Does anyone have a favourite Jane Austen Villain.

[florentina1]

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.

@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, 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.)

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

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 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.

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.

[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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

@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'.