To have just realised that Mr Collins got Mrs Collins in the family way.

[squoosh]

Have just re-read Pride & Prejudice for the first time in yonks and at the end Mr Collins mentions 'dear Charlotte’s situation, and his expectation of a young olive-branch. How had I not noticed that before?

I'd always imagined dear Charlotte avoiding that messy business by keeping him occupied with his sermon writing and his gardening and his pash on Lady Catherine.

But she was a woman who knew what she wanted so I wouldn't be surprised if she was the one who took conjugal matters in hand.

Good old P&P, the book that keeps on giving.

Re GWTW, I think Melanie suffered from the effects of being of a 'weak' physical nature to begin with combined with the effects of ignorant midwifery and a difficult birth followed by near starvation and hard labour at Tara. The book mentions that she 'never recovered' from Beau's birth. I always felt that perhaps she suffered from some form of lifelong anaemia or perhaps an undiagnosed heart condition and that she was just too weak to carry another child. Dr Meade even says that she should never have had Beau (her first). The miscarriage and what I always assumed was excessive blood loss and/or strain on her heart weakened her beyond salvation. As Rhett said "She never had your (Scarlett's) strength. She never had anything but heart".

GWTW was written in the 1930s and there would have been more knowledge of gyno and obstetric medicine than in JA's day. M Mitchell was also married and (assumingly) had more 'first hand' knowledge than JA did and my assumption is that the death of Melanie was rooted in medical fact as opposed to being simply a plot device.

But I digress. GWTW is my favourite book of all time. As you were.

Pond yeah, that makes sense. And she never let up on herself for a moment. Letting the children bounce on her bed while she was ill, insisting on going out and picking cotton in the blazing sun with everyone else - until she fainted...

Pond - that does make sense especially the anaemia, did they even know about anaemia then I wonder. I always felt sorry for Melanie, married to such a sap who lusted over another woman the whole time!

Don't forget thought that Mr Darcy also felt it was important to be accomplished that a Lady was an extensive reader and worked to improve her mind. Then again, he did only know about half a dozen truly accomplished young ladies!

On the "is Lizzie a suitable chatelaine for Pemberly" question, where she has an advantage is in having a already-competent household that understands how to run things, even when Darcy is away, or distracted.

Yes, this. Lizzy is very likeable and has great tact and social sense, and when she shows up at Pemberley as the very popular master's new bride, I think a combination of her own intelligence and social chutzpah, and goodwill towards Darcy's wife, will make her task very manageable. A lesser woman would be intimidated, but we don't ever see Lizzy discommoded by grandeur - she's quite at her ease at Rosings when poor Maria Lucas and Sir William are dying of fright, and is at ease enough to help out shy Georgiana at Pemberley when the Bingley sisters are looking daggers and making snide remarks how her family must miss the militia.

And one of her first responses to the beauty of Pemberley is a wistful/amused 'Of this I might have been mistress!' which doesn't suggest someone likely to quail before being the chatelaine of a great house.

(We know Pemberley is a 'modern' house - are we to imagine an earlier house on the site was demolished, as the Darcy money isn't new? Though I suppose that calls into question what JA means by 'modern'...)

I wonder was it "modern" enough to have what was a new innovation around then - a flushing indoor toilet?!

I know in many of the regency books I've read, the hot water is still brought up from the kitchen in the mornings. But I have seen some talk about the modern conveniences, one book where the Master had installed a bath with taps in his dressing room, and another had mentioned something about a "closet" in the hall. But I tend to not believe the historical facts in most of those books (written in modern times).

Whereas authors like JA who were writing about their own times, I'd feel confident in their descriptions. They just don't tend to describe all that much about the practicalities of daily life!

Hootsmon - THAT is the version I loved! That is what we used in school, and then my Uni had a copy on video of it up on the Arts and English Literature floor (where no self-respecting science student generally dared to tread). But as my bus home, 3 nights a week, was at 9.30pm, and I finished lectures at 6pm, I would get dinner and then go up and re-watch P&P a couple of times a month (there was only so much study you could do frequently, and I had no money for cinema trips or sitting having pints in a bar - this was free but there was very little of interest to a non Eng-lit student, no "Die Hard" or blockbuster type films, just adaptations of the various works on the course). I have the Jennifer Ehle version on video tape (machine now defunct) and dvd, and regularly watch it on Netflix to put me to sleep when DH is away. If I could get the older version, I'd be delighted!!

I love this thread! And the CF as Darcy haters

Can we all gather up our bonnets and make our way over to the genteel reading circle thread though with suitably muddy hems as it would be a shame to lose some of you lovely ladies before we make our way through S&S, WH et al

What's the genteel reading thread?

I hate CF as Darcy too! Bloody man, he's far too humourless.

I would think that "wife who is able to run the house" would be more of a problem if money were short than if it were plentiful.

In a middling income family like the Bennetts (or the Dashwoods), the mistress of the house would have to keep a strict watch on costs and perhaps even do some work herself. Mr Collins did ask which of his cousins cooked dinner, so they can't have been too far away from that, despite Mrs Bennett's indignation.

I think Lizzy would settle in beautifully as the mistress of Pemberly. Especially with a helpful and supportive housekeeper like Mrs Reynolds there to assist her. I think the housekeepers are key actually, think of poor Mrs de Winter II and evil old Danvers.

I think Lizzy would settle in beautifully as the mistress of Pemberly. Especially with a helpful and supportive housekeeper like Mrs Reynolds there to assist her. I think the housekeepers are key actually, think of poor Mrs de Winter II and evil old Danvers.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/what_were_reading/2619713-The-Genteel-Reading-Circle-For-Ladies?msgid=60624566

Fantastic thread-popping over to the other one now!

I love this thread! I read P &P for English Lit 'O' level and loved it, as my teacher said I would, after being bored rigid by Henry V. I haven't read it since, but have seen all the film and TV adaptations. I'd completely missed Charlotte being preggers too! The quote about desperately impregnating Mrs B had me in stitches! I also couldn't resist a childish snigger at poor Harris Bigg-Withers!

Thank you so much squoosh for this thread!

Vestal asked " Where would Willoughby fall?

I think you're right - he's a selfish predator, who ultimately sees Marianne's charming lack of attention to social mores as the signal of vulnerability. He's also an example of how easy it is to fake sensibility - because someone who truly did feel for others, and for places, wouldn't make the decisions he does. The lesson Marianne learns is that someone can appear to have 'true inner feelings' on the outside and be utterly contemptible inwardly - while someone can appear to be more restrained and proper - more 'sensible' on the outside - yet be suffering inner agony (Elinor).

Re Mrs B stopping having children, I think Queen Victoria was told to stop having children for the sake of health after a certain point. She was very upset at having to stop shagging Albert (I imagine he was quite a PIV kind of guy :))

Going back to Wuthering Heights - a total melodramatic fantasy but people always tend to forget that all the Brontes (like everyone else at that time) LOVED the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and the whole historical novel/comedy yokels/melodrama/violence etc of Wuthering Heights etc is influenced a lot by him.

Which is why I fond Scott almost completely unreadable. I can handle him in opera, because who doesn't love murderous brides and deadly rivalries when it's Donizetti? - but he's so damn copious. I suspect I'd be a lot more impatient with Emily Bronte if there were 20 plus Wuthering-Heights-style novels, all child ghosts and fanatical retainers and digging up coffins.

We know she was working on another novel after WH was published, because it's mentioned in a letter to Newby, her publisher, but hard to think what on earth it could have been like, even if Charlotte (possibly) didn't destroy it...

I've never seen Emily Bronte as a Scott-like figure - he always seems so very gentlemanly (in spite of the melodrama). Shelley, on the other hand....

As a teenager I used to check Scott's plots in the Oxford Companion in order to decide whether to read them or not - I wasn't wading through all that guff if I didn't get a happy ending (certain fondness for Ivanhoe and for The Talisman).

Going back to JA, Northanger Abbey she clearly has the The Mysteries of Udolpho and the Castle of Otranto in mind... but what I'd love to know (apropos of the "how much did she know about the mechanics" question) is whether she'd read The Monk?

Didn't Queen Vic say something about children being the price she had to pay for sex? Or something a bit more queen like probably! !! I would think if you fancied your partner, sex was on the cards but if you didn't like the Bennetts it was for reproduction only.
bathsheba I've always been a voracious reader but I have never re read for pleasure anything I did for GCSE Alevel or degree! Weird isn't it?

She must have been familiar enough with it, Lurcio, since the idiotic John Thorpe mentions it (along with Tom Jones) as the only decent novel for years... while condemning poor old Catherine's taste for liking Radcliffe's Udolpho, a book that JA clearly thinks beats Lewis's work hollow! My guess is that, at the very least, she knew the plot and the general 'status' of the work as a bit dubious (all those comments from men expressing shock that such a thing should be in womens' hands), even if she hadn't read it cover-to-cover.

As PPs have said, I think the idea of ladies being entirely shielded from sex in the C19 is a bit of a myth. Illicit sex - seductions, caddish behaviour - is never far away in JA's work. For instance, the whole 'leaping over the ha-ha' thing in Mansfield Park seems intended to refer to behaviour that's both socially and sexually problematic. Then you've got those comments that have raised an eyebrow amongst critics for decades - Mary Crawford's book about sailors, for instance: '“Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”

Big shout out, by the way, for Valancourt Books and Zittaw Press who do an amazing job of publishing "horrid novels" (amongst other interesting things).

As a teenager I used to check Scott's plots in the Oxford Companion in order to decide whether to read them or not - I wasn't wading through all that guff if I didn't get a happy ending (certain fondness for Ivanhoe and for The Talisman).

I did similar. I can't now remember exactly what my rationale was for whether I would read or not, but I had some kind of internal gamut from 'merely mad' to 'batshit insane' .

I know there was a heavily bowdlerised version of The Monk in the late 1790s (which does make one wonder what can have been left in), so it's perfectly possible, though I don't think there's any evidence either way. Mind you, the 'knowledge' you'd obtain from The Monk is more along the lines of 'how to date rape someone by using magic myrtle boughs' and 'how to impregnate nuns disguised as the convent gardener' sort...

Isn't it Udolpho where the first thing our heroine does after escaping from the castle is buy a hat? Otherwise she could not respectably be out in public?

I think she does, Surely. She's certainly a very well-prepared and genteel emergency escapist. She always seems to be able to produce sketching materials at the drop of a hat, too, to show how accomplished she is while in mortal danger...

Shove, and there's the 'great rent' in Lydia's muslin gown that she mentions after she's run away with Wickham and her hymen isn't in pristine condition now either.

Incidentally, in a JA cad-off, who wins - Willoughby or Wickham?

Not to mention the fact that Emily is never so alarmed at being kidnapped by bandits etc. as not to show her full appreciation of the sublime scenery that surrounds her!

at Lydia's gown - I'd forgotten that!!

I think what Willoughby does is worse than what Wickham does, but that's only because of circumstances (Darcy forcing through the marriage).