Jane Austen

[BaconAndAvocado]

Currently listening to a Radio 4 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility and loving it.
I’ve read and enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Emma.

What are the others like?

Exactly this. If it had been the equivalent of dancing naked in public, there's no way Mrs Norris, or even Lady Bertram or Edmund blinded by his infatuation, could have been brought round to consider it suitable entertainment (even if in Edmund's case it was grudging). A nice bit of Shakespeare within the family, or just involving the men, would have been fine.

There was also the question of the expense of it (at a time when Tom was still pissing the estate up the wall and Sir Thomas had to intervene in Antigua to try to recoup some of his losses).

That's not that easy to do, though. It's easy enough, reading P&P and with general knowledge, to understand that etiquette and gender roles have changed a great deal since that period. It's also easy enough to understand the crassness and lack of decorum of Mrs B, Kitty, Lydia, Mary, and even Mrs B. It's a lot harder to understand the precise implications of some siblings and a few friends mucking around putting on a play, especially when very few people will be familiar with "Lovers' Vows" specifically, and most people don't necessarily want to have to read several pages of contextualising to understand a key plot point.

I'm not criticising Austen or Mansfield. I'm just saying that that novel hasn't aged as well, to a modern reader, compared to P&P and S&S, which are more focused on courtship and less on morality.

And it's not just about the morality, but how the world has changed in accessibility and risk. It's all but impossible for a modern reader to understand, without prompting, that a long sea voyage to the Carribbean was so physically chancy that Sir Thomas had to be treated as though he were dead for the duration, because there was such a high chance that he would be.

I think they've all got about the same level of moral input, it's just that some of the values are still resonant whereas others have changed. The acting thing isn't relevant anymore, but everyone still understands that Willoughby is a wrong'un because running off in secret with a 16 year old girl, getting her pregnant, then abandoning her is still considered morally wrong. Both are ways to reveal characters' morality.

True, although that's sexual morality, which I think you could argue, in some ways, has changed less. It was wrong in Austen's day to exploit the vulnerable and shirk your responsibilities to those and especially to women you'd knocked up, and it still is. And it's within living memory for many or most people to disapprove strongly of sex before marriage (my DM still does), even if it's not something that's going to socially ruin a woman any more.

There are bits of JA's morality that don't sit right with me - like her approving comments about how in Mansfield, unlike Portsmouth, everyone's needs and comfort are considered. Well, no shit, Jane, it's easy to make everyone comfortable when you have plenty of mansion and money to do it with and not so easy when you have ten children, no control over your reproductive capacity, a disabled husband, and no safety net.

The Mansfield/Portsmouth contrast is meant to highlight the ill consequences of choosing a spouse for purely 'romantic' reasons and ignoring everything else that makes someone a suitable husband. It's showing that Mrs Price made her bed and now has to lie in it. It's not a theme which would sit well with a modern western audience (much more resonant in some other cultures), but I think it's still there as an unwritten rule. There are so many posts on MN about women who are in love with their partners but they have some huge incompatibility. It's no accident that it occurs to Fanny while she has an open offer of marriage from a man who is highly eligible in some ways and utterly unsuitable in others.

It’s a long time since I’ve read Mansfield, but wasn’t ‘everyone’s needs and comfort’ being considered a thought expressed by Fanny rather than by the narrator? I remember thinking it pretty ironic, given the way she was treated there.

What did Lady Bertram do that was different, though, other than have the sheer good fortune that her suitor happened to be wealthy, stable and bonafide? And Mr. Rushworth is wealthy, stable, and fairly decent at heart; the problem with him is that he is fucking dim. I don't think Austen's philosophy on this always hangs together fully. You can argue that Maria accepts Mr. Rushworth for the wrong reasons - money and importance, when she can't stand him as a person - but then you have the quite content Charlotte Collins as a counterpoint.

Charlotte made sure Mr Collins was happy & never let him know that she couldn’t stand him - not in the book, anyway. And I think she probably had less hope than Maria did of getting a better offer.

My point wasn't that JA thinks every woman should go for the most prudent match possible regardless of feelings; all her heroines do, after all, end up with the man they love. But I was making the point that she believes all marriages to be a compromise. There's no such thing as the perfect man, it's the woman's job to weigh up her suitor's pros and cons and decide which things are essential and which are negotiable. Frances Ward marries a naval lieutenant, Anne Elliot breaks off her engagement with a naval lieutenant. And Anne remarks at the end that she doesn't believe there was a real question of right and wrong, an answer to whether or not that was universally the proper advice to give, it could only be seen by the outcome. Fundamentally, Fanny senior marries to disoblige her family, Anne chooses to listen to the closest thing she's got to a loving family.

Maria and Mr Rushworth fail because she only marries him to spite Crawford and to escape her father's house (and for the money and consequence). But the Hursts in P&P seem to get on more or less ok even though they have many things in common with the Rushworths (one of them being that they don't have a lot in common as a couple). I think the take away there is that there has to be a certain level of respect for one's spouse, whatever their defects.

Charlotte is definitely much better at "managing" a pompous, but eligible and basically decent man, no question. And part of the issue with Maria is that she's vain, self-satisfied and lacking in impulse control. But I don't think you can straightforwardly extract a "this is how you should select a marriage partner" message from the Austen canon. It's a bit more complicated than that. Jane Bennet is, after all, above reproach, but she can't stand Mr C and couldn't have borne with him. And Mr Bingley is weak-willed and not too bright, but their marriage works because Jane loves him.

Charlotte accepts Mr Collins because she is 27, she is unlikely to ever have the chance of children or a stable home with anyone else and its the sensible option. In some ways I find her the counterpoint to Lydia as much as Elizabeth. Charlotte is trying to get away from the potential of a future unstable homelife, lack of her own home and genteel poverty whilst Lydia runs towards the options of an unstable home and poverty (of the less genteel sort)

Maria on the other hand is young and has many more opportunities. She gets engaged and then is flirting and fighting for the attention of another man whilst she is engaged.

Charlotte decision is sensible and pragmatic whilst Maria's is cold and calculated. They sound the same but there is a subtle difference. Maria does it without caring whether her behaviour will make Mr Rushworth unhappy. Charlotte aims to make Mr Collins, if not happy, at least comfortable.

It’s Fanny’s thought, and you’re right, it’s pretty ironic, given that she’s a kind of Mansfield dogsbody who sleeps in the attic, doesn’t even get a fire on the former school room she uses as a sitting room, and is lectured on the need for gratitude by aunt Norris. But she thinks something like ‘if tenderness were wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied it’s place’, but in Portsmouth, there’s neither.

I quite like JA’s tough-mindedness when she says that Mrs Price would have been just as good a fine lady as Lady Bertram (they’re essentially the same character), but Mrs Norris would have been a far better mother of nine on a small income.

Their prospects were completely different: Charlotte was 27, plain looking, not particularly well off, not well-born (her father was in trade), and we're to understand that she never had another offer of marriage. Maria was 21, beautiful, rich enough, and from a good family. She didn't have to settle for Rushworth, it was pure vanity, greed, and lack of any serious thought. I also think she suffered from her family situation: if her father had been at home he never would have encouraged the match, and her mother is too indolent (and doped up on opium) to give her any advice, so she's left to Mrs Norris, who is a terrible judge of character and gives piss poor counsel.

What makes you think Lady Bertram was on opium rather than just indolent Fink? It can’t have been easy for her to procure.

Sorry, I lost that post and had to rewrite it. I meant to write 'possibly' before the opium bit. It's not canon, but it's a common discussion point that she might have been on laudanum. I think it's overt in one of the film versions, but it was a topic of speculation amongst commentators way before that. Not in JA's text though.

Ah, Laudanum makes more sense to me. I like to think she was just a terrible lazybones though, I find that more amusing!

I think it's a bit unfair to call Bingley weak willed and not too bright. He is easy going rather than weak willed, and he is not stupid. Austen says, 'in understanding, Darcy was the superior, Bingley was by no means deficient, but Darcy was clever'.

I stand by my statement 🙂Bingley's not stupid, but he's not that bright - not the equal of the Bennet girls - and he's easily dominated by stronger personalities.

The news about Matthew Perry has underlined what a terrible and debilitating thing opiate addiction is. Seeing Lady B in that light would make her more of a tragic figure. However, the poorer sister Mrs Price was also naturally inclined to idleness I recall, so maybe it’s in their genes or something, although I can’t imagine there was much opportunity for idleness with 9 children!

Maria accepted Rushworth initially because he was rich, and it was about time she got married. Crawford awakened her to there being more out there but when he (to all intents and purposes) dumped her, she continued with her marriage to Rushworth as a consequence of anger and hurt pride, as well as wanting to be free of her father's restrictions.

Maria was never going to make a great wife to anyone because she had no idea of putting anyone else before herself.

I agree, but I also think that if Maria had had a properly chaperoned London season, she might not have accepted the first rich guy who showed up. You're right that she was too selfish to be good for anyone, but she might have been happier. She also, to put it bluntly, might have got a bit more worldly before marriage and wised up a bit as to what behaviour would be overlooked/ how to cover her tracks better. In that respect, Mary Crawford is right that she was foolish to get caught.

Mansfield Park is her deepest and best I think, but I have a soft spot for Catherine Morland of Northanger Abbey.

Oh, and I actually loved Sanditon even though it was u unfinished . How I wish JA had been able to complete it. I do recommend Kate Riordan 's version, as although her voice is distinctly different from JA it is still a good read. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I agree that Lady Bertram is merely indolent, it is her nature. The only 'busybody' among the sisters being Mrs. Norris.

Another thing has set me wondering - why was Jane Austen reluctant to name actual places?

For example, Tom sets off for --(we never find out where).

Maria begins to interest herself about the horse that Crawford is racing at B---

The regiment at Meryton located to the north, but we don't know where.

Yet some real locations such as Portsmouth, Lyme, are clearly identified.

She must have had a reason for this. Ideas?