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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Jane Austen
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
Have Shipmates read the works of Austen? Do you have favorites among them?
I am very fond of "Pride and Prejudice" and of "Persuasion". The latter, in particular, has a well-earned happy ending.
I am less fond of "Emma", as I cannot imagine anyone willing to marry a woman with such a ninny of a father; he could live many more years.
In "Sense and Sensibility", there are only two adult characters I especially like (the older sister and the colonel) and they do not end up married to each other.
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
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.
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Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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sebby
Shipmate
# 15147
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Posted
EMMA is my favourite.
Mr Collins so recognisable as a certain type of clergyman.
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sebhyatt
Posts: 1340 | From: yorks | Registered: Sep 2009
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Snags
Utterly socially unrealistic
# 15351
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Posted
In my youth I liked them all. Although Pride & Prejudice is better written and developed, I actually enjoyed Sense & Sensibility more. Even named one of my motorbikes Marianne because it was flighty and unreliable.
Northanger Abbey retains a soft spot, because of the gothic pastiche. I can't remember enough about Mansfield Park to know if I share the above criticism, but I seem to remember getting on with it OK at the time.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
Either Pride and Prejudice or Persuasion is my favourite novel. It depends on my mood. Emma is a candidate for the best novel in the English language.
Mansfield Park is a novel that is better than it is easy to like. In some ways it's a dry-run for Persuasion.
I can't really get on with Northanger Abbey. It lurches awkwardly between a parody in the style of her juvenilia and her mature style. Love and Freindship is brilliant.
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Chamois
Shipmate
# 16204
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Posted
I enjoy all of them, but Emma has got to be the best. It's balanced, it's funny, the people are all real and the situations are all real - none of the melodrama of elopements or evil conspiracies which (I think) mar her other work.
I love the way she had the confidence to pare the plot right down to the bare bones - a dinner party, a garden party and a picnic at Boxhill. Brilliant.
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The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases
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North East Quine
Curious beastie
# 13049
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Posted
Pride and Prejudice. My teens' bible study recently concluded that the story of Ruth is an early prototype of P&P.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be...this truth is so well fixed in the minds of surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their widowed Moabite daughters-in-law.
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
Mansfield Park was the first Jane Austen I ever read. I was 18 at the time, and I absolutely loved it. Granted, Fanny is not the most charismatic of heroines, but she convinced as a poor abused wee soul who had an inner strength and goodness that all the flash and dazzle of the Crawfords could never comprehend.
The scene where Fanny turns down Henry Crawford's proposal is both heartbreaking and horrifying: it is the one genuine impulse he has ever felt or acted upon, and he is right - she could save him. But if she accepted, he would damn her. And when she rejects him, she has effectively damned him too. And as for Edmund's dark night of the soul when he realises how close he has come to damnation himself - it is pure drama! No film or television series has ever quite captured his sense of horror: Jonny Lee Millar's smug self-righteousness in the 1999 film missed the point entirely.
So Mansfield Park remains my favourite, closely followed by Persuasion. Jane is wonderful fun, but I seem to like her best in her more serious mode. Maybe it's the Calvinist in me. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
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Huia
Shipmate
# 3473
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Posted
Persuasion is my favourite, although it alternates with Pride and Prejudice. It probably depends on which one I read last.
I'm not sure whether this is due to a lack of constancy on my part, or Jane Austen's genius - I think the latter.
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Charity gives food from the table, Justice gives a place at the table.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by sebby:
EMMA is my favourite.
Mr Collins so recognisable as a certain type of clergyman.
Though perhaps more easily recognised in Pride and Prejudice. Emma is probably the better novel, but I miss the comic extravagance not only of Mr Collins, but Lady Catherine (Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?) or indeed, in their several ways, Mr and Mrs Bennett.
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snowgoose
Silly goose
# 4394
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Posted
Pride and Prejudice is definitely my favorite, followed by Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.
Mansfield Park is my least favorite. I remember wondering, when I read it long ago, why Jane Austen would take all the trouble to write an otherwise very good book about such a dull, lifeless creature? But that was over 25 years ago. Maybe I would find Fanny more interesting upon re-reading.
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Save a Siamese!
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jedijudy
Organist of the Jedi Temple
# 333
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Posted
Pride and Prejudice is my favorite. Wait. No. Sense and Sensibility is. But I've read (and listened to) P&P the most. So that has to take top spot...well, for today, anyway!
Reading Jane's stories again would probably fix me right up. Good for what ails a body.
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
Persuasion has to be my favourite. I am not sure why though. To be honest I am extremely fond of all of her novels with the possible exception of Northanger Abbey, which I merely like.
Oddly, unlike the other novelists I studied for A Level, my affection for Austen's writing has only grown over the years. She is a very sly and witty observer of men and manners.
PD
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Posts: 4431 | From: Between a Rock and a Hard Place | Registered: Mar 2007
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M.
Ship's Spare Part
# 3291
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Posted
Probably Pride and Prejudice. Among many other things, I like the way Mrs Bennett is held up as a figure of fun - while she is just doing her duty as a mother of five unmarried daughters with little money and Mr Bennett is held up as clearly sensible and likeable - although he has singularly not done his duty by them.
Very sly.
M.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
She is inexhaustibly fascinating.
I read Northanger Abbey as a teenager and loved it for its debunking of corny romanticism. It's not as mature as the later ones, but it is her funniest.
Anyone notice that when she was young she was irritated by giggly silly sexpot girls (Isabella Thorpe, Lydia Bennett) and when she was older she was irritated by doting and silly mothers (Emma's sister, Mary Musgrave in Persuasion)? The sort of women she would be bracketed with socially.
Three of her heroines marry clergymen, two married landed gentlemen and one marries a naval officer.
One of her brothers was adopted as a landed gentleman, two were clergymen and the rest were naval officers.
Apart from Mrs Dashwood, are there any remotely satisfactory mothers?
[ 02. May 2012, 07:56: Message edited by: venbede ]
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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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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I like the combination in Austen of cool irony with a joie de vivre. You get the impression that she just loved life, in all its variety, including human stupidity and folly.
Mansfield Park changed in my estimation over the years; at first, it seemed dull, and with a hint of evangelicalism, but eventually, I grew to savour its fine qualities.
I suppose Persuasion is the most fun, a kind of a romp really. I see Emma as her major symphony, with themes, characters, plot, synthesized into a sublime harmony. Her handling of Emma's projected sexuality onto other people, and their relationships, followed by her realization (and withdrawal) of this projection, is masterful.
If only she had lived longer, and written more!
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Her juvenile writings are also great fun. All that talent and no idea of where to stop.
One of my favorite scenes is when someone "gracefully purloins" money from someone else's desk drawer.
Moo
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Mary LA
Shipmate
# 17040
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Posted
Persuasion is my favourite. Anne Elliot's speech at the end, within earshot of Captain Wentworth whom she was forced to relinquish years earlier:
"All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."
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“I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.”
― Muriel Spark
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Lothiriel
Shipmate
# 15561
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Posted
I can't say which is my favourite, unless it is the one I am reading at the moment -- each has its own charm and genius.
I think Austen's best talent was breathing life into such a variety of characters, and making them all believable. She took such care with each, even (or especially?) the unlikeable ones.
It's so easy to make a complicated, clever plot and then write characters as cardboard cutouts who move about within the plot, all speaking in the same voice. As someone said upthread, Austen didn't need elaborate plots to make a good story -- all she had to do was give her characters places to gather and they would make the story.
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If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. St-Exupery
my blog
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I was thinking about this on a walk, and it struck me how fine Austen's moral discrimination is. She doesn't assail you with an obvious moral point, but suggests it, leaves it implicit rather than explicit. Thus a character such as Mr Collins is amusing, even farcical, and then we start to realize that he shows some of the moral lapses, which Austen points out - vulgarity, narcissism, snobbery, meanness. But she obeys the old injunction, show don't tell.
And then, as someone has mentioned, her portrayal of the Bennet parents is very subtle. They both have good and bad qualities, although Mrs Bennet is one of Austen's rather obvious targets as the bad mother, but she is not all bad. Vulgar again, pushy, narcissistic, materialistic, yet in a sense she is driven to this by Mr Bennet's withdrawal.
Good grief, what a psychologist she is!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
My problem with Mansfield Park is knowing the Bertram family wealth comes from owning a slave estate in Antigua.
Incidentally, because Jane hardly describes people in physical terms, other than the most general, it is easy to overlook Fanny is quite a looker. Sir Thomas notices it when he comes home from Antigua, and is one reason why he begins to be nice to her.
She is wonderful at family relationships: Elizabeth takes after her father, Lydia takes after her mother. All the Bertram children react against a placid, selfish mother and a distant pompous father. Emma's sister, Mr John Knightley, is utterly the daughter of Mr Woodhouse.
And isn't Mr Woodhouse a wonderful character: utterly selfish when you analyse his actions, but coming across as gentle, charming and considerate.
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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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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, Mr Woodhouse was sentimentalized in old-fashioned criticism, as a sort of dotty but well-meaning old man, but then modern criticism began to point out how tyrannical and narcissistic he is. Another example of Austen's dialectical ability, that she can convey the complexity of human beings, who are usually not all bad or good. She also grasps brilliantly the force of unconscious motives and feelings.
Of course, Emma herself is likewise, utterly selfish, until she experiences her great journey into self-knowledge, and emerges, refreshed, and ready for marriage and sex. She has been redeemed.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
It was pointed out to my once the detail that when Lizzie asks her father for permission to marry Mr Darcy, when Mr Bennett agrees he says something like "I hope you marry someone you can respect" and the whole pain of being married to Mrs B is hinted at.
Hinted of course, because that for JA, to fail to recognize another person's selfishness is a failure, but equally to bitch on about or even mention it to others is almost equally bad.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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The Weeder
Shipmate
# 11321
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Posted
I re-read them all regularly. Persuasion is my real favourite- the way the couple are finally united always has me in floods. In Real Life, I do not re-act to sentiment in any way other then laughter, but this scene is so moving, it gets me every time.
I have P and P and Emma as school prizes and have the 6 novels and the Shorter Works in Folio Society editions, but think it might be time to get them on Kindle. I am guessing they must be available.
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Still missing the gator
Posts: 2542 | From: LaLa Land | Registered: Apr 2006
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Cara
Shipmate
# 16966
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Posted
I think Emma is my favourite, and then Persuasion, but I'd need to read them all again to be sure.
I love how you get different things out of them at different times of life. I first read Emma when I was 18, like her. Mr Knightley seemed oh-so-wise and so very much an older man.
Imagine my surprise when I re-read the book much much later, and found that mature Mr Knightley is all of 32 (or thereabouts!) and I was now considerably older than him ! That was a shock--to be older than Mr Knightley.
I too love her gentle but clear moral lessons, the showing rather than telling, as Quetzalcoatl says.
And the wit, and the delicacy, and.....sheer brilliance.
Must re-read...
cara
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Pondering.
Posts: 898 | Registered: Feb 2012
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
She is often referred to as a "romantic" novelist.
But she seems to me quite the opposite. She was contemporary with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats but shows no interest in them.
She mercilessly lampoons the Gothick novels of Mrs Radcliffe.
Sensibility is inadequate without Sense.
A happy marriage needs a stable income.
She seems the very reverse of romantic.
What do readers think?
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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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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
And there is the quiet terror of women's fates: Charlotte Lucas marrying Mr Collins because she is 27 and had never been handsome; Miss Bates; the elder Miss Steele; the post-adultery life of Maria Bertram.
It makes you so glad to have been born 200 years later.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
The pre-adultery life of Maria Bertram was pretty grim too. How interesting that the Ugly Sister in this version of Cinderella is both good looking and tragic.
Julia Bertram is a bit of a blank, artistically speaking.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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The Weeder
Shipmate
# 11321
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
She is often referred to as a "romantic" novelist.
But she seems to me quite the opposite. She was contemporary with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats but shows no interest in them.
She mercilessly lampoons the Gothick novels of Mrs Radcliffe.
Sensibility is inadequate without Sense.
A happy marriage needs a stable income.
She seems the very reverse of romantic.
What do readers think?
I suspect that people who call her a romantic novelist have not read any of her books. She is the daughter of a relatively poor family, and is totally realistic about the need for an income.
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Still missing the gator
Posts: 2542 | From: LaLa Land | Registered: Apr 2006
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
You do get a sort of sentimentalization of Austen at times, so that she is seen as a genteel novelist, who portrayed young ladies having tea, and handsome young men on horseback, and trysts in the garden, and so on.
But the modern view is quite different - she is tough-minded, satiric, sarcastic, very critical of snobbery and vulgarity, a very profound psychologist, a moralist.
She has a romantic streak, in that love conquers all for her heroines, but she is also very realistic. Women also need to get married, or they will starve, if they are not upper crust. Thus Charlotte Lucas in P and P marries Collins, not for love, but as a matter of survival. Money talks with a loud voice in her novels, and without it you are lost.
[ 02. May 2012, 23:30: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You do get a sort of sentimentalization of Austen at times, so that she is seen as a genteel novelist, who portrayed young ladies having tea, and handsome young men on horseback, and trysts in the garden, and so on.
But the modern view is quite different -
What you describe first IS the popular modern view, I suspect. In her day, her toughness was recognised: Charlotte Bronte didn't like her, George Eliot's other half did.
The first view isn't Jane Austen, of course, it's Georgette Heyer.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Weeder:
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
She is often referred to as a "romantic" novelist.
But she seems to me quite the opposite. She was contemporary with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats but shows no interest in them.
...
Sensibility is inadequate without Sense.
A happy marriage needs a stable income.
She seems the very reverse of romantic.
What do readers think?
I suspect that people who call her a romantic novelist have not read any of her books. ...
In Sense and Sensibility Austen specifically addresses the Romantic (capital R) agenda through the contrast between Marianne and Elinor. Charlotte Bronte was very much in the Romantic tradition, and that's why she hates Austen; history does not record what Emily (a writer with a greater and deeper vision than her sister IMHO) thought, though it's interesting to use Wuthering Heights as a basis for speculation.
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Tradition is the handing down of the flame, not the worship of the ashes Gustav Mahler.
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
Jane Austen isn't a romantic novelist, there is romance in her novels though, who can fail to be moved by Darcy and Elizabeth's romance. It is wildly romantic, but in a restrained sort of way. My high school English teacher summed up Jane Austen's stance as "It is immoral to marry for money, but imprudent to marry without it."
I do like Emma and have a soft spot for Northanger Abbey but it's hard to go past the sheer brilliance (IMO) of Pride and Prejudice. Almost all the characters are brilliantly drawn and the dialogue is so witty and sparkling. Darcy's put downs of Miss Bingley are fantastic and so satisfying.
There is something much deeper and serious about Mansfield Park but it's difficult to get too enthusiastic when the heroine is such a wet rag.
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You do get a sort of sentimentalization of Austen at times, so that she is seen as a genteel novelist, who portrayed young ladies having tea, and handsome young men on horseback, and trysts in the garden, and so on.
But the modern view is quite different -
What you describe first IS the popular modern view, I suspect. In her day, her toughness was recognised: Charlotte Bronte didn't like her, George Eliot's other half did.
The first view isn't Jane Austen, of course, it's Georgette Heyer.
Yes, I really meant the modern critical view, following on from Harding's influential article 'Regulated Hatred', which placed a bomb under the sentimental view. Harding demonstrated Austen's anger at social cruelty, and her lack of sentimentality, something which is also revealed in her letters.
Mansfield Park is interesting precisely because its heroine is an anti-heroine, shy, depressed, passive. It's almost as if Austen is saying, OK, you like the pretty spunky heroines do you, who catch the beau, so I shall give you someone very unlike that. Whether it works or not is obviously a matter of opinion, but it is an astonishing thing to try, a heroine whom many people dislike.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
I like Fanny Price. She's shy, honest, kind and dreadfully put upon by Mrs Norris.
As I said, Cinderella to the two Bertram sisters.
But I wonder about her going back to Portsmouth, when she is disgusted at her birth family's vulgarity. But the underlying difference between the home at Portsmouth and Mansfield Park is a matter of income: Lady Bertram couldn't possibly exist as she is in a home where she has to do the cooking.
And the money comes from slavery.
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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
PS. Fanny is sweet (and inwardly tough, although outwardly gentle). But Edmund Bertram is a prig. He's really off-putting. (Although not such a drip as the other young clergyman Elinor Dashwood, for all her sense, ends up with.)
If you were really nasty you could say Fanny is a slyboots who escapes her family's poverty by sucking up to the rich relations.
But then you have the odious Mrs Norris to show what somebody like that. Fanny redeems the Bertrams and gets the reward of her virtue.
As I said, it's Cinderella. Or maybe the Ugly Duckling.
And she's meant to be very pretty.
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Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know,
Thro' the world we safely go.
Posts: 3201 | From: An historic market town nestling in the folds of Surrey's rolling North Downs, | Registered: Sep 2011
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
My long-term girlfriend described herself as a Bronte woman dating an Austen man. Which is as interesting a statement about relationships this English major has heard recently...
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Julia Bertram is a bit of a blank, artistically speaking.
In terms of subtle morals, the less-spoiled sister doesn't suffer as grim a fate. I think the differences between Maria and Julia are well-executed.
Re Austen versus the Brontes:
Austen Comics
Brontes Comics
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Animals may be Evolution's Icing, but Bacteria are the Cake.
Andrew Knoll
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Huntress
Shipmate
# 2595
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Posted
As many commenters have said, I love her undertanding of human nature and its complexities. The most recent novel which I re-read was Sense and Sensibility and I realised that I know at least two Lucy Steeles (one of them male!) I'm also related to a Mrs Bennet, bless her. I've tried to hold the Austen mirror up to myself and whilst I would love to be Lizzie, some days I feel like a mixture of Fanny Price and Mary Bennet.
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The Amazing Chronoscope
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Kelly Alves
Bunny with an axe
# 2522
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Posted
Excellent, Bel.
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I cannot expect people to believe “
Jesus loves me, this I know” of they don’t believe “Kelly loves me, this I know.”
Kelly Alves, somewhere around 2003.
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Robert Armin
All licens'd fool
# 182
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Posted
venbede, are you certain the Bertram's money comes from slavery? I didn't think the novel was clear cut on that.
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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
Posts: 8927 | From: In the pack | Registered: May 2001
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Well Sir Thomas has an estate in Antigua and I don't think the British could get any paid labourers to spend their working life cutting sugar in the tropics.
I'd love to be corrected. I think it was pointed out by Edward Said.
And although Jane's analysis of snobbery is powerful, the English agricultural and working class whose labour provided the money so necessary for an elegant life, don't get a look in.
True elegance counts a lot with Jane, and the Prices can't afford it.
(I still think Jane is a wonderful, wonderful novelist and my all time fav. At least she never patronises the lower orders with pert maids, cheeky cockneys and comic servants. There's a side comment in Emma, IIRC, on the misery of the cottagers.)
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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
It can be inferred from contemporary events, but indeed it's never specfically stated (it's mentioned that Fanny asks a question about the Slave Trade, but in the context of the novel it is simply a conversational topic).
[X-Post]
EATA:
Though slavery did still exist in Antigua, Said's argument of it being a significant motif in MP is not generally agreed with.
Re the Prices: With Mrs. Price's daughter's share (same as Lady Bertram's, even though she was otherwise disowned) and Mr. Price's half-pay, the family was definitely in the Middle-Class range; to a contemporary reader, it would be clear the shoddiness is largely the family's own fault ("...Mrs. Norris would be a much more respectable mother of a large family on a small income.")
[ 03. May 2012, 16:08: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
While Sir Thomas Bertram does have some kind of investment in Antigua, we never have the details, and he certainly does have property in England, although again we lack the details. (He may, for instance, have farmers as tenants.)
Austen does not always pay attention to the source of her characters' wealth. Some is from trade, but the class involved looks down upon tradesmen. Some characters in "Persuasion" are naval officers who have acquired wealth as prize money, but again, some of the other characters look down on the Navy. Usually wealth is presented as a fait accompli.
I am presently rereading "Mansfield Park". It is interesting to notice that Fanny Price and Edmund, the happy couple, do not have much wealth or prospects; he is a vicar, and his living is in the family's gift, so he will eventually be at his older brother's mercy. (Perhaps Tom may turn out all right in the end.)
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
The question of politics in Austen is interesting. One can assume she was a conservative Anglican Tory, and yet the moral tenor of her work is partially to subvert the social hierarchy, by promoting a moral hierarchy. Thus, the aristocracy are judged, not according to their status, but their moral worth. Hence Lady Catherine de Bourgh is a vulgarian and a snob, and is also cruel, which is pretty heinous in the Austen ethic.
I've never done it, but it would be interesting to draw parallel networks of social standing and moral worth. For example, Emma's patronizing attitude to the farmer Martin is eventually corrected; he may be lower than her in the social scale, but he has integrity and honesty, as Mr K knows.
Of course, Austen is not advocating an overturning of the social system, but there is a critique here of some aspects of it.
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
quote:
Re the Prices: With Mrs. Price's daughter's share (same as Lady Bertram's, even though she was otherwise disowned) and Mr. Price's half-pay, the family was definitely in the Middle-Class range; to a contemporary reader, it would be clear the shoddiness is largely the family's own fault ("...Mrs. Norris would be a much more respectable mother of a large family on a small income.")
Indeed- for all their supposed hardship, the Prices have two servants! Mrs. Price simply can't be bothered to keep them in line. Poverty for the gentry was not poverty as us commoners understand it. Even in their humiliatingly dire straits, Mrs. and Ms. Bates have a serving girl.
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venbede
Shipmate
# 16669
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Posted
Thanks for the comments (and particularly the one on how Mrs Norris would have managed in Mrs Price's position. I didn't think the Prices were poor -any more than the Austens - but they were not as well off as many.) I will start re-reading her again after I've finished Adam Bede and Martin Chuzzlewit.
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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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Belisarius
Lord Bountiful of Admin (Emeritus) Delights
# 32
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
If you were really nasty you could say Fanny is a slyboots who escapes her family's poverty by sucking up to the rich relations...But then you have the odious Mrs Norris to show what somebody like that...
I think Mrs. Norris never got over not getting picked by Sir Thomas and lives a secret fantasy of being his wife (though I have never gotten anyone to agree that she comes on to Sir Thomas as well as suck up to him).
ETA: Interestingly, when Mrs. Norris self-exiles near the novel's end, Sir Thomas feels as if he's "lost a part of himself", though he does eventually wonder how he ever tolerated her.
[ 03. May 2012, 18:44: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
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Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by HCH:
I am presently rereading "Mansfield Park". It is interesting to notice that Fanny Price and Edmund, the happy couple, do not have much wealth or prospects; he is a vicar, and his living is in the family's gift, so he will eventually be at his older brother's mercy. (Perhaps Tom may turn out all right in the end.)
I always got the impression that Tom was not long for this world, and that, vicar or no vicar, Edmund would inherit Mansfield Park soon enough. Or perhaps their children would, if Tom hung in there long enough. (Tom didn't seem to show much interest in the ladies.)
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QLib
Bad Example
# 43
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belisarius:
Though slavery did still exist in Antigua, Said's argument of it being a significant motif in MP is not generally agreed with.
Maybe not significant, but it perhaps is part of the Bertrams' generally unsatisfactory attitude to morality. Perhaps JA did not have enough faith in her worldly wisdom to take a stance on this matter. I think she may have been planning to return to the theme in Sanditon - one character is an heiress from the West Indies, someone we would now say was of mixed race. Even if she was only intended to be a minor character, I would guess that's pretty strong stuff for the early nineteenth century.
Like many others Pride an Prejudice is the one of which I most fond and the only one I could re-read regularly. I enjoy re-reading the others occasionally.
[ 03. May 2012, 19:16: Message edited by: QLib ]
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