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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Jane Austen
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Lothiriel
Shipmate
# 15561
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Huntress:
In 'Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?', John Sutherland addresses the puzzle of how Lady Catherine becomes aware that Mr Darcy once proposed to Elizabeth ...
He puts forward quite an interesting theory that Charlotte Lucas (now Collins) had the secret of Darcy's surprise proposal confided to her by Elizabeth before her departure from Hunsford Parsonage.
I can't believe that Elizabeth would have told Charlotte. After Charlotte's wedding, the were no longer close confidantes. We are told that Elizabeth's and Charlotte's correspondence "was as regular and frequent as it had ever been; that it should be equally unreserved was impossible."
Mr Collins was too close to Lady Catherine for Elizabeth to risk telling Charlotte about the first proposal. There's no indication that anyone other than Jane was told that the first proposal had taken place.
When Lady Catherine visits Elizabeth at Longbourn, she gives no sign of knowing about the proposal at Hunsford; that lady, not noted for tactful reticence, would surely have mentioned it in her tirade had she known of it.
Another possibility is that after Elizabeth's visit to Pemberley, Bingley's sisters may have alerted Lady Catherine to Darcy's admiration for her, in the hope of her putting a stop to it. Or maybe the rumour got started after Darcy was seen visiting Elizabeth at the inn in Lambton.
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
The Collins' could have had a gossipy servant or two that overheard his proposal in the parsonage. Just another possibility. The delay in Lady Catherine finding out could be the time it took to filter through the neighborhood servants, to Lady Catherine's servants, to Lady Catherine herself.
Or, come to think of it, she finally figured out that Mr. Darcy was just not interested in her daughter, and cast her mind about for possible reason why. A likelier situation in my mind.
[ 06. May 2012, 12:35: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
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Zacchaeus
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# 14454
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Weeder:
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
The scene where we see how she has arranged her household to keep Mr. Collins at the front of the house, watching out for Lady Catherine de Bourgh of course, while Charlotte rules from the rear, delights me every time.
Yes, I love that too! Charlotte is very wise. She gets the status of being a wife, but keeps as independent as possible!
I suspect this type of marriage was common, marriage being more about security, property and family lines, than love.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zacchaeus:
I suspect this type of marriage was common, marriage being more about security, property and family lines, than love.
It was also about having a home of your own rather than constantly being in someone else's.
Moo
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
On love and marriage, I can remember being shocked and confused as a teenager by reading JA's comments on Henry Tilney falling in love with Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey.
"I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own."
I hope Catherine has more intelligence than her mother and learns from Henry, or he will get very bored by her and a Bennett situation is on course.
I wonder if Henry and Catherine inspired Mr and Mrs Bennett?
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Man was made for joy and woe;
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
I think Mr. and Mrs. Palmer would be a more likely inspiration.
I've also thought more the opposite--when would Catherine start getting bored with Henry? I find him insufferable; a more sophisticated woman would tear him a new one.
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Am I right in thinking that Shamela by Fielding contains a wonderful scene where she is writing a letter while being raped?
Not sure (Shamela never gets her "vartue" taken that way, IIRC), but probably something similar. Pamela does keeps scribbling almost up to the moment her marriage is consummated.
ETA: Shamela manipulates Mr. Booby(?) into marrying her but is then caught in adultery with a parody of the minister-figure from Pamela.
[ 07. May 2012, 16:12: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
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Animals may be Evolution's Icing, but Bacteria are the Cake.
Andrew Knoll
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I have to say Henry Tilney is my very favourite Austen hero, the only one who would be fun to be with.
I loved Northanger Abbey when I read it as a teenager mainly because of the piss-taking of the Gothick novel and sensationalism generally.
But I had an awful lot in common with Catherine - a sheltered, provincial upbringing, hardly any social confidence except what came through innocence. I'd have loved a reasonably good looking, piss-taking, clever young clergyman to be sweet and affectionate and joke with me. I find him sending up Catherine a sign of affection recognising that despite her innocence, she's has integrity.
I'd have fallen for his chat lines.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belisarius:
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Am I right in thinking that Shamela by Fielding contains a wonderful scene where she is writing a letter while being raped?
It sounds like an appallingly bad taste parody of the central rape in Clarissa.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
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Thro' the world we safely go.
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Chamois
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# 16204
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
It sounds like an appallingly bad taste parody of the central rape in Clarissa.
That's EXACTLY what it was intended to be.
Fielding considered that Richardson's novels were preaching the "prosperity gospel" - that you should do good because it will bring you wealth, status and social success.
He couldn't thole it.
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
It sounds like an appallingly bad taste parody of the central rape in Clarissa.
That's EXACTLY what it was intended to be.
Actually, I think, an exceedingly good parody of a very silly near-rape in Pamela, also by Richardson, of course.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Terry Eagleton in The Rape of Clarissa wouldn't find it very funny. But then, Marxists are not notoriously lacking in a sense of humour.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Fielding considered that Richardson's novels were preaching the "prosperity gospel" - that you should do good because it will bring you wealth, status and social success.
Definitely re Pamela, but Clarissa is considered more morally sophisticated. Clarissa was truly attracted to Lovelace and might have given in to him he hadn't treated her like a conquest; she then refused to marry him after he "disgraced" her with rape.
[ 07. May 2012, 20:22: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
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Steve H
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# 17102
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I'd say my (and practically everyone else's) favorite is Pride and Prejudice, while Mansfield Park is my least favorite. What a boring dishrag Fanny Price is! One feels preached at and abused by the time one is done reading about her.
I agree. Fanny Price and her drip of a boyfriend are the least likeable of Austen's heroes and heroines, being a pair of priggish spoilsports. P.&P. is prolly my favourite, predictable though that is.
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belisarius:
quote:
Originally posted by Chamois:
Fielding considered that Richardson's novels were preaching the "prosperity gospel" - that you should do good because it will bring you wealth, status and social success.
Definitely re Pamela, but Clarissa is considered more morally sophisticated. Clarissa was truly attracted to Lovelace and might have given in to him he hadn't treated her like a conquest; she then refused to marry him after he "disgraced" her with rape.
I haven't read either yet, though I mean to read 'Pamela' one day. I've got an old four-volume edition of it, with no publication date given, but each volume except the first have been inscribed by the original owner, One Ann Moss (or "Mofs", as she wrote it*), who added the date "Oct. 23. 1808" to Vol. IV. Vol. III is signed "Ann Mofs Chesterton", with the last name below the rest, suggesting she added it later - her married name, perhaps, she having originally inscribed them when she was single? Vol. I's front free endpaper is missing, which no doubt originally bore her inscription of that volume. Vol. I is prefaced by a selection of letters written by readers of the first edition to Richardson, praising the book. One is headed " The following objections to fome paffages in Pamela were made by an anonymous Gentleman in a letter from the Country." I love this objection: "That females are too apt to be ftruck with images of beauty; and that the paffage where the gentleman is told to fpan the waift of Pamela with his hands, is enough to ruin a nation of women by tight-lacing."
*She wrote in copper-plate, and the first s is long and f-like.
[ 07. May 2012, 20:51: Message edited by: Steve H ]
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
Incidentally, prosperity gospel or no, 'Pamela' is one of the first novels, if not the first, in which the hero(ine) is from the lower orders, and I think Richardson deserves some praise for that at least.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
Fielding was also mocking the epistolary form. The young Jane Austen also had some fun with that form - wrung it out and hung it up to dry with her hilariously wicked Lady Susan.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by QLib:
Fielding was also mocking the epistolary form. The young Jane Austen also had some fun with that form - wrung it out and hung it up to dry with her hilariously wicked Lady Susan.
Love and Freindship surely? Absolutely wonderful. However, Richardson was Jane's favourite novelist: objections to him seem only to come from men.
PS. Steve - I know Clarissa is appalingly long and it is tempting to read Pamela to get to know Richardson, but C is much the more fascinating work.
Silly though the epistolary form seems to us, it allows layers and layers of ambiguity: what are Clarissa's feelings towards Lovelace? There is the theory that she really fancies him, but I don't think she does very much. Her very last words show who she really loved.
Jane wrote the first draft of P&P in letters. It may well be she learnt the possibilities of ambiguity from Richardson, which later third person novelists didn't manage to the seem subtle extent.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
quote:
pot on. Mrs B is actually the only one, pretty much, who both realises the urgency of, and tries to do something about, securing homes for herself and her daughters when Mr B dies.
Yes, but she's so stupid and has questionable morals in that she (along with Mr Bennet) fails to bring up her girls responsibly such that Kitty and Lydia disgrace the family and Lydia almost ruins all the other girls' chances of respectable marriages.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Glad to see someone else resisting this revisionist account of Mrs Bennett.
I even heard one woman say she sympathised with Mrs Bennett and thought Lizzie was a bitch, who only fell for Darcy when she saw his estate.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
I think that a major reason the epistolary form arose was purely practical. Novels as we understand them today - realistic, extended prose fictions - are a relatively new form, and in the early days, the conventions that we take for granted nowadays, including the omniscient, third-person narrator, were not in place, so authors had to think of some device which would explain how all the events narrated in the novel came to be known. If the novel was written in the first person, there was no problem, since the novel was masquerading as a memoir (Daniel Defoe tried to pass his novels off as genuine memoirs, and was rather asnnoyed when people began to realise that they were fictional). However, if the plot demanded that events be described which one person could not plausibly have witnessed all of, things were trickier, and that problem was solved with the epistolary novel, which has at least two viewpoints. (Two early novels or proto-novels, Sidney's 'Arcadia' and Cervantes' 'Don Quixote', are both writtin in the third person, but the first is not a novel in the modern sense, being more like myths or fairy-tales, and the latter is really a series of short stories linked by a frame-narrative, like 'Pickwick Papers', rather than a single story.)
Fielding's 'Tom Jones' was one of the first novels in the modern sense to be written in the third person, using the omniscient-narrator convention.
Perhaps some of these posts should be split off to a new thread about Richardson and epistolary novels, but that's for the mods to decide!
Returning to Jane, does anyone else agree that there's something of a moral hole in her fiction, in that, although she makes gentle fun of them, she never questions the right of a small minority to live in idle - or at least unproductive - luxury, dependent on the labours of the productive vast majority, who live in or near poverty? I love her novels, but that aspect of them makes me a little uncomfortable.
[ 08. May 2012, 07:33: Message edited by: Steve H ]
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Jane wrote the first draft of P&P in letters.
S+S, surely (Elinor and Marianne) not P+P?
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
Returning to Jane, does anyone else agree that there's something of a moral hole in her fiction, in that, although she makes gentle fun of them, she never questions the right of a small minority to live in idle - or at least unproductive - luxury, dependent on the labours of the productive vast majority, who live in or near poverty?
That's at the back of my mind as well, and the issue has been discussed earlier on the thread (which is getting a bit Richardsonian in length).
QLib - yes, you're right. But there was an early version of P&P called First Impressions of which the manuscript doesn't survive. I had the idea it was epistolary.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
Responding to various things, I think the first draft of Pride and Prejudice was Love and Freindship (sic) and that it was epistolary.
Also, I am suspicious of reading too much of Austen's personal feelings about her parents into her portrayal of parental characters. How much plot would be left in P&P if the Bennett's were reliable figures? In the same way, how many children's adventure books would not have been written if the local police always listened to the kids' concerns and followed up on them efficiently? (Slight tangent, but I read a psychologist somewhere saying that the best gift a parent can give their child is the their own imperfection. A truly perfect parent, who did everything right, would produce perpetual infants, simply because those children would not need to grow up.)
Getting back to the problem of Mansfield Park, Austen did say she thought that P&P was too "light and bright and sparkling", and it seems as though she sat down to write a more earnestly moral novel. Fanny may be quiet, but she is strong in moral terms (though not physically, which underlines her ethical authority) and she is the only heroine Austen addresses in the novel as "my so-and-so" which indicates she felt a lot of affection for her. I come back to P&P for pleasure, I return to MP because it is a problem, and raises all sorts of awkward questions.
[ 08. May 2012, 09:45: Message edited by: Robert Armin ]
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Keeping fit was an obsession with Fr Moity .... He did chin ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit, and had developed a series of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with ritual movements of the Mass. The Antipope Robert Rankin
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Responding to various things, I think the first draft of Pride and Prejudice was Love and Freindship (sic) and that it was epistolary.
Love and Freindship is an entirely different work. It is epistolary (although all the letters are by the same writer and there's no sign of any correspondence from the other side). While it has dull patches, there are parts of it that are hilariously funny.
It is probably contemporary with the first draft of P&P or a bit earlier, and it wasn't published in Austen's lifetime.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Steve H
Shipmate
# 17102
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Posted
Anyone else ever noticed that Jane's six completed major novels fall into three pairs, title-wise - two something and somethings, two place-names, and two single-word titles? This would work better if the last pair were either both girl's names or both abstract emotions, but all the same - curious.
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Hold to Christ, and for the rest, be totally uncommitted.
Herbert Butterfield.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve H:
Returning to Jane, does anyone else agree that there's something of a moral hole in her fiction, in that, although she makes gentle fun of them, she never questions the right of a small minority to live in idle - or at least unproductive - luxury, dependent on the labours of the productive vast majority, who live in or near poverty? I love her novels, but that aspect of them makes me a little uncomfortable.
While she may not question the social order, it's hardly the model of exploitation that you suggest. The wealthy have their obligations to their tenants and poorer neighbours. Emma sends a present of meat to the Bates; John Martin asks Mr Knightley's advice about his marriage; even the awful Lady Catherine intervenes - albeit unhelpfully - in the lives of the villagers. Also JA is acutely aware how precarious that prosperity is for women. Miss Bates will fall on hard times; the Dashwood girls are turned out of their home; Lucy Steele, like Mrs Clay, needs to entrap a husband to survive.
In pre-social security days, you had only the web of kinship obligation between you are some very bleak Georgian alternatives.
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
Also, did any novelist question the social order then? AFAIK, Walter Scott didn't.
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Animals may be Evolution's Icing, but Bacteria are the Cake.
Andrew Knoll
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
It's true that Jane Austen is a conservative in the context of England of the early 1800s. But I think she's criticising that world from within. Certainly in Mansfield Park she strongly implies that if the privileged don't live up to the responsibilities that privilege brings they risk bringing the whole thing down.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
Yes, and the aristocrats depicted range from non-entities (Lady Dalrymple) to significantly flawed (Lord Osborne) to decidedly negative (Lady Susan, Lady Catherine, The Honorable Mr. Yates). The only remotely positive portrayal is Lord Fitzwilliam, and even he is on the hunt for an heiress.
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Animals may be Evolution's Icing, but Bacteria are the Cake.
Andrew Knoll
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belisarius:
Also, did any novelist question the social order then? AFAIK, Walter Scott didn't.
Is Swift a novellist? Was Bunyan? OK, he''s a lot earlier and in a different kind of world. Candide is a novel, but Voltaire wasn't writing in English. I've never read it but I'd be willing to bet that Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft challenged the social order. I must confess to never having read Smollet either but his stuff is, so I am told (and so I hear on the odd BBC radio serialisation) rather critical, in a satirical way. And that was the age of Hogart and Gillray
In the late 18th & very early 19th century maybe not so much novellists, but poets certainly did. Romantic period and all that.
Later (not that much later) novelists got a bit more political. More about reforming and repairing the social order than overthrowing it, but there was certainly criticism in Dickens and Gaskell, and a desire to expose the conditions of the poor - Disraeli and well. And at least satire in Trollope and Thackeray. The Brontes were maybe more oblique.
Late 17th and most 18th century English writing - or at any rate the stuff we remember - often seems very lower-middle-class to me. In a hugely overgeneralised way. But its socially climbing lower-middle-class, not socially critical. Jumped up clerks who want to be treated like aristocrats and resent it when they aren't - they want to join the party, they want to be part of the club. And if they can't join it they stand on the sidelines and make snarly remarks under their breath and throw glace cherries at their masters and betters when they aren't looking. So its natural mode of political expression isn't the exposure or the call to arms, but satire and sarcasm.
But from the 1770s and 1780s onwards the Gothic and Romantic turns things on their head. You get a few genuine working-class blokes (almost always men) who attract attention partly because they are supposedly triumphing over their background. Dogs on their hind legs. I know more about the poets than the novellists. Burns (who was astonishingly famous in his lifetime), Blake (who wasn't), Keats (who sort of was) and others. So they knew what the social order looked like from the bottom (well, about half wqay up to be honest) and they could get angry about it. And you get some seriously posh types like Byron and Shelley who try to take over and lead the revolution. (Shelley and Byron both do being angry really well). Wordsworth and Coleridge and Southey weren't either aristocrats or artisans. But they certainly didn't write as if they thought being an aristocrat was moraly better than being an artisan. And they certainly didn't think that the aristos had a natural right to rule.
I can't think who the first genuinely famous English novellist from a genuinely working-class background was. Unless we count Bunyan as a novellist. Which I think we ought to ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
[ 08. May 2012, 19:50: Message edited by: ken ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
I can't think who the first genuinely famous English novellist from a genuinely working-class background was. Unless we count Bunyan as a novellist. Which I think we ought to
I think we can. At any rate The Life and Death of Mr Badman. (Where do you place Defoe, ken?)
But that doesn't mean to dismiss Jane Austen.
Incidentally, Lady Russell in Persuasion got it wrong in advising Anne to reject Captain Wentworth, but she's titled and not a bad sort.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Incidentally, Lady Russell in Persuasion got it wrong in advising Anne to reject Captain Wentworth, but she's titled and not a bad sort.
Titled, yes, but not in the aristocracy. Persuasion mentions that as "the mere widow of a knight", she was more impressed with Sir Walter's rank than she should have been.
And of course, Sir Walter and his oldest daughter, (closer to, but not in the aristocracy either) truly abase themselves toadying up to their distant relation Lady Dalrymple.
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Animals may be Evolution's Icing, but Bacteria are the Cake.
Andrew Knoll
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Belisarius:
Also, did any novelist question the social order then? AFAIK, Walter Scott didn't.
Is Swift a novellist? Was Bunyan? OK, he''s a lot earlier and in a different kind of world. Candide is a novel, but Voltaire wasn't writing in English. I've never read it but I'd be willing to bet that Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft challenged the social order. I must confess to never having read Smollet either but his stuff is, so I am told (and so I hear on the odd BBC radio serialisation) rather critical, in a satirical way. And that was the age of Hogart and Gillray
Yes, but by the time Austen arrived on the scene, the world had changed. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, virtually the whole of England was in retreat from radicalism - including, of course, Coleridge and Wordsworth, who had originally been in the van. There’s a convincing argument that, for all the personal radicalism of the younger Romantics, by and large the Romantic movement represented a retreat from the political to the personal. In those times, and with a family connection to a guillotined aristocrat, one can hardly blame Austen for taking a fairly conservative view. And, whatever her personal inclinations (IMHO there’s some evidence from Persuasion that she might have become more radical had she lived), a female novelist stepping into the political realm would probably only have been mocked and derided.
We also view the Romantics with the benefit of hindsight - in Austen’s day they weren’t such a big deal. Let’s face it, how many poems in the Lyrical Ballads have any real merit? There’s a discussion between Edward and Marianne in Sense and Sensibility in which he gently mocks her (Romantic) preference for “ruined, tattered cottages” whereas he prefers “tidy, happy villages”. The (perhaps slightly unfair) implication being that the Romantics actually enjoyed their bleeding heart relationship with the poor and down-trodden. Austen actually preferred Cowper; she was dead before Byron published Don Juan and dead before Keats really made his mark. I'm not aware that History records what she made of Shelley - it would be interesting to know.
Anyway, the personal is political. Given the tenor of the times, in her own quiet way, Austen was about as radical as it was possible for a woman of her class, situation and temperament to be.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
Austen does offer some slanted criticism of Byron in Persuasion.
While not all the Lyrical Ballads are masterpieces most of them are worth reading. (There are people who love The Idiot Boy.)
[ 09. May 2012, 11:13: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Time for another "What's tricky about Mansfield Park" session.
Whatever would anyone now think was wrong about putting on a spot of amateur dramatics at home? OK, in the event, it shows up the silly side of everyone, but I mean, where's the harm?
And if a woman left a deeply unsympathetic husband and took up with another man, most people would express at least some sympathy, let alone condemn her as immoral. (Maria's immorality is surely in marrying Mr Rushworth in the first place. And Henry is being a bastard knowing what it will mean for Maria.)
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
It can be argued that doing any large-scale amusements while the father was away on a dangerous trip wasn't right, but there were, in real-life High Society, several instances of notorious elopements, etc. directly resulting from amateur theatricals.
Per the ominiscent narration, Henry was annoyed with Maria snubbing him when they met again (though one critic mentions that being pleasant and unconcerned to him should have wounded his vanity more); without technically being unfaithful to Fanny, he wanted to bring her back in line, not realizing until it was too late that she was willing to leave her husband for his sake.
The narration also alludes that Henry's punishment, in a perfect world, would be as bad as Maria's; not much pity is wasted on Mr. Rushworth.
[ 10. May 2012, 15:54: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
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Andrew Knoll
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TurquoiseTastic
Fish of a different color
# 8978
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Posted
Is there a thought that the theatre is a little bit immoral per se? Mansfield Park does have a touch of moralism in it - for example, it is considered a mark of Henry Crawford's utter licentiousness that "Sunday travelling had been (gasp) a common thing!"
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
I think that's William Elliot in Persuasion, but MP does go (by modern standards) overboard by lumping the threatricals with Henry's toying with Maria as a "riot of gratifications".
Incidentally, Jane Bennet is shocked to find out Wickham's a gamester, but that's more a last straw (now even she can no longer give him the benefit of a doubt).
[ 10. May 2012, 18:18: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
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Andrew Knoll
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
I can't think who the first genuinely famous English novellist from a genuinely working-class background was. Unless we count Bunyan as a novellist. Which I think we ought to
I think we can. At any rate The Life and Death of Mr Badman. (Where do you place Defoe, ken?)
Petty bourgeois ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Ta, ken. I haven't read it for ages, but I remember all those footnotes referring to Proverbs. I've never found it (Proverbs) a very edifying part of Scripture since.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
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Lothiriel
Shipmate
# 15561
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TurquoiseTastic:
Is there a thought that the theatre is a little bit immoral per se? Mansfield Park does have a touch of moralism in it - for example, it is considered a mark of Henry Crawford's utter licentiousness that "Sunday travelling had been (gasp) a common thing!"
Edmund is actually a devoted theatre-goer:
quote:
'Now, Edmund, do not be disagreeable,' said Julia. 'Nobody loves a play better than you do, or can have gone much farther to see one.'
'True, to see real acting, good hardened real acting; but I would hardly walk from this room to the next to look at the raw efforts of those who have not been bred to the trade...'
However, it may be that it was considered acceptable for certain classes of people to act, but not for gentlemen's families.
Edmund's initial objections were (a) the fact that their father was "in constant danger" on his travels, and that to indulge in lighthearted amusement in his absence was inappropriate; and (b) Maria's "delicate situation" as a young lady unofficially engaged to be married.
After Lover's Vows was selected, his objections were more vehement, as the play would require the ladies to speak and act immodestly.
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lothiriel:
Maria's "delicate situation" as a young lady unofficially engaged to be married.
That's Edmund's weakest objection--(the admittedly dim-witted) Mr. Rushworth has no objection to Maria or himself participating; he is only disappointed there just happen to be no scenes where they act together.
Significantly, the narration makes no obviously negative commentary when Mrs. Grant, a clergyman's wife, participates. Even Fanny, against her better judgment, is fascinated by the rehearsal process.
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
I thought that part of the objection to the amateur theatricals was that the play selected, "Lover's Vows", was in some fashion objectionable. If they had decided to do, for instance, a medieval mystery play such as "Everyman", I doubt that the objections would have been so strong.
I thought the suggestiveness of "Lover's Vows" was part of the reason it was chosen, as some of those involved lacked a proper moral sense.
The simple fact that Sir Thomas would have disapproved of the activity, had he been home, should have been enough to deter respectful young people; they are not sufficiently or sincerely respectful. (At least, that is the argument.)
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I thought the suggestiveness of "Lover's Vows" was part of the reason it was chosen, as some of those involved lacked a proper moral sense.
Not directly--several characters admit that some parts of the play be may have to be cut out; that Mr. Yates's (presumably decadent) aristocratic circle almost performed it, however, helps give it a stamp of approval.
Julia, after Henry's mindgames, Maria's backstabbing, and Tom's Method-y cluelessness, naturally blasts the play and production.
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Andrew Knoll
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
If they had decided to do, for instance, a medieval mystery play such as "Everyman", I doubt that the objections would have been so strong.
Too few female characters.
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Animals may be Evolution's Icing, but Bacteria are the Cake.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I've just began re-reading Mansfield Park. When Fanny is a lonely child and Edmund befriends her, is very touching.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
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Thro' the world we safely go.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I've just been re-reading The Watsons. I came across a passage where the older sister explains to the younger one why getting married is essential. Otherwise you end up as an old woman with no money that no one wants.
Moo
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Sir Kevin
Ship's Gaffer
# 3492
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Posted
My wife has at least one Austen book on her e-Reader (Barnes and Noble Nook - similar to a Kindle). She is reading it even as we speak...
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I've just read the text of Lovers' Vows, the play in Mansfield Park.
I didn't realise Maria and Henry are playing mother and (illegitimate)son. I might post more tomorrow.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
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Thro' the world we safely go.
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