The Genteel Reading Circle For Ladies

[EverySongbirdSays]

In which like minds will discuss Jane Austen and other such 19th Century Classics sparked from an unhealthy interest in the sex life of one Mr Collins, parson to her ladyship Catherine De Bourgh of Rosings Park

First up : Sense And Sensibility

Bring your love of Dashwood, Brandon, Willoughby, Farrars, and Emma Thompson's weird crying noise here!!!

I read WH in my teens but I was the least romantic teenager ever and it left me cold (and with a permanent loathing of novels with acres of phonetically rendered dialect).

I should probably try it again, but worry that it will be like the time I saw La Boheme and spent most of it muttering OH PLEASE MIMI JUST DIE NOW

Odd, gruffalo, I love Heights and still dislike Eyre - looking forward to ripping it a new one when I get there.

AIBU - to have reserved the Clothbound Edition of S and S and also let you all know there's a now a Clothbound of her Juvenilia ? Love and Friendship.

There's also a clothbound of Tenant. It's mine. MINE I TELL YOU.

My family's from Howarth, I had an ancestor living at Top Withens (the farmhouse WH is supposed to be based on). The graveyard is an awful place, so full of graves you can't squeeze between them. I was taught the drinking water used to come from an underground stream which flowed through the graveyard (shudder)

After lurking on various threads for about three years have been compelled to join by this one! I live near Haworth and have visited many times. Not only did the graveyard feed into the water supply but there was a communal privy at the top of the main street " perched upon an eminence commanding the whole length of the street.in fully view of passers by" The quote is from the Babbage Report into sanitary conditions in Haworth , (which Patrick Bronte institgated) and you can read more here about just how bad the conditions in Haworth were: www.kdfhs.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=310:the-bavage-report&catid=43&Itemid=102

Welcome, welcome, Lydia!

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.

That link is grim - no wonder none of the younger Brontes made old bones!

Jesus it's a wonder they got through childhood unscathed

"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.

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.

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

Nope Maryz - no-one's properly posted their re-read thoughts yet, we're still on S and S

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

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

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

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

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.

On some level I'll always be reading Wildfell Hall wrote my dissertation on it.

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

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

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

I'd not thought of that!

Marianne will totally be a Mrs B

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).