#class prejudice

[whatonearthisgoingon]

@unnecessaryheadache

You'll love this moot. And I'm thinking of really embracing this for Lost Memories.

¿Do you think Sirius and James felt entitled to bully Snape because he was an easy target, being half-blood and poor, while they belonged to pure-blood families?

Yes, and I’ve talked about this many times before too. Sirius and James weren’t just from a higher social class, they were at the very top of the privilege pyramid within Hogwarts: both wealthy, from prominent families, both pure-bloods. There’s an entire social web at play that meant not only did they feel entitled to bully a boy below them both economically and socially, but they also knew — whether consciously or not — that their actions would have no consequences.

And I’m not just referring to the fact that, if they were at risk of being expelled, their families could step in and exert pressure. I’m talking about the economic security they had. If they had been expelled, it wouldn’t have mattered: they had money, they came from affluent backgrounds, they weren’t going to end up on the streets, they weren’t going to lose everything. If Severus had been expelled, he would’ve had to go back to a slum in a deprived area, with an abusive father, in an environment where he couldn’t even afford proper clothes. Going home wasn’t an option for him, going home meant losing any chance, no matter how small, of doing something with his life.

Sirius and James didn’t have to worry about that. They had options. So of course, it was much easier to go after the boy who not only already came from a disadvantaged situation — and was therefore a more vulnerable target — but also couldn’t defend himself with full force because doing so could get him expelled, and that was a risk he simply couldn’t afford. That played a major role in the whole dynamic. Sirius and James were a pair of privileged, aristocratic brats, and their true colours showed when they found the perfect victim, someone they felt entitled to bully for his ideas or his friendships. But regardless of Severus’s views, the truth is that this was a situation involving two boys with power targeting a boy with no support. That’s not just abusive, it’s profoundly classist.

If James and Sirius had any real courage or genuine political ideals, they would’ve gone after Mulciber, Avery, or Rosier, but those three weren’t easy targets, and messing with them wouldn’t have come cheap. So, well… better to go for the poor kid, right?

Defending that kind of behaviour is defending abuse of power, classism, and bullying based on social prejudice. And it absolutely disgusts me that there are still people out there trying to justify or sugarcoat the actions of James and Sirius — because they were vile.

[ninjagoiwtv]

This Erik with this Charles

[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.

[stealingpotatoes]

in your period drama au, who has the highest royal status?

(also just out of curiosity is ahsoka human)

due to the fact i can't draw anything without making an extensive plot for it in my head, my fun little au is actually about luke and leia befriending each other in some bridgerton-style debutante season completely unaware they're the children of the reclusive queen amidala and her secret knight lover (princess at the time of the relationship) <3 but they find this out thru mystery-ing and some secondary plot yay

but yeah to answer your question more directly padme is the queen, satine is a duchess obvs, leia's some sort of lady or ladyling, and luke is upper class non-nobility of some sort idk (until he becomes prince and leia princess), and the jedi are all knights

speaking of jedi uh. i never thought about ahsoka in this but i'll draw more period drama au and get back to you <3

[lotus-pear]

does anyone have some rly good life-changing soul-crushing gut-wrenching shuake fic recs?? lowkey kinda desperate here please help a girl out

[elwenyere]

The way class and money work in Austen is really interesting, and it's specific to the transition from a system of income and prestige based primarily on land ownership to a capitalist one where wealth increasingly circulated through commercialism and market exchange. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet is a member of the gentry: the only one in Meryton aside from Mr. Darcy whose source of wealth (a 2000-pound-a-year income from the family estate) is solely landed and generational (the Bingley sisters don't acknowledge it, but their fortune was acquired by trade, and Bingley's - and his father's - unfulfilled intention to purchase an estate at some point would be a way to acquire some old-money prestige). This is what makes Elizabeth, even by Lady Catherine de Bourgh's estimation, a "gentleman's daughter." This is also a key part of what puts the Bennet sisters in a precarious financial position. The family estate is entailed to the male next-of-kin (Mr. Collins), so none of the daughters can inherit it or plan to live on its annual income after Mr. Bennet's death. In the meantime they're still required to undergo certain expenses to keep up the social appearance that validates their status (keeping a carriage, having new gowns, etc.), but they cannot work for a salary without forfeiting their gentility, and the kind of education that would be allowed to them (even if their parents had hired a governess, which they didn't) would be limited to those "accomplishments" that increased their value on the marriage market and reaffirmed their class status (when Darcy and the Bingleys discuss what makes a woman accomplished, the list largely involves proficiency in deportment and the decorative and performance arts, and only Darcy includes improvement of the mind through reading). And while the public behavior of Mrs. Bennet, Lydia, and Kitty in particular takes an embarrassing toll on the family's social standing - and Lydia's running off with Wickham is potentially catastrophic for their moral standing - for members of the landed aristocracy like Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and to a lesser extent Darcy, as he admits the connection will hurt the Bennet sisters' prospects), it's the ties that Mrs. Bennet's family, including the Gardiners, have to trade and to commercial wealth that makes their social status suspect. As Lady Catherine says to Elizabeth when confronting her about the rumored engagement to Darcy: "You are a gentleman’s daughter. But what was your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their condition." In many of her novels Austen explores the tensions created by shifts in the early-nineteenth-century class structure, as a more capitalistic system of wealth generation and transfer emerged. In Pride and Prejudice the Gardiners play a key role in getting Elizabeth and Darcy together not only by physically bringing them into the same space again but also by serving as a morally laudable example of the new, trade-based and professional middle class, whose behavior wins Darcy's respect and helps overcome aristocratic prejudices. Austen also satirizes (including in the opening line of P&P) the way the marriage market made spouses into an asset of capitalist exchange, and she interrogates (more or less sympathetically, in the cases of Charlotte Lucas and Caroline Bingley) what it means for women to assent to commodifying themselves as marriage products.

The income Austen gives Darcy in P&P is fairy-tale level, in a novel that would otherwise be described as realist. He could certainly support an in-law or five, but beyond that it's interesting to consider what that kind of rarefied wealth means for Austen's attempt to imagine (through Jane and Elizabeth) a path for women to achieve financial stability without losing themselves.

[mulberry-madness]

The most unserious thing about hyperfixating on classic literature is that I live in fear of spoilers for a book written 200 years ago

[taradactyls]

Found something interesting for Pride and Prejudice fans relating to Elizabeth's takedown of Mr Darcy's perception of himself a gentleman.

I'm reading Thomas Fuller's 'The Holy State, and the Profane State' (published 1642 but this version republished in 1841 so the views were clearly still applicable) for a research essay, and in the chapter labelled 'The True Gentleman' he states:

He is courteous and affable to his neighbours … the truly generous are most pliant and courteous in their behaviour to their inferiors.

And of course, during the Hunsford proposal, Darcy has just objected to Elizabeth's family, she's called him out, and we get the iconic lines:

"Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections?—to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?" "You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner."

So Elizabeth drops that bomb just after he's been ungenerous and discourteous about her inferior relations... in direct contradiction of one of the rules of true gentlemanly behaviour. No wonder he can't rebut her words at all in the moment, even though Darcy later says "it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice." He might not believe he's got a real problem yet, but there's been examples Elizabeth could call on from even during the course of their conversation too blatant for him to disagree with entirely!

And then later, obviously, he reflects and finds it's true he also hasn't been gentlemanlike in this and other ways in too many aspects of his life.

[jomiddlemarch]

Five Times Aristocrats Shared a Bed and One Time They Didn’t*

(*where “they” have delusions of grandeur)

1.

“If it is your preference, I shall give you your privacy and I will seek your permission before entering your chamber,” Fitzwilliam said stiffly, reminding Elizabeth so much of the aloof stranger she’d first seen at a Meryton dance that she could not keep from laughing.

“Madam?” he asked, taken aback.

She had learnt him well enough to wait to speak until she’d laid her hand upon his chest, where he could not fail to see his ring upon her finger.

“I’ve never slept alone in my life and I shouldn’t like to start now,” she said. “I warn you and Jane will confirm it, my feet get cold but I despise bed-socks.”

“It will be my pleasure to keep you warm, Elizabeth,” he said.

2.

“I’ve made sure your suite was entirely redecorated, all in the loveliest shades of green and indigo, and I spoke with your housekeeper, to ensure your mattress here is just as you like it,” Emma said.

George raised an eyebrow in inquiry. It was quite the most devilish expression and she wished she were capable of matching it.

“You have already undertaken so much, leaving Donwell Abbey and coming to live at Hartfield, you deserved to have a place of your own, a retreat when you cannot bear another second of Papa’s exhortations about the risk of cold lettuce on a young man’s chest or my silly prattling,” she explained.

“Mrs. Knightley, what I cannot bear is to be apart from you at night,” he said, moving closer as he spoke. “To wake without you in my arms.”

“Well, you needn’t,” she said, while she could. 

She was not sorry when she couldn’t. Not one bit.

3.

“If you’d like, my dear, I’ll sleep in my dressing room,” Charles said. “I know aristocrats don’t share a bed. My parents did but of course, Father was in trade, for all that Caroline wants to pretend we’re the obscure cadet branch of some viscount from the North. I asked Darcy and he turned rather puce but he did say it was so—”

“We’re not aristocrats, Charles,” Jane replied.

“You’re a gentleman’s daughter, Jane, a lady to the very tips of your toes,” Charles replied.

“Whoever the Bingleys are, we’re only Charles and Jane here,” she said. “And whatever you consider the tips of my toes, I’m your wife first and last.”

“You’ll send me to my dressing room if I snore, though. You must promise me that, you’re too good a creature to complain about anything but I shan’t have you exhausted,” Charles said.

“If you snore, I promise, I’ll wake you,” Jane said.

She’d learnt quite quickly how her husband took his tea and how to lie to him.

4.

“When we choose an estate, I’ll make sure there’s a separate chamber for you, sweetheart,” Frederick said softly. “You’ll want that after being crammed into this crowded little cabin—”

“It’s snug,” Anne said, turning slightly so she might see his dear face better. The moonlight from the porthole took him from the epitome of a British sea-captain and changed him into a figure of romance or myth, a god all silver and shadow. “I shouldn’t like anything better than this, this perfect refuge that’s ours alone and the sound of the waves.”

“We’ll choose a place by the sea,” he said. “A house with a view, plenty of space, light and airy.”

“But I don’t care to sleep apart, no matter had bad Ton it is,” she said. “We were apart long enough.”

5.

“Don’t say we must be stuffy aristocrats about it and sleep in separate rooms and you’re to knock at my door and wait there in a banyan and slippers for me to bid you enter,” Marianne said in a rush, exhilarated by the fresh air, the vista before them, Colonel Brandon’s arm around her waist. He did not yet believe she was steady on her feet after her illness and she could not convince him otherwise, had she been inclined to try. “There is nothing romantic about that, nothing ravishing—”

“There will be ravishing, my dear,” he replied. “In one room, one bed, if that’s what you want.”

“I quite fancy the contrast, how splendidly massive Delaford is and then to imagine the two of us tucked away, almost in a garret,” she said dreamily.

“I draw the line at a garret,” he said. “And I do wear a banyan and slippers when it’s chilly.”

6.

“Some would say we’ve pretentions beyond our station, Mrs. Collins, yes, some would say that very thing, but for someone, if you will, attached to a lady as elevated as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, for a clergyman with refined taste and a sense of elegant delicacy derived from a close association with an aristocrat like her Ladyship, well, it hardly seems the argument that we’re aping our betters should be given the least credence,” Mr. Collins declared, speaking much as he would giving one of his sermons. Anything to do with Lady Catherine called for that tone of voice, a fact Charlotte had gleaned after three days in the vicarage.

“As you say, Mr. Collins,” Charlotte replied.

“It’s a squeeze, I’m quite aware of that, but I had the box room fitted out and the alcove in the larger room can serve as a dressing room, if it comes to it,” he said.

“I’ve no complaints, sir,” Charlotte replied. 

Indeed, her husband’s announcement that they would have separate sleeping chambers had made her nearly as happy as his offer to wed and might very well be her salvation.

Posted late for Janeuary 2025 @janeuary-month Day 21, prompt: aristocracy

[firthbetterorfirthworse]

The 2005 Pride & Prejudice is gourmet comfort food at a Michelin restaurant

It is exquisitely crafted

Fundamentally misses the point of the source material

I leave the experience starving

[thedupshadove]

Turning over the idea of an all-genderflipped Pride and Prejudice, not for the first time, and it suddenly occurs to me...is a female Fitzwilliam Darcy just Emma Wodehouse?

[bennetsbonnet]

I got very excited when I discovered that Pride and Prejudice (2005) will be shown here in cinemas for its twentieth anniversary next month, because it is a visually stunning film and it deserves to be watched on the big screen.

But then I read the description and... that is certainly a choice of how to summarise the story. Even for the film, which diverged a lot from the novel, I still think this is kind of ridiculous.

'Sparks fly,' hmmm are we sure? Pretty sure a man dismissing a woman as 'tolerable' at their first meeting isn't the height of romance.

Yes, Elizabeth is 'spirited' and Mr Darcy is 'single, rich and proud.' Sure, 'reluctant' is maybe a little harsh but I can see what they mean but... 'beneath his class'?? 'BENEATH HIS CLASS'????

Such an accusation is levelled at Elizabeth by Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who calls her an 'upstart...without family, connections, or fortune,' and warns her, 'if you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere in which you have been brought up.'

But Elizabeth shuts that notion down at once, and I'll leave it to her to explain why she is not beneath Mr Darcy:

'In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal.'

No, Pride and Prejudice is not an enemies to lovers romance; nor are Elizabeth and Mr Darcy star-crossed lovers tragically doomed by their circumstances. They are hindered by their pride and their prejudice... that's quite important.

I just... how do you manage to irritate me this much with only two sentences?! Mind-boggling. I'll still go and I'm honestly quite excited to watch it in the cinema, but I needed to rant.

[bethanydelleman]

I love when I'm reading through accounts of monarchies and suddenly there is a crisis! There are no direct male heirs but a direct female heir. The only male heir is indirect and has Poor People Cooties. What will they do?

Turns out the kingdom of Silla opted for Class Discrimination, resulting in three Queens who ruled in their own right.

I find it really interesting. Is it easier to argue that a girl with all the Divine Right of King's Blood is SPECIAL & DIFFERENT than a Dude with Less Divine Blood who is further down the social ladder? How do you get around the argument that if the divine only gave you daughters maybe he was sending some sort of message? I suppose that the monarchs themselves would also be likely to push for their own children above distant relatives, especially if they want their legacy preserved.

Anyway, I always love to see which prejudice turns out to be stronger in the end.

(Side note: the Silla system used "bone" instead of "blood" to denote how special your heritage was and for some reason that seems so strange to me, but then why does blood make more sense?)

[wring-wraith]

thinking about this bad summary of Pride and Prejudice I made in eighth grade so I wouldn’t forget the plot while doing a report

[vaguelyhumanshaped]

Wicked truly is just like, the Autistic Black engineering student wants to fix the world's injustices by asking for help from the president, but when she gets there he's the CEO of Lockheed Martin and is asking her to pretty please build him some bombs please, and also her performative-woke white liberal girlfriend who didn't take maths or science but thinks "bombs are cool" is there

[io-lu-art]

"Well then, your hands are cold."

After the obligatory annual rewatch of Pride and Prejudice my father asked me: "Why does Lizzy tell Mr Darcy that his hands are cold after he confesses his love to her again?"

And I didn't know how to answer that - UNTIL. I. REALISED.

WILD GUESS, but if I recall correctly from my limited experience of 21 years on planet earth, your hands get cold when you are anxious about something or nervous or what not (excluding the cases of external temperature change or sickness, we are talking pure emotions here).

Now watch this:

Throughout the movie there are 3 deliberate closeups on Darcy's hands before the climax, all of which occur in immediate proximity to Lizzy. And I cannot help but notice, without wanting connect one with the other right on the nose...

...look at his hands! He is SO. NERVOUS. around her it makes me wanna scream and giggle and cry-

Now, I hope it is not too bold of me to assume, but...

...I mean you clearly see where this is going...

When he helped her onto the carriage...

...when they were dancing, when they finally meet on the field at dawn.

You put everything together and you've got your answer.

So, what's my theory? Darcy's hands have been cold all this time when we see him around Lizzy. And Lizzy has been paying attention.

That's it. That's the juice.

You may go on with your normal life now while as you still can.

Pls tell me someone else figured this out before me and I am just late to the party.