#this is not anti edmund i love him and fanny

[junewongapologia]

On The Origin Of The Species was feasibly published within the lifetime of Edmund Bertram, and you just know he would have been insufferable about it.

[fedonciadale]

Jon/Tyrion spend more time together in the books than Jon/Sansa. They probably talked more to each other than Jon/Sansa. Jon/Tyrion shook hands and parted as friends, Jon/Sansa did not even say goodbye at WF though they wouldn't have ever seen each other again. When Jon hears that Ned and the girls may return he's excited to see and talk to Ned and Arya, not Sansa. Jonsas write all these metas about romance and how GRRM is writing a love story and has anyone read any romance like this? Did Darcy and Elizabeth have a connection only in the last 3/4rth of the book. Did Emma and Mr. Knightley have a connection only at the end? Did Fanny and Edmund only know each other towards the end?

Jon and Daenerys have not even met each other, don't know of each other, are on different continents and yet GRRM is giving them parallel arcs in the corners of the world, Dany is getting visions of sweet smelling blue roses at the wall and Jon is wishing for a dragon or three. We don't know what sort of relationship Jon/Daenerys will have in the future, but we do know they will meet and interact. Because she's fire and the mother of dragons and Jon is fighting an Icy existential apocalypse.

Even the characters closest to Jon have nothing to do with Sansa. GRRM writes Jon's closest friend Sam meeting with Bran and then going all the way to Braavos to meet with Arya and then Aemon telling him about Daenerys and meeting Marwyn and probably meeting with Tyrion and Daenerys in the next book. Jon's wolf dreams have nothing to do with Sansa, but he can connect with Arya and Bran and Rickon, even Daenerys half a world away hears a wolf howling at the same time Jon dies.

I have a suggestion for you:

Get a tumblr blog, and write all the nonsense you spout into my inbox on your own blog and tag it Anti Jonsa. Knowing the ASOIAF fandom you'll probably get all the attention you seem to need so desperately.

And I would also suggest that you take into consideration not Jane Austen novels but actual fantasy novels that might come a bit closer to what GRRM writes (you know, the man writes fantasy, where the conflict is not centered on the couple like in Jane Austen, *pretends to be shocked*).

If you look at some of the novels GRRM cites as influence you might get a surprise or two.

And you should really look up the whole quote about the howling wolf, it's a very telling quote.

[misscrawfords]

For the bad Austen take game: Fanny Price is boring. (I hated even typing that)

 Aaaaahhhh, you went straight to the jugular!

Mansfield Park was published in 1814, a year after Pride and Prejudice. The latter contained a spirited, active, and witty heroine. The former, a heroine who was shy, physically weak, and very introverted.

Fanny Price is actually closer to what a lot of contemporary heroines were like. Elizabeth Bennet, bursting in on the scene with her “pert opinions” and physical vigor and her direct challenges to the hero is not ahistorical because clever and witty heroines do exist in literature of the time, but she takes that to the next level.

The “perfect heroine” of the early 18th century in many novels was sweet, virtuous, morally dutiful, and somewhat passive. She was prone to fainting, basically had no faults, and at the end of the novel was rewarded with the love of the hero. She is not always a particularly interesting figure and often such narratives have a foil in a lively, witty anti-heroine who brings the fun to the novel but cannot be rewarded with a happy ending because she does not display the appropriate morals. That way the author and reader can get the pleasure of a “bad girl” or at least a “fun girl” without disrupting the expected didactic morals required of (many) novelists at the time.

Fanny Price and Mary Crawford are interesting variations on that. Fanny, like all of Austen’s heroines, challenges contemporary notions of what being a heroine was about. Austen does this in all her novels though Emma is the most obvious example. Fanny has many of the qualities that you would expect from a contemporary heroine but she is also not particularly attractive (a heroine should always be the most beautiful woman in the room) and it is hard to read her excessive passivity and not feel irritated by it. She has a much deeper inner life than most of her contemporaries of this type. We see her jealousy of Mary Crawford, we see her misery, we see her unrequited love for Edmund, her complicated feelings regarding her home in Portsmouth in ways that make her fully rounded internally, only little of that is spoken out loud. These feelings are very human and understandable, but they are not always to her credit and knowing them, we wish she could act on them. Austen seems to be asking the reader to take the classic novel heroine and then ask, “How would she really respond to novel situations?”

Austen’s plot also challenges expected novelistic plots. Edmund Bertram is not a satisfactory romantic hero. He is as quiet and rigidly moral as Fanny... except he blows all his convictions by his blind infatuation on Mary and he spends 99.9% of the novel oblivious to Fanny’s feelings or even that she’s an eligible woman at all. I have sympathy for him as well as for Fanny because he’s very young (only 22/23) and making poor judgements over women at that age and being an oblivious numpty over your childhood best friend’s crush seems pretty normal to me. Nevertheless, following Mr. Darcy, he’s hardly the stuff of dreams.

The character and plot that does seem more novelistic is Henry Crawford and his pursuit of Fanny. He’s handsome and rich and a bit of a rake. Then he meets Fanny who he attempts to seduce, falls in love with her for real, proposes to her and is rejected, then changes his behaviour, tries again and is accepted now that he is reformed and worthy her love.... wait. Rewind. That’s not what happened! Think this plot looks familiar? It should. Henry Crawford is what a lot of people think Mr. Darcy is who don’t understand Mr. Darcy on any level. Henry Crawford genuinely is a handsome bad boy who is reformed by the love of a virtuous woman after being rejected by her. And Austen teases readers with a redemption arc and a real enemies-to-lovers plot. But Henry is as real and complicated and human as Fanny and Edmund - he fails at the last hurdle and cannot complete his redemption arc. He relapses at the last moment. Isn’t that true to life? And is reforming a rake really Fanny’s destiny in life? She doesn’t think so. She sees right through his charm and hates who he is underneath. She doesn’t reject him as Elizabeth does Darcy because she doesn’t understand him; she rejects him because she understands him perfectly. She is the only person in the novel who does. I feel it would be a poor ending for Fanny to make her marry a man she despises and become the mistress of a large estate which brings with it the kind of social duties she must have been unhappy executing.

Fanny gets what she wants. She quietly, patiently does not change. She is surrounded by the superficial, the brash, the badly behaved, the immoral, the weak and she remains strong and stoical and by doing this and remaining true to her values, she triumphs. She wins. She gets the man she wants. She is truly and fully adopted into the heart of Mansfield Park with all her enemies and rivals removed. She is acknowledged as the best of them all. Without even needed to do anything except endure and stick to her guns, she defeats every big boss in her path.

These are not attractive modern values. Our concept of a “strong woman” (*shudder*) is Elizabeth Bennet. But not all of us are Elizabeth Bennets. Most of us aren’t in fact. Most of us are quiet and insecure and filled with envies, jealousies, private sadnesses. Many of us have experienced at some point less than ideal family situations and reacted not by being spirited and clever but by curling up in a ball and just waiting it out. Shouldn’t Fanny be held up as an icon for winning in absolutely the worst of circumstances? But she is an Aeneas in a society that only wants to read about Odysseuses and Achilleses.

Finally, another way in which Austen was distinctly saying in MP, “Hey, so, if you thought I was going to write another P&P, JOKE’S ON YOU, MATEY!” is that the entire novel is an anti-romance. Of course you’re going to be frustrated with Fanny and Edmund if you’re looking for a pair of exciting characters who fall in love and get a swoonworthy romance. But if you read MP as an examination of bad love, inappropriate love, selfish love, inexperienced love, love that taints and goes wrong through the eyes of a quiet and insightful observer who herself suffers the crushing and all too familiar pangs of hopelessly unrequited love - then you find a character and a novel that are rich, satirical, and deeply intimate and clever.

[soc-characters-as-songs]

The OCs as Jane Austen characters?

everyone is lizzie bennet, remember? lmao

quoted descriptions sourced from the atlantic, barnes and noble, the guardian, and stylist.

and yes, I realize some of these could definitely qualify as hot takes lmao

ivy: fitzwilliam darcy ("I always saw myself as more of a mr. darcy than an elizabeth bennet. we’re both more reserved, and people can mistake our standoffishness for arrogance. but mr. darcy gets the chance to prove what he is really like, and now people often think of him as the ideal romantic hero.")

meredith: marianne dashwood ("marianne is a hopeless, self-indulgent romantic who veers from ecstatic, all-consuming happiness to miserable self-neglect over the unsuitable man she has pinned her hopes on. she is, however, capable of self-improvement and learns invaluable life lessons from her practical and generous older sister, elinor.")

diana: susan vernon ("not all austen’s protagonists are morally sound, well behaved romantics. in her only epistolary novel she presents us with a vicious anti-heroine in the shape of lady susan vernon. a beautiful 30-something widow, she is charming and manipulative towards anyone she can make use of.")

dahlia: isabella thorpe ("in northanger abbey, isabella is one of austen’s funniest characters. she’s a very realistically drawn teenage girl who makes and breaks friends on a whim, is a shallow flirt and loves dancing, shopping and giggling.")

alassie: mary crawford ("in mansfield park, mary crawford is the character all men fall in love with. vivacious, worldly, musical, funny and kind, she is the ultimate femme fatale. even the dull parson edmund bertram falls for her charms, simultaneously attracted and repelled by her particular brand of sexy charisma. she’s a wonderful actress and plays the harp like an angel. she makes the filthiest joke in austen when she makes a pun about sodomy in the navy, concerning rear and vice admirals: “of rears and vices I saw enough. now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”")

ramona: anne elliot ("she may be austen’s most hopeful character. without the native strength of emma or lizzy, her quiet character withstands her own youthful mistake to triumph in the end. since most of us blow it to one degree or another in our twenties, anne represents that painful journey to self-knowledge and courage that most of us experience.")

rhea: elinor dashwood ("on the surface, she has it together, she’s in control, she keeps her family together, and she acts like she has no need for romance. but underneath, she is a deeply emotional person. to me, she is jane austen’s most complex and human character. we all exist in layers and are neither sense nor sensibility, but a mixture of both.")

cornelia: elizabeth bennet ("she is smart, witty, charming, and loyal. I have always admired her self-respect: a self-respect that wasn't entirely vain or selfish. the self-respect that would not allow her to marry her intellectually inferior cousin, just to have a home, or save her family. her self-respect that gave her the fortitude to reject darcy's marriage proposal, though, again, it would have secured her future. Her self-respect that gave her the courage to speak her mind among men and women who outranked her socially and economically.")

kaden: emma woodhouse ("emma is rich, pretty, and thinks more of her matchmaking abilities than she should, but she is also a devoted daughter, a loving friend, and above all is someone who is willing to own up to her mistakes and attempt to right them. emma is a heroine you root for as she not only finds love (as any great austen heroine must), but also as she matures from an often inconsiderate girl to a sincere and kind young woman.")

andreia: diana parker ("diana is a homeopathic health fanatic in austen’s final, incomplete novel sanditon, written when she was dying. diana sips herbal and green tea, has anorexic tendencies and distrusts conventional medicine and doctors. she self-medicates with her numerous homemade remedies and is drawn to the other invalids who are staying at the seaside resort. she plans to take a sea bath in a bathing hut on wheels with a mixed-race girl. what a pity that we’re deprived of the chance to see how that would have turned out")

arely: fanny price ("fanny price is also an odd heroine, meek and quiet without any of the strength of her other heroines. she’s also very difficult to read, with a moralistic streak that comes across as quite judgemental. however, like anne elliot, she is very much the outcast of the family and has to endure a fair amount of humiliation from childhood. to see her finally defy her uncle in the gentlest way possible and end up with her childhood love edmund bertram is satisfying."

suzy: catherine morland ("catherine is a dramatic, gothic-novel-loving teen who is desperate for drama and tries to turn her own life into a ghost story, offending and upsetting her friends in the process. throughout my teens I did my best to make my life something in between a fantasy novel and a sofia coppola movie—I can relate. she’s funny, outgoing, and magnificently stupid. but catherine, in her ridiculousness, just wants to make life a fun story. she is the angsty suburban girl who invites you to join her book club with a message written in invisible ink. I would join in a heartbeat.")

samuel: henry tilney ("funny, good-natured, and forgiving, tilney’s even ready to defy his boorish father’s wishes to marry the woman he…loves? this novel lacks the intense romanticism of austen’s later works, but that doesn’t mean henry isn’t a peach.")

bianca: charlotte lucas (sensible and intelligent, does what she has to do for a successful life)

archibald: george knightley ("he is the epitome of kindness, an underestimated heroic quality. he takes care of a vulnerable woman like miss bates, and steps in to dance with lowly harriet smith when he sees that she has been snubbed by the awful mr and mrs elton. he represents the perfect english gentleman and sets himself firmly against french affectation. he refuses to play the conventional hero and talk the language of love: “I cannot make speeches, emma. If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” perfect!")

raphael: charles bingley ("this charming, gallant gentleman wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he would let his chilly sisters talk him out of proposing to the woman he loves, in an era when dancing with her all night has already got half the neighborhood writing up the wedding banns. but who doesn’t keep a spot in their heart for bingley, who’s glad to dance with even the homeliest old maids (we’re talking 27-year-old hags here). he may be suggestible, even a touch weak-willed, but he’s also got a heart of gold. (and if he had a bit more spine, he’d top mr. darcy.)

[herelivesahobbit]

There's a kind of smug analysis (that I myself have been guilty of) of Mansfield Park which states that Fanny rejected Henry Crawford, not because of his poor moral compass and her superior judgement, but because she was in hopeless love with Edmund herself. This is absolutely accurate but it is also something explicitly stated in the text so I don't understand what is there to be smug about seeing this or why it should be an additional reason to hate Fanny Price. The narrative is clear that no matter how principled she might be, there's no way a young, inexperienced girl of 18 with low self esteem and submissive nature wouldn't have fallen for a charming guy like Henry or at least, accepted him out of sheer gratitude. It even says that she definitely and quite happily would have eventually accepted him, had Edmund gotten married to Mary. Fanny herself is quite aware of the primary reason she cannot love Henry, and has a lot of anxiety about this being discovered by her uncle, Mary, Henry or Edmund himself. She definitely gives her secondary reasons more importance than they deserve, sincerely believing that she could never love Henry, no matter who else existed in the world. But that's an obvious error of inexperience and wishful thinking. It's not malicious or spiteful or vain. In the situation she is in, she could be forgiven much jealousy, resentment and bitterness, which she does feel often, but rarely without accompanying shame. As usual though, people love to hate and dismiss the feelings of the complicated female protagonist as opposed to her much more morally weak love interests.

And I'm saying all this as someone who is currently scratching my head (yet again!) about the moral message/themes of the novel (as I always do with these novels where that specific brand of English Protestant Christianity is taken as a universal and absolute law). And also as someone who greatly appreciates Mary Crawford, the anti-heroine ahead of her time, and just 2 steps left of Elizabeth Bennett. I've said it once and I'll say it always, what's the big fucking deal about a play? Why can't divorced women be reintegrated into society when their husbands and the men who they ran away with, can? Why SHOULD adultery be treated as equally horrific as, say, murder? It's very much an exercise in saying "different times" over and over again to yourself.

TL;DR - Fanny Price is way more complicated and interesting than people give her credit for, and Henry Crawford much less. Shrug.

[misscrawfords]

I really can't get on board with the Reylo/Pride and Prejudice parallels and it's been bothering me for a while.

Like, I get it. I really do and the proposal scene in TLJ... yeah. I really do get it and it gives me hope and I love the *intention* behind these parallels. The proposal scene is very much the closest to where a parallel might work. But, like, Kylo Ren is not Mr. Darcy in a really, really fundamental way and while his story may share some similarities to Darcy's, I feel really uncomfortable buying into this as a working parallel and that Reylo is somehow Darcy/Elizabeth in space.

Darcy is a good man. He's one of the best. In a novel filled with useless men (Mr. Bennet, Wickham, even Bingley), he stands up and is a hero because he does the right thing. He has never in fact done the wrong thing in terms of conduct and moral behaviour. His flaws are of perception - self-perception, how he wants others to perceive him and how he thinks they do. His encounters with Elizabeth tell him that he must show her and the world who he really is, not that he must fundamentally change. Elizabeth herself says that she doesn't think he's changed, only that her knowing him better has altered her opinion. (I hope that's in the book, not just the BBC serial, I haven't read the book for too long.)

Kylo Ren is... not a good man. He has done attrocious things and continues to make destructive and cruel decisions. Yes, we can absolutely sympathise with him and understand him, but he is not a good man. His faults are fundamentally wildly different to Darcy's. As is Rey's perception of him. She spends TLJ trying to see good in him and coax out what she believes is under the surface. This is literally the opposite to what Elizabeth does and thinks about Darcy.

If you want an Austen parallel for Kylo Ren (and who doesn't want an Austen parallel?) then I would look at Henry Crawford. Henry is an intelligent young man, not handsome but somehow extremely attractive and compelling. As a child he was taken to live with his uncle, Admiral Crawford, who was an extremely unsuitable guardian and it is implied that he warped the moral core of both Henry and his sister Mary. As a result, both Henry and Mary have the cleverness and charisma of many of Austen's heroes and heroines but with an interesting moral vacuum at their core. (Please note, I love them both. They are some of my favourite characters in all of Austen and I have an entire sequel planned in my head of which Henry is an anti-hero and deals with all his issues.) Henry plays games and toys with the emotions of the women around him until he falls inexplicably in love with heroine Fanny Price. Fanny is so good and moral that most Austenites don't like her (especially put next to charming, naughty, self-aware Mary) and Fanny repeatedly rejects Henry. She sees that fundamentally he is not a good person. The thing is, Henry has moments where he is, where it is clear that his heart is in the right place and he selflessly does some great things for Fanny. He gets a promotion for her brother in the Navy and when she is at her very lowest (when she realises the truth about her home life and her parents in fact), he is there for her, civil and kind and unjudgmental. There is a point in the book where Henry/Fanny ALMOST happens and Fanny is truly tempted. But Henry proceeds to shoot himself epically in the foot by doing one of the most morally condemnable acts in all of Austen - eloping with Fanny's married cousin Maria. Henry ends the novel as the villain figure and Fanny marries her sexless cousin Edmund who spent most of the novel obliviously pining after Mary. Yay? But it's never that clear cut in Austen and Henry is an incredibly sympathetic and appealing character, especially given the hints of how his upbringing at Admiral Crawford's hands affected him (a man described by Austen as "a man of vicious conduct").

Mansfield Park is not well-known and loved in the way P&P is and all the film adaptations are horrible and like I said I get the superficial similarities between Reylo and P&P, but I really feel too aware of their fundamental differences to be comfortable with the parallels. Please go read Mansfield Park!!! I would love to see some Kylo/Henry parallels developing and be able to discuss this with people!