Fanny is at her absolute least sympathetic in this section. Everyone has stopped badgering her about Henry Crawford (huge relief), but she’s also monumentally judgy about her family. She doesn’t like her father because he drinks and swears and talks about his job (seriously, this is a reason that is listed for her not liking him). She doesn’t like her mother because her mother’s not a good housekeeper, although I admit this bit is very well described:

Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it, without altering her ways; wished to be an economist, without contrivance or regularity; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power of engaging their respect.

“A kind of slow bustle” honestly killed me. Whomst among us has not known the grim failure of a slow bustle? WE INTENDED A FAST BUSTLE BUT THE REALITY IS WHAT IT IS.

She doesn’t like her brother Sam because he’s “loud and overbearing”; she doesn’t like her other brothers because they’re “untameable by any means of address which [Fanny] had spirits or time to attempt”; she doesn’t like Betsey because Betsey’s a brat; and she doesn’t like Susan because Susan fights with all the other family members. Eventually she decides Susan might be sort of okayish, but overall she hates the house because it’s loud. In other words, because her family members are poor. Like, honestly, it’s not surprising that the other Prices don’t want to hang out with Fanny! She clearly thinks she’s better than all of them, and they can tell, and that’s not fun for anyone!

Jane Austen makes another not-un-racy joke here:

In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson’s celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.

lolololololol

But then Henry Crawford comes visit, and he could not be more charming and winning. He squires Fanny and Susan all over Portsmouth when they want to go to shops, making himself very agreeable to Mr. Price in the meantime, and he also asks Fanny’s advice about how to be an ethical l…andlord? business-owner? (I’m not 100% on the business that calls him to Portsmouth? because I wasn’t ALL that interested in it, and I was much more interested in Henry Crawford endearing himself to every Price, including Fanny.)

She thought him altogether improved since she had seen him; he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people’s feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so agreeable–so near being agreeable; his behaviour to her father could not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the notice he took of Susan. He was decidedly improved.

I loved that little moment of “she had never seen him so agreeable–so near being agreeable.” How charming is that? She had a little Freudian slip! There simply could not be a better indicator that Fanny is amenable to eventually falling in love with Henry Crawford, right? Like. He’s improved! Pretty soon he’s going to have improved enough that she can love him! Isn’t that a reasonable-ass expectation for me as a reader?

Moreover, Henry learns that Fanny’s been at Portsmouth the greater part of the month, and he not only immediately offers to come with Mary and pick her up and drive her back to Mansfield any time she wants, but he also tells her very gently that he knows that the other residents of Mansfield Park are neglectful of her comforts: “I know Mansfield, I know its way, I know its faults towards you. I know the danger of your being so far forgotten, as to have your comforts give way to the imaginary convenience of any single being in the family.”

I am not sure Edmund has ever stated the case as plainly as this! Henry Crawford, 1. Edmund Bertram, 0.

Then Tom gets sick, and then Tom gets very sick, and Fanny is still at Portsmouth writing and receiving letters about Tom’s illness. Mary Crawford hasn’t written her for a while, which Jane Austen notes rather tartly, but she does eventually write to basically say that she hopes Tom dies. In the same letter, she mentions that Henry is hanging out with Maria again in town, which Fanny gets on the judgiest judgey face about. I was like “Calm down, Fanny, it’s way too early in the book for Henry and Maria to run away together! If they did it now, it would feel way too abrupt and unearned.”

Yeah. Well. Guess what. Henry and Maria Rushworth nee Bertram have run away together. At around the same time, Julia eloped with Mr. Yates — remember him? He wanted to play a part in the play where he got to do a lot of ranting? That guy. He and Julia are married now. The Bertrams are very very upset, so upset in fact that they summon Fanny back to Mansfield Park to run all their errands for them, and generously offering for her to bring Susan too, to run even more errands.

(Oh, Fanny likes Susan now. It’s because Susan has obediently agreed to absorb all of Fanny’s lessons and do exactly what Fanny wants all the time, which in the vocabulary of this book means the Morally Correct Things. I don’t know, y’all, it seems like part of the lesson of the book is that whereas the rich can choose not to be morally righteous, the poor can’t choose to be morally righteous because it’s too, like, noisy in Portsmouth or whatever. Big question mark to Jane Austen on that one.)

So Maria and Henry eventually break up, and Maria goes to live with Mrs. Norris in someplace that isn’t Mansfield Park. (When the question is raised of whether Maria can live at Mansfield Park again, her father is like, oh, absolutely not, too immoral, I can send her money but I can’t, like, associate with her anymore. Great parenting, my dude!) Julia and Mr. Yates are meekly repentant of their elopement, so they get to still associate with the family. Fanny and Edmund get married. The end. Ugh.

Fuck You, Edmund Bertram

My three angriest Edmund Bertram moments both had to do with Mary Crawford, surprise, surprise. The first one is when he’s writing to Fanny about his planned proposal to Mary, and when he anticipates her turning him down, he says this: “The loss of Mary I must consider as comprehending the loss of Crawford and of Fanny.” He says this to Fanny, a woman who has repeatedly, firmly told him that she has no interest in Henry Crawford! But oh, no, here comes Edmund being like “well, you’ll change your mind for sure.” She has just told you and she has repeatedly told you that she’s not planning to marry Henry Crawford. For fuck’s fucking sake.

Second, when Fanny and Edmund are debriefing all the things that went down with the Crawfords, he’s like, listen, I know you were in love with Henry Crawford, but what about my feelings in all this? It’s doubly infuriating because it’s so goddamn selfish but then it’s also predicated on her being in love with Henry Crawford, which she has told him a hundred thousand times she isn’t. Shut! Up! Edmund!

But all of this really pales next to the orgy of self-righteousness he indulges in when he’s telling Fanny about his post-scandal conversation with Mary Crawford. Mary says something like she can’t believe their siblings were so foolish, and Edmund’s like:

Guess what I must have felt. To hear the woman whom–no harsher name than folly given! So voluntarily, so freely, so coolly to canvass it! No reluctance, no horror, no feminine, shall I say, no modest loathings? This is what the world does. For where, Fanny, shall we find a woman whom nature had so richly endowed? Spoilt, spoilt!

He scolds and fusses at Mary (I know because he proudly tells Fanny about it), and when she doesn’t gratefully receive his scoldy lecture about the failures of her character, he’s mad about that too! She jokes:

A pretty good lecture, upon my word. Was it part of your last sermon? At this rate you will soon reform everybody at Mansfield and Thornton Lacey; and when I hear of you next, it may be as a celebrated preacher in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary into foreign parts.

Once again, and as always, a good joke from Mary Crawford! Edmund indignantly tells her that he hopes he learns to be more self-aware and do her duty, and then he storms off. Advantage Mary Crawford.

Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?

Yeah, Mary is pretty wicked here. Tom Bertram gets sick, and Mary immediately starts thinking about how fun and great it will be if he dies and she marries Edmund, who will then be the eldest son and thus Sir Thomas’s heir. Mary! That’s a terrible thing to write to Tom and Edmund’s cousin about! Wtf!

Aside from this, their main wickedness in this section is related to Henry’s running off with Maria, for which, see the next section.

Were the Crawfords Wronged?

As in my memory, it feels a lot more like Jane Austen did a wrong than the Crawfords. I cannot explain this distinction, given that the Crawfords have no separate existence from Jane Austen, but I feel it keenly. What bugs me is that I would have been fine with Henry Crawford really truly reforming his fuckboy ways but then not marrying Fanny, because I do not demand that Fanny marries someone she doesn’t love! But here’s Jane Austen’s valedictory statement about Henry:

Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman’s affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Fanny Price, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Fanny must have been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Edmund’s marrying Mary.

So like! It just feels really contrived! Jane Austen has this whole alternative plotline planned out for Henry Crawford where things end well for him and his reform is genuine! Her closing statement is that his reform was genuine, but he got bored of it, which is totally narratively unsatisfying! Like either make it insincere all along (like Frank Churchill flirting with Emma) or let him reform all the way! You know? Why do this to us?

At least Mary Crawford’s faults are consistent! She doesn’t change much over the course of the book: The person she is at the start of Mansfield Park (charming, funny, self-centered) is exactly the person she is at the end. Though Edmund claims that she’s changing and improving, we all know that she’s staying exactly the same. But I don’t think her flaws are all that horrific! The worst ones are her snobbery and self-centeredness, and those are the same flaws Emma Woodhouse has. The only difference is that Jane Austen decides to reward Emma with a moment of realization, and she doesn’t give the same thing to Mary because she’s too committed to Mary being bad.

The most vivid and interesting characters get done the dirtiest, and I simply can’t believe that Jane Austen intended us to like Edmund Bertram. Fanny Price, yes; Fanny at least is in a pitiable position, and it’s easy to feel sympathy for her when her rich relatives go tromping all over her wishes. But Edmund? Is there any redeeming feature to Edmund? He’s a shitty judge of character, a patronizing scold to Fanny, and in the end he’s rewarded by having all his dreams come true. This book rules but my God is the ending ever unsatisfying.

The post Once Again, I Call Shenanigans: Mansfield in May, Part Five appeared first on Reading the End.

This whole section features a lot of the Crawfords wanting to spend time with Fanny, and Fanny not wanting to spend time with them. It raises the question “Does Mary Crawford actually like Fanny?” and I am afraid that I do not have a good answer on that one. If I had to guess, Mary Crawford likes people easily and likes Fanny fine; she can see that Fanny is a sweet gentle soul, but she also finds her a bit boring. Which, same! Like, bless Fanny’s heart, but to return to my brunch theme from last week, I wouldn’t take her out for brunch. (Fanny wouldn’t want to go out to brunch either, I’m guessing? She’d rather stay home in her cold cold room?)

Perhaps much more prominently, Henry Crawford (claims that he) has fallen in love with Fanny. For real this time.

Henry Crawford had too much sense not to feel the worth of good principles in a wife, though he was too little accustomed to serious reflection to know them by their proper name; but when he talked of her having such a steadiness and regularity of conduct, such a high notion of honour, and such an observance of decorum as might warrant any man in the fullest dependence on her faith and integrity, he expressed what was inspired by the knowledge of her being well principled and religious.

Look! I will be honest! I kind of like him for this! When people in books — especially men — fall in love on the basis that their love object has infinite integrity, I am won over. See also the conversation Harriet Vane has with Peter Wimsey where she finally asks him what he likes about her even. Just A-plus stuff! So I was slightly won over by that, and then I was won over even more when he tells Mary that he’s tired of all the Bertrams treating Fanny badly, neglecting her, and overlooking her. Once I again, I cannot figure out if he’s sincere in this or not, but he at least seems sincere, and we all agree, right?, that Fanny deserves better from her family than what she has gotten. It would give me satisfaction to see Maria and Julia having to reckon with Fanny as their social equal, rather than alternating between ignoring her and patronizing her.

It turns out that the reason Henry stayed away from Mansfield for so long is that he was exerting his uncle’s influence (remember his uncle? the one who installed his mistress in his house after his wife died, necessitating Mary’s move to Mansfield Park in the first place?) to get William promoted to lieutenant. This is legitimately nice of him, although I do think he’s doing it to get Fanny to agree to marry him, and Fanny is tearfully grateful to him.

Henry Crawford asks Fanny to marry him. Fanny says no.

Henry Crawford asks Fanny’s uncle if he can marry Fanny. Sir Thomas says yes. Fanny still says no.

Here begins the badgering. The people who badger Fanny include:

• Henry Crawford, whom Fanny rejects and who then tries to do an end-run by going to her uncle about it! WTF, sir!
• Sir Thomas, who calls her willful, perverse, and ungrateful
• Henry Crawford again, in a private conference orchestrated by Sir Thomas; though Jane Austen notes that Fanny’s manner is so gentle and equivocal that Henry legitimately doesn’t understand how much she wants to marry him. Girl, I guess.
• Lady Bertram, who says it is “every young woman’s duty to accept such a very unexceptionable offer as this”
• Edward, who’s like “look, it’s fine that you said no now, but later on you of course will have to accept him”
• Mary Crawford, who tells Fanny she can’t scold her but then spends so many pages telling her about all the women who wish they could marry Henry but he’s not in love with them; he’s in love with Fanny
• NOT WILLIAM THOUGH. William secretly thinks she should marry Henry, but he doesn’t tell her so.

Literally all of you people are jerks. Only William can stay!

Oh, yeah, there’s a third thing that kind of brings me around on Henry Crawford a little bit: They ask him to read some Shakespeare for them, and he is staggeringly good at it. Jane Austen devotes most of one entire page to how good he is at reading Shakespeare and how sexy that is of him. No arguments from me on that — though, I suspect, Jane Austen is here making a point about Henry Crawford’s sincerity. Even when he seems very sincere indeed, as he does throughout these chapters, he’s still putting on a show.

(I have not confirmed this reading with Jane Austen scholars but I am sure it is correct and I demand a tenured faculty position in recognition of my rightness.)

As part of the overall badgering campaign, Sir Thomas comes up with the idea that Fanny should visit her (poor) family in Portsmouth, as part of seeing William off. She’s thrilled to get more time with William and thrilled to see her family. Sir Thomas has a sneaky motive that if Fanny goes to her wretched poverty home, she’ll realize how lucky she is and how grateful she should be and how doomed she is if she turns down Henry Crawford. Really superb uncling work, Sir Thomas! Top notch stuff!

And this is where I honestly find Fanny the least sympathetic so far. When she gets to Portsmouth, her little brothers and sisters are shy of her, the house is small and cramped, and her mother isn’t giving her the most attention either. And Fanny acts I HATE TO SAY THIS BUT Fanny acts a little bit entitled about the whole thing. It’s the most sympathetic of faults, but in the same way that Edmund really can’t recognize the position of privilege he occupies in relation to Fanny, I don’t feel like Fanny is the most sensitive to her own privilege as compared to her mother and sisters. I guess we’ll see how things unfold from here.

Were the Crawfords Wronged?

Henry, definitely not. Jane Austen burns him so good when she says “A little difficulty to be overcome was no evil to Henry Crawford. He rather derived spirits from it. He had been apt to gain hearts too easily. His situation was new and animating.” Heeheehee, nailed it.

Mary seems to be being genuinely nice to Fanny in this section. At no point does she indicate that she thinks Fanny’s beneath her brother, although socially it’s clear that she is. Instead she’s all enthusiasm for the marriage, and she goes out of her way to be welcoming and kind to Fanny. Jane Austen broke my heart about this by saying “[Fanny’s] disposition was peculiarly calculated to value af ond treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it, she was the more overcome by Miss Crawford’s.” Bless this baby and her tiny neglected baby heart.

Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?

Everyone is a real bully on behalf of Henry Crawford. Officially he’s not responsible for the choices other people make on his behalf, but unofficially he very clearly set matters up to where Fanny would feel obligated to marry him. This is largely a problem of patriarchy, but it is also a problem in which Henry Crawford is on purpose making the patriarchy work for him. Bad!

Remember last time when we talked about how maybe the Crawfords conspired on the matter of the gold chain? Yeah. They did. Mary confirms it in this chapter. Fucking rude.

Fuck You, Edmund Bertram

I had to add this new section so I’d have somewhere to put my dislike of Edmund. His patronizing scolding of Fanny about her refusal to marry Henry is terrible, of course, but the absolute worst comes when he’s trying to explain why they’d make such a good match:

There is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow. He is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will support yours. It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they are. [furious emphasis mine]

Fuck OFF, just fuck OFF, just really fuck off into the SUN, Edmund! Who the everliving fuck made you the arbiter of how great Fanny’s difficulties are, you absolute wanker? In another reading of your lives, maybe you miss a lot of what goes into making things difficult for Fanny because you are so very privileged by comparison to her! Uggghhhhhhh.

Okay, but he does also say “I told them that you were of all human creatures the one over whom habit had most power and novelty least” and that made me lol because it is relevant to my own personality.

The post Badger Badger Badger Badger: Mansfield in May, Part Four appeared first on Reading the End.

Not to keep beating a dead horse, but Mansfield Book continues to rule. I am having the best time reading it, and I swear to you that I am going to love it more than Emma by the time I finish. And I fucking love Emma. It’s just that in this one, Jane Austen is simultaneously so funny and so insightful that I kind of can’t take it. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t read a Jane Austen book in a little while and I forgot how good she is? Could that be it? Because I keep being bowled over by how keenly observed this book is, even on the scale of Jane Austen to Jane Austen. I’ll get into it, but the whole business of Fanny needing a chain for her necklace is just *chef’s kiss*.

Okay, so! We start with Edmund being a class-A prick. Fanny’s talking to him about how much she enjoys hearing her uncle talk about the West Indies, and she says “I am unlike other people, I dare say,” meaning unlike the Crawfords lololol, and Edmund says this:

Do you want to be told that you are unlike other people in being more wise and discreet? But when did you, or anybody, ever get a compliment from me, Fanny? Go to my father if you want to be complimented. He will satisfy you.

Edmund, I cordially invite you to get fucked. Like, I am going to have some very critical things to say about Henry Crawford in a minute, but at least Henry Crawford knows he’s a fuckboy. At least Henry Crawford gets slapped down by Fanny and the text of Mansfield Park for being a fuckboy. This is the weirdest most unnecessary piece of cruelty I can imagine, and Fanny is mortified about it. She hates compliments and is not fishing for one! Which if Edmund were paying the slightest bit of attention to her, ever, he would know! Then when he sees that he’s embarrassed her, he just goes ahead and embarrasses her more, this time 100% definitely on purpose.

If you cannot bear an uncle’s admiration, what is to become of you? You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at. You must try not to mind growing up into a pretty woman.

I hate Edmund. I haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate him. We also get the famous moment where Fanny mentions that she, alone of the young Bertrams, has follow-up questions about the slave trade, i.e., the trade on which the Bertram family fortune has been founded. This exchange, in which Fanny mentions that she asked about the slave trade and was met with silence, is the only reason I read Mansfield Park in the first place: It was part of a course on colonial British literature that I took when I was twenty. It is not really very headline-worthy! Enslaving human beings is bad, says Jane Austen, maybe, sort of.

Anyway, Maria gets married and Julia goes off to stay with her, which means Fanny is the only girl at the house, which means everyone is suddenly bored enough to pay attention to Fanny. She hates it. I would too! It sounds awful! And I would feel like a real dick having everyone be like “oh Fanny’s pretty, actually!” and “oh maybe let’s throw a dance for Fanny!” after years of that never ever happening. It would make me feel like a doll that everyone had suddenly gotten bored enough to want to play with.

Case in point, Henry Crawford, fuckboy, who tries to talk to Fanny about the play and gets slapped down hard (v. satisfying honestly). The next morning he announces to his sister, “My plan is to make Fanny Price in love with me.” Which is a very fuckboy thing to say, but I have to admit his follow-up is pretty funny. But bad!

“No, I will not do her any harm, dear little soul! only want her to look kindly on me, to give me smiles as well as blushes, to keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer at Mansfield, and feel when I go away that she shall never be happy again. I want nothing more.”

These are good jokes. I am sorry. I would be madder at the Crawfords if they didn’t seem so fun to be around.

Except, here’s where I truly am mad at the Crawfords. Okay, so Fanny’s brother William has shore leave or whatever and comes to Mansfield Park on a visit. Fanny is so happy, and I am happy for her. SHE DESERVES THIS. While he’s there, Sir Thomas (who like everyone is bored) decides to have a little dance and invite some people from the area and it’ll be a nice treat for Fanny. So far so good. Her problem is that she has this very pretty amber cross that William brought her from Italy, but he wasn’t able to afford a gold chain to put it on, and a piece of ribbon isn’t fancy enough for Fanny to put it on for this dance. So what will she do? Crisis!

Mary Crawford then is like, oh, do you need a gold chain for that pretty cross that William gave you? Have one of mine! I have too many!, and as she’s showing Fanny all the different chains she can choose from, Fanny gets the impression that Mary wants her to choose this one specific chain. So okay, Fanny chooses that one. Then Mary says this:

“You must think of somebody else, too, when you wear that necklace. You must think of Henry, for it was his choice in the first place. He gave it to me, and with the necklace I make over to you all the duty of remembering the original giver. It is to be a family remembrancer. The sister is not to be in your mind without bringing the brother too.”

Fanny suspects, and I do too, that the Crawfords talked this over and CONNIVED on it together. She feels awful, but she has already accepted the gift and can’t take it back now. When she gets home, Edmund is there with a gold chain to give her a gift. Even more crisis! This occasions a big conversation between Edmund and Fanny about how nice he thinks Mary Crawford is, and Fanny realizes that he’s maybe in love with Mary Crawford? Question mark? Which makes Fanny sad because she, of course, is in love with Edmund.

In the event, though, the chain Mary Crawford gave her is too big and won’t go in the little ring on the amber cross, so she has to wear Edmund’s. She feels so happy about it that it reminds me of that “Cyclops Has a Good Day” thing where it counts as a good day if he, like, finds a quarter on the ground. I just want Fanny to be happy.

The whole sequence of events around the gold chain reminded me of what I love so much about Jane Austen. It’s a matter of very little consequence, in the broad scheme of things. Fanny is going to get a chain, and she’s going to put the amber cross on the chain. But the path to get there tells us so much about everybody involved, about both Crawfords, about Fanny, and about Edmund. It’s also the type of thing that feels so much like life, where like, you have this one small thing that needs to get accomplished (acquire gold chain for amber cross), but every step on the way to the goal is fraught with these weird emotional sand traps where instead of just getting a damn necklace, you have to navigate a series of increasingly fraught and complicated social dynamics when all that really needed to happen was get a damn gold chain for this damn amber cross. And that’s a very Jane Austeny thing and I’m into it.

Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?

Yes, both of them. Mary continues to be such a rude jerk to Edmund about his job. Like, Edmund sucks, and I’d love for Mary to insult him about the things he deserves to be insulted about. But she keeps being like, “Ugh, a vicar. Gross. Poor. Hate it.” Mary, that’s rude! Who raised you?

Henry, meanwhile, is being the fuckboy of all fuckboys by conceiving a plan to make Fanny fall in love with him just because he’s bored and she’s unattainable. That said, this would be an amazing romance novel premise, wouldn’t it? Like, he starts out fucking around but then he falls in love for real and becomes a better person and at the end they fall in love? WHY ISN’T THAT THE BOOK I’M READING, JANE AUSTEN?

The matter of the gold chain is honestly cruel, though it’s unclear to me the extent to which the Crawfords realize it’s cruel, given their imperfect understanding of Fanny. But I am mad at them both.

Were the Crawfords Wronged?

Not even slightly. Not a bit. The Crawfords are jerks in this section. I have nothing to say in their defense except that they do still seem really fun. I don’t want to marry a Crawford, but I’d love to take a Crawford out for brunch. By contrast, I would rather demolish the institution of brunch for all time than attend one single brunch with Edmund Bertram, who sucks.

The post Flying the Fuckboy Flag: Mansfield in May, Part Three appeared first on Reading the End.

I have to say, I am enjoying Mansfield Park so much. Part of the reason people seem to hate it is that it doesn’t have a satisfying romance like some of the others — which is true, certainly, but Jane Austen’s dry observational humor on the tiny interactions between people has never been better. There’s a part where everyone’s out for a walk on Mr. Rushworth’s estate, and they all abandon Fanny on a bench while they wander around, and then when they get home everyone’s cross because “they had all been walking after each other, and the junction which had taken place at last seemed, to Fanny’s observation, to have been as much too late for re-establishing harmony, as it confessedly had been for determining on any alteration.”

(I know that’s a small thing, but it’s so on point! That is how it goes when nobody makes a plan and everybody’s just wandering around all willy-nilly!)

Also, re the casting process for the play:

Mr. Yates was particularly pleased: he had been sighing and longing to [play the part of] the Baron at Ecclesford, had begrudged every rant of Lord Ravenshaw’s, and been forced to re-rant it all in his own room…. To do him justice, however, he did not resolve to appropriate [that role]; for remembering that there was some very good ranting-ground in [the part of] Frederick, he professed an equal willingness for that.

JANE AUSTEN YOU ARE KILLING ME.

Though I didn’t know it when I made my Mansfield in May schedule, this batch of chapters (chapters ten through twenty) perfectly encompasses the entire arc where they want to put on a play. A man called Mr. Yates arrives from the country, disappointed at having to abandon the plan to do a play at some other friend’s house, and then the young Bertrams (except for Fanny) and the Crawfords get all excited and want to do a play. The original idea is for them to perform it only among themselves, but you can just tell that when the time comes, they’re going to change their minds and want to invite everyone and be applauded for.

Edmund hates this. Fanny haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates this. They have several serious conversations about what a bad idea it is. Then Edmund, the jerk, shows up in Fanny’s room to be like, listen, I think I need to take part in the play, you know, for Reasons. (The reasons actually make sense to me, within the moral terms the book is laying out: They want to get a near-stranger to act in the play with them, and Edmund finds that unseemly and thinks that if he takes the role in question, it’ll be less overall inappropriate because it’ll be just within their two families.) I wouldn’t mind Edmund taking part in the play (since, again, I don’t mind that they’re doing a play, that seems perfectly cromulent), except that he kind of browbeats Fanny into agreeing that it’s the best course of action? He comes in to get her opinion; she says she doesn’t think he should do it; and he keeps asking the question in like fifteen different ways until he gets a version of her answer that sounds sort of like yes. Then he’s like “Great! We agree! I knew I could count on you!”

The worst, meanest thing that happens in this whole section is when everyone starts aggressively peer-pressuring Fanny to take a small role in the play. She keeps saying no, she’s very uncomfortable, and the other people keep insisting, and finally Mrs. Norris says, “I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her — very ungrateful, indeed, considering who and what she is,” which is staggeringly mean and has Fanny in tears.

Mary Crawford immediately comes to Fanny’s rescue, which is nice because Mary hasn’t been the most aware of Fanny’s situation up until then. She comes to sit by Fanny and cheers her up by asking what Fanny’s working on, where she got the pattern, what Fanny’s brother is up to at sea, how handsome that brother must be, etc. It’s legitimately very sweet, although it does prove that Mary Crawford knows perfectly well how to be polite about someone’s brother’s profession even if she herself does not personally want to socialize with someone in that profession, which nobody is asking her to do anyway. But I liked it, because so few characters ever seem aware of how vulnerable Fanny is in relation to her cousins and aunts, and I was glad that Mary took her side so visibly.

In fairness to Edmund — and I am trying to be scrupulously fair to Edmund because of how much I dislike him — he does defend Fanny when his father gets home and is mad about the play. He says this: “We have all been more or less to blame, every one of us, excepting Fanny. Fanny is the only one who has judged rightly throughout; who has been consistent. Her feelings have been steadily against it from first to last. She never ceased to think of what was due to you. You will find Fanny everything you could wish.” THANKS, EDMUND.

Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?

Yes! Henry Crawford is a big jerk in these chapters, although I have to say that the real villain is the societal system that forbids open honesty about one’s intentions until one is ready to propose. The fact that Henry Crawford is flirting outrageously with both Maria and Julia, to the point that a bunch of characters think he’s going to propose to Julia and Maria thinks he’s going to propose to Maria, is really shitty given that he has no interest in marrying them. It would be one thing if they were all playing the same fun flirty game, but Henry knows they’re not. Once the idea for the play is given up, Henry fucks off to Bath without a backward glance, leaving the Bertram sisters miserable, disappointed, and angry with each other.

Which: We are kind of far into the book for him to have no interest in Fanny yet. I had remembered him fixating on her much earlier on in the book, but I’m not sure they’ve had a single conversation as of chapter 20. She does notice him being a fuckboy to her cousins, but she’s not in a position to do anything about it. She runs it up the flagpole with Edmund, and Edmund is oblivious. Fanny says, wonderfully, “What a favourite he is with my cousins!” but Edmund doesn’t catch on at all. Edmund is a ding-dong.

Were the Crawfords Wronged?

Henry Crawford is terrible in this section, as I’ve said. But I think it’s mean that everyone keeps going on about how ugly and short Henry Crawford is. It comes up like five times in this section of the book! People keep being like, “I mean, he’s FINE if you like them SHORT” or they’ll be like “well he can’t play THAT part, he’s only five-eight, gross.” Calm down, weirdos!

Fanny also blames Mary Crawford for Edmund taking part in the play. It’s actually really uncool! She’s like, “Could it be possible? Edmund so inconsistent! Was he not deceiving himself? Was he not wrong? Alas! it was all Miss Crawford’s doing. She had seen her influence in every speech, and was miserable.”

A of all, Fanny, slow your roll with that. Edmund is actually capable of making his own wrong moral decisions; Mary Crawford is not the boss of him. Secondly, this is the severalth time that Fanny has blamed Mary Crawford for things Edmund is doing. Maybe try blaming the man who is doing the things, instead of the woman you think might possibly be motivating the man to do the things. And number three, Mary just went out of her way to be nice to Fanny, which supposedly is the whole reason Fanny likes Edmund in the first place, and Mary is far from the driving force behind the play-putting-on idea. So I am not sure whence this notion that Edmund’s acquiescence to the play is supposed to be Mary’s fault. FEELS LIKE EDMUND’S FAULT.

In closing, I love Mansfield Park. Twenty-year-old Jenny was not wrong; Mansfield Park is hilarious and great. If it weren’t for the years of sentimental attachment to and fun adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park might unseat Pride and Prejudice in my heart. I’m not 100% that won’t happen anyway. I am loving it. I can’t believe that it’s acquired this reputation for being grim and joyless when it is so consistently funny and smart. Like, yes, Edmund’s a pill, but all of Austen’s heroes¹ are pills! No surprises there!

The post It’s Gonna Be PLAY: Mansfield in May, Part Two appeared first on Reading the End.

Okay, okay, I am getting ahead of myself. As you can see, it’s May! And for years I have been threatening to reread Mansfield Park in one of the months that begins with M, and at last in May of 2021, I have finally done it. For today, I read the first nine chapters of Mansfield Park, a book I have reliably been calling Mansfield Book, and I am here to report on my findings about it.

What Happened?

In these first chapters, we get a lot of set-up and, frankly, more jokes than I expected! Our heroine is Fanny Price, who’s a poor relative of Lord and Lady Bertram and has been raised in their home as a favor to her mother, Lady Bertram’s wayward sister. Three of the four Bertram children (the older son, Tom, plus the girls, Maria and Julia) have no use for Fanny, but her cousin Edmund sometimes does nice things for her. He is very patronizing. I hate him.

Due partly to Tom’s gambling debts, Lord Bertram has been called away to his properties in Antigua to try and recoup the family’s financial losses. While he’s away, strangers come to town: the charming Crawford siblings, Henry and Mary, who instantly become staples in the lives of our Bertrams. We haven’t seen much of Henry Crawford yet, but Mary Crawford is an absolute goddamn delight. That’s not what we’re meant to think of her, however. We’re meant to think that she is funny but immoral. I can already tell you that’s never going to be my opinion of her.

Is the World Wrong About Mansfield Park?

So far, yes. I am in love with this book so far. Mary Crawford is such a treasure.

Did the Crawfords Do a Wrong?

Yes, I have to admit that they did. Well, Mary did. When she finds out that Fanny’s brother is in the Navy, she’s very snotty about low-rank Navy guys. It’s rude! It’s especially rude if she understands — which she must, if she’s been paying any attention at all — that Fanny is not in a position to go against the Bertrams and their guests. I will say very mildly in her defense that Fanny didn’t not open hostilities here: Mary is making jokes about how brothers are bad correspondents, using her own brother as an example, and Fanny’s like, “Oh my brother writes me amazing letters.” But it’s still rude, and it’s snobby.

Mary is also quite snotty about Edmund’s plan to become a clergyman. For someone as socially adept as she’s supposed to be, I am not sure whence this very snotty habit she has of insulting other people’s jobs and aspirations. Maybe she’s mad at Edmund for being a total prig, for which, see the next section.

Were the Crawfords Wronged?

Yep! Henry Crawford doesn’t have much to do in these chapters, but there’s a lot of Mary Crawford, and I’m sure you have picked up on the fact that I was here for it. Before I get into the ways Mary was grievously wronged in this section of Mansfield Book, let me start by reporting that she rules. She’s consistently flashy and unembarrassed and so, so fucking funny, and Edmund doesn’t deserve her.

Okay, I will give you an example. Mary Crawford plays the harp (hot) and has been having a hard time getting her harp delivered to her new residence near Mansfield Park. So they’re talking about all the harp logistical challenges, and Mary says to Edmund, “Now, Mr. Bertram [Edmund], if you write to your brother [Tom], I entreat you to tell him that my harp is come: he heard so much of my misery about it. And you may say, if you please, that I shall prepare my most plaintive airs against his return, in compassion to his feelings, as I know his horse will lose.”

Help me? I love her???

And then, just when I thought I couldn’t love her more, she makes what you will absolutely never convince me isn’t an anal sex joke. Edmund asks her if she knows Fanny’s brother, and she says no, she doesn’t socialize with captains, too lowly!, but she has met a bunch of admirals.

Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.

L O L. Now, I have done some research into this matter. Jane Austen scholar Devoney Looser believes that Mary was making reference to strictly heterosexual vices. Mary and Henry were taken in by an aunt and uncle when their own parents died, and then when their aunt died, their uncle installed his mistress in the house so Mary had to leave. Yikes! Dr. Looser’s argument is that Mary is referring to that kind of vice; i.e., the kind to which Mary may already be assumed to have been exposed by her shitty, vicious uncle.

Given what the novel reveals – the adultery of the uncle and the attempted reform and adulterous repetition in the nephew – it seems clear that Mary (and Austen, in giving her voice) was making the most pointed reference in her pun to the heterosexual vices of powerful old Naval men, not to the illegal, punishable, same-sex vices of men’s rears.

Jillian Heydt-Stevenson, a woman after my own heart, argues in her book Austen’s Unbecoming Conjunctions, that Jane Austen tooooooooootally meant it that way, connecting the “Rears and Vices” joke to other jokes about homosexuality in Jane Austen’s juvenilia. (She also argues that Jane Austen sides with Mary Crawford over Edmund, which I’d love to believe and will be keeping an eye out for going forward.)

D.A. Miller says that one reaction to coming upon a double entendre such as this in Austen, is to be “embarrassed and often arrested by the question, ‘Could a character in Jane Austen ever mean this?'” Miller poses a good question. My answer is that, yes, despite her lady-like manners and spinster status, Austen can create characters who mean “that.”

Brian Southam argues in a 2002 article for Essays in Criticism that it’s not a sodomy joke because Jane Austen is too polite to make a sodomy joke, and her publisher and audiences would have been upset if there had been a sodomy joke.

The point is worth contesting, because the pun has become caught up in something much larger and more damaging than a matter of purely local interpretation; it has become involved in a wider campaign to promote the idea of a bawdy or dirty-joke Jane Austen. … [Austen’s] effects … are achieved by the slightest adjustments in style and tone, and these do not include a subtext of sexual punning or double entendre. The power of the novels is achieved strictly within the terms of polite fiction, and one way of describing Jane Austen’s greatness is to say that she wrote the novels she wanted to without transgressing its literary and social decorum.

Seth Stein LeJacq points out (rather compellingly, in my opinion!) that naval sodomy trials hit their peak in the Regency era, and that Jane Austen’s two brothers sat on — and in one case presided over — naval sodomy cases. In other words, the notion of naval sodomy would have been familiar to readers of the era generally, and to the Austen family particularly.

Basically, the pro-sodomy-joke arguments and the anti-sodomy-joke arguments can both be boiled down to “Oh, come on,” and as such, I feel perfectly free to conclude that she was making an anal sex joke. Evidence: That’s fucking funny.

Anyway! After this conversation in which Mary Crawford absolutely definitely makes an anal sex joke, Edmund and Fanny sit down to recap how they felt about the conversation, and they spend a little while tsk-tsking to each other about Mary being insufficiently respectful of her uncle. The source of their unhappiness is that Mary makes a joke that her aunt and uncle did a home reno one time and it was inconvenient (plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose!), plus I guess this rears and vices joke. Like — why can’t she be snotty about her uncle? He was supposed to be sheltering her, and he totally threw her out on the street because he wanted to bone his mistress in comfort! Her uncle sucks!

The other thing is that Fanny gets mad at Mary Crawford for monopolizing her, Fanny’s, horse. It’s unclear to me how much Jane Austen endorses Fanny’s annoyance in this matter. Edmund tells Mary she can borrow Fanny’s horse in the morning before Fanny needs it, but then he starts letting Mary keep the horse out later and later, even though he knows damn well that Fanny wants to do for a ride. You do not have a Mary Crawford problem, Fanny, you have an Edmund problem. We all have an Edmund problem, because Edmund sucks. Which is disappointing because I love the name Edmund and I love most characters called Edmund (Pevensie, Dantès, Winslow). MARY WAS WRONGED. IT’S EDMUND’S FAULT.

That’s it for today! Next week at this same time, we’ll be chatting about chapters 10 to 21. I hope to have more information to share with you about the other Crawford sibling at that time!

The post Is Jane Austen Making an Anal Sex Joke? appeared first on Reading the End.

• Mansfield Park is unfairly maligned (by the world); and
• The Crawfords are unfairly maligned (by Jane Austen)

Well, 2021 is the year we’re going to find out the truth! Is Fanny as much of a pain as I remember? Is Edmund the actual worst Austen hero, or does that title still belong to Mr. Farrars? And, perhaps most importantly, does Mary Crawford deserve what she gets, or is she amazing and she deserved better? We will find out together!

Here’s my proposed readalong schedule, although of course you may read at your very own pace. I am going to do a post every Monday in May (there are five) that follows my reading, and I will surely be nattering about the book in minor, petty ways on Twitter, using the hashtag #MansfieldInMay. Join me, comrades!

The Official Mansfield in May Schedule

May 3: Chapters 1 – 9
May 10: Chapters 10 – 21
May 17: Chapters 22 – 29
May 24: Chapters 30 – 38
May 31: Chapters 39 – 48

The post #MansfieldinMay: A Readalong! appeared first on Reading the End.

Ten Books I Feel Differently About After Time Has Passed (less love, more love, complicated feelings, indifference, thought it was great in a genre until you became more well read in that genre etc.)

I couldn’t think of ten — my initial responses to most of the books I read continue to hold true on rereads — but here are six, anyway!

1. Emma, by Jane Austen – I think the problem here is that I saw Clueless, one of the world’s most perfect movies, long before I read Emma, and it left me unfit to enjoy the book. It wasn’t that I thought Emma was a dick (I love Emma actually, and I super-identify with her), it was just that I thought the book she was in was terminally boring. I finally read it during a slow day at my second-ever job¹ and couldn’t figure out what my problem with it had ever been. It’s my favorite Jane Austen book now!

2. Rose in Bloom, by Louisa May Alcott – No, I know, I’m hitting all the absolute high points in contemporary fiction with this list. DEAL WITH IT. When I read Rose in Bloom as a kid, I thought it was super boring and I didn’t understand why Rose was ever into Charlie in the first place. Or Mac. What was her deal, I thought. Rereading it as an adult (this is true of An Old-Fashioned Girl too actually!), I’m surprised by the level of nuance Alcott gets into both of those relationships. Young Jenny missed it completely.

3. Angela and Diabola, Lynne Reid Banks – I loved this book when I was a kid. As an adult, I felt slightly smug that I was never that into the Indian in the Cupboard books in the first place, reserving my true love for Lynne Reid Banks’s lesser-known, unracist kids’ books, including this one and the apocalyptically terrifying The Fairy Rebel. What superb critical taste my younger self had, I thought.

I recently reread Angela and Diabola and it was a hella rude awakening. (The Fairy Rebel is still fine. That book rocks. Don’t read it right before bed though, or if you have wasps living near you.) The good twin has fair skin and golden hair, and the bad twin is darker-skinned with corkscrew curls. The corkscrew curls are mentioned a lot. It is — uncomfortable to read. Would not give to a child.²

4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson – When I lived in England, I checked this out of our library (which had a paternoster lift, see below for gif depiction) and thought I was going to die of boredom.

As with Emma, I don’t know what was going on in my head the first time I tried to read this book. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is the furthest thing from boring, and I’m so glad book bloggers convinced me give Shirley Jackson another try. Thanks, bloggers!

5. Possession, A. S. Byatt – People who don’t do a lot of rereading often ask me if I worry that rereading a book will make me like it less. Yes, I think about that sometimes; but if what me and the book had was true love, not just a fling, it should stand the test of time. Possession is a rare but notable failure of rereading. When I first read this book I loved it. Couldn’t put it down. Called it the Arcadia of novels. Was baffled that I never got on with any of A. S. Byatt’s other books. Then I reread it and was like:

OH WELL. I guess it wasn’t true love.

6. Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. Let me clarify something: My feelings for this book haven’t changed. I loved it when I first read it, I loved it every time I reread it, and I continue to love it with a fierce and abiding passion. What’s changed is that I realize now, in a way I didn’t as a teenager, how many legitimate truth bombs about morality and emotions and adulthood Diana Wynne Jones is dropping in this book. The example I always use is “being a hero means ignoring how silly you feel” — which, goddamn, that is the truest truth that maybe I have ever encountered in fiction. Standing up for what’s right does not actually have a stirring musical soundtrack. More like a soundtrack of chilly, uncomfortable, disapproving silence.

7. See also: The vast majority of Diana Wynne Jones books. I’ve disliked all but maybe four of her books, upon reading them for the first time. Not for nothing did they name Jenny’s Law after me: Diana Wynne Jones Is Better on a Reread.

What about you, friends? Are you a big rereader, or not so much? Do you generally stay true to your first impressions, or can you think of some books you’ve grown out of / into over the years?

The post Ten (well, six) Books for Which My Feelings Have Changed appeared first on Reading the End.

Episode 44

Books discussed in this podcast are listed, in order, below. If any book is an adaptation of another book, the source material is listed in parentheses.

Wicked, Gregory Maguire (The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum)
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Gregory Maguire (Cinderella. This doesn’t count.)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard (Hamlet, William Shakespeare)
Fool, Christopher Moore (King Lear, William Shakespeare)
Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte)
Longbourn, Jo Baker (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen)
Lady’s Maid, Margaret Forster
Alias Hook, Lisa Jensen (Peter Pan, JM Barrie)

pause for you to enjoy the Go Fug Yourself recap of the live Peter Pan. It’s superb. I did look it up as soon as we were off the phone.

Re Jane, Patricia Park (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte)
Ana of California, Andi Teran (Anne of Green Gables, LM Montgomery)
CLUELESS even though it’s not a book, because it’s the greatest book adaptation there’s ever been.
Salome, Oscar Wilde (Salome story from the Bible!) PLUS: Dirtbag Lord Alfred Douglas.
Many Waters, Madeleine L’Engle (Noah’s Ark story from the Bible)
Behold Your Queen, Gladys Malvern (Esther story from the Bible)
Game of Queens, India Edghill
The Once and Future King, TH White (King Arthur story) (please enjoy Madam Mim)
Wishing for Tomorrow, Hilary McKay (A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett)
Ulysses, James Joyce (the Odyssey)
The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason (READ THIS SERIOUSLY THO)

Book reviewed this week: Emma, Alexander McCall Smith
But instead of that, read Emma by Jane Austen cause it rocks, and then watch Clueless.

The Ice Master, Jennifer Niven (the story of Bartlett’s extremely disastrous journey on the Karluk)
Ada Blackjack, Jennifer Niven
All the Bright Places, Jennifer Niven (the buzzy YA novel in question)

Here’s the adorable toddler who was on the Karluk trip. LOOK HOW CUTE THIS BABY:

For next time: Uprooted, Naomi Novik

Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Song is by Jeff MacDougall.

The post Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.44: Reworking Classic Novels, Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma, and a Return to Polar Explorers appeared first on Reading the End.

(Those gifs would also work if I captioned them Frank Churchill / Mr. Knightley.)

I’ve said in the past that Mr. Knightley isn’t the best of the Austen heroes, as didactic and patronizing as he can sometimes be to Emma. If I were she, I would be all the time

But she takes his scolding in remarkably good grace, even when he’s making her feel terrible, as when he takes her to task (rightly) for teasing Miss Bates in front of the whole picnic party. The light heart that Emma brings to her life, including — usually — the admonishments Mr. Knightley sends her way, make it easier to like her and easier to take Mr. Knightley’s scolding as gracefully as Emma does.

On the up side, it’s nice to see him showing his feelings for Emma:

“Whom are you going to dance with?” asked Mr. Knightley.

 

She hesitated a moment, and then replied, “With you, if you will ask me.”

 

“Will you?” said he, offering his hand.

 

“Indeed I will. You have shewn that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.”

 

“Brother and sister! no indeed.”

By the time I finally read Emma all the way through, I was familiar with its rough outlines, both from Clueless and from the movie adaptation with Gwyneth Paltrow, but I think if I hadn’t been, this would be the moment at which I’d have spotted that Mr. Knightley was carrying a torch for his old friend. Well, that, and:

Mr. Knightley, who, for some reason best known to himself, had certainly taken an early dislike to Frank Churchill, was only growing to dislike him more. He began to suspect him of some double-dealing in his pursuit of Emma.

Aw. Actually, if I’m honest, the thing that makes me like Mr. Knightley the most in this book is how much he hates Frank Churchill. For such a level-headed dude, he takes against Frank ferociously and talks smack about him all through the book, without surcease. It’s great. Plus, it is sweet that Mr. Knightley is mad at him in the first place for slighting Mrs. Weston by not visiting, and in the second place for dicking Emma around. Quite rightly! Those are things that Frank Churchill does that are shabby!

Anyway, it all ends well. Emma accepts Mr. Knightley’s proposal, Harriet accepts Mr. Martin’s proposal (duh, he’s the best), and Frank writes an apologetic(ish) letter to Mrs. Weston explaining why he acted like such a jerk. And they all live happily ever after, I suppose, although I think it would be better if Jane Fairfax stayed in town so she and Emma could be friends. Emma doesn’t have enough friends of her own age and station.

The post Emma Readalong part three appeared first on Reading the End.

“Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Every body is so surprized; and every body says the same obliging things. I am sure she will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury, as they can be to see her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which, because Colonel Campbell will be wanting the carriage himself one of those days. So very good of them to send her the whole way! But they always do, you know. Oh yes, Friday or Saturday next. That is what she writes about. That is the reason of her writing out of rule, as we call it; for, in the common course, we should not have heard from her before next Tuesday or Wednesday.”

A few paragraphs of this and you feel like

And that’s just from reading the conversation! Imagine sitting through it! I really feel for Emma when she visits the Bateses, or when Jane Fairfax visits her. Emma starts out with the best of intentions towards Jane Fairfax, but Jane is maddening to try to have a conversation with. Emma’s all “GUESS WHAT SURPRISE MARRIAGE IN TOWN,” and Jane won’t enter into it at all.

As for Frank Churchill, I’m a hundred percent with Mr. Knightley on this one: Like most of the antic young men in Jane Austen’s books, this kid’s a dick. I had forgotten how mean he is about Jane Fairfax — I can’t imagine anything meaner than beginning his conversation about her to Emma by saying she’s sallow and sick-looking. If I were Jane Fairfax, I’d have kicked his ass to the curb. A guy who says this about the woman he secretly loves is a worthless guy.

“Thank you for rousing me,” he replied.  “I believe I have been very rude; but really Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd a way—so very odd a way—that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw any thing so outree!—Those curls!—This must be a fancy of her own.”

Or this:

“Perhaps it is as well [the party ended],” said Frank Churchill, as he attended Emma to her carriage.  “I must have asked Miss Fairfax, and her languid dancing would not have agreed with me, after your’s.

By contrast, Mr. Knightley, who I am liking so much better on this reread than I ever have before, displays his awesomeness by ordering a carriage for Jane Fairfax and the ladies Bates, and also by saying, “Surprizes are foolish things.  The pleasure is not enhanced, and the  inconvenience is often considerable.”

I’ll have more to say about Mrs. Elton in the third section of this readalong, but for now, I will just say that it’s nice to see Emma taking one of Mr. Knightley’s lectures to heart, and deciding to try to be nicer to Jane Fairfax:

“This is very true,” said she, “at least as far as relates to me, which was all that was meant—and it is very shameful.—Of the same age—and always knowing her—I ought to have been more her friend.—She will never like me now.  I have neglected her too long.  But I will shew her greater attention than I have done.”

Good for you, Emma! Way to grow as a person!

The post Emma Readalong! Part Two: Frank Churchill is the worst appeared first on Reading the End.