To think Marianne shouldn't have married Colonel Brandon?

[squoosh]

Okay Willoughby was a cad and a bounder and took himself out of the running, but I do think that Brandon swooped in to take advantage of her rain induced fever which had left her a bit dazed and compliant.

It's a bit creepy that he falls in love with her because she reminds him of his long lost, 'fallen', dead love. Plus he's a bit intense, the laughs wouldn't be forthcoming and I'll warrant he expected her to do all kinds of dark shit in the bedroom.

Ideally she'd have had another couple of seasons in London and met lots of nice suitors or maybe even nipped across to Pride and Prejudice and married that nice Colonel Fitzwilliam.

Drippy Fanny

Heeheehee

Persuasion is definitely my favourite JA. Captain Wentworth, yum.

Anybody seen this cartoon? I LOL'd:

www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/hark_brontes.png

Crap. Forgot to click for live link:

www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/hark_brontes.png

Emma is young. Early twenties. And not too bright. Vain and undereducated.

What's interesting is that you all fancy the cads. I wonder if that was always the case and Austen understood the appeal of bad boys. Or a shift in sensibility over time.

Apart from Wentworth that is.

Well, there's more opportunity for an interesting story if the characters are flawed.

grendelsmum, thanks for making me think again about Fanny Price.

surprised so many people are keen in Toby Stephens' Rochester, I thought he was awful. Like a gurning fool trying to do stiff upper lip yet failing horribly. And I normally have a thing for TS.

I don't fancy any Rochesters.

Thankfully no one has mentioned fancying a certain Heathcliff, that baffles me.

I should be offended at 'drippy Fanny' but I'm just sniggering.

Yours sincerely,
Fanny Price(less)

To answer the original question, Marianne was a selfish, rude little madam who was extremely lucky to get Colonel Brandon. He would have treated her like a queen.

Aren't all 17 year olds selfish, rude little madams at times though?

God no to Heathcliffe. I hate Wuthering Heights.

LadyCuppa - well, maybe that's actually the point? Maybe, in real life, and forgetting the fairy-tale ending in which it all works out right (or the alternative ending Austen points us to, in which she marries Henry Crawford and he and Maria have an ongoing affair), a poor woman like Fanny Price is actually pretty much worthless to the world, and her only option is to live with her Aunt Norris (or Aunt Bertram, perhaps).

Pug is the only pet in Jane Austen, isn't she? Is Pug a deliberate parallel to Fanny Price? Fanny is a pet for Lady B, just as Pug is. When Fanny gets a marriage proposal, she is elevated to the status of potential pug owner ('when Pug next has a litter, I shall give you one of the puppies').

I have to say I'd love to have a pug, so I could pretend to be Lady Bertram.

NKF

I don't think I fancy the cads. I tend to like the men where I think the balance is actually the other way as to how good they are for each other. The only exception being Wentworth as she is.
Henry Tilney, she's wet. Knightly, she's a brat...

Oh - clever analogy with the pug!
So the point is her morality is of more value, in the end, to her than a fortune like Julia's although it does not feed her literally - she is prioritising the morality over food and getting the ultimate gains and rewards of this?

emma is younger than twenty though, isn't she? I thought she was about 18. and incredibly spoilt.

I think she's 20 or 21 Cakes.

LadyCuppa - yes, and she gets to see what morality and 'making your own choice' and marrying the man you love gets you when she's packed off back to Portsmouth and sees her mother and family living in unpleasant conditions. Lady B who married for money has done better and has a happier life than Mrs Price who married for love.

I sometimes think that the joke is that Fanny Price has listened to all the moral sermons that are meted out by Dr Grant etc and genuinely believes them, whereas everyone else knows that morality is rubbish and you need to look for the money. Then the Mansfield Park family are horrified to find out that she actually proposes to live by the rules they profess to follow.

Pretty sure Emma is 20 at the start of the book.
Knightly is 15? years older yet they always manage to make him sound ancient

Definitely think that Emma/Knightley is the creepiest match of all the Austen books. Emma is rich and indulged. Her money isn't going away when her Dad dies, like most of the heroines, because she's an only child with no entail issues.

So she marries an older bloke who admits he's been grooming her since she was 13?

Seriously? SERIOUSLY?

No way do I fancy the cads. Even Darcy would be too high maintenance for me!

Wentworth, Wentworth, Wentworth, always, every time.

Don't get me started on Heathcliff, I'd like to refer you back to the Thursday Next series (can't recall which book) where the cast of Wuthering Heights are in group therapy.

Because of this thread I have given up on my reread of Hitchhikers, and have picked up Northanger Abbey.

I will always Clueless as my preferred version of Emma. Blame my teenage years.

Grooming?!

It was v normal then for young women to marry older men, and at 35 Knightly is hardly an old man. Remember that Mr Woodhouse acted like a decrepit old fool, so Knightly would have seemed quite young and thrusting to Emma. :)

Well, i've just emerged from my 1995 Pride and Prejudice series marathon (no kids all day! And nothing else done!), and I had forgotten just how smashing it was. Colin Firth is brilliant. The look on his face when he's watching Lizzie at the piano , and Lizzie standing up to Catherine De Bourgh is brilliant. Now I need to find a good Persuasion to stream..... Glass of wine, no husband, no kids, full on Austen fest.