Thread: Jane Austen Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :
 
EMMA is my favourite.

Mr Collins so recognisable as a certain type of clergyman.
 
Posted by Snags (# 15351) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
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]
 
Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by snowgoose (# 4394) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by PD (# 12436) on :
 
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
 
Posted by M. (# 3291) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
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!
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
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
 
Posted by Mary LA (# 17040) on :
 
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."
 
Posted by Lothiriel (# 15561) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
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!
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by The Weeder (# 11321) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :
 
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
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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?
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by The Weeder (# 11321) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
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...
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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
 
Posted by Huntress (# 2595) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :
 
Excellent, Bel. [Big Grin]
 
Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :
 
venbede, are you certain the Bertram's money comes from slavery? I didn't think the novel was clear cut on that.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.)
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :
 
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.)
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
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.)
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
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.
Mary Crawford had that impression too. [Biased]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
The more I read here, the more fascinating Mansfield Park seems. I must re-read it this year.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
Meh, the whole problem with Mansfield Park is that everything interesting happens to everyone but the main character. All Fanny has to do is wait out the morality tale everyone else is in. Heck, she only hears about the the most climax of the book through letters!

[ 03. May 2012, 20:01: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
How about "Heck, she only hears about the climax of the book through letters!"
[Hot and Hormonal]
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
Heh--in Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen, Fanny is forced to play a (non-sexual) role in The Curious Cousins (written by "an Energetic Gentleman"); the stage action includes having her outer clothes torn off.

While Fanny may not be directly involved in some events, I agree with others who have said she shows endurance and a backbone. Fanny also has an all-too-human jealousy of Mary--when she thinks Edmund is about to propose to Mary:

quote:
“He is blinded and nothing will open his eyes, nothing can, after having had truths so long before him in vain. He will marry her and be poor and miserable. God grant that her influence does not make him cease to be respectable!...She loves nobody but herself and her brother. Her friends leading her astray for years! She is quite as likely to have led them astray...Edmund, you do not know me. The families would never be connected, if you did not connect them. Oh! Write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself."
[Admittedly, she does soon feel guilty about the outburst and starts excusing Edmund.]

[ 03. May 2012, 21:25: Message edited by: Belisarius ]
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
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.
At the very end of the novel, Mr. Grant, the vicar, dies and Edmund is given that living. AIUI once he has the living, it is his for life. His heirs may have a problem, however.

Moo
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
How about "Heck, she only hears about the climax of the book through letters!"
[Hot and Hormonal]
But she's the heroine of an eighteenth century novel!

We only know of everything through letters in Clarissa and the central action - the rape - is not described directly.

[ 04. May 2012, 06:43: Message edited by: venbede ]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
Just thought a bit more:

OK, Fanny is passive and doesn't take much initiative. But there was precious little initiative a woman could take.

Anne Eliot and Elinor Dashwood suffer a lot in silence as well. As does Jane Bennett, who if you find innocent goodness boring, if far more so than Fanny. (And like Fanny, she has sex appeal, not that it is spelt out.)

I'll try to stop posting here and read some of the books. (And isn't it good that everyone here is talking about the books, and not the movies/TV adaptions?)
 
Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :
 
Am I right in thinking that Shamela by Fielding contains a wonderful scene where she is writing a letter while being raped?

[ 04. May 2012, 11:24: Message edited by: Robert Armin ]
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Just thought a bit more:

OK, Fanny is passive and doesn't take much initiative. But there was precious little initiative a woman could take.

Anne Eliot and Elinor Dashwood suffer a lot in silence as well. As does Jane Bennett, who if you find innocent goodness boring, if far more so than Fanny. (And like Fanny, she has sex appeal, not that it is spelt out.)

I'll try to stop posting here and read some of the books. (And isn't it good that everyone here is talking about the books, and not the movies/TV adaptions?)
Yes, some feminists have argued that Fanny is an accurate portrayal of the role of women. Persuasion has the fascinating situation where the woman (Anne Elliot), is not allowed to do the heavy lifting in the courtship, and has to find circuitous routes to it. But having once been persuaded against her wishes, she now is able to insist on them.

The other thing about Fanny is that because she is rather passive, everybody manipulates her, or has designs on her. She is seduced, rejected, patronized, and so on, but you could argue that Austen is actually presenting a brilliant portrayal of how women are treated.

Of course, in a sense, we want her to become more active, but our frustration is an image of hers perhaps.
 
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Yet another facet of Mansfield Park, pointed out by contemporary critics, is that Fanny is actually increasingly portrayed as an erotic being, who excites sexual feelings in men. This is done in a fairly discreet manner, but it is there. Thus in the Mansfield ball, Fanny dresses in a ball-gown, thus partly exposing her flesh, and men notice her.

I think one film version (Rozema's), has been described as a film about slavery, lesbianism and incest, perhaps not quite what Austen intended!
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Belisarius:
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
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.
Mary Crawford had that impression too. [Biased]
Heh. That's just what I was going to say. I always feel a little sympathetic, as well as horrified, when Mary Crawford puts her foot in her mouth by voicing her belief that Tom would soon be gone. The Crawfords were altogether frightening to me because they set themselves beyond the pale with such relatively small mistakes. (Just the sort of thing I might do!)

I love Cottontail's defense of Mansfield Park. because it's my favorite too. I would much rather root for downtrodden, timid Fanny than someone like Emma who seems to have had it all her way from birth. Not to say that Emma isn't a glorious novel and Mr. Knightly is my favorite Austen hero.

I can never enjoy Pride and Prejudice because of the family's treatment of Mary. The father's favorite is Elizabeth, the mother's favorite is Lydia, they all admire Jane. Jane and Elizabeth are very close and so are Lydia and Kitty. No one likes Mary. Mary is either ridiculed, "No one danced with Mary!" left out, or publicly humiliated by her father over excessive piano playing. Oh yes, Mary is pedantic and embarrassing, but there's never the slightest indication that anyone in the family has tried to guide her or even befriend her and she's only seventeen for heaven's sake.

Yes. I have issues with Miss Austen even while reading her novels over and over and never missing the latest BBC adaptations. Why is she so apt to ridicule mother love? Of course the parents of a young man who died are going to remember his good qualities and forget his faults (Persuasion) of course new mothers fuss over their babies. If I had one during the days of diptheria and smallpox I probably wouldn't take him out of the nursery till he was sixteen. Why don't Marianne and Eleanor talk to each other like sisters, instead of keeping their heartaches secret?

Austen is wonderful and amazing but a biography I read said that her neighbors didn't like her and I can understand why. I would hate to come under her critical gaze and find myself in the next publication.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
quote:
I can never enjoy Pride and Prejudice because of the family's treatment of Mary. The father's favorite is Elizabeth, the mother's favorite is Lydia, they all admire Jane. Jane and Elizabeth are very close and so are Lydia and Kitty. No one likes Mary. Mary is either ridiculed, "No one danced with Mary!" left out, or publicly humiliated by her father over excessive piano playing. Oh yes, Mary is pedantic and embarrassing, but there's never the slightest indication that anyone in the family has tried to guide her or even befriend her and she's only seventeen for heaven's sake.
I read an article once that speculated that Mary's pedantry was the result of her observation that her father spent a whole lot of time alone, reading in his library, from which she that he would appreciate a scholarly daughter. It makes a lot of sense. Consider Mr Bennet's contempt of balls, and Mary's claims that she herself found little pleasure in a ball. She much prefers reading- alone.

Of course, all she got for her efforts was her father's contempt, poor girl.

[ 04. May 2012, 15:03: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
...the result of her observation that her father spent a whole lot of time alone, reading in his library, from which she that he would appreciate a scholarly daughter.
Whereas what he really wanted was someone intelligent and funny he could talk to. The reason he sat alone wasn't that he disliked conversation so much as that he was bored by his wife's empty conversation. (And pretty much everything else about her)

Some of the funniest scenes in the book, and some of the cruellest, are where Mr Bennett and Lizzy talk over the heads of the opther family members. They manage to communicate with each other and leave Mrs Bennett in the dark. Irony spiced with sarcasm.

And of course it is nearly impossible to read the book without either half falling oin loive with Lizzy yourself, or else realising that she is a self-portrait of the author - but as she would like to have been, not as she really is. She's too good to be true. But not too good to be funny.

I suppose Pride and Prejudice has to be just about my favourite of the novels.
 
Posted by Albertus (# 13356) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by M.:
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.
Spot 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. Silly and quacking and vulgar in many ways, no doubt, but she has got her head screwed on and knows where her duty lies. Mr B has just opted out- but then he can: he's got a home for life.
 
Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :
 
My JA novels are ready to re-read, thanks to all of you on this thread! But, I also decided to download more of the audio books into my phone so I can listen while walking.

It's very embarrassing to "talk back" to the characters while walking though. Some of my neighbors just don't understand.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Albertus:
Spot 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.
In the modern novel Jane Austen in Boca, the women in a retirement-community book discussion group all take Mrs. Bennet's side.
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
I have issues with Miss Austen even while reading her novels over and over and never missing the latest BBC adaptations. Why is she so apt to ridicule mother love?
Jane's parents kept a small-scale boys' school - boarding the boys in their own house - and sent Jane and her sister, Cassandra away to boarding school when they were both very young - in fact, Jane was really too young, but insisted on not being separated from Clarissa. Funnily enough, Jane seems to have been on very good terms with all the boys, but loads of buried anger there, I guess.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
This is fascinating.

I'd always regarded Mary Bennett as one of the crudest characterizations and irrelevant to the plot.

But I now see here how she is another example of how JA works out the relationships within families: imitating Mr Bennett in the hope of his approval, but with her mother's intelligence and vanity.

It would be nice if JA could provide a few more positive pictures of mothers (though there's Mrs Dashwood, and indeed Mrs Jennings - Emma's mother figure, Mrs Weston, is much too nice to have had any influence on Emma).

Was it there were only really only two acceptable roles for a woman, and Jane was not prepared to be limited by either.

As a young woman one should be sexy and available (Lydia Bennett, Isabella Thorpe).

As an older woman one should be a matriarch (Mrs Bennett, Mrs Price et al.)

As a younger novelist, Jane criticizes the first stereotype.

As an older novelist, she criticizes (and very unfairly in Persuasion) the later.
 
Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
The good mothers are dead (Emma's and Anne's); the alive mothers are ineffectual. Either way, Jane's girls have to find female role models elsewhere.

Anne's late mother in Persuasion is held up as a model of prudence: Anne seems to take after her, and never will admit that she was wrong to turn down Wentworth the first time. Indeed, although his fortunes have turned out well, she suggests that they would not have done so had he been encumbered with a wife and family at a young age. So unhappy though everyone has been, she was nevertheless right! (Which didn't keep her very warm at night.) And although Lady Russell has her flaws, she genuinely cares for Anne, and Anne never blames her for her advice to reject Wentworth. It is just that the time has now come for Anne to make her own decisions.

Also, Sophia Croft is an older woman who is a good strong role-model to Anne - although it is interesting how she is not allowed by Jane to be a mother herself. And Mrs Musgrove is a warm affectionate mother of a slightly chaotic family, who gives Anne some uncomplicated and much needed affirmation. They may not be perfect individually, but put together the warmth of Mrs Musgrove, the strength of character of Sophia Croft, and the prudence of Lady Russell, and you have there a composite model of womanly perfection!

I could also mention Aunt Gardiner in Pride and Prejudice (does she have children of her own? I can't remember), as a minor character with good motherly sense. And Anne Weston models some aspects of motherhood (though fails in others) in Emma. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realise how utterly isolated Fanny Price is in Mansfield Park. I can't think of a single female role model there.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
Anne seems to take after her, and never will admit that she was wrong to turn down Wentworth the first time.
Anne thinks that she was right to turn down Wentworth given the advice that she was given; but she doesn't think it was the right advice. She thinks that she, Anne, wasn't in a position to see that the advice was wrong at the time.

[ 05. May 2012, 13:20: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
 
Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
Anne seems to take after her, and never will admit that she was wrong to turn down Wentworth the first time.
Anne thinks that she was right to turn down Wentworth given the advice that she was given; but she doesn't think it was the right advice. She thinks that she, Anne, wasn't in a position to see that the advice was wrong at the time.
Yes, you are right - I spoke too strongly. But Anne also adds:
quote:
But I mean, that I was right in submitting to her, and that if I had done otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement than I did even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman's portion.
So yes, it was the wrong advice. But she thinks she was absolutely right to obey it, and not just because she was too young and inexperienced to know the advice was wrong. Even had she known clearly and absolutely that the advice was wrong, she intimates here that her duty would still have been to obey the woman who was "in the place of a parent" for her. Which is an odd conclusion, but there you are.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Cottontail:
I could also mention Aunt Gardiner in Pride and Prejudice (does she have children of her own? I can't remember), as a minor character with good motherly sense.
Yes, she has children. There is a brief charming description of their behavior when Elizabeth arrives for a visit. They come as far as the stairs to welcome her, but they are too shy to come down and greet her.

Moo
 
Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :
 
What other characters do shipmates like or identify with?

I love Charlotte Lucas. I can totally see myself making the same decisions she made. As ridiculous as Mr Collins is, I think I would rather be married to him and have my own home and children than live out my life as a spinster in a quiet Regency village. (silent scream)

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.
 
Posted by The Weeder (# 11321) on :
 
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!
 
Posted by Huntress (# 2595) on :
 
In 'Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet?', John Sutherland addresses the puzzle of how Lady Catherine becomes aware that Mr Darcy once proposed to Elizabeth (along with other puzzles thrown up by works of classic fiction - I recommend it and the others in the same series: 'Is Heathcliff a Murderer?' and 'Can Jane Eyre Be Happy?' A few Austen puzzles are examined, including the source of the Betram's wealth in 'Mansfield Park').

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. Charlotte has let slip the secret to her husband in a lapse of character due to a possible frustration with her circumstances - despite the advantages afforded by them in comparison to remaining single. Mr Collins mentions in his letter to the Bennets following Lydia's elopement that Charlotte is expecting a child and Professor Sutherland suggests that this state of affairs has affected Charlotte's mood; because if Elizabeth had married Mr Collins, Charlotte would not be pregnant by him.
 
Posted by FooloftheShip (# 15579) on :
 
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!
The other way of looking at her is that she has allowed herself to be suffocated by Mr Collins's utter, all pervading stupidity in pursuit of the status of a married woman. The suffocating nature of Mr Collins's stupidity, combined with the visibility created by his pursuit of social standing makes her situation tragic rather than heroic.

[ 05. May 2012, 20:44: Message edited by: FooloftheShip ]
 
Posted by Lothiriel (# 15561) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Zacchaeus (# 14454) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
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
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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?
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Chamois (# 16204) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Evangeline (# 7002) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by venbede:
Jane wrote the first draft of P&P in letters.
S+S, surely (Elinor and Marianne) not P+P?
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Robert Armin (# 182) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Steve H (# 17102) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
Also, did any novelist question the social order then? AFAIK, Walter Scott didn't.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
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]

[ 08. May 2012, 19:50: Message edited by: ken ]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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 [Biased]
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by QLib (# 43) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.)
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :
 
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!"
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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 ]
 
Posted by ken (# 2460) on :
 
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 [Biased]
I think we can. At any rate The Life and Death of Mr Badman. (Where do you place Defoe, ken?)
Petty bourgeois [Razz]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Lothiriel (# 15561) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by HCH (# 14313) on :
 
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.)
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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.
 
Posted by Belisarius (# 32) on :
 
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. [Biased]
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
I've just began re-reading Mansfield Park. When Fanny is a lonely child and Edmund befriends her, is very touching.
 
Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
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
 
Posted by Sir Kevin (# 3492) on :
 
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...
 
Posted by venbede (# 16669) on :
 
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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