*waves Lady Catherine Fanclub sign*
Aug. 19th, 2009 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineI don't know why, exactly, but I've always had a sneaking fondness for Lady Catherine. She's overbearing and ridiculous and not terribly bright, but I still like her. Partly because she is so exactly everything that every conduct book said a woman shouldn't be, aggressive and managing and bossy, and enough force of personality that she gets most people to admire her for it. Like Emma on crack, only with a lot more staying power. (I feel reasonably certain that Lady Catherine never loses interest halfway through one of her plans.) And part of it is because she's so demonised by fandom and academia - she's either aristocratic!Mrs Bennet or still worse. LawfulEvil!Lady Catherine.
(Tangent - I think she's meant to be reverse!Mr Bennet, actually. He's the parent who's brilliant but irresponsibly passive; she's the [surrogate] parent who is extremely proactive but so unintelligent that she does it all wrong. Mrs Bennet is mostly just nervous and selfish and frightened.)
And partly it's because I actually feel rather sorry for her, esp after her icy statement that daughters never matter much to their fathers - it's rather sad, I think (*suspects that Lady Catherine and Lady Anne were not terribly important to Daddy the Earl*). And even though the idea of planning the marriage of a pair of infants is silly (and was so by then), I still kind of love the image of two sisters leaning over their children's cradles and . . . yeah. Anyway, I'm pretty muchthe a card-carrying member of the Lady Catherine Defence Society and I wanted to write something that was both sympathetic and . . . well, Lady Catherine.
So this is a very long and meandering way of saying: Lady Catherine fic!
-----------------------------------
Title: Untitled (I'll name it eventually...)
Fandom: Austen (PRIDE AND PREJUDICE)
Fanverse: N/A (prequel)
Blurb: Lady Catherine is, surprisingly enough, one of the only mothers in Austen to name her firstborn daughter for someone other than herself. This is why.
Major Characters: Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Lady Anne Darcy; the late Lord ----; Fitzwilliam Darcy
Pairings/Warnings: no pairings; deathfic, sympathetic!Lady Catherine
Length: One-shot
-------------------------------
Catherine Fitzwilliam is four years old when her father summons her home from Ardsley. Angry, resentful, and already missing her doting, indulgent uncles, she marches after the servants with a mutinous scowl on her face.
‘Catherine,’ says the Earl, ‘you have a sister.’
She stares at the tiny toes and fingers, the golden ringlets and peacefully slumbering face, and forgets all her earlier fury. The baby is so small, she looks as if a breeze might break her in half.
In that moment, her sister becomes the only person Catherine loves more than herself. They are inseparable; even their marriages take place on the same day. When their first surviving children are a boy and a girl, born within months of each other, it seems the workings of Providence.
Exactly twenty years after the wedding, Catherine receives the letter. It is a stiffly-worded note from Alexander Darcy, explaining that her sister is dying, and asking for her.
Catherine flies off to Pemberley, and sits with Anne for the longest hours of her life. Her nephew Fitzwilliam is on the other side, so pale and gaunt that he resembles his mother even more strongly than usual, and Anne looks at them, and smiles, and dies.
(Tangent - I think she's meant to be reverse!Mr Bennet, actually. He's the parent who's brilliant but irresponsibly passive; she's the [surrogate] parent who is extremely proactive but so unintelligent that she does it all wrong. Mrs Bennet is mostly just nervous and selfish and frightened.)
And partly it's because I actually feel rather sorry for her, esp after her icy statement that daughters never matter much to their fathers - it's rather sad, I think (*suspects that Lady Catherine and Lady Anne were not terribly important to Daddy the Earl*). And even though the idea of planning the marriage of a pair of infants is silly (and was so by then), I still kind of love the image of two sisters leaning over their children's cradles and . . . yeah. Anyway, I'm pretty much
So this is a very long and meandering way of saying: Lady Catherine fic!
-----------------------------------
Title: Untitled (I'll name it eventually...)
Fandom: Austen (PRIDE AND PREJUDICE)
Fanverse: N/A (prequel)
Blurb: Lady Catherine is, surprisingly enough, one of the only mothers in Austen to name her firstborn daughter for someone other than herself. This is why.
Major Characters: Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Lady Anne Darcy; the late Lord ----; Fitzwilliam Darcy
Pairings/Warnings: no pairings; deathfic, sympathetic!Lady Catherine
Length: One-shot
-------------------------------
Catherine Fitzwilliam is four years old when her father summons her home from Ardsley. Angry, resentful, and already missing her doting, indulgent uncles, she marches after the servants with a mutinous scowl on her face.
‘Catherine,’ says the Earl, ‘you have a sister.’
She stares at the tiny toes and fingers, the golden ringlets and peacefully slumbering face, and forgets all her earlier fury. The baby is so small, she looks as if a breeze might break her in half.
In that moment, her sister becomes the only person Catherine loves more than herself. They are inseparable; even their marriages take place on the same day. When their first surviving children are a boy and a girl, born within months of each other, it seems the workings of Providence.
Exactly twenty years after the wedding, Catherine receives the letter. It is a stiffly-worded note from Alexander Darcy, explaining that her sister is dying, and asking for her.
Catherine flies off to Pemberley, and sits with Anne for the longest hours of her life. Her nephew Fitzwilliam is on the other side, so pale and gaunt that he resembles his mother even more strongly than usual, and Anne looks at them, and smiles, and dies.
no subject
on 2009-08-20 09:49 am (UTC)no subject
on 2009-08-20 03:23 pm (UTC)Ooh, that was rather good. And she smiles too much! Heeeeeeeee! Though I agree with the reviewer that said the setting is done rather awkwardly.