beatriceaware

[beatriceaware]

[beatriceaware]

I feel like when people talk about Knightley in the canon of Austen heroes it’s always “he’s the friend who will call you out” and he IS but he’s also has soooo much like, social grace?? not in the shallow way of “manner” that Austen is always undermining, but in a deeper way that has real compassion at its root! he puts people at ease!! he takes care of them!! he thinks about what people’s needs are and then he finds a solution, without being asked! put him in a group situation and he won’t be witty and charming and make everyone laugh, but he WILL find the person suffering and quietly make their troubles go away

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@genevamichaels

Romance novels: This story ends in marriage.

Arranged marriage trope: what if….the story STARTS with marriage?

Me:

[beatriceaware]

Me, reading a regency romance novel: all of these men must have syphilis. the women know that the men are visiting brothels and yet are willing to marry them (despite the very real risk that they will also contract syphilis). genuinely i don't think modern authors understand how risky it was to have multiple sexual partners, not just in terms of reputation but in terms of actual life and death

[beatriceaware]

real talk i’m so tired of anachronism in period dramas. i just want proper clothing, proper hairstyles and proper dialogues.

[beatriceaware]

not to be columbo on main, but I'm just saying, Wishbone went off air and now we have university students passing over classics

[beatriceaware]

Ladies and gentlemen of tumblr (but mostly ladies, let's face it), I'm so excited to introduce you to my good friend's new first book

What Comes Of Attending The Commoners Ball.

Cinderella meets Howl’s Moving Castle in this cozy fantasy romance from debut author Elisabeth Aimee Brown. Preorder your copy and prepare to whirl away into a whimsical story of glittering gaslamps, frisky Folk, and huggable hogs.

— * — * — * —

I hope you guys will go check her out on instagram @elisabethaimeebrown and follow her for updates and spread this post like crazy.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/215353471

[beatriceaware]

books about bugs

[beatriceaware]

Stories will be like it looks like doing something wrong will help more in the long term but the character chooses to do good despite it putting them at a disadvantage and then in the end that's actually what saves them after all even though they couldn't forsee it they could only have faith. And I cry.

[beatriceaware]

Review: Marriage (1818)

"How very distressing Sir Sampson's cough is!" said the sympathizing Miss Grizzy.

"Distressing, child! no- it's not the least distressing. How can a thing be distressing that does no harm? He's much the better for it- it's the only exercise he gets."

Synopsis: Marriage (1818) is the shrewdly observant and humorous take of young women making their marriage choices and having to live with them. Charting the lives of two generations, the novel centres on Mary, a Scottish heroine whose wisdom contrasts with her foolish mother and rash sister. She leaves her domestic haven in the Highlands to brave the perils of faraway London, in a reversal of the traditional coming-of-age narrative. The contemporary of Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, Susan Ferrier addresses the issues of national identity an culture, and exposes English prejudice towards the Scots as itself a form of provincialism. - Oxford University Press edition, 1997

If Waverley took me the longest to get through in my Georgian reading goal, Marriage, by far, has taken me the shortest amount of time. I think this can partially be blamed on the writing style; you can really start to see a shift between the older Regency novels of years prior and this one. There is more dialogue, more showing instead of simply telling, and more action on-page rather than just summary or narration. On the flip side, this means that the annoying aspects of characters can really pull through; I probably drove both my mother and my best friends crazy by updating them on the absolute wreck of a dislikable character that is Lady Juliana Douglas. Unfortunately, her rash marriage and infuriating self-absorbed reaction to the realities of it take over the first third of the book, though a part of you can’t help but watch her awfulness like a bad car wreck. Novels of this time period certainly have their fair share of despicable characters, but this was the first time my book-rage was actually triggered in one, and I would have paid money to enter that book just for the sole purpose of slapping the woman.

A fresh burst of cries from the unfortunate baby again called forth its mother's indignation.

"I wish to goodness that child was gagged," cried [Lady Juliana], holding hands to her ears. "It has done nothing but scream since the hour it was born, and it makes me quite sick to hear it."

"Poor little dear," said Mrs. Douglas compassionatly. "It appears to suffer a great deal."

"Suffer!" repeated her sister-in-law. "What can it suffer? I am sure it meets with a great deal more attention than any person in this house. These three old women do nothing but feed it morning to night, with everything they can think of, and make such a fuss about it!"

Mary, her daughter, is raised in Scotland, while Lady Juliana takes her twin sister, Adelaide, along with her when she moves back to England. I will say that the synopsis given here is a little inaccurate: the English portion of the story takes place in the countryside, not London, and Adelaide is more cold and ambitious than rash. Mary is a far more likable character than either her mother or sister, if at times a bit dull. She is not entirely without personality, and as I said, she’s not so much of an ideal of perfection that she isn’t likable, but it does feel like the author spends far more time on giving us character sketches of eccentric acquaintances than on digging into Mary herself. As a romance in the modern sense, this book fails: Mary’s love interest is barely in it, and we never get enough interactions between the two to really feel anything about their relationship, even if he seems like a nice enough fellow.

My favorite character would probably have to be Mary’s cousin, Lady Emily: raised by Lady Juliana, she’s also selfish and spoiled and not exactly morally centered, but she has intelligence and a heart, and I find that it’s rather rare to find such a flawed character as actual friends with the heroine without her eventually being revealed as two-faced or inconstant (such as, say…Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey).

Lady Emily remained with her cousin; but she was a poor comforter: her indignation against the oppressor was always much stronger than her sympathy with the oppressed; and she would have been more in her element scolding the mother than soothing the daughter.

As a satire/critique on contemporary society, there’s certainly a lot here. Ferrier is merciless in showing how ridiculous the English prejudice against the Scottish can be, while also being perfectly willing to make some of those Scottish characters just as ridiculous as her English ones. The novel's statements on marriage are ones I find pretty well-matched with my own, even two hundred years later. The book’s main message is that the wisest marriages are born of a match made with both affection and sense, but it also compares the woman whose entire life revolves around her husband so that she cannot make a decision without him, with the woman whose independence causes her to behave as if he does not even exist, and how both are just as ridiculous in their own way. The book does devolve into moralizing here and there, but it was woven into the narrative a bit better than I’ve seen it done elsewhere.

"It's impossible the bagpipe could frighten anybody," said Miss Jacky in a high key; "nobody with common sense could be frightened by a bagpipe." [about Lady Juliana's screeching upon hearing one for the first time]

Despite this book’s host of unlikable characters and its uneven pacing, when all is said and done, I have to admit I enjoyed the book as a whole, even if some of that enjoyment came from screaming and complaining about it to my friends and family.

[beatriceaware]

[beatriceaware]

space books ✨🪐🌘

[beatriceaware]

Honestly when people say their art needs to get "more weird" they usually mean that as in "less commercial/less broadly appealing" and I think the answer to this is not to insert artificial Quirky Weird Style Stuff into it I think you just need to get uncomfortably earnest. What's the thing you really want to draw but feel shy about putting the effort into because it'd be too sincere an admission. You need to draw that. I want to see it

[beatriceaware]

Y'all have gotta get more insane about platonic relationships like you are about romantic relationships. We need to get more annoying about them NOW. I need to see more meta and losing our minds over them. Get more annoying NOW. More than that. More than that also.

[beatriceaware]

Review: Waverley (1814)

"Hospitality to the exile, and broken bones to the tyrant."

Synopsis: Waverley is set during the Jacobite Rising of 1745, which sought to restore the Stuart dynasty in the person of Charles Edward Stuart (or 'Bonnie Prince Charlie'). It relates the story of a young dreamer and English soldier, Edward Waverley, who was sent to Scotland in 1745. He journeys North from his aristocratic family home, Waverley-Honour, in the south of England (alleged in an English Heritage notice to refer to Waverley Abbey in Surrey) first to the Scottish Lowlands and the home of family friend Baron Bradwardine, then into the Highlands and the heart of the 1745 Jacobite uprising and aftermath. (from Goodreads)

I can't lie that out of all of my Georgian/Regency reading, this one has by far taken me the longest to get through. However, one can't really seriously foray into Regency novels without spending time on Sir Walter Scott, and his first novel seemed a good place to start. (I did read Ivanhoe once, years ago, but do not really remember enough to comment on it)

I admit that, for me, this one was a bit hard because of how political it was. As someone not naturally drawn to politics and who tends to find them confusing even in her own time, that didn't bode well for me here. That being said, I did enjoy the moments Scott's humor bled through the narration. One early chapter in particular is an absolute slog of political background, and just as I was about to lose my mind, he ended the chapter with an apology because he knew it was boring but the context was needed to understand the conflict of the rest of the book. So at least...he was self aware? 😅

But some bits in particular really did make me laugh, like the opening of chapter 24:

Shall this be a long or a short chapter?- This is a question in which you, gentle reader, have no vote, however much you may be interested in the consequences; just as you may (like myself) probably have nothing to do with imposing a new tax, excepting the trifling circumstance of being obliged to pay it.

Edward Waverley himself is a bit bland and dull; something of an everyman tossed through the story to showcase (quite frankly) more interesting characters, though this bit about him did remind me of Mr. Darcy:

Where we are not at ease, we cannot be happy; and therefore it should not be surprising that Edward Waverley supposed that he disliked and was unfitted for society, merely because he had not yet acquired the habit of living in it with ease and comfort, and of reciprocating and receiving pleasure.

My favorite part of the novel was actually just the name choices....like Cosmo Comyne Bradwardine, Donald Bean Lean, Ebenezer Cruickshanks, John Mucklewrath, Mrs. Nosebag...Sir Walter Scott walked so Charles Dickens could run.

I think the trouble with this book is that it is set up ripe for adventure, and yet one never really feels the action, at least not as we are used to today. Still, I can see why it was popular, and I would argue that it is well-written, too, but that Scott's style of writing is not shown off to its best advantage here. I'm interested in reading more of his works to see if I enjoy them more than this one.

[beatriceaware]

I have come to realize that, to me, one of the worst crimes a piece of fiction can commit is being mean-spirited. Just about anything else can be good in certain circumstances. But a mean-spirited work diminishes anyone who encounters it.

[beatriceaware]

“She doesn’t do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen’s point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.”

—

Susanna Clarke

She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.