Please or to access all these features

Add post

Watch this thread

Save thread

Start a new thread

Unflip thread

Hide thread

My feed

Active Unanswered threads

Getting started FAQ's

Unanswered threads Acronyms Talk guidelines

Hide shortcut buttons

Talk

What we're reading

Find your new favourite book or recommend one on our Book forum.

Unflip

1 2 3 4

Original poster

Does anyone have a favourite Jane Austen Villain.

87 replies

florentina1 · 03/01/2022 14:17

I am torn between Fanny Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility and Mrs Elton from Emma.

Also, while we are idling away a gloomy Monday, which Austen character do you most want to live with. I want to be adopted by the Musgroves.

OP posts:

Annaghgloor · 06/01/2022 17:57

@Doomscrolling

She certainly has dreadful fathers - Emma and Anne's fathers make me want to scream! Fanny doesn't have one, the Dashwood's dies at the start and Mr Bennet is a neglectful, selfish man who only bothers with the two of his children he likes.

Oh, Mr Price, Fanny's father, is absolutely present (and awful) when she visits home in Portsmouth as a punishment after she refuses Henry Crawford -- her mother married down for love, and Mr Price is a lazy, neglectful, invalided officer of Marines: 'he swore and he drank, he was dirty and gross'.

Doomscrolling · 06/01/2022 17:33

Original poster

florentina1 · 06/01/2022 09:22

AIBU to wish all about me would not try to use me as messenger for their complaints. I am staying with my sister, who moans about her DH, her MiL and her SiLs. I get no peace. As soon as I am away for her, the others make contradictory complaints.

The main issue is that my sister is a total PITA, who is wrong about everything.

OP posts:

DameAlyson · 05/01/2022 21:53

All of these families would make amazing AIBU.

Straight out of the book:

AIBU to hate sending my children to visit their grandparents? Their grandmamma gives them so much trash and sweet things, that they are sure to come back sick and cross for the rest of the day.

AIBU not to want to see my grandchildren more often? I think my DIL would like me to invite them more, but it is very bad to have children with one that one is obligated to be checking every moment; "don't do this," and "don't do that;" or that one can only keep in tolerable order by more cake than is good for them.

AnneElliott · 05/01/2022 21:21

I think Mr Eliot is the best villain - plausible and nearly succeeds in carrying Anne off.

I'd like to live with the Musgroves or the Crofts.

Twicklette · 05/01/2022 20:46

[quote Annaghgloor]@Twicklette, then you should definitely read Joan Aiken’s Mansfield Revisited, where this JA writes Mary Crawford as thoughtful, fascinating and repentant, and Henry as completely blameless in Maria Bertram’s elopement. (And tiresome Edmund and Fanny have gone to Antigua.)[/quote]
Thank you for the recommendation. I will find a copy and read it!

Original poster

florentina1 · 05/01/2022 20:45

All of these families would make amazing AIBU. Maybe that should be an extension to this thread.

I am right away stealing,’rich hypochondriac, megalomaniac’ as my insult of the day.

Annaghgloorn should have a prize for the best understatement of the day regarding functional families. That really made me laugh.

OP posts:

Annaghgloor · 05/01/2022 20:09

[quote AmazingBouncingFerret]@Annaghgloor

Oh the shame of autocorrect changing my post to Bennett with two t’s! 😂😂

The jumpers and T-shirts on that site were spelling her name Lizzie.[/quote]
Ah, gotcha. You’re right, it’s a disgrace.

AmazingBouncingFerret · 05/01/2022 18:59

@Annaghgloor

Oh the shame of autocorrect changing my post to Bennett with two t’s! 😂😂

The jumpers and T-shirts on that site were spelling her name Lizzie.

DameAlyson · 05/01/2022 18:50

I don't get the sense Jane Austen was gay (particularly not based on the fact that she didn't want to get married - there are plenty of other good reasons for making that choice!

She definitely had something going with Tom Lefroy, but I think at the time he wasn't in a position to marry, and the relationship didn't go anywhere.

Annaghgloor · 05/01/2022 18:23

@Twicklette, then you should definitely read Joan Aiken’s Mansfield Revisited, where this JA writes Mary Crawford as thoughtful, fascinating and repentant, and Henry as completely blameless in Maria Bertram’s elopement. (And tiresome Edmund and Fanny have gone to Antigua.)

Annaghgloor · 05/01/2022 18:18

@NewYearSue

He plays with everyone but in particular the young woman he is secretly engaged to.

And he only bothers to visit his father and his father’s new wife (after saying he’s going to come every ten minutes for months) when his secret fiancée moves to the area — mind you, his mother dying young and his father immediately handing him over to her disapproving posh family, to the extent that he takes their surname and grows up at the beck and call of a rich hypochondriac megalomaniac probably isn’t the most functional of family backgrounds.

Mrs Churchill probably would have been a magnificent baddie if we’d actually encountered her other than offstage.

Twicklette · 05/01/2022 18:17

@Laska2Meryls

She has written some great villains ... just adding The Crawfords and Aunt Norris to the list..

But then some of her heroes are not terribly heroic .. Gawd... Edmund Bertram.. what a pompous twit.. I certainly wouldn't want to live with him . ..

THe Crawfords are not villains. Think when Aunt Norris is having a go at Fanny Price, Mary Crawford sticks up for her. "it is too hot for me here'. I think if Henry Crawford had married Fanny, she would have been the making of him. Lucy Steele and Fanny Dashwood (the occasional use of a pony is quite sufficient) are horrible people.

Filmbuffmum · 05/01/2022 18:12

It really is huge fun, and Adrian Lukis still has the perfect twinkle in his eye. Hard to be cross with his Wickham for long!

SuburbanCrofter · 05/01/2022 18:06

That looks fantastic Filmbuffmum! I'm imagining Rowley Birkin QC-style ramblings

SuburbanCrofter · 05/01/2022 18:04

PermanentTemporary, I don't get the sense Jane Austen was gay (particularly not based on the fact that she didn't want to get married - there are plenty of other good reasons for making that choice! ) But I think she would have met and enjoyed gay men, without realising that's what they were.

Filmbuffmum · 05/01/2022 18:04

Looks as if you can buy access until the end of January. Relatively expensive but I watched it this way and I promise it is worth it originaltheatreonline.com/productions/28/being-mr-wickham

PermanentTemporary · 05/01/2022 18:00

Filmbuffmum, was that on screen anywhere?

Filmbuffmum · 05/01/2022 17:57

The recent one man play with Mr Wickham (same actor as the 1995 version) celebrating his 60th birthday was absolutely delicious, one of the best sequels I have read or seen.

PermanentTemporary · 05/01/2022 17:54

I think Henry's certainly a woman's idea of a great husband, which may be the same thing in some cases. Was Jane Austen gay? Surely some have speculated about it.

LadyMonicaBaddingham · 05/01/2022 17:46

Mrs Bennett

SuburbanCrofter · 05/01/2022 17:45

PermanentTemporary, Henry Tilsley is obviously gay, isn't he!

SuburbanCrofter · 05/01/2022 17:44

NewYearSue you mean Jane Fairfax. I can never understand why Emma doesn't like her - because she's not chatty enough??

Also, favourite baddy not from an Austen book but mentioned above - St John Rivers. He is such a chilling depiction of sexual repression and misogyny dressed up as piety.

PermanentTemporary · 05/01/2022 17:44

Favourite hero? Henry Tilsley. Rational, rich, witty, cute and fond of a shopping trip.

CheeseplantJungle · 05/01/2022 17:36

Thanks. I’m due a reread I think.

Unflip

1 2 3 4

Swipe left for the next trending thread