Tumblr crosspost (21 February 2020)

An anon said:

Hi! I love your Austen analyses, and I particularly like to read ones about Emma, which is my favorite of her works. I know how you feel about some of the adaptations, and I'm curious about your opinion about the newest Emma adaptation (2020) starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Johnny Flynn? I read some of the interviews for the film and it sounds wonderful tbh since the actress said that her Emma is going to be a little unlikable.

I replied:

Thank you! The reviews seem good, so I’m looking forward to seeing it, but otherwise, I don’t have much of an opinion. I do think it’s important that Emma is allowed to be unlikable (to many) at points—as Austen herself was perfectly conscious of! So … *fingers crossed*

Tumblr crosspost (21 February 2020)

An anon said:

hey, i've been going through your various P&P tags and I noticed these tags "#georgiana and lydia parallel each other to highlight their differences to highlight how little it matters anyway #they also parallel each other as part of the broader darcy--elizabeth parallels but not even getting into that" on this post /post/100262707898/warmed-up-rant and i was wondering if you ever went into how georgiana and lydia are part of the broader darcy/elizabeth parallels? i'd love to read it if so :)

I replied:

Hmm, it was some time ago, but I think I meant that Georgiana and Lydia occupy roughly similar positions in the narrative with respect to Darcy and Elizabeth respectively. They’re significantly younger sisters to Darcy/Elizabeth (and exactly the same ages as each other), they’re attractive but less so than Darcy/Elizabeth, they get led astray by Wickham in partial consequence of Darcy/Elizabeth’s inaction and are rescued in some form or another by Darcy.

(At the same time, they’re exact opposites in other ways—they operate as sorts of mirror images of each other.)

So it’s not just that Lydia and Georgiana are strikingly similar or starkly dissimilar at pretty much all times (and in either case, in ways that still associate them together). They’re also paralleled specifically in relation to Darcy/Elizabeth. And that makes the parallels between them feed into the broader Darcy/Elizabeth parallels that drive the novel (you can see something similar with Jane and Bingley, say, and perhaps Charlotte and Fitzwilliam, along with Mr/Mrs Bennet and Lady Catherine). I would say that it’s the clearest way that they’re bound up in the overarching thrust of the story.

That’s in addition to their significance as vulnerable young girls whose radical differences of situation and personality don’t prevent them from being preyed upon in similar ways—reinforced by the fact that their predator is literally the same person.

They said:

parallels anon here - thank you! that makes a lot of sense, and it's given me a bit to think about with regards to how character dynamics aren't conceived in a vacuum, but are also influenced by the other characters they interact with :)

I responded:

I’m very glad to hear it :)

Tumblr crosspost (22 February 2020)

An anon asked:

Hi, I was just wondering whether you think Henry Tilney gives off slightly chauvinistic vibes? Some of his jokes are a little grating, like the one where he says he'll explain his joke because he's a gentleman, or something like that (don't have the book with me for reference). I still find him kind of charming, but feel a little guilty for liking a guy who's always being accused of sexism! Also, I just want to say that I love your analyses and I'm sure you must be an excellent grad student.

I responded:

Well, thank you very much! I try :)

As for Henry … hmm. I know that in my MA, a lot of people in my Austen seminar read him that way (including the prof, lol). But personally, I don’t mind, mostly because I can’t take most of what he says very seriously. It’s not that jokes can’t be taken seriously—I understand why he grates on some people—but he’s so tongue in cheek that I’m pretty much just “lol, whatever” about it.

I do know about liking characters who are relentlessly seen that way, though, so I feel you. /fistbump

Tumblr crosspost (22 February 2020)

I reblogged a picture of María Valverde as Lucrecia in "Los Borgia," and said:

I love Holliday, but the Lucrezia in my head is María.

Tumblr crosspost (22 February 2020)

How have I lived over thirty years in this world without encountering Rinmaru’s mega fantasy dollmaker until now???? The other mega doll creator is good, but this one is just ... *chef kiss*

[ETA 9/24/21: I included dolls of the OCs of my novel in the original post, but I won't add those here. They were very close to my mental pictures, though!]

Tumblr crosspost (22 February 2020)

In response to this post, whetstonefires said that it's possible we don't hear about any change in Darcy's feelings about Mr Bennet because Elizabeth is no longer concerned about Darcy holding Mr Bennet against her.

I replied:

Hmm, I’m not sure about the first part. In the letter, Darcy specifies that Mr Bennet is one of the people whose behaviour contributed to his sense of the Bennets’ unsuitability. So he was holding Mr Bennet against her to some extent, at least in more or less the same sense that he was holding Mrs Bennet against her—and Elizabeth is quite anxious about Darcy’s and Mrs Bennet’s reactions to each other in the final stage of the novel.

Either way, Elizabeth is neither the narrator nor the only viewpoint character of P&P. There’s a distinction (sometimes a very sharp distinction) between what she thinks about and what is important for the narrative as a whole.

It’s possible that Darcy’s feelings about Mr Bennet are simply not terribly important to the narrative (though it was sufficiently worth mentioning to come up in the letter and then again in his preference for dealing with Mr Gardiner). But it’s also possible that there is no reason for his feelings to have changed beyond a certain baseline of human respect, and his distaste is just … not something to really emphasize at that point in the story.

(no subject)

I actually tried to delete a Tumblr post today, something I almost never do, and ... it didn't work. /sigh