Keyboard Shortcuts
ctrl + shift + ? :
Show all keyboard shortcuts
ctrl + g :
Navigate to a group
ctrl + shift + f :
Find
ctrl + / :
Quick actions
esc to dismiss
Likes
- Janeites
- Messages
Search
Elizabeth¡¯s Inaction
Beginning with Elizabeth Bennet¡¯s stroll with Colonel Fitzwilliam, and then
continuing during Darcy¡¯s botched first proposal, and then in his letter to Elizabeth, Elizabeth Bennet comes to learn that Bingley has been kept in the dark by Miss Bingley and Darcy since leaving Meryton about Jane¡¯s continuing interest in him, which is what brought Jane to London a few months after he left. Elizabeth is thus uniquely situated by Chapter 36 in her knowledge that Bingley may still be romantically interested in Jane, and she already knew all along that Jane was definitely still romantically interested in Bingley. It¡¯s an old romantic trope, the two lovers who each don¡¯t realize that the other is still in love with them. I suggest that once Elizabeth has this unique knowledge (the only other character who also knows is Darcy, but he has made it clear, arrogantly, that he stands by his actions to keep Bingley in the dark about Jane), she does absolutely nothing to try to somehow let each of the lovebirds know about the other, which might cause Bingley to wake up and (as Darcy puts it in the 1996 miniseries, ¡°go to it¡±). When she does think about telling Jane, she decides that it would only make Jane even sadder, since, so her thinking seems to go, it would be a fool¡¯s errand, it would not bring Bingley back. I advocate for Elizabeth to persuade her father to covertly seek out Bingley in London, and inform Bingley of this crucial fact that Jane still loves him. I am not suggesting that Elizabeth tell Jane directly, not unless and until her father was successful. Two counterarguments to mine come to mind: FIRST: Mr. Bennet is indolent, not a responsible diligent father, so even if Elizabeth asked, he would refuse to intervene. But, given the stakes for Jane, shouldn't Elizabeth give it a try with him anyway, what does she have to lose? It would be for Jane¡¯s sake, so it would be the generous thing for Elizabeth to do. But this possibility never even occurs to Elizabeth. Also, in Chapter 41, Elizabeth does try to get her father to stop Lydia and Kitty from going to Brighton. But she doesn¡¯t ask him to do something he already did, in a different way, at the beginning of the novel, which is to go on a secret romantic mission to Bingley! And¡. last but not least, Elizabeth doesn¡¯t even think the thought of asking her father, it never even occurs to her. Her mind is totally occupied, I would suggest, with increasingly obsessive thoughts and regrets about Darcy, so it appears there¡¯s no room for thoughts about Jane. Even when she is at Pemberley with her aunt and uncle, and Darcy¡¯s being so nice to them and to her ¨C it never occurs to her even then that she might ask him to reconsider about Jane and Bingley. No, that would risk him getting angry at her, and sending her on her way home. SECOND: I actually made up a hypothetical letter that Mr. Bennet could arrange to have delivered to Bingley in London without being detected by either Caroline Bingley or Darcy. The letter doesn¡¯t threaten Bingley, it doesn¡¯t try to make him feel guilty, it recognizes the delicacy of the situation, and it makes Mr. Bennet¡¯s good intentions perfectly clear, and gives Bingley an easy out if he is not interested, for any reason, in restarting with Jane. Would that be ¡°improper¡± for Mr. Bennet to write such a letter? But why would it be improper for a respectable gentleman like Mr. Bennet if he wrote a carefully worded, non-threatening letter of information to another gentleman, about a matter of great personal interest to both of them, and to the woman they both share affection for ¨C Jane? Why would that be more improper than Mr. Bennet going over to Netherfield at the beginning of the novel to introduce Bingley to the Bennet family and all his daughters, which everyone thought was a great move by him. More important, though, this got me thinking deeply about the distinction between ¡°propriety¡± and ¡°morality¡±. Even if hypothetically, someone could argue that it was not normal Regency Era decorum for Mr. Bennet to intervene in this way, I would think that everyone would agree that this was a very moral thing for Mr. Bennet to do. It would be a mission of mercy, a mission of love, with pure motives and a possibility it could lead to the righting of a very bad wrong ¨C two people who love each other having been separated for no good reason at all. I don't believe Jane Austen valued propriety and protocol over true love. Isn't such propriety what Austen ridicules strongly when Mr. Bennet reacts to Mr. Collins¡¯s letter: ¡°I must not, however, neglect the duties of my station, or refrain from declaring my amazement, at hearing that you received the young couple into your house as soon as they were married. It was an encouragement of vice; and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should very strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.¡¯ That is his notion of Christian forgiveness!¡± Mr. Bennet would, I conclude, find a mission to Bingley to be a mission of charity and generosity. He would risk looking improper, out of love for his daughter Jane. What do you all think, about any of the above? ARNIE |
Re: Two new family members
They are adorable. You will have so much fun with them. As you will also
come to remember, young kittens /cats can be terrors as well. Have them listen to Austen audible books. Nancy On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 6:47?PM Ellen Moody via groups.io <ellen.moody= [email protected]> wrote: 2 new family members: Fiona, white & grey spots; sister Elinor |
Two new family members
2 new family members: Fiona, white & grey spots; sister Elinor
(Dashwood), Ellie-cat, grey & white, same litter; females born early August. In cat bed; with foster mom; thru carrier mesh; in cat stack w/holes for climbing in and out in Izzy's room. Born early 8/2024. Thou mett'st w/things dying (beloved Ian & Clary), I w/things newborn (Winter'sTale) Callooh callay she chortled in her joy Ellen ![]()
FionaElinorcominghome.jpg
![]()
Elinorwfostermother.jpg
![]()
FionaElinorcominghome.jpg
![]()
fionaelinorthroughmesh.jpg
![]()
IncatstackInIzzysRoom.jpg
|
Ann Radcliffe: how central, important, intelligent & yet written out of the canon
Obviously, Nancy, you disagree with the author of that article, and even
more so with me. His rant may have been against imagining English husbands murdering or confining their wives - but I say it was also, ventriloquistically, Jane Austen's rant about what English husbands did every to their wives, which was just as bad (especially the "confining" part). ARNIE On Sun, Oct 6, 2024 at 1:28?PM Nancy Mayer via groups.io <regencyresearcher= [email protected]> wrote: Henry's rant wasn't about marriage. It was about riots. It was written |
Re: Ann Radcliffe: how central, important, intelligent & yet written out of the canon
Henry's rant wasn't about marriage. It was about riots. It was written
while the Gordon Anti-Papist riots were still remembered by older people. I do not find women isolated in spooky castles very threatening even considering the times, It fails in such symbolism for me. Much more pertinent are some of the court cases where a wife is trying to separate from her husband because of his cruelty, or male employers and sometimes their male servants attack female servants. Maria or the Wrongs of Women is much more frightening. Nancy On Sun, Oct 6, 2024 at 1:37?PM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io <arnieperlstein@...> wrote: Ellen, |
Ann Radcliffe: how central, important, intelligent & yet written out of the canon
Ellen,
This is scholarly writing about literature that is on a much higher standard than I typically see in this sort of mainstream media article about Austen (or Austen-related) The best part of Ferguson's article for me is this section: "The heroines are often imprisoned in remote, atmospheric locations where supernatural events appear to take place. ¡°That gives us a real sense of terror,¡± said Wright. ¡°It¡¯s quite psychological, before psychology was invented. She uses the image of the decayed castle or crumbling convent to explore the precarious and outmoded issue of marriage laws in England, where coverture meant a woman¡¯s legal identity and her property effectively disappeared when she married. So she shows young women in distress, in really exciting, action-packed narratives, with the aim of showing the precarious nature of a young female¡¯s existence who has no protection in ²õ´Ç³¦¾±±ð³Ù²â.¡± By empowering her heroines with the strength and resilience they need to escape and marry the men they choose, Radcliffe is ¡°very staunchly¡± showing that women can successfully resist domination, Wright said. ¡°There is a sense of Radcliffe critiquing patriarchy and men who think they can dictate to women precisely what we should do and what we should give to them in marriage. So in many ways it is feminist literature, on a par with what Mary Wollstonecraft was arguing in *A Vindication of the Rights of Women <>* .¡± At one point, a Radcliffe villain tells his victim: ¡°You speak like a heroine, let us see if you can suffer like one.¡± Wright added: ¡°There¡¯s always a happy ending and a good resolution. But there¡¯s a sense of a heroine being able to manoeuvre that resolution.¡± END QUOTE FROM FERGUSON ARTICLE However, even Ferguson fails to take the final step in her chain of logic, which is that it's not just some "men who think they can dictate to women" - that domination was baked into the patriarchal system of marriage - and the central, most insidious part of that domination was the wife's lack of control in "normal" marriage over her own body - hence serial pregnancy and death in childbirth as "normal". As I've said 1000 times, Henry Tilney's rant about what couldn't happen in a Christian nation is the epicenter of Jane Austen's critique of marriage in Northanger Abbey - YES IT COULD, AND DID, HAPPEN, all the time, and yet, no clergyman, politician, or male public intellectual was railing against this plague. Catherine's theories about General Tilney may have been wrong in specifics, but she was spot-on in essentials - and Jane Austen pretty much says that, in code, at the end of the novel. ARNIE |
Women's books, writing, literature
Ellen,
You and I have disagreed about a thousand things over nearly 25 years, but on this point, we are in 100% agreement - I've cited her line a hundred times or more about hating the Prince Regent because he treated his wife so abominably for so long. I have been a board member of Advance Gender Equity (AGE) for nearly 8 years. Read about the great work that AGE's young diverse team is doing here in Portland: Those of you reading this post who admire AGE's mission, please donate! ARNIE On Sun, Oct 6, 2024 at 8:58?AM Ellen Moody via groups.io <ellen.moody= [email protected]> wrote: I have to say that after all for me at this point in my life while I |
Women's books, writing, literature
I have to say that after all for me at this point in my life while I
can discover new genres or (to me) male authors I like for real, my driving desire and interest is to read books & essays by women. I remain amazed how I discover so many women seem indifferent to this important gender divide. I see those who care on the few places dedicated to some form of women's art, but outside that, no. They look surprised when I say most of the time I prefer women's writing. They seem not to realize the central messages or interpretations found in male books are male centered, male aesthetics. It's denied; maybe not on the level of the sentence or paragraph or chapter but on the level of a whole work of art. Many women do try hard to write versions of male books and especially male movies (There's money in that.) Selling themselves for centuries but now one does not have to. In the US men are trying to make pregnancy compulsory, but having made a miscarriage or anything going wrong in pregnancy, now life threatening, the cruelty and drive to dominate women of many is backfiring ... I'm with Austen on Queen Caroline: she was on her side because she was a woman Ellen |
Ann Radcliffe: how central, importnt, untelligent & yet written out of the canon
A new edition the occasion of this review with links to other essays
on Radcliffe. I am chuffed because what is said about her and her books is precisely my view and I agree she was ridiculed and written out because she was a woman Austen's remarks in NA quoted. To me the absurdity of attributing the gothic craze to apple's shallow burlesque a way of excluding the real starts: Lee's The Recess and Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest Ellen |
Re: BILLIARDS AND GAMBLING IN REGENCY PERIOD
Some would bet on everything including which raindrop would get to the
bottom of the window first. Two people could bet on a game even if others wouldn't. It really depended on the people. Nancy On Mon, Sep 23, 2024 at 8:22?PM Mary Cantwell via groups.io <Mary= [email protected]> wrote: Do any of you know whether gambling was a common practice with billiard |
BILLIARDS AND GAMBLING IN REGENCY PERIOD
Do any of you know whether gambling was a common practice with billiard games played in private homes/clubs in Regency Era?
I'm intrigued since this is where John Thornton and General Tilney met up, i.e., billiards. I Googled what I could, but I know that this group has members with specialized knowledge of the Regency Era, and I'm interested in finding out what you all know. Thank you -Mary |
Re: The Olive-Branch
I have never denied Jane Austen's disdain for serial pregnancy. She isn't
really pleased with pregnancy at all. I have never agreed that Austen put this into any book and particularly not NA where the Morland family of many hopeful children is thriving and the mother is still alive. There are many dead mothers in Austen's works. It is rather a trope in fiction that the heroine has to be without a mother, have a worthless mother, or be away from a sensible mother in order to have an adventure. There is not a single mother who died of multiple pregnancies, if by multiple, is meant more than 4, In fact, Mrs. Price and Mrs. Moreland are mothers with the most children and they are still very much alive. The dead Mrs. Tilney had 3 children. The dead Lady Eliot had 3 children. Mrs. Fairfax and Mrs. Weston had one child each. Mrs. Woodhouse had two children. The Musgrove's had four children and the mother is still alive to endure grandchildren. I think Austen expressed her opinions about pregnancy in her letters but not in her novels. We might as well think that Mrs. Tilney died from being beaten by her husband. That is much more likely. There is as much proof of that means of death as any other. Nancy On Mon, Sep 23, 2024 at 12:30?AM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io <arnieperlstein@...> wrote: Thank you Nancy. Actually another article about Pamela's pregnancy that |
The Olive-Branch
Thank you Nancy. Actually another article about Pamela's pregnancy that
actually outlines her "career" as a pregnant wife is this one: The Pregnant Pamela: Characterization and Popular Medical Attitudes in the Eighteenth Century by Dolores Peters Eighteenth-Century Studies , Summer, 1981, Vol. 14, No. 4 pp. 432-451 It is indeed clear from the moment they get married during the first *Pamela* novel, that Mr. B wants her to become pregnant right away. - he hints at it at least a couple of times, as Peters explains. So when he speaks about the olive-branch at the very end of the first *Pamela* novel, he either knows she is pregnant, or fervently hopes she is. That makes the likelihood that Mr. Collins's final wink about Charlotte being pregnant was Austen's wink at this line in *Pamela *that much greater. The above-cited article also discusses Pamela's fears of dying in childbirth, and her Austen-like chagrin at being serially pregnant since her marriage, as expressed in the fourth from the last letter in the second *Pamela* novel ("Mr. B. kindly accompanied me, apprehending that his presence would be necessary, if the recovery of them both [Pamela's sick parents], in which I thankfully rejoice, had not happened; *especially as a circumstance I am, I think, always in, added more weight to his apprehensions*.") Given my assertion since 2008 (that you always deny, Nancy, in our eternal dance here in Janeites) that this theme of serial pregnancy and death in childbirth is a major subtext of *Northanger Abbey *vis a vis Mrs. Tilney*,* I believe this is the first time I have ever found these fears explicitly described or enacted in fiction that we *know *Jane Austen read, and read closely. How ironic and sad if Pamela was the only book she ever read that made explicit what so many married Englishwomen of that era feared during their entire childbearing married years. ARNIE On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 3:46?PM Nancy Mayer via groups.io <regencyresearcher@...> wrote: Mr. B was definitely the father. |
Re: The Olive-Branch
Mr. B was definitely the father.
I found the article on JSTOR South Atlantic Review N.1 1993 The Edible Woman: Eating and Breast-Feeding in the Novels of Samuel Richardson Laura Fasick <> On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 5:17?PM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io <arnieperlstein@...> wrote: NANCY: "I think Mr. B is referring to a baby Pamela is carrying. A part of |
Re: The Olive-Branch
I think most editions of Pamela are abbreviated and the part of their life
after marriage left out. I don't remember the name of the journal in which I found the article. It was the journal of a language association which held a conference in Atlanta around 1989. If I can find the reference I will tell you. Nancy On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 5:17?PM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io <arnieperlstein@...> wrote: NANCY: "I think Mr. B is referring to a baby Pamela is carrying. A part of |
The Olive-Branch
NANCY: "I think Mr. B is referring to a baby Pamela is carrying. A part of
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
the book that is less published mentions that Pamela had a baby son and that Mr. B thought that her nursing the baby herself would remind people that he married some one from a much lower class. ( of course, class wasn't used then.) According to the author of an essay, husbands of the 18th century had a great deal to say about whether the wife nursed the child or not." Interesting, Nancy, thanks! Do you mean that there were multiple editions of Pamela, and in some of them it mentions Pamela having been pregnant, but in others not? Was Mr. B the father, or was that unclear? If you can point me to where in Pamela that is mentioned without inconvenience, that would be wonderful Thanks, ARNIE At the end of Richardson¡¯s *Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded*, after Mr. B hasschool ARNIE |
Re: The Olive-Branch
I think Mr. B is referring to a baby Pamela is carrying. A part of the book
that is less published mentions that Pamela had a baby son and that Mr. B thought that her nursing the baby herself would remind people that he married some one from a much lower class. ( of course, class wasn't used then.) According to the author of an essay, husbands of the 18th century had a great deal to say about whether the wife nursed the child or not. Nancy On Sun, Sep 22, 2024 at 1:50?PM Arnie Perlstein via groups.io <arnieperlstein@...> wrote: At the end of Richardson¡¯s *Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded*, after Mr. B has |
The Olive-Branch
At the end of Richardson¡¯s *Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded*, after Mr. B has
married Pamela, he reveals to Pamela the story of his illegitimate daughter, Miss Goodwin. He does this in a back-handed way, by first introducing Pamela to Miss Godwin, whom he had placed in a boarding school nearby, without revealing her true relationship to him. Then, after Pamela begins to suspect that he is more than an ¡°uncle¡± to the girl, he tells Pamela that she is in fact his daughter, and how that came about. Pamela warmly accepts the little girl, whom they will then take into their new marital home. Then we read this statement by the buoyant Pamela in her letter to her parents: ¡°Yesterday we set out, attended by John, Abraham, Benjamin, and Isaac, in fine new liveries, in the best chariot, which had been new cleaned, and lined, and new harnessed; so that it looked like a quite new one. But I had no arms to quarter with my dear lord and master¡¯s; though he jocularly, upon my taking notice of my obscurity, said, that he had a good mind to have the olive-branch, which would allude to his hopes, quartered for ³¾¾±²Ô±ð.¡± Wikipedia informed me thusly as to the meaning of ¡°arms to ±ç³Ü²¹°ù³Ù±ð°ù¡±: ¡°a heraldic term that refers to the practice of dividing a shield into four or more sections, or compartments, to display multiple coats of ²¹°ù³¾²õ¡±. My question is, does Mr. B mean by that reference to the olive-branch to symbolize his hopes that Pamela will continue to accept his daughter as if she were her own; and moreover, to accept his reformation from predatory rake to faithful husband as bona fide. Of course, a few of you have been reminded by the above of the references by Mr. Collins to olive-branches, and in particular the baby he hints Charlotte is carrying ¨C it's interesting to think of them as allusions to the above passage in *Pamela.* ARNIE |
A Calendar for Austen's Sense and Sensibility
I am truly delighted that my blog-essay called A Calendar for Sense
and Sensibility is now up on, and part of Sarah Emsley's Summer party for Jane Austen's S&S. It's based on my timelines from and for Austen's six seemingly finished novels, and three of her four unfinished novels. I published one paper (on the calendar I found in S&S) and put all the others on my website under the rubric: Time in Jane Austen: A Study of her Uses of the Almanac. While studying the novels this way I discovered (among other things) that in all but Northanger Abbey and Sanditon memorable and linchpin events where there is a hurtful humiliation of a heroine or great social loss, or deprivation/dispossession Austen has configured her timeline to make the day or evening a Tuesday. Since it's an attempt to show some fundamental about S&S, the other Austen's novels, and the nature of her art I am especially pleased to provide closure for this wonderful seasonal celebration Ellen |
My first published essay on S&S
I'm now writing a brief essay on the timeline & Tuesday in S&S (and
other Austen novels) for Sarah Emley's blog -- perfect excuse to spend evening wallowing in the Ang Lee/Emma Thompon 1995 S&S and Davis' 2008 S&S. How much I prefer the latter to the former. I found. Davies seeing where Austen does go wrong, and beautiful filling ot of Brandon owes much to Thompson's script Ellen |
to navigate to use esc to dismiss