#eliza bennet

[curiousb]

The Darcy Family Album: Volume X

Still with the Darcys today (I had a lot of catching up to do with them), and it's time for a birthday get-together!

Eliza has invited her sister Martha, who has brought her sometime-boyfriend James with her. No one invited Grace the Stroppy Stray - she just showed up of her own accord.

That greeting kiss seems to have sealed the deal for James!

Grandma Mary is also here, eschewing her reclusive lifestyle for once.

Thanks to granddad Fitzwilliam's dedication to the cause - despite his creaking back - Agnes masters walking, just in time!

Aunt Georgiana is also here, and bizarrely, James has decided that she is the girl for him too! (Although they do have a history.)

While he reflects rather soberly on the unexpected turns that his love life has taken within the space of only an hour, his two paramours (not forgetting Olivia and Henrietta too) settle down together for a friendly game of chess.

Frankly, it's all a bit of a relief when the time comes to blow out some candles!

Younger twin Agnes actually goes first.

~ Scorpio 8 / 5 / 10 / 1 / 2

~ Adventurous / Grumpy / No Sense of Humour

~ OTH: Games

~ Favourite Colour(s): Lilac

And then Lewis is up.

~ Scorpio 10 / 5 / 4 / 2 / 7

~ Bookworm / Perfectionist / No Sense of Humour

~ OTH: Science

~ Favourite Colour(s): Olive Green Well, it seems that one of the few things they share - other than a birthday - is a humourless disposition!

Isabel would like everyone to know that she is there too!

Some angry washing up from Lewis.

Beat it, kid.

So he does - and goes to play with his little sister.

Knowing that her grandma is some kind of alienologist, Agnes is keen to find out whether they really have ray guns?

No, Georgiana! I'm with Martha - not best pleased at all with this romantic development! (Although how she can see what's going on from around a corner, I do not know.)

[pedros-immaculate-vibes]

Fun fact Friday

I read all of the stories in my Jane Austen compendium in high school, and I’m currently working through Brian Sanderson’s Mistborn series while I reorganize our basement

Tav is some kind of combo between Eliza Bennet and Vin

[wring-wraith]

people who call Elizabeth Bennet “Lizzy” are my favorite people

[bellemorte79]

Mr. Darcy is the original Depressed Elf Nightmare Man

[mimonoart]

in keira knightley we trust 🫶

[shrinkthisviolet]

Fandom: The Flash

Characters: Morgan Wells (OC), Eobard Thawne/Harrison Wells (“Eowells”), Tina McGee, Eliza Harmon, James Bennet-Evans (OC), Caitlin Snow, Cisco Ramon

Pairings: Morgan & Thawne, Morgan & Tina, Eliza & Morgan, Caitlin & Morgan, Cisco & Morgan, Morgan/James

Summary:

“Soulmarks are merely an indicator of extra special people in your life...whether friend or lover or anything of the sort. But there's no obligation to act on them…and you can absolutely have close relationships with other people.”

“Do...do you have any?”

He smiled and showed her the one on his left shoulder: a cluster of stars with a golden aura. “It's why I call you Starlight, you know.”

She beamed.

Morgan's known about soulmarks nearly her whole life, and she's known just as long that one of them is her dad's. She should feel lucky, to know such a thing so early—parent-child soulmate matches aren't common and are often auspicious.

So why, instead, does she feel so uneasy?

As usual, thank you to the wonderful @occreatorexchange for hosting this 🥰 this was a fun AU to dip my toes into, and I hope to write more of it in the future!

Taglist (send an ask or DM to be added or removed):

@arrthurpendragon @ocappreciationtag @raith-way @vexic929 @ironverseocs

@thechaoticfanartist @goldheartedchaoticdisaster @negative-speedforce @starstruckpurpledragon @angst-is-love-angst-is-life

[bambiraptorx]

I feel like Raph would actually really like books like Pride and Prejudice or Emma because those stories are so low stakes. Nobody dies or is at threat of dying, there are no battles or wars, no one is in danger. A third of these books is people going on walks and chatting. Another third is people going to each other's houses. Everybody gets a more or less happy ending.

[dreamyplaylists]

Pride & Prejudice Playlist

~ 🌹🫖📚🎀🐴 ~

[bethanydelleman]

The Three Possible Fates of Fallen Women

Jane Austen offers three possible fates for women who are entangled in sexual misconduct: To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant farmhouse.

"Come upon the town" means fall into prostitution. Now let's forget for a second how horrible Meryton is being (Wouldn't it be better for gossip if she was ruined forever?) Jane Austen has actually explored all three fates that are mentioned around Lydia Wickham.

In Sense & Sensibility, Eliza Brandon, the divorced and disgraced love of Colonel Brandon, was found by him in a sponging house, probably dying of syphilis, after falling into a life of either prostitution or becoming several people's mistress. "I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin."

Then, in Mansfield Park, Maria Rushworth, also disgraced and divorced, ends up in a distant farmhouse with Mrs. Norris, "It ended in Mrs. Norris’s resolving to quit Mansfield and devote herself to her unfortunate Maria, and in an establishment being formed for them in another country, remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment."

We often think that Lydia has the worst fate, but of the three she seems to have the best. Eliza Brandon and Maria Rushworth suffered far more. All three women were failed by their male guardians/fathers and we see the three possibilities, prostitute/mistress, banishment, or married to an unworthy man. Fortunately for Lydia, her sisters will keep her from anything worse.

[curiousb]

The Knightley Family Album: Volume XVII

James is continuing to throw his heart and soul into establishing his new business, which includes keeping the place tidy.

It's good to get a bit of family support, when mum Jane shows up to see how things are going.

And his efforts are paying off!

It's all going so well that Martha has been drafted in to help out on the till - it's becoming a family concern.

And the (cute) Reporter likes the shop so much, she comes back the next day.

The true mark of a good salesman is being able to sell a pet bed to someone who doesn't even have a pet.

No wonder stock is flying off the shelves.

Perhaps someone should tell Eliza that her husband bought the same aquarium already...

Becoming a self-made man doesn't allow much time for domestic concerns, but worryingly, James seems to be concerning himself more with old flame Georgiana - when she just happens to drop round - than with his own fiancée!

(And with that, my gameplay screenshot reserve is exhausted! Expect something slightly different next week...)

[refabled]

statistical "which character" personality quiz

this is an interactive personality quiz that will match you to fictional characters from a large database based on similarity of description.

Pam Beesly (The Office): 89%

Anna Bates (Downton Abbey): 89%

Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz): 89%

Hilda Spellman (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina): 89%

Rosalind Walker (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina): 89%

Charlie Bucket (Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory): 88%

Littlefoot (The Land Before Time): 88%

Samwise Gamgee (Lord of the Rings): 87%

Eliza Hamilton (Hamilton): 87%

Kara Danvers (Supergirl): 87%

Waverly Earp (Wynonna Earp): 87%

Annie January (The Boys): 87%

Anastasia Steele (Fifty Shades of Grey): 87%

Jane Bennet (Pride and Prejudice): 86%

Belle French (Once Upon a Time): 86%

Jess Day (New Girl): 84%

[pedros-immaculate-vibes]

One of the hardest games to win

Not screaming whenever Matthew McFaddyen and Kiera Knightly sass each other

[thepompusonefrombefore]

I just read the words:

"I'm not afraid of you," he said smilingly.

For the first time in my whole entire life and let me just

[besotted-with-austen]

Lady Catherine de Bourgh: *ranting*-you, my nephew, the son of my sister, with Miss Eliza Bennet! The gall of that girl and her family to spread rumours about you, they really do not understand what it would mean for our family's name! And she did not even blink when I went to confront her! She will not let it go, she will not be persuaded to forget you! Oh, thankfully Mr Collins made me aware of what she was plotting, or I would have been the last to know that she wanted to marry you!

Fitzwilliam Darcy: *flabbergasted* what?

Anne de Bourgh: second-last, I guess.

[princesssarisa]

My post about whether or not Lydia should be saved from Wickham in modern Pride and Prejudice retellings has gotten more likes and reblogs than I expected. It's made me think of another possibility of why Austen didn't save her from him.

Presumably, Lydia and Wickham's marriage could have been avoided in only three ways that would have left Lydia's reputation intact. The first is if they had only been planning to elope, but it was prevented, as with Georgiana. The second is if they had been found earlier and separated before Lydia lost her virginity. Or else Lydia could have listened to Darcy and left Wickham, and then Darcy could have used his influence to protect her honor: e.g. by claiming that she was kidnapped, or by arranging a decent marriage for her.

If Austen had wanted to make any of those choices to free Lydia, she could have done it without drastically changing the plot. But if she had, it might have felt a bit too "literary" and unrealistic.

I've just been re-watching some of Dr. Octavia Cox's literary analysis videos on YouTube. They reminded me that Austen always loved to skewer the tropes and clichés of other literature, especially Gothic melodrama, whether in outright parody or in subtler deconstruction.

Dr. Cox's video on the elder Eliza's fate in Sense and Sensibility particularly highlights this trend in Austen. She argues that Eliza's story is a classic, clichéd Gothic melodrama (a beautiful orphan, an abusive uncle, thwarted romance, forced marriage to a cruel man, a "fall" into a life of "sin," and ultimate illness and death, all narrated by Colonel Brandon in heightened, poetic language), and that Austen's point in including it was arguably to highlight that this wouldn't be the fate of her heroines. Marianne comes close to it with Willoughby and with her near-fatal illness, but in the end she's saved. Austen's point was arguably to say "Yes, I know all about this type of melodrama, I know all the clichés, but I'm relegating it to the backstory, because that's not what I want to write."

(I don't know if everyone would interpret the elder Eliza's storyline this way, but it's how Dr. Cox reads it.)

Maybe with Lydia's fate, and with the backstory of how Georgiana was freed from Wickham, Austen was doing something similar.

I'm not enough of an expert on Georgian literature to know if the rescuing of girls from predatory men with their virginity and honor intact was a cliché or not. But it does appear in late 18th century comic opera. For example, Mozart's Don Giovanni: the title character is the ultimate womanizer, but he has no success with any of the women he tries to prey on over the course of the opera. His seductions are stopped by the timely, chance arrivals of his enemies, his victims get away unscathed, and he pays for his crimes with his life in the end. Or The Marriage of Figaro: the Count's designs on Susanna are thwarted, and he's humiliated and forced to beg his wife's forgiveness.

If stories of womanizers being thwarted and punished, and their female victims saved with virtue intact, were as common in the literature of the day as they are in opera from that era, then maybe Austen used Wickham and Lydia to deconstruct them.

We definitely see some skewering of poetic cliche in the fact that despite Mrs. Bennet's fears/hopes, Lydia's honor is saved with a bribe instead of a duel.

Maybe like the Eliza backstory in Sense and Sensibility, the backstory of Georgiana's near-elopement can be read as a more perfect "literary" example of a girl escaping a cad's clutches. The elopement was thwarted partly by pure chance, as Darcy paid a surprise visit just before Wickham and Georgiana meant to run off, and partly because Georgiana was a “good victim,” whose conscience got the better of her and who chose her family and honor over her whirlwind romance.

But similar luck isn't on Lydia's side, nor does she make the right, “virtuous" choices. Darcy doesn't find the lovers until Lydia has already been living with Wickham, and like a typical reckless teenager, she cares nothing for either her reputation or her family compared to her infatuation with him. So Darcy is forced to bribe Wickham to marry her, Wickham goes unpunished except that he loses his hope of marrying rich, and all the characters have to live with the results of the scandal for the rest of their lives.

By having Georgiana's successful escape from Wickham be mere backstory while foregrounding Lydia's lack of escape, maybe once again Austen was saying "I could have freed Lydia this way – I know the tropes other authors might have used to free her – but I'm a more cynically realistic writer than that, so I won't."

I have no idea if this is valid or not, but it's a theory.