#austen fanwank

[anghraine]

This is unnecessarily long, but: I was just thinking about Wickham's predation on fifteen-year-old Georgiana Darcy and then, almost exactly a year later, Wickham's predation on sixteen-year-old Lydia Bennet.

There are obvious parallels between the two incidents. In fact, they're so obvious that I think the incidents are sometimes treated as equivalent, with the consequences only differing by happenstance. I don't think that's true, personally.

There are some mechanistic sort of differences—Wickham put a lot more effort and planning into the Georgiana situation. He wanted to marry her for her money and to make her brother suffer. She had to be isolated from people who would look out for her interests, he had Mrs Younge in place, he had known Georgiana as a child and was able to exploit his own previous kindness to her as her father's godson, etc.

And Georgiana, despite all of this, and despite being swept away by a teenage infatuation with an extremely attractive man, was still uncomfortable with it. She was worried about disappointing a brother who raised her and whom she deeply loves and admires. When her brother actually showed up by surprise, she decided to tell him everything; Darcy takes pains to give her credit for this. Adaptations generally downplay Georgiana's active decision-making here, but the only element of chance is Darcy deciding to go to Ramsgate at all. He insists that he was only able to act because Georgiana chose to tell him what was going on.

This isn't meant to be an indictment of Lydia, though. Does she admire the parents who raised her? No. But why would she? Especially why would she admire a father who treats her mother and sisters and herself with profound contempt and no sense of responsibility? Why would she ever confide in him?

It's not like Lydia doesn't confide in anyone. In fact, she too confides in an older sibling, her sister Kitty. And in one sense, her trust in Kitty is not undeserved. Kitty does keep the secret. Presumably, she does this because, despite her occasional annoyance with Lydia, she is very much under her influence and goes along with whatever Lydia does. Regardless, she is trustworthy in that sense. Moreover, we see at the end of the book that Kitty is easily improved by being placed in better environments and taught how to behave. She just didn't know better.

How was she going to judge Lydia's situation correctly? Who was teaching her to judge anything correctly? Certainly not their parents.

If Mr Bennet had bothered to interest himself in his younger daughters and try and influence them for the better, impressionable Kitty is probably the one who would have benefited the most. The whole Lydia/Wickham thing would have fallen apart before it went anywhere if all the girls had been been properly raised, even if Lydia did exactly the same things.

And Lydia likely wouldn't do the same things if she'd been brought up properly and, you know, treated with a baseline of respect rather than being openly mocked by her father, the person most able to affect her development. Instead, at barely sixteen, she's been continually rejected by her father, over-indulged by her mother, and flattered by adult men (28-y-o Darcy says he and Wickham are nearly the same age). And she still tells someone what's going on, even though she doesn't care about her parents' opinions or the consequences of her actions. And she was under the protection of a colonel and his wife at the time, who also could have told someone or acted, and didn't.

It's not that nobody could have done anything about the Lydia/Wickham situation. It's that nobody did until Darcy found out and tried to extract her. But it was, in one sense, too late. To Lydia, he's just some unfun acquaintance who says boring things like "go home to your family and I'll do what I can to cover for you." That is, he tries to do what he did for Georgiana.

But Lydia is not Georgiana—she did not choose to tell him about any of this. She did not want to be extracted because she didn't know and couldn't be quickly made to understand what marriage to Wickham would mean in the long term. And she didn't care what her family thought because she had no reason to, pragmatically or psychologically.

Georgiana, otoh, did care about her family's welfare and the good opinion and affection of the head of her family. But despite their radical differences in personality, the most fundamental difference between the girls IMO is that Georgiana had every reason to believe that disappointing Darcy and losing his respect would be a change from the norm.

Normally he is affectionate and attentive towards her. They write each other long letters, he defends her to other family members, and praises her frequently. Georgiana, quiet and intimidated though she may be, talks more when he's around. Disappointing him had actual stakes for her.

Put another way, the potential loss of his good opinion mattered to her because he's gone to the trouble of raising her as well as he can and forming a good relationship with her. She chose to tell Darcy the whole thing because he had earned her affection and trust in a way that Mr Bennet has utterly failed to do. Even Darcy happening to visit Georgiana at Ramsgate comes from his affection and attention to Georgiana's welfare, even if he couldn't have known what would follow from checking on his sister at that particular moment.

Chance is always part of life, and it's part of the novel and these situations. But a lot of how these scenarios wound out was not determined by chance but by long-existing patterns in these girls' educations and relationships.

#this actually spun off from a different post about the contrast between darcy and mr bennet #they're alike in some ways but it only makes the differences all the more glaring #and i don't think we see that more than in how they conduct themselves towards the young girls in their care #and in the drastic consequences of how they educate and relate to those girls #georgiana and lydia made choices but there's a point at which harping on choice!!! and personal responsibility!! doesn't have much value #and the contributing factors and context of those choices matter so much more #anghraine babbles #long post #austen blogging #austen fanwank #georgiana darcy #lydia bennet #fitzwilliam darcy #george wickham #mr bennet #catherine bennet #some unflattering references to mrs bennet but this is more of a mr bennet hate post :)

[and-you-will-like-it]

We see Cora with a book a few times throughout the series, so of course I've fanwanked that she adores reading :) Today's fun (?!) question: What do you think are her favorite things to read? Mysteries, romances, historical novels, classics, nonfiction...? I can also see her proudly rereading Edith's articles over and over :)

Hi, darling! Thank you so much for the ask!! Huge apologies for not answering yesterday. It was a crazy day.

I love headcanon questions and discussions, so please keep them coming!!!

In my headcanon, Cora has always loved to read. As a child, she could always be seen roaming about the house with her nose in a book.

As far as her favorites, I believe her to be a big fan of the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen. I also picture her reading “Little Women” to her girls when they were little.

As for Edith’s column, I imagine Cora sitting in the window seat in her bedroom, reading each new article as she beams with pride. She clips the articles out and keeps them in one of the drawers of her dressing table. I also think she was immensely proud of Edith for putting together the magazine at the last minute just as Robert was in episode 6.03. That was one of my favorite scenes, and I can imagine Cora gushing even more about her daughter’s success (once she recovered from that horrid hospital meeting).

[anghraine]

Darcy's role in P&P would work for me anyway, but tbh it works for me 10x better because he halfway reverts back to form towards the end of the book.

#so many takes on darcy seem to think his presentation of himself at pemberley is a permanent radical transformation of his personality #and the end point of his character arc #and it's explicitly not a static end point in that way #his inwards change is real but how much that translates into outwards presentation depends on the context #like late-novel darcy trying to compliment mrs bennet and doing it in a way that reads as icy and brusque is just peak darcy #the difference isn't that he's become personable in this social context; he's not! but he's doing his best now #and this being an ongoing struggle at which he sometimes comically fails is so much more austen #than the total transformation into a perfect dreamboat narrative #but yeah i love that austen goes out of her way at the end to yank him out of his fulfillment enclosures and underscores his foibles #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #lady anne blogging #fitzwilliam darcy

[anghraine]

It's obvious that I'm adamantly opposed to the idea that Darcy does not deserve Elizabeth's good opinion/love, doesn't deserve his happy ending with her, is generally inferior to her, whatever.

I will say, however, that there is someone who has a good opinion of him that he does very little to earn. I think you could make a much better argument in that case that he doesn't really deserve it. And yet it's so endearing:

[Mrs Bennet:] “Mrs Long told me last night that he [Darcy] sat close to her for half an hour without once opening his lips.” “Are you quite sure, ma’am? Is not there a little mistake?” said Jane. “I certainly saw Mr Darcy speaking to her.” “Ay, because she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, and he could not help answering her; but she said he seemed very angry at being spoke to.” “Miss Bingley told me,” said Jane, “that he never speaks much unless among his intimate acquaintance. With them he is remarkably agreeable.”

-

Jane's reaction to Wickham's story:

“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful light it places Mr Darcy, to be treating his father’s favourite in such a manner,—one whom his father had promised to provide for. It is impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had any value for his character, could be capable of it."

Jane passing on Bingley's account:

"I am sorry to say that by his account, as well as his sister’s, Mr Wickham is by no means a respectable young man. I am afraid he has been very imprudent, and has deserved to lose Mr Darcy’s regard."

Jane after Wickham's story becomes common "knowledge":

Miss Bennet was the only creature who could suppose there might be any extenuating circumstances in the case unknown to the society of Hertfordshire: her mild and steady candour always pleaded for allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes; but by everybody else Mr Darcy was condemned as the worst of men.

Jane after Elizabeth tells her about the Hunsford proposal:

She [Jane] was sorry that Mr Darcy should have delivered his sentiments in a manner so little suited to recommend them; but still more was she grieved for the unhappiness which her sister’s refusal must have given him.

Jane is so sad about how sad Darcy must be!

“His being so sure of succeeding was wrong,” said she [Jane], “and certainly ought not to have appeared; but consider how much it must increase his disappointment.”

Jane's response to hearing the truth about Wickham:

What a stroke was this for poor Jane, who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind as was here collected in one individual! Nor was Darcy’s vindication, though grateful to her feelings, capable of consoling her for such discovery.

Jane still vicariously suffering for Darcy:

“Wickham so very bad! It is almost past belief. And poor Mr Darcy! dear Lizzy, only consider what he must have suffered. Such a disappointment! and with the knowledge of your ill opinion too! and having to relate such a thing of his sister! It is really too distressing, I am sure you must feel it so.”

Jane even points out that Darcy's general behavior and demeanor never struck her as all that bad:

[Elizabeth]: “There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.” [Jane]: “I never thought Mr Darcy so deficient in the appearance of it as you used to do.”

Elizabeth keeps so much of her relationship with Darcy hidden through the later novel that Jane doesn't have reason to say much about him, but after their engagement, Elizabeth worries about her family's response:

she anticipated what would be felt in the family when her situation became known: she was aware that no one liked him but Jane

When Elizabeth tells Jane about the engagement, Jane is shocked and baffled. Elizabeth assures her of her change in feeling, and adds:

"But are you pleased, Jane? Shall you like to have such a brother?” “Very, very much."

Jane continues to be worried that Elizabeth doesn't really love Darcy and wants details that she eventually does receive.

“Now I am quite happy,” said she, “for you will be as happy as myself. I always had a value for him. Were it for nothing but his love of you, I must always have esteemed him; but now, as Bingley’s friend and your husband, there can be only Bingley and yourself more dear to me."

Yes: Darcy is more dear to Jane than her father, mother, other three sisters, friends, and four uncles and aunts.

As for Darcy, he certainly likes and respects her. He describes her in the letter as amiable, cheerful, engaging, and explicitly excludes her from his criticisms of the Bennets. Back at Netherfield, he's noted as ignoring Miss Bingley to be polite towards Jane, and after his own engagement, he points out Elizabeth's care for Jane as early proof of her own goodness. Jane is one of only three characters he refers to by their first name alone by the end of the book (the others are Elizabeth and Georgiana).

So it's not that he doesn't appreciate her in his own way. I actually think the quiet rapport between them is really cute even though Jane is the person who suffers the most for Darcy's mistakes. But damn, Jane.

#jane and darcy brotp is so important to me because jane is... like that #anghraine babbles #long post #austen blogging #austen fanwank #fitzwilliam darcy #jane bennet #elizabeth bennet #jane austen #pride and prejudice

[anghraine]

I saw a post that was like "P&P is about a man listening to the love interest and unlearning his toxicity" and it's similar enough to many others I've seen that I'm just ... aghhhh.

ffs Elizabeth is not the love interest; she is the protagonist of the damn book and P&P is primarily about her character and development and experiences. If you care more about Darcy's, okay; that doesn't mean it's what the book is about.

Yes, Darcy listens to Elizabeth's criticisms despite the circumstances and that's good. But that framing makes it sound extremely one-sided, yet Elizabeth's arc (which, again, is the main focus of the novel) is contingent on seriously considering what Darcy says and drastically overhauling her conceptions of pretty much everyone involved. The listening goes both ways!

Not going to lie, "toxic" and its variants are losing all meaning for me at this point.

#love interest elizabeth bennet might be my peak villain origin story tbh #darcy is one of the most prominent austen love interests but the book still isn't essentially about him #anghraine rants #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #otp of otps

[anghraine]

I find it deeply annoying that Darcy gets lumped in with Rochester and/or Heathcliff, but it is also slightly funny because I'm not sure any Austen lead would hold Rochester and Heathcliff in more undiluted contempt than Darcy.

(In fairness to Rochester, I don't like him but he's no Heathcliff either. IMO a lot closer to him than to Darcy, though!)

#i am utterly convinced that darcy would loathe them both with his entire soul and being #sarah rees brennan had a great tweet about this that i sadly don't exactly remember #but it was one hundred percent correct #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #lady anne blogging

[anghraine]

While I'm on a Darcy kick (lmao as if I'm ever not, peak blorbo, etc), there's another very strange criticism I encountered the other day.

There's a long-running debate (that briefly comes up in the novel itself) about whether Darcy should have revealed Wickham's true character earlier/more publicly. This is complicated for a lot of reasons, but I saw an argument recently that was like ... okay, he couldn't really talk about Georgiana, and he couldn't talk about it in a way that would lead Wickham to destroy Georgiana's reputation, and possibly nobody would have believed him over Wickham anyway, but that's his fault for being so unlikable and anyway, he could have told Bingley! Then Bingley could warn someone, so why didn't Darcy do that?

Um. He did.

There's this whole thing in the novel where Bingley does try to deliver a warning about Wickham. It doesn't work because a) his information obviously comes from Darcy and b) Bingley forgot the details about Wickham that, according to him, Darcy has told him multiple times.

Caroline also warns Elizabeth in an admittedly shitty way, but it's so heavily filtered through her snobbery that Elizabeth doesn't listen to that, either.

This isn't meant to completely resolve the debate over what Darcy could have done about Wickham without jeopardizing Georgiana, but he absolutely did warn Bingley about Wickham and Bingley tried to pass it on.

#anghraine babbles #lady anne blogging #austen blogging #fitzwilliam darcy #charles bingley #george wickham #austen fanwank

[anghraine]

A few days ago, I briefly mentioned Wickham's take on Lady Catherine, and it's stuck in my mind. At least, this specific part of the description has:

She [Lady Catherine] has the reputation of being remarkably sensible and clever; but I [Wickham] rather believe she derives part of her abilities from her rank and fortune, part from her authoritative manner, and the rest from the pride of her nephew, who chooses that everyone connected with him should have an understanding of the first class.

I mean, in fairness to ... Wickham (ugh), it's evidently true that Lady Catherine is not actually clever and her power and force of personality do a lot of the work of giving her a reputation for it. But I do think the way he manages to link this to Darcy is interesting.

Wickham seems to assume that Darcy can just choose that everyone connected with him has a reputation for high intelligence, which I think is pretty debatable. On top of that, Wickham assumes that Darcy would choose to do that, because of pride. He's set up an odd framework in which Darcy cares deeply about everyone around him being perceived as clever (but only for nasty pride reasons, of course!), and in fact cares so deeply that he'd bring his influence to bear in maintaining Lady Catherine's reputation for it.

I don't think Lady Catherine's reputation for cleverness rests on Darcy just wanting his family to be seen as clever or requires that explanation at all. But I find it intriguing that Wickham thinks so, or at least says he does, given the Ch 4 description of Darcy:

In understanding, Darcy was the superior. Bingley was by no means deficient; but Darcy was clever.

So I suspect this may be part of Wickham's attempt to acknowledge Darcy's good reputation and qualities enough to cover his ass later, while tying everything good about him to his pride. Wickham doesn't quite admit that Darcy's (alleged) desire for those around him to be seen as clever derives from Darcy being clever himself and valuing the quality, but I think it's kind of implied, and at the very least, he could suggest that he'd said something to that effect.

It's a bit how he describes Darcy's careful guardianship of Georgiana (which Wickham certainly has reason to know about!). He mostly attributes it to Darcy's reputation for being a good brother, finds a way to make it somehow about pride, and barely wedges in a grudging admission that Darcy actually has some real affection for Georgiana. I suspect he only does the last because it's so incredibly obvious that it'd be suspicious if Wickham suggested otherwise.

I do wonder, though, if part of the reason that Wickham associates Lady Catherine's reputation for cleverness with Darcy's supposed desire for his family/connections to be seen as clever is Wickham's own fixation on Darcy. Wickham knows Darcy is seen as clever and likely that Darcy values intelligence. Darcy and Wickham were brought up together as companions in the same household. And tbh I don't think Wickham himself is, or has ever been, particularly clever in the way that Darcy and Elizabeth are.

Wickham suggests that Darcy was insecure and jealous from childhood (and some readers have really wanted to believe him!). But my headcanon is that, growing up with Darcy, Wickham was the more insecure one. He was the one who was supposed to go to school and Cambridge and become a clergyman; he was supposed to be quick-thinking and good at his books and morally restrained. Darcy was the heir; he could be anything he wanted to be. Yet I would guess that young Wickham was continually outstripped by Darcy in those terms, that he came to resent Darcy's freedom and what he did with it, and that it's very easy for his mind to link Lady Catherine's supposed cleverness to Darcy's.

In Wickham's head, the connection must somehow be causal. But he can't bring himself to quite admit to anyone that Darcy's cleverness is real any more than he can admit that Darcy's generosity or moral rectitude are real. It's got to be about pride, reputation, family, fortune. And I suspect Wickham can't admit the truth to himself, either.

#i feel like wickham really blurs the lines between what qualities ly c and darcy actually have and what they have the reputation for having #because he's so much about the appearance of things and doesn't engage with the reality of them #oh and i also have headcanons about how darcy himself relates to this but that's a post for another day #anghraine babbles #long post #austen blogging #lady anne blogging #george wickham #fitzwilliam darcy #lady catherine de bourgh #anghraine's headcanons #pride and prejudice #jane austen #austen fanwank

[anghraine]

I think I've talked about it before, but there's a pretty beloved book!Darcy line that's ... maybe not objectively misread, but often read in a very different way than I interpret it:

"But your family owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe I thought only of you."

I've seen this interpreted as a romantic concession that Darcy's love for Elizabeth and concern for her were his true motives for intervening with Lydia. Less often, I've also seen it read much more uncharitably as an indictment of his principles—he only cares about this whole thing at all because Elizabeth does and he cares about her, so it's ultimately selfish.

And those readings (which are ultimately related) do make a certain amount of sense if you analyze the quote by itself. He outright says he was only thinking of Elizabeth! Yes, this is in specific reference to her family, but still, he's pretty clear that his true motive was Elizabeth's peace of mind.

In this case, his claim to the Gardiners that he was principally motivated by his sense of guilt over Wickham would simply be a lie—perhaps a benevolent one to protect Elizabeth from feeling pressured, perhaps a necessary one in the circumstances, but still not an actual motive and not truly an aspect of his character.

Interestingly, though, when Elizabeth receives Mrs Gardiner's account of the Lydia affair in her letter, she does not doubt that Darcy was telling the truth about his motives, even if his feelings for her also affected him:

he had liberality, and he had the means of exercising it; and though she would not place herself as his principal inducement, she could perhaps believe, that remaining partiality for her might assist his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind must be materially concerned.

Elizabeth is in a lot of turmoil and uncertainty at the time, so it does make sense that she might not fully realize, or dare assume, that she really was his primary motivation—even if it means that she's largely wrong about him all over again.

...except, a mere two sentences before Darcy says "I thought only of you," he says something else that's often excluded from the romantic (or anti-Darcy) use of the original quote.

"That the wish of giving happiness to you might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny."

So in this very passage, he says that he had other motives than Elizabeth's happiness, but that the possibility of making her happy strengthened his other motives. That is quite similar to what Elizabeth concluded when she read Mrs Gardiner's letter (even the phrasing is similar). She did underestimate the strength of Darcy's feelings during that whole phase of the story, yes—he certainly feels more than "remaining partiality." But she's not getting him fundamentally wrong at this point.

I think that, like Elizabeth, Darcy did feel guilty about Wickham (both of them disproportionately to their actual culpability, IMO). I think that this really was a driving motive for his intervention with Lydia—first in trying to get Lydia to leave Wickham, and secondly in arranging the marriage. Of course, his feelings for Elizabeth would strengthen that drive, and did! But I don't think he was mostly lying to the Gardiners or that Elizabeth's analysis of his actions and character were all that wrong this time.

IMO, when he says he was only thinking of Elizabeth, he's speaking specifically in the context of her attempt to voice the gratitude that her family (allegedly) would feel if they knew the truth of what he had done. He respects them as human beings at this point, but he wasn't acting for the sake of the Bennets as a group and doesn't feel like they really owe him anything. The only person he was particularly motivated by was Elizabeth. He also doesn't want her to feel like she owes him something, but if she's going to thank him personally, it should be for herself alone; anything else is kind of wrong and fake.

In that sense, he was only thinking about her—that is, as opposed to thinking about other people. But given his longer speech, in which he explicitly says he had other motives, Elizabeth's happiness being the only person's he was really preoccupied with doesn't prevent him from having more complicated, abstract, layered motives overall. It can be romantic without necessarily being simple.

#anghraine babbles #long post #austen blogging #austen fanwank #fitzwilliam darcy #elizabeth bennet #otp of otps #anghraine's meta #anghraine's headcanons #a bit of columns a and b honestly

[anghraine]

I always find it interesting that no one in P&P has any doubt that Mr Gardiner could and would have shelled out ten thousand pounds to bribe Wickham.

Mr Bennet is determined (at least at the time) to eventually repay him, when he believes Mr Gardiner paid it, but he does believe that. Mrs Bennet simply shrugs off the vast sum of money that everyone believes was expended to preserve Lydia's reputation. Her justification is that she and her daughters would have inherited all her brother's money if he hadn't gone and got married and had children of his own (how dare!). His assurance that she's going to be fine is not an empty one.

Elizabeth doesn't seem to doubt it, either. And earlier, at Pemberley, she assumed that Darcy had mistaken the Gardiners for members of fashionable upper-class society—a believable mistake to make, apparently, and he is surprised that they're Mrs Bennet's relatives. (I mean. Fair.) Their summer trip is likely not a cheap one. They're doing quite well.

In any case, I do think the Gardiners' prosperity and its bearing on the Bennets' situation is kind of overlooked by the fandom.

#honestly i think mrs bennet's response to mr gardiner apparently paying ten thousand pounds for lydia to marry /wickham/ #is pretty repugnant actually #the whole thing about how she would have been his heir #and he hasn't done anything except give presents to her children so he /should/ pay for lydia is. wtf. #(this is also manifestly false since elizabeth and jane frequently stay in the gardiners' house...) #in any case the bennet women were never going to be left out in the cold by the gardiners #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #edward gardiner #m gardiner #mrs bennet critical

[anghraine]

I know that "my male fave is also the fandom's male fave to such a disproportionate degree that almost everyone who has a different fave uses mine as the point of comparison to explain why theirs is Better, Actually" is a smallest violin kind of problem.

But I've liked many popular characters and juggernaut ships and ... damn, there is something about Austen's Darcy that attracts this like nothing else.

#also extremely reductive or simply wrong takes on him to prop up the alternate fave #and a whole ton of heteronormativity bc of the assumption that his popularity is all about straight women wanting him #'wouldn't you rather have a man like xyz who ...' #no :) because i would rather not have any man at all :))) bye #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #lady anne blogging #fitzwilliam darcy #anghraine rants

[anghraine]

I trust Austen's artistic judgment enough to believe that she was right to cut out parts of her previous draft of P&P to create the version we have. Cuts are sometimes necessary at the best of times and the finished product is incredibly smooth, engaging, and polished, especially for the time.

But as a fan ... the knowledge that there was once more P&P than we have and it's gone forever ... :'(

#rip first impressions #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #pride and prejudice #deep blogging

[anghraine]

I saw a popular author post about how, while of course Elizabeth has some obligatory flaws, Darcy's are exponentially more severe, and it was like stepping into a view so far removed from mine that it was almost disorienting.

The thing is, I periodically see people wondering why Elizabeth/Darcy is such a behemoth in Austen fandom when either/both of them have substantial flaws that the narrative doesn't shy away from. Their flaws aren't identical, but they do obviously mirror each other and are thematically intertwined, with reflecting character arcs and specific beats. As I see it, the novel maintains a tense and careful balance between them—not in terms of centrality (Elizabeth's mistakes and growth are more central to the narrative than Darcy's IMO) but in terms of the weight given their flaws and virtues.

And for me that's essential to their appeal!

I love plenty of other Austen characters and relationships, but for me, personally, none of the other canon pairings are balanced in such a fun and satisfying way. The closest (and the other most conventionally romantic pairing in Austen IMO) is probably Anne/Wentworth, where at least the choices of both of them are heavy contributors to their current problems. But a) the novel is ambivalent as to whether Anne actually erred morally in the first place and b) that is long in the past by the time of the novel; the Anne of the main story of Persuasion is a fairly idealized figure by contrast to Wentworth.

I sometimes see arguments that, say, Anne or Mr Knightley or Elinor Dashwood or whomever are actually as flawed and prone to error as their romantic counterparts, but I just ... don't buy it, honestly. As far as canon Austen goes, I only really see that balance in the course of the main story with Elizabeth/Darcy. P&P loves them and holds them up as admirable (and they are!), but it also loves undercutting them in clearly paralleling ways and does it over and over throughout the novel.

So the idea of an Elizabeth and Darcy where one of them has obligatory storytelling flaws that can't seriously be compared to the other's is just ... blah. It cuts out the fundamental interconnection and resonance between them that I think is built into the structure of the novel down to its bones and is what makes their relationship special. A lot of stories pay lip-service to that kind of dynamic, sure, but despite the many (many) imitators, I don't often see it done successfully. But P&P is the real deal.

So yeah, when people are like "why do people like Elizabeth with Darcy so much when she could have a different man who doesn't make serious mistakes" I'm just thinking ... why on earth would I want Elizabeth "there was truth in his looks" Bennet with someone who would never make mistakes on that level? Or when people are like, Darcy's just misunderstood, wouldn't he be better off with Jane [or another relatively idealized female character] it's like ... hell no, I love him, but I do not want to inflict him on that poor woman.

It's not that there's something wrong with multishipping them (I've written alternate pairings for both!) or shipping them with other people, but just in terms of the novel as it exists, I do think the balance and echoes between them are part of what makes the novel work and one of the sources of their long-standing popularity. And I feel that trying to pin the "real" blame on one or the other up-ends that balance and diminishes a lot of what I, at least, find appealing about the dynamic between them.

#anghraine babbles #anghraine rants #austen blogging #austen fanwank #otp of otps #elizabeth bennet #fitzwilliam darcy #long post

[anghraine]

I know why "Mr Bennet and Darcy have the same status, the only difference is Darcy having more money" is such a popular take, but also, I think it is kind of divorced from the practical reality of late 18th/early 19th century landed life.

Mr Bennet and Darcy have the same rank. They have the same technical precedence, and both belong to the landowning upper class. The idea of P&P as a Cinderella story is very silly, IMO.

But Darcy's social status is not "Mr Bennet but with more money" in a pragmatic sense. Darcy could have 20k a year and be much more on a par with Mr Bennet in terms of his reception in society if it came from a different source than his multiple estates. I'd argue that the difference between them in terms of this less strictly defined status—consequence is often Austen's word for it—is far more about land and direct power than simple income.

This is, additionally, why the idea that Elizabeth is a gold digger seems a very strange, cynical take on her to me—not only because of the cynicism, but because Elizabeth always knew his income and didn't care. What really hits her at Pemberley is something that seems to have never occurred to her before:

As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people’s happiness were in his guardianship! How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! How much of good or evil must be done by him!

Power-hungry Elizabeth makes far more sense than money-grabbing Elizabeth, c'mon. Both are wrong, of course, but Elizabeth is actually affected by a consciousness of the extent of Darcy's power at Pemberley, where she is never affected by the simple fact of his income.

#additionally darcy does not owe his consequence to his connections. again i get why people would think so. #but it's much more that darcy is the kind of powerful landowner whose uncles /would/ be earls and judges #than that he has the kind of power and consequence he does purely because of them. he owes far more to his land than to the fitzwilliams #anghraine babbles #austen blogging #austen fanwank #lady anne blogging

[anghraine]

Speaking of the sidelining of Elizabeth's arc in pop culture/fandom takes on P&P, I do have a more uncharitable than usual speculation about it:

I don't think Elizabeth is written as an audience stand-in in a general sense. But the novel does give audiences a carefully-constructed space to fuck up in the same ways that Elizabeth does.

The audience participating in Elizabeth's flawed patterns of thinking and reacting and engaging with other people is not equivalent to Elizabeth doing it in-story. But I think the novel is more broadly concerned with these kinds of patterns in ways of thinking and approaching the world and especially approaching people in the world than with it as a purely in-story thing.

The novel's exact central turning point is Elizabeth's horrified epiphany about her faults following Darcy's letter. That moment is integral to Elizabeth's characterization, but much of what she says of herself and how she's been approaching the world could be fairly turned on much of the audience because of how the book is constructed. This construction is very clearly deliberate.

It's easy to feel like Elizabeth's flaws and mistakes are not really a big deal when it's stuff we ourselves do all the time and when the person doing them is as generally admirable and engaging as Elizabeth. But while she overstates things in the horror of the moment, the novel still insists that the flaws in her approach are a big deal, ethically. They are morally wrong. Elizabeth has to struggle to grow past those patterns and flaws, however imperfectly, and I think there's an implicit challenge in that: so should we.

tbh I suspect that challenge is really uncomfortable for some people to think about too hard, and that's part of the reason there's so much flailing to make the book centrally about anything else.

#anghraine babbles #long post #austen blogging #austen fanwank #elizabeth bennet critical #i almost made this unrebloggable but... honestly i really do feel that certain takes #arise at least partly out of some people's discomfort with the book's scrutiny and criticism of faults they themselves possess #which they reveal in how they read the book itself! because it's structured and designed to expose exactly those kinds of faults! #but no. it must be about anything else

[anghraine]

Queuing this because it's 3:30 AM and I don't keep normal person hours any more, but I'm just thinking about how one of the reasons that Mrs Gardiner's response to Darcy at Pemberley and then in her letter is so endearing is because—

Well, the thing is, I think a lot of the characters conflate the distinction between Darcy being an asshole (sometimes true) and Darcy being reserved (often true). Sometimes other characters are responding to him being genuinely obnoxious, and sometimes people are overreacting to him being quiet and stiff in a way that people throughout the novels often respond to reserve.

And something that's really nice about the dynamic between Darcy and Mrs Gardiner is that he's actively trying to be courteous now, and he still comes off as reserved and formal, and she concludes that this is basically okay.

I joke about her deciding Wickham is hotter and then walking it back while still believing Darcy is evil, but this is part of an interesting process where she essentially thinks out loud. Her starting point is "hmm. attractive, but not as attractive as Wickham", and then she actually interrogates that reaction ("or rather...") and realizes it's not really about how perfect their features are (both have that), but more about demeanor and expression and so on.

Wickham gives this impression of goodness that goes well beyond his physical appearance and which Darcy lacks, and it's this that makes him seem more attractive to her. Yet she concludes that the kind of stiff dignity in Darcy's manner is fine, actually. It's not as engaging, but it suits Darcy, and makes him seem like a good person, too (the danger of vibes lol).

Later, in her letter to Elizabeth, Mrs Gardiner comes back to that—she really likes him, yet that lack of liveliness in his manners is something she's continued to notice about him. At the same time, she thinks this is something that will soften in marriage and just doesn't seem to find it that big of a deal. His real flaw as far as she's concerned is not being reserved but being stubborn. (Interestingly, this is what Darcy himself suggested was his main flaw long before.)

Basically, she distinguishes between "this is morally wrong" and "this is a bit off-putting" in a way that very few characters do, and even though she's sometimes mistaken about things, it's really pleasant to see someone doing that.

#tbh i think the more ... let's say. darcy-critical takes that prefer to shift the darcy/elizabeth balance of blame towards him #also conflate his reserve with his rudeness and tend to flatten the nuances in mrs gardiner's response to him #but anyway. it's nice and the gardiners-darcy relationship is one of my favorite things in pride and prejudice #austen blogging #austen fanwank #m gardiner #fitzwilliam darcy #lady anne blogging #long post #george wickham