind of labor was considered vital to the household, and doing it was considered "working".

Also, the women Bethany is pointing out as leisured in Austen do not have to do this kind of thing at all, or rather, they have the luxury of being so wealthy that they can afford to rise above the "proper women are industrious" principle. Even the Bennets don't seem to do anything more than occasionally remake bonnets for amusement; Caroline Bingley and Fanny Dashwood are definitely not engaging in the work of mending clothes or sewing curtains, not because it would demean them but because there are other things they would rather spend their time on.

I really do think a big part of Austen's works is examining what happens when a lot of wealth and a lot of leisure brings out the worst in people. Most of her characters are Trust Fund Babies who never have and never will work a day in their lives. Even good landlords like Darcy can take two month vacations at their friend's houses without consequences beyond writing a few letters of business. Even some of the real jobs were hardly work, clergymen could (and did) hire dirt cheap curates to cover their sermons, landlords had stewards.

What sort of terrible behaviour results? A ton of greed, a lot of social envy (trying to get higher and richer in society), a lot of men and women treating love as a game (either for giggles or to marry up), a lot of indolence/laziness (Mr. Bennet and Lady Bertram), and a ton of pride despite having done nothing for their wealth and position except you know, being born (and often being born male).

How could a man flirt with women just for fun? He doesn't have anything else to think about or do! Why is that woman trying so hard to manipulate a rich man? It's her only way to attain wealth since it's uncouth for her to dirty her hands.

These people need actual jobs. I'm convinced Henry Crawford would be like an 80% better person if he had something to do with his life.

And then you have the fact that almost none of the actions of men have any real consequences, at least for themselves...

[themalhambird]

Thinking about how Jane Austen's six novels taken together (in writing order, not publication order) become an increasingly scathing criticism of social class, i.e:

Northanger Abbey: Individual members of the gentry (General Tilney, chiefly) come in for some criticism, but mostly on a personal level: General Tilney is a grasping, tyrannical father to be sure but we hear little (though we might easily infer) of what he is like as the resident landholder. The final crisis of the novel, General Tilney's refusal to sanction Henry and Catherine's marriage, is resolved by Eleanor's marriage to a Viscount.

Sense and Sensibility: The "correctness" and "elegance" of the fashionable members of society- the Dashwoods, Robert Ferras, Lady Middleton- are negatively contrasted to the warmness and frankness of Mrs Jennings- whose kind-heartedness makes her more attractive, in spite of her lower-class origins and perceived vulgarity, than Fanny, Lady Middleton or Mrs Ferras (snr).

Pride and Prejudice: The aristocratic Lady Catherine de Bourgh is an interfearing busy body whose title and money only excuse her officiousness and rudeness. Darcy's pride in his superior situation to the Bennets leads him to act wrongly with regard to Bingley and Jane. Aunt and Uncle Gardiner, in trade, are more respectable- certainly better parental figures- than the gentleman Mr Bennet (and Mrs Bennet too). At the same time - Darcy's strengths are displayed in his undertakings as the resident landholder of the Pemberly estates- he supports the poor, and his situation allows him to shield the more vulnerable when he his spurred to act (Georgiana, to a less successful extent Lydia). Wickham's circumstances - debt, etc- could easily be read as the consequences of his wanting to step out of his place- his desire to be the oldest, or at least the second, son of a Mr Darcy- rather than what he 'is'- the son of Mr. Darcy's steward

Mansfield Park: Hey. HEY. look at the shitshow of a baronetcy. Lady Bertram is functionally useless. Sir Thomas is such a bad father that his daughters marry idiots just to get away from him. Also, having money can't give you intelligence or a personality. Most of "fashionable society" are actually miserable and mercenary and also probably immoralistic. The Church is clouded by corruption and isn't actively benefiting the local parish the way it should. The whole thing is underpinned by slavery, and the hardworking Price Children are ultimatley more deserving than the flighty Bertram ones. THAT BEING SAID: the portrait of Mr. Price is hardly better than the one of Sir Thomas, and Mansfield Park does stabilise- indeed, begins grows stronger with the reformation of its heir, and the implication that Fanny and Edmund go on to have children of their own. There is less of a quarrel with establishment, and more of a quarrel with the people who fill it.

Emma: "Gentility is inherent one can sense it in a person-" no you can't lmao shut up. There is literally no inherent difference marking out a gentleman's daughter and a farmer's daughter. Emma's snobbery as to class leaves her, at various times, both isolated and into some *serious* missteps. Emma and Frank Churchill both have a tendency to treat others as playthings, as their money allows them to do so.

Persuasion: The peerage/nobility are patently ridiculous throw them out in favour of [relative] meritocracy and hard workers. Sure, the resident landowners are supposed to be of benefit to those beneath them but they're not, actually, they take all of the privileges and fulfil non of the responsibilities and are pretty much uniformly selfish and our heroine Casts Them Off.

[anghraine]

Meanwhile, in one of my other main fandoms:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

[leohtttbriar]

hiiiii i recently watched ball of fire and the whole time i was thinking about your posts where you say worf/jadzia is like a screwball comedy. i am not a worfzia warrior but i do always love when jadzia is so flirty and cute. i love her sooooo much my beautiful worm wife

oh my gosh yes!! the screwball comedy dynamic that is worfzia is sooo! i just love screwball comedies--i find them more romantic than just about any other genre of romance. the dialogue, the hijinks, the absurdity, the understated affection: it's all there to expose precisely how much two characters are each other's equals in every way that matters.

when i wrote that post, i was thinking a lot about bringing up baby and it happened one night--maybe biggest ones of the genre? lol im so original--and how the story in both ends up being about the girl pursuing the guy single-mindedly, despite their superficial mismatch. colbert jumping into the ocean and sneaking onto a night-bus and flashing her leg to hitchhike after making fun of gable's ""know-how"" is all very flirty and liberated dax--and gable demanding only $39.60 from her father for keeping her safe and then saying "yes i love her but don't hold that against me im a little screwy myself" is Worf. he'd never demand a giant reward--he would demand precisely $39.60.

and hepburn in bringing up baby is so Jadzia Dax: A Menace. and the upright cary grant with all his poorly concealed social anxieties is very Worf: Do Not Tease Me and it works really well!

it's all very dependent on jadzia dax's character who i thought was screwball-comedy perfection even before worf came on the scene (i mean, it was in relation to kiradax but kira is very similar to worf in her character archetype and her normal role in ensemble scenes so i was delighted when worfzia ended up being the way it was). and not to get too into the lit crit regarding dax's flirty cuteness but i think one of the reasons jadzia isn't taken as seriously as she should by fans and critics and whatnot is not only the women-aren't-people bias but also the comedy-isn't-that-deep bias. jadzia is definitely a comic-relief character but she's not funny like quark is funny or worf is funny--she's deliberately wise-cracking and ironic and is even called out a few times for not taking things seriously. but the thing about humor is that it equalizes hierarchies and sets contradictions next to each other and forces serious-genre tropes to collapse under their own weight and exposes the construction of anything we might think natural. and all of that is the point of jadzia dax's character, whether it's a humorous or sincere scene/plot. and also why worfzia works as well as it does--imagine worf with someone who doesn't tease him.

im figuring out now that one of the reasons i love dax so much is also why i prefer austen to most other romance novels---she is teasing. romance is funny. dax is like mr. bennet saying of mr. collins that he think he's ridiculous and that's why he loves the guy: "for what do we live but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?"

anyway sorry for rambling on and on!! the point is: i love love flirty and cute dax too!!!!

[ankahikoibaat]

WIP Word Game

tagged by: @littleblackraincloudofcourse tagging: @heatherfield @queenofglassbeliever @thesecondbatgirl @noneedforbloodpressure @ossidae-passeridae @ouzoathena11 @mid-nighttiger @brachiosaurus-off @thegreencarousel and whoever else wants to (since all my willow mutuals are tagged but consider yourselves tagged again) rules: you will be given a word. then you share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of your word!

The word was ECLAIRS.

from the P&P spite fic:

E

Each word was bitter in her mouth, each thought and feeling she felt at hearing their father’s casual disregard tasted like ash. She had known, of course, how little her father cared for her and her younger two sisters. It was evident in his actions, or lack thereof, towards them.

C

Christmas came and went, with it the Gardiners and Jane. The removal of Mr Bingley and the other Netherfield occupants from the neighbourhood had affected Jane tremendously, and she did not begrudge her sister the need for a change. But it did not surprise her either that neither of her Gardiner Uncle and Aunt gave their younger nieces any of the attention and consideration they gave their elder.

L

Lizzy’s chiding “Papa!” had too much laughter in it for Mary to take it seriously. Kitty reached out to clasp her hand. Mary gripped back just as tight.

A

And Mary, at least, was rather certain their father would accuse them of eavesdropping purposefully, ignoring the fact that this was the little patch of garden their mother had cultivated with much love and therefore Kitty’s favourite place to sketch and Mary’s safe haven. It was hardly their fault that the conversations from Mr Bennet’s study carried over into the area, especially when the window was open as it was now.

I

“I wonder at his coming here to find himself a bride.” Lizzy’s disdain was evident. Mary knew it well, for all her sister tried to veil her criticisms as advice.

R

Relief flooded her veins and she clutched at her Uncle's sleeve tightly, as if a child in need of reassurance, secure in the knowledge that her Uncle, at least, unlike her father, would give it. He pat her hand gently and then nudged her to her feet. Mary stumbled a little, and then on finding her footing, found her voice too. “Lydia!”

S

She might have been only fifteen, but Lydia was not unaware of the ills of the world. She did pay attention, even if she preferred to act as though life was a lark. “And we will take care of each other.”

Your word is MUSIC.

[itspileofgoodthings]

and it’s like which is it. You criticize Mrs. Bennet for having no chinks in the armor of her stupidity, never having an even incidentally wise moment, the way real people do, but then complain that Darcy displays inconsistent behavior by being a fundamentally good person who ….. was in a bad mood one time??? says some internal thought processes better left unsaid during a first proposal?? You know, like real people do??

[warrioreowynofrohan]

I’m subscribed to Wildfell Weekly, so here’s some thoughts on the first three chapters of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. I’ve read it before, so there are some very general spoilers for later events, but no specifics.

So, who is Gilbert Markham, from what we’ve seen so far? I would say that, on the whole, he’s a fairly average guy. He has a good relationships with his family; he has a job (important, as we will see later - Anne Brontë has strong opinions about the negative effects of idleness and privilege upon men of the gentry class); he has a pretty high opinion of himself; and he’s good with kids. He is decided not Byronic - his life to this point has been very normal and uneventful - whereas Mrs. Graham is the unconventional one with a mysterious past and distinctive looks.

He is a mix of the practical (looking at the Romantic scenery around Wildfell Hall, he thinks first in terms of its agricultural properties) and the romantic (he nonetheless spends a while looking at the house and daydreaming; and, while telling himself he doesn’t like Mrs. Graham, he powtically describes her “sweet, pale face and lofty brow, where thought and suffering seem equally to have stamped their impress”.

He and his social circle seem clearly of a lower social class than what we see in, for example, the novels of Jane Austen - none of Austen’s rural characters farm their own land, and all of them have servants. In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet is offended by Mr. Collins’ assumption that one of her daughters cooked their dinner; their servants do that! Whereas Gilbert’s mother prides herself on her cooking and criticizes Mrs. Graham’s lack of knowledge in that area (which provides a hint towards Mrs. Graham’s background).

He has conventional opinions, and defends them determinedly against Helen’s equally determined advocacy of unconventional ones, and he’s very annoyed by how effectively she reveals the unconscious double standards buried in his views. Mrs. Graham’s views - that young men should not be expected to resist all temptation unaided, and that young women should not be sheltered even from the knowledge of evils, but that both should be aided by the experience of others - is the same that the author expresses in the Preface:

When we have to deal with vice and vicious characters, I maintain it is better to depict them as they really are than as they would wish to appear. To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is doubtless the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers. O Reader! if there were less of this delicate concealment of facts - this whispering of ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace - there would be less of sin and misery to the young of both sexes who are left to wring their bitter knowledge from experience.

[bethanydelleman]

One criticism of Jane Austen is that she ignored the lower classes. I find this kind of dumb on multiple levels, primarily because not every work of fiction or social criticism needs to include every single social ill, but also because she does talk about servants/the lower classes quite a bit more than people realize and what she says is important.

The overall theme: kindness to servants/the lower classes/the poor is a very important mark of character.

We all know that Elizabeth Bennet changed her mind about Mr. Darcy after hearing a positive character reference from his housekeeper, but that is just one example of many. The Dashwood girls are better employers than John & Fanny since they easily find servants to move across the country with them: Her wisdom too limited the number of their servants to three; two maids and a man, with whom they were speedily provided from amongst those who had formed their establishment at Norland. Also, servants tended to brag about having wealthy employers, these three servants wanted both a far away and a less prestigious job. John & Fanny were really that bad!

Another mark against General Tilney's character is that he gets irrationally angry at/scares servants:

To such anxious attention was the General’s civility carried, that not aware of her extraordinary swiftness in entering the house, he was quite angry with the servant whose neglect had reduced her to open the door of the apartment herself. “What did William mean by it? He should make a point of inquiring into the matter.” And if Catherine had not most warmly asserted his innocence, it seemed likely that William would lose the favour of his master forever, if not his place, by her rapidity.

“Why! How can you ask the question? Because no time is to be lost in frightening my old housekeeper out of her wits, because I must go and prepare a dinner for you, to be sure.” (Henry, on his father coming to his house for a visit. This may be half a joke, but General Tilney is very critical of the meal)

Mrs. Ferrars's character is made quite plain in this complaint about paying annuities (basically a pension here) to some of her husband's old servants:

I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father’s will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother’s disposal, without any restriction whatever.

Mrs. Ferrars is loaded, and she begrudges paying a few pounds to 3 servants. She is greedy and ungrateful.

Mrs. Norris's treatment of the servants is similar to her treatment of Fanny. It shows the depth of her miserliness (how much could one boy really eat?) and also cruelty:

"I had been looking about me in the poultry-yard, and was just coming out, when who should I see but Dick Jackson making up to the servants’ hall-door with two bits of deal board in his hand, bringing them to father, you may be sure; mother had chanced to send him of a message to father, and then father had bid him bring up them two bits of board, for he could not no how do without them. I knew what all this meant, for the servants’ dinner-bell was ringing at the very moment over our heads; and as I hate such encroaching people (the Jacksons are very encroaching, I have always said so: just the sort of people to get all they can), I said to the boy directly (a great lubberly fellow of ten years old, you know, who ought to be ashamed of himself), ‘I’ll take the boards to your father, Dick, so get you home again as fast as you can.’ The boy looked very silly, and turned away without offering a word, for I believe I might speak pretty sharp; and I dare say it will cure him of coming marauding about the house for one while. I hate such greediness—so good as your father is to the family, employing the man all the year round!”

It also highlights her hypocrisy, as Mrs. Norris has moved in during the play to help with the preparations, so she is getting free meals all week but she won't let this kid eat when he's helping his father (who is building the stage for the play)

Mr. Knightley considers the common people of Highbury before moving a path, even though he likely owns all of the land and can do whatever he wants:

"But John, as to what I was telling you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly the present line of the path"

The kind Musgroves, who have given their nursemaid a retirement plan instead of turning her out:

A chaise was sent for from Crewkherne, and Charles conveyed back a far more useful person in the old nursery-maid of the family, one who having brought up all the children, and seen the very last, the lingering and long-petted Master Harry, sent to school after his brothers, was now living in her deserted nursery to mend stockings and dress all the blains and bruises she could get near her, and who, consequently, was only too happy in being allowed to go and help nurse dear Miss Louisa.

And who clearly are rewarded for this kindness.

Anne Elliot showing kindness to Mrs. Smith, who has nearly fallen right out of the gentry, vs. her fathers disdain for charity:

“Westgate Buildings!” said he, “and who is Miss Anne Elliot to be visiting in Westgate Buildings? A Mrs Smith. A widow Mrs Smith; and who was her husband? One of five thousand Mr Smiths whose names are to be met with everywhere. And what is her attraction? That she is old and sickly. Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most extraordinary taste! Everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting to you. But surely you may put off this old lady till to-morrow: she is not so near her end, I presume, but that she may hope to see another day. What is her age? Forty?”

Added to Sir Walter and Elizabeth's idea to cut expenses:

“Can we retrench? Does it occur to you that there is any one article in which we can retrench?” and Elizabeth, to do her justice, had, in the first ardour of female alarm, set seriously to think what could be done, and had finally proposed these two branches of economy, to cut off some unnecessary charities, and to refrain from new furnishing the drawing-room; to which expedients she afterwards added the happy thought of their taking no present down to Anne, as had been the usual yearly custom."

Vs. how the Crofts treat the poor:

She could have said more on the subject; for she had in fact so high an opinion of the Crofts, and considered her father so very fortunate in his tenants, felt the parish to be so sure of a good example, and the poor of the best attention and relief, that however sorry and ashamed for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch Hall had passed into better hands than its owners’.

Henry Crawford's moral fall begins with ignoring the needs of his tenants:

"I have half an idea of going into Norfolk again soon. I am not satisfied about Maddison. I am sure he still means to impose on me if possible, and get a cousin of his own into a certain mill, which I design for somebody else. I must come to an understanding with him. I must make him know that I will not be tricked on the south side of Everingham, any more than on the north: that I will be master of my own property... I have a great mind to go back into Norfolk directly, and put everything at once on such a footing as cannot be afterwards swerved from. Maddison is a clever fellow; I do not wish to displace him, provided he does not try to displace me; but it would be simple to be duped by a man who has no right of creditor to dupe me, and worse than simple to let him give me a hard-hearted, griping fellow for a tenant, instead of an honest man, to whom I have given half a promise already. Would it not be worse than simple? Shall I go? Do you advise it?”

Of course, Henry does not go to Everginham, as he knows is right, but instead goes to the party in London, where he again runs into Maria...

Yes, Austen didn't write servants/the lower classes as full characters in general, they are in the background and around the edges of the scenes, but over and over, we can sort characters into moral and immoral by their treatment of those less fortunate around them.