"The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet"

[anghraine]

[reposting from wordpress]

So, I’ve been amusing myself by reading reviews of Colleen McCullough’s ghastly sequel, and came across her own remarks. Dear Lord. Some people should be muffled from birth.

But why pick on Austen’s Mary Bennet, apart from wanting to tweak a few noses?

It’s certainly not because McCullough has been a life-long Austen devotee.

“I’ve never been a fan of Austen’s,” she declares.

That was painfully obvious already, though I wasn’t aware she’d actually admitted it. And come on, what’s the point of pastiche if you don’t like the original author!

McCullough makes it clear in the first chapter that she’s not quite so enthusiastic about the likes of Lizzie and her imperious husband, Fitzwilliam Darcy.

We learn that their marriage is less than happy and that they have no one to blame but themselves.

“Austen led a sheltered life and that’s reflected in her writing, her characters don’t have particularly rich inner lives,” McCullough says.

“It was obvious to me that Lizzie, like many young women, thought she could reform Mr Darcy, that a good woman could change a man.

“I’ve been around the block a few times and know that a leopard’s spots are there for good.”

What. The. Hell. Elizabeth never once thought she could reform Darcy, and she never once did anything with the intent of changing him by it. How could anybody read the book and think it’s “obvious” that it’s about a good woman thinking she could reform a [bad] man? Austen toys with that, yes. In Mansfield Park – and ultimately, that leopard’s spots remain. She knew all about that. And her inner life was richer than devil’s food cake.

Maybe if somebody repeats “Fitzwilliam Darcy is not Henry Crawford” enough times, it’ll stick. For heavens’ sakes, the whole point of the Pemberley scene is to show the person that Darcy really is. It’s like everybody just leaps over that and fastens on “OMG transformed for love of her!” Finally, we see him at home, where he is most himself – through the eyes of a person who has known him for almost his entire life, and whose life and livelihood are completely dependent on his whims.

Elizabeth, before that point, undoubtedly agrees with McCullough:

This was praise of all others most extraordinary, most opposite to her ideas That he was not a good-tempered man had been her firmest opinion.

What few people seem to realise – or seem willing to admit – is that she was wrong. Not about everything, no – certainly, he was haughty as all get-out – but she was wrong about this because she didn’t know him and she didn’t want to. She wanted an arrogant bastard (nothing more, nothing less) who she could sharpen her wits on with a clean conscience, so that’s what she got.

But she – unlike McCullough, evidently – knows that you can mostly clearly see, and judge, another person’s character in how he treats those he has power over – not annoying social acquaintances. Darcy has no real power over Elizabeth or the Bennets or the Gardiners; they’re little more than inconveniences to him, and that’s how he treats them. Almost as badly as Mr Bennet does his wife. But where he has absolute power, he behaves quite differently. Mrs Reynolds tells us not about a ‘new’ Darcy, but about how he has always been, even as a small boy:

I have never had a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever since he was four years old.

Don’t be changing those spots, Darcy. Clearly you’re unrecognisable without them.

. . . he was always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the world.

Aww. He sounds darling. I bet he had a collection of wounded birds and snuck pastries (hee) to the scullery-maid. Oh, and always bowed to the tenants. (He probably also delivered orders like a little general.) Not bad for a kid whose parents left him to follow their principles on his own.

He is the best landlord and the best master that over lived. Not like the wild young men now-a-days who think of nothing but themselves.

*sniffle* I’ve always loved Mrs Reynolds. She clearly adores him – and just as clearly, because she has reason to. Once they get to know him, pretty much everybody ends up loving Darcy. She just has a lead on the fangirling; seniority, as it were.

I also love it because it’s a wonderful balance to Elizabeth’s much more frequently quoted “selfish disdain for the feelings of others.” It wasn’t completely wrong. But it wasn’t completely right either.

There is not one of his tenants or servants but what will give him a good name.

Bear in mind that this is several hundred people she’s talking about. Like I said: everybody loves Darcy. Either he’s vampirically enthralling them all (a theory which, since I first wrote this, seems to have gained a certain following), or he’s just that noble and high-minded and generally awesome.

And this is always the way with him. Whatever can give his sister any pleasure is sure to be done in a moment. There is nothing he would not do for her.

Be my brother, plz? Or uncle, or father, or grandfather, or . . . something, because you’re clearly the perfect guardian.

So that’s his biggest fan; here’s his worst enemy reluctantly acknowledging that he’s not all bad.

It has often led him to be liberal and generous, to give his money freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, to relieve the poor. [. . .] Some brotherly affection makes him a very kind and careful guardian to his sister, and you will hear him generally cried up as the most attentive and best of brothers.

Poor, poor Elizabeth, stuck with a miserly, ruthless bastard like that. You’ve really got to wonder how she survived it without going insane from such unspeakable horrors.

Oh! Enlightenment dawns! Here’s McCullough again:

We’re told that there were five beautiful Bennet sisters and we’re given a lot of information about them, except for Mary. She’s only really known for having a terrible singing voice.

Um, no, we’re not. Mary is ‘mortified’ by comparisons between her sisters’ looks and her own – she’s ‘the only plain one in the family.’ Which, with my interpretative superpowerz, I take to mean that she is, indeed, plain.

And . . . ha ha ha! I have discovered the truth.

Many, if not all, of the adaptations give Mary a horrible singing voice – but Austen says only that it’s ‘weak’. She’s not talented, but she’s an adequate musician by dint of much practice; Elizabeth does not perform ‘half so well’. The problem with Mary isn’t that she sounds like a rottweiler being mauled by a screech owl, it’s that she’s just so bloody annoying. Of course, McCullough would only know that if she’d read the book. Just like she’d know that, when it comes down to it, we have very little information about any of the sister except for Jane and Elizabeth.

Gotcha! You’re not talking about Austen’s Darcy at all, are you? Nope, you’ve seen – let’s see, which one – yep, the ‘95 mini-series with boorish Muffin!leopard!Darcy and caterwauling Mary. And you’ve extrapolated from that to ‘poor underappreciated book-lover’ and ‘unsociable at parties = teh ebol!’

PS – There are lots and lots and lots of Mary sympathisers out there, and a strange amount of reader discomfort. My personal theory is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Mary as Austen wrote her and everything to do with readers/critics seeing the books, moviefen seeing the glasses, and they automatically identify her as ‘the smart bookish one’ (and themselves, with her) rather than ‘the silly pseudo-intellectual.’ And then they feel offended that the author is so mean to her! It’s just ’cause she’s not pretty. In short, they stuff her into a box and get outraged that she doesn’t fit.

ETA: I found one of the few favourable reviews – hee!: If you loved the original “Pride and Prejudice” series, you will most certainly love this book. Colleen McCullough is a truly amazing writer. The foundation of this book is from the television series, but she really delves so much further into the nature of their characters. It takes place years after the series leaves you and goes on to show you that a beautiful wedding does not always denote “happily ever after”. Thank you Colleen McCullough.

Yes. We hear so much about the beautiful wedding in the book. Filmfen. *sniff*

Oh, and I have another pet theory. The Muffins have a stranglehold on literary thought, so that misery – the more tragic, the better – is somehow considered inherently superior to happiness – a higher Art, greater insight into the human condition, etc etc. I feel a strong suspicion that the principal reason for the literary community’s ambivalence over Pride and Prejudice is that, for all its brilliance, it’s just so terribly, abhorrently cheerful. How dare it, really, when the lower classes are being oppressed, women can’t own property, and marriages last for a lifetime? How dare the protagonists, after a year of analysing each other’s characters and their own, struggling to act in accordance with their own principles, dealing with several family dramas, and falling in love, enter into a good marriage and live, more or less happily, in a slice of homemade paradise? That’s intolerable, that is. We must redeem it from the happy and make them miserable together.

There, all better now.