The Genteel Reading Circle For Ladies

I'm not sure about Lydia but re Mrs B, I always thought part of the reason Brandon was A Good Thing was that he's a steadying influence on Marianne - so she might avoid ending up as a Mrs B type. Mrs B was rather a cautionary figure for girls who tended towards silliness. Marianne was bright but she was at least for a time very silly.
On a related note I don't think Mrs B was stupid. As discussed on the other thread, although she was a rather silly woman in a lot of ways she had valid concerns about her girls and their financial future and did more then their father did to try and sort that out (though admittedly not in the best of ways of course). And she herself must have made very good marriage given her brother is in trade and thus presumably her father was too. She married a gentleman, that's a big step up for her family.

I don't see much similarity between Marianne and Lydia, almost the first thing Marianne talks to Willoughby about are her favourite authors, Cowper, Scott and Pope IIRC, I doubt Lydia has a favourite author!

(What sort of biscuits have you got Prude? I'm in need of a biscuit ATM!)

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. You could call it love (and I know things were different back then) but I'd call it teenage infatuation. There are also a couple of instances where she behaved inappropriately for the time, which her mother shrugged off, in a similar way that Mrs B did with Lydia.

I also thought she was hideously rude and snobbish towards Mrs Jennings as well.

Totally disagree re Marianne being Lydia-ish or Mrs Bennet-ish. Unlike both of them, she is actually intelligent. Her 'crime' isn't stupidity, it's allowing herself to be utterly consumed by love for somebody who chooses money over her.

Poor Brandon
Poor sexy Alan Rickman

I could do with a soothing Austen read! May I join in if I bring biscuits? Or perhaps some wholesome smooth gruel would be preferred?

Yes, Marianne will totally be a Mrs Bennett! Why have I never realised that before?

I actually think Marianne shares some qualities with Lydia as well. She'd would definitely have 'eloped' with Willoughby if he'd asked. (I don't like Marianne either).

I'd not thought of that!

Marianne will totally be a Mrs B

Oh and my other thought = Brandon is taking quite a gamble that Marianne doesn't turn into Mrs Bennett as she ages. I'm sure Mr B saw some of the same qualities in the alluring young Mrs B when he married her. But then I've never been a fan of Marianne

De-lurking

The thing I find most interesting about JA is the way she explores the values of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
As someone said earlier (or maybe on the other thread) S&S has a pretty clear split: Marianne = Romanticism, Eleanor = Enlightenment.
In P&P it seems to me there are two on each side, illustrating both happy and perhaps less happy outcomes on each side. So for Enlightenment we have Jane and Charlotte (though I take the point made in the previous thread that Charlotte may have been happier than we modern readers think) vs Lizzie and Lydia for Romanticism.
I appreciate that's a simplistic analysis but would be interested to know what others think?

Not sure how it applies to other JA as I haven't spent as much time reading them. Would particularly like to hear positive analysis of Emma as she irritated the fuck out of me tbh

I've finished chapter 1, finally! It's been a full on couple of days. Can we talk about thoughts etc now or do we wait for a bit?

Not that I'm not loving the thread so far! Cos it's really interesting. I bored my family talking about things I'd learnt from this, and the previous one, last night

Oh and on the rather morbid subject of What People Died From in the Olden Days, didn't Charlotte Bronte die of morning sickness?

It must have been absolutely terrifying being a woman 200 years ago - financially and health wise.

Is anyone reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall at the mo??

JK = great characters and stories, but nit great writing.

Says she who's named after a JK Rowling character.

Wilkie, Jane and Stephen (King) - the great triumvirate of the literary world imvho.

Bloody autocorrect changed Magdalen to Magdalena! I have read No Name, honest.

Magdalena was quite an annoying character, Lydia is definitely cooler.

Back when I first registered on MN I tried to be Marian Halcombe, but of course it had been taken years before.

"Welcome Lydia... though I must admit I trembled a little at the sight of your name and the memory of your heinous deeds, as so thrillingly recounted by Mr Wilkie Collins."

Thank you IrenetheQuaint - delighted to find a fellow Collins admirer! I actually wanted to be Magdalen Vanstone but it seems to have been taken already.