#which elizabeth do I want to be

[eerna]

me explaining why Will/Elizabeth/Jack love triangle was a perfect little one-movie arc that wasn't present in the final movie because it was never about choosing and instead just about dynamics and character development so they all outgrew it by then

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[bibyshitsuji24k]

spooky season

[rain-on-wax-feathers]

nonhuman burr, washington, and eliza!!!

[realredbanana]

There’s something so intriguing to me about how Rachel has stronger “prophecy powers” than Octavian, but she can’t control when she speaks prophecies, yet Octavian’s “prophecy powers” are much weaker, but he can control when he reads them.

[happybunnykat]

I think Jmart would work really well in a Pride and Prejudice au bc I think Jon proposing to Martin while insulting him would be funny.

[p2iimon]

fnaf furries 2 electric boogaloo these are more well thought out and i learned what a fucking rabbit looked like

[averlym]

,,, sun-dappled sheets...

[sussex-newswire]

"Meghan became the first royal to guest-edit an issue of the fashion bible for its September 2019 edition, which she collaborated on with then-editor Edward Enninful.

"The duchess chose to spotlight 15 high-profile women who she considered to be Forces for Change and included them on the cover shot by favorite fashion photographer, Peter Lindbergh, along with a mirrored square intended to represent the reflection of the reader.

"The issue also included a personal interview conducted by Meghan with former first lady, Michelle Obama, and an interview with conservationist Jane Goodall conducted by Prince Harry.

"It became British Vogue's fastest selling edition in history and was the biggest-selling issue of the past decade.

"Now, five years later, the legacy of Meghan's issue lives on. The publication has marked...the anniversary of the Forces for Change concept by asking the initial 15 trailblazing women selected by Meghan to nominate their own candidates for the honor."

[friendlycursedspaceotter]

In vain I have struggled. It will not do. The past few weeks have been a torment. I cannot complete the essay on how Pride and Prejudice combats amatonormativity through the emphasis on familial and sisterly relationships, and also contains extensive evidence for my aroace Mary headcanon and how Jane Austen inadvertently created one of the first queer characters in British media by 11:59 tonight. I have fought against the threat of failure in the class, my worse judgements, and the great admiration of my beloved feminist literature teacher. I am now in need to ask her to put aside all that and end my agony.

I hate this. Most ardently. Please do me the honor of allowing me to make it into a Tumblr post.

[wonder-worker]

Thinking about Elizabeth Woodville as a gothic heroine is making me go insane. She entered the story by overturning existing social structures, provoking both ire and fascination. She married into a dynasty doomed to eat itself alive. She was repeatedly associated with the supernatural, both in terms of love and death. Her life was shaped entirely by uncanny repetitions - two marriages, two widowhoods, two depositions, two flights to sanctuary, two ultimate reclamations, all paralleling and ricocheting off each other. Her plight after 1483 exposed the true rot at the heart of the monarchy - the trappings of royalty pulled away to reveal nothing, a never-ending cycle of betrayal and war, the price of power being the (literal) blood of children. She lived past the end of her family name, she lived past the end of her myth. She ended her life in a deeply anomalous position, half-in and half-out of royal society. She was both a haunting tragedy and the ultimate survivor who was finally free.

[dorianwolfforest]

FMK MILF edition

[cinemaocd]

about to fuck up a mental health day

[iampikachuhearmeroar]

im sorry UTS, but WHAT on fucking earth is "creative intelligence and innovation"????? and why on earth would anyone studying nursing or midwifery need "entrepreneurship and innovation" as a double degree??

[sm0lcatfish]

is there anything i could do? i could try?

you can’t help me. maybe figure out your own problems.

[mxcottonsocks]

I've seen a few reviews of Lady Audley's Secret which say they either didn't enjoy the book because they were able to guess the secret early on, or who say they enjoyed the book despite guessing the secret early (I've been in this latter camp myself in the past).

But lately I've been thinking... I think the reader is supposed to know what "the secret" is.

[SPOILERS for Lady Audley's Secret below the cut.]

I think there's two things to bear in mind about Lady Audley's Secret:

It is a sensation novel, not a mystery novel. It certainly has a lot of elements of the modern mystery and detective genres, and (along with other sensation literature) did influence the development of those genres, but it predates them (in their modern forms at least). Therefore, while I understand why modern readers tend to approach the book with the expectation that it will conform to the standards of the mystery genre, I think we do the book and author a disservice when we do so.

Lady Audley has more than one "secret" throughout the book. I think there are at least three secrets, which I will refer to as: 1. The Initial Secret (bigamy; that Lucy Audley and Helen Talboys are the same person); 2. The Secret of the Cover Up (the conspiracy at Ventnor; pushing George down the well so her secret isn't revealed to Sir Michael); and 3. The Underlying Secret, the one which is referred to as "the secret of my life" and "the secret which is the key to my life" (that she's mad). Depending on your interpretation, there's also potentially another secret still (that she's not mad at all).

The Initial Secret, the bigamy, is the one I think most people are talking about when they say they guessed the secret. And yes, it is obvious. All the clues are fed to the reader within the first three chapters. Robert Audley doesn't enter the book until Chapter 4 and then spends a good chunk of the book investigating this secret (he also guesses the secret relatively early on, I think, and then sets about checking his suspicions).

The Secret of the Cover Up is also fairly obvious (the general gist of it, anyway, if not the details) relatively early. George's disappearance is what sparks Robert's investigation.

The Underlying Secret is perhaps less easy to guess, but not impossible. Robert doesn't guess this one ahead of its revelation, but the reader might.

So, yes, if a reader approaches the book with the expectation that there's one big secret and that it's going to take a lot of mental effort for the characters and reader to figure out, and that their suspicions will be confirmed or denied at the end of the book, they're likely going to be disappointed.

But I don't think that's what Braddon was trying to do.

Most of the dramatic tension of the novel does not come from the reader wondering "what is the secret". That's just one factor. Other factors include:

How information is revealed and concealed, both by characters and by the book itself

The escalation of events, secrets and stakes

The external conflict between the characters, especially the 'battle' between the protagonist and the antagonist (whichever way round you think they are - readers differ)

The internal conflict in the characters, especially Robert (e.g. duty to society vs duty to his family name; duty to his friend vs duty to his uncle)

Big Emotions

Questions of morality (e.g. where do different characters believe that a moral line is crossed, if at all? what do they think is forgivable behaviour? what do they think is justified-in-the-circumstances? what do they think is unforgivable? what do you, the reader, think?)

Lady Audley's Secret (and Sensation novels in general, from my experience so far) seems to be less about the 'destination' (i.e. what the secret is) and more about the journey, the drama and emotions along the way.

So yeah, this is all a very long-winded way of saying: yes, it's easy to figure out what's happened fairly early on in the book, but I think that's intentional on the author's part, and 'having it all figured out' needn't negatively affect our experience of the story if we don't let it.