#more Pride less Prejudice

[whetstonefires]

You know what I realize that people underestimate with Pride & Prejudice is the strategic importance of Jane.

Because like, I recently saw Charlotte and Elizabeth contrasted as the former being pragmatic and the latter holding out for a love match, because she's younger and prettier and thinks she can afford it, and that is very much not what's happening.

The Charlotte take is correct, but the Elizabeth is all wrong. Lizzie doesn't insist on a love match. That's serendipitous and rather unexpected. She wants, exactly as Mr. Bennet says, someone she can respect. Contempt won't do. Mr. Bennet puts it in weirdly sexist terms like he's trying to avoid acknowledging what he did to himself by marrying a self-absorbed idiot, but it's still true. That's what Elizabeth is shooting for: a marriage that won't make her unhappy.

She's grown up watching how miserable her parents make one another; she's not willing to sign up for a lifetime of being bitter and lonely in her own home.

I think she is very aware, in refusing Mr. Collins, that it's reasonably unlikely that anyone she actually respects is going to want her, with her few accomplishments and her lack of property. That she is turning down security and the chance keep the house she grew up in, and all she gets in return may be spinsterhood.

But, crucially, she has absolute faith in Jane.

The bit about teaching Jane's daughters to embroider badly? That's a joke, but it's also a serious potential life plan. Jane is the best creature in the world, and a beauty; there's no chance at all she won't get married to someone worthwhile.

(Bingley mucks this up by breaking Jane's heart, but her prospects remain reasonable if their mother would lay off!)

And if Elizabeth can't replicate that feat, then there's also no doubt in her mind that Jane will let her live in her house as a dependent as long as she likes, and never let it be made shameful or awful to be that impoverished spinster aunt. It will be okay never to be married at all, because she has her sister, whom she trusts absolutely to succeed and to protect her.

And if something eventually happens to Jane's family and they can't keep her anymore, she can throw herself upon the mercy of the Gardeners, who have money and like her very much, and are likewise good people. She has a support network--not a perfect or impregnable one, but it exists. It gives her realistic options.

Spinsterhood was a very dangerous choice; there are reasons you would go to considerable lengths not to risk it.

But Elizabeth has Jane, and her pride, and an understanding of what marrying someone who will make you miserable costs.

That's part of the thesis of the book, I would say! Recurring Austen thought. How important it is not to marry someone who will make you, specifically, unhappy.

She would rather be a dependent of people she likes and trusts than of someone she doesn't, even if the latter is formally considered more secure; she would rather live in a happy, reasonable household as an extra than be the mistress of her own home, but that home is full of Mr. Collins and her mother.

This is a calculation she's making consciously! She's not counting on a better marriage coming along. She just feels the most likely bad outcome from refusing Mr. Collins is still much better than the certain outcome of accepting him. Which is being stuck with Mr. Collins forever.

Elizabeth is also being pragmatic. Austen also endorses her choice, for the person she is and the concerns she has. She's just picking different trade-offs than Charlotte.

Elizabeth's flaw is not in her own priorities; she doesn't make a reckless choice and get lucky. But in being unable to accept that Charlotte's are different, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with Charlotte.

Because realistically, when your marriage is your whole family and career forever, and you only get to pick the ones that offer themselves to you, when you are legally bound to the status of dependent, you're always going to be making some trade-offs.

😂 Even the unrealistically ideal dream scenario of wealthy handsome clever ethical Mr. Darcy still asks you to undergo personal growth, accommodate someone else's communication style, and eat a little crow.

[the-lilac-grove]

[ao3-crack]

(x)

[lunarharp]

things.. uh... Gentry era au

[bethanydelleman]

Jane Austen: So here is my heroine. She's slightly less hot than her sister.

Reader: Okay... so what does she look like?

Jane Austen: She has a very intelligent expression in her dark eyes.

Reader: Hair colour? Eye colour (dark is a shade)? Height, weight, skin tone? I guess we know she's shorter than Lydia...

Jane Austen (ignoring the questions entirely): Here is my hero, he is hotter than his friend, tall, and noble looking.

Reader: Hair colour?

Jane Austen: Do you really expect me to do all the work?

Announcing my next blog post: Imagining Jane Austen's Heroines (with period portraits)

(a follow up to my post on the Austen men)

[heynhay]

As a fellow top 0.1% mitski listener I want to say thank you for existing

asks that initially gave me a level 10 heart attack

[cursemewithyourkiss]

Whenever people are comparing literary adaptations and go well of course it's going to be very compressed it's a film! the adaptation can't help that! Like... I'm sorry but film is just one medium and if you choose a certain medium you're responsible for the consequences. They could've made a mini series but they didn't. I will complain about the story being compressed!

[lit-in-thy-heart]

‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?’

PRIDE & PREJUDICE (dir. Joe Wright)

timestamp roulette + pale sunset after the rain palette

[dimdiamond]

Pride and Prejudice au and here's the moment everything falls apart for Chang but he's not the only one in pain.

@yacrimago sorry but I had to.

[izzielizzie]

Fitzwilliam Darcy

I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun

Favorite Book Characters from A to Z (6/22)

[smallphoenix13]

when’s choices gonna make a dark academia story?

[daydreamerbeliever]

Analysis is watching both Pride and Prejudice adaptations back to back to find the true superior.

[amarrymeinbostonwriter]

"You can only keep 20 books out of all the books you own" tag

I saw this originally on @theinquisitxor 's page. I thought I'd do my own version of their tag.

Hypothetically, you are only able to keep 20 of your books. Only one book per author/series. So what books are you keeping?

This was hard. I only picked from books I've read all the way through. This list also includes two honorable mentions (because I couldn't limit myself :/). I'll list the titles and authors at the end.

Frankenstein (1818 edition) by Mary Shelley

Mary's Monster by Lita Judge

Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls by Emilie Autumn

Byron in Love by Edna O' Brien

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me by Ellen Forney

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

Female Husbands: A Trans History by Jen Manion

Persuasion by Jane Austen

My Plain Jane by Cythnia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton

Literary Theory by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness by Nagata Kabi

The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

(Honorable mentions)

Abigail by Magda Szabo

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks (not pictured here- but I do own a copy, I just couldn't find it in time for this post).

I tag: @paperbackpropensity, @thatwritererinoriordan, @godzilla-reads, and anyone else who wants to do this! :)

Because of how long my post already is, please make a new post for your own version of the tag. Feel free to tag me back, if you want, but also credit @theinquisitxor for making the original tag.

Thank you and have fun, everyone! :D

[combustible-lemons]

rewatching the bbc pride and prejudice miniseries and my GOD do I ever want to reach into the screen and just dig my fingers through collin firth's floofy-ass hair 😤😤🥰

[achillescome-down]

i love you period films that have a dance scene with the two protagonists do the dance with their hands up between them almost touching and there’s only a centimetre or two separating their skin and they’re staring into each other’s eyes and somehow the yearning for the other feels more erotic than to see them actually touching, even if it were just palm to palm