So You Think You Know Jane Austen? (Misc - A)

[anghraine]

[Reposted from wordpress]

(2) What should we read into the fact that Lydia is both the youngest and tallest of the Bennet girls?

A1: Let’s see. She’s overgrown and immature? The sisters who seem closest to her in nature are both slight and delicate - fundamentally different? Yet another parallel to tall, womanly Georgiana Darcy? I can keep going if you want.

 

A2: She has coarse vitality.
— Yes, she does. I’m not sure that follows from being tall at fifteen/sixteen; Georgiana lacks both.

Lydia is ‘a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen’, possessed of ‘high animal spirits’, we learn. This would seem to be a euphemism for sexual appetite.
— What?! I’m not saying Lydia hasn’t got a sexual appetite, but those ‘high animal spirits’ speak far more, IMO, of an unthinking desire for instantaneous gratification of any kind; a bonnet, a dance, a romance. Sex too, of course.

Lydia, who is prepared to make her own destiny, in defiance of the decencies of middle-class life, would be the heroine of a twenty-first-century novel.
— Am I completely missing something here? Lydia couldn’t care less about her destiny. She isn’t defiant of middle-class (or, more accurately, upper-class) decencies, she’s oblivious to them. There is a difference. Lydia is shallow and foolish, driven solely by the impulses of the moment, and she doesn’t so much make her destiny as crash-land into it (though she won’t realise that for awhile).

(3) Why is Lizzy Mr Bennet’s favourite and Mary his least favourite daughter?

A1: Elizabeth is his only daughter with anything like wit or cleverness. Jane has sense, and the rest not even that. I don’t think that Mary is ever condemned as his least favourite, though — he shoves the younger three together, but he seems to dislike Kitty and Lydia rather more.

A2: Lizzy is ‘quick’, has inherited his caustic humour, and amuses him.
— I could go with that, though I’m not sure that Elizabeth’s sense of humour is all that caustic when Darcy isn’t in the room (his is). And, post-Hunsford, it softens still further. Darcy and Elizabeth are both much more amusing in the first half, if less admirable.

Mary has presumed to set up as a bluestocking . . . The implication is that she has dulled herself (and lost much of her femininity) by book study.
— Um, no. First of all, she does not pretend to be a bluestocking and would undoubtedly be horrified at the very thought. She likes Fordyce, not Wollstonecraft — archconservative moral instruction. In fact, Mary is the exact opposite of a bluestocking, and if she’s setting herself up as anyone, it’s the Bennet family’s own Hannah More. IMHO again, she’s a parody on the very conservative idea of the accomplished woman, and probably the Evangelicals (who Austen didn't care for, at least at the time). Mary’s book study is ultrafeminine (by contemporary standards) and uninspired, as well as pretentious, and that is what Mr Bennet so disdains.

A contemporary Pride and Prejudice would, perhaps, see Mary (named, perhaps, after Mary Wollstonecraft) as the most interesting of the Bennet girls.
— I thought that was Lydia? Actually, I think Elizabeth would always-always-always be the most interesting of the Bennet sisters. A brilliant mind rusticating and already beginning to stagnate in her backwater ‘hometown’, pretty without being fashionably beautiful, a perfect older sister, completely and utterly inadequate parents, everyone intellectually or morally inferior, except for one haughty, straitlaced young man who dismisses her on sight. Except for the protagonists’ morals, this framework would fit quite nicely into the modern world. Oh, and Mary could be named after Mary Wollstonecraft, but is it more likely than Mary Austen, Austen’s sister-in-law? or Mary, Countess Fitzwilliam? or Mary, Queen of Scots, who Austen loved as a girl? Or simply an ordinary English name like those given to all the Bennet girls but Lydia? (I can’t help but think of Lydia Languish, but also Cassandra Austen's great-aunt, the Duchess of Chandos, was Lydia Catherine.)

(4) What is Mrs Bennet’s characteristic indisposition, and what do we deduce from it?

A1: Nerves! And she’s a self-dramatising, hypocritical hypochondriac.

A2: ‘Nerves’. Neurosis would be the modern equivalent.
— Not if she didn’t have an actual disorder, it wouldn’t. And I really don’t think she does. If I had to choose a character in P&P to label ‘neurotic,’ I’d go with poor Georgiana Darcy. (I’ll add that I’ve always both admired and been disturbed by Austen’s portrayal of her. P&P3’s portrayal made Wickham’s perfidy far less of a betrayal and depravity than it really was. In the original, we see the whole effect with the direct antithesis of Lydia — a girl who is talented, pretty, sensible, devoted to an affectionate brother, and an absolute wreck.)

She uses her nervousness as a means of tyrannizing over her family.
— Yep.

One must also wonder how much Mr Bennet’s sub-acid scorn has driven her neurotic.
— I always thought it was the other way around, actually; her ‘nerves’ drove him into sarcasm and mockery.

Is she a (verbally) battered wife?
— No. At least, not really; she’s certainly no better than he is. The difference is that he could be better (I’m thinking of Sir Thomas Bertram, another one who married a pretty girl and discovered her to be a shallow idiot later on; he treats her with the respect she’s due as his wife and guides her thinking as much as is possible. Lady Bertram is silly but not vulgar).

A2: [Miss Bingley] perceives that Darcy is attracted, and not just by Elizabeth’s ‘fine eyes’.
— They could be talking about his attraction to her personality, but I rather doubt it. I wonder, if I checked the publication date, would it be post-1995? Ah — yes. 2005. Figures. (Which is not to say that Darcy is only attracted by Elizabeth’s pretty eyes and sparkling personality, just that since brooding!Darcy took hold, nobody shuts up about it.)

Women have better prescience on such subjects than men.
— Particularly when the woman in question sees what’s going on because the man in question told her about it. Pointedly.

Why, one may wonder, does Darcy, if he is so grand, not have a title to his name?
— This is one that springs up occasionally, though I wouldn’t have expected to see it in anything pretending to be remotely authoritative (it’s usually more fannish). Darcy doesn’t have a title because he is so grand. His name means high birth, extensive property, political/economic power, and connections to his fellow aristocrats (titled and not). He could purchase one if he wanted, but as he's in the peculiar position of having virtually nothing to gain from one (unlike, say, military victors, younger sons, former tradesmen or bankers, ambitious politicians etc) one I consider it extremely unlikely. 

(10) Why has Mr Collins offered his ‘olive branch’ to Mr Bennet?

A1: Because his father is dead and he can? I daresay the rumours of his cousins’ beauty have something to do with it, too.

A2: Because Lady Catherine has ‘condescended to advise him to marry as soon as he could.’
— Okay . . .

Why? To protect her own daughter from the addresses of a young clergyman (she not having, like Emma Woodhouse, a Harriet Smith close to hand).
— Uh . . . that didn’t so much come out of left field as come out of a different ballpark entirely. In Lady Catherine’s mind, engagements for Darcy or Anne are impossible, as they’re engaged to each other. And were there the slightest indication that Mr Collins was subverting Anne, Lady Catherine’s displeasure would know no bounds. No, she’s just being an interfering busybody, as usual.

It resembles a kind of castration of the harem attendant.
— Er. If you say so.

(11) What profession was Wickham first destined for, and what do we know of his backstory?

A1: The church was intended to be his profession. As for his backstory . . . *deep breath*

The late Mr Wickham was an attorney who, apparently, followed a fairly conventional path in becoming steward of a great estate. The estate in question, Pemberley, prospered under his stewardship, and his friend/benefactor, Mr Darcy, felt very much obliged to him.  When Mr Wickham's son George was born, he asked Mr Darcy to stand godfather, which he did.

The Wickhams were always poor, not from any stinginess on Mr Darcy’s part, but because Mrs Wickham was extravagant. Therefore, being a very generous, benevolent sort, Mr Darcy took responsibility for his godson, openly favouring him, personally bringing him up - at his own expense, no less, giving him a gentleman’s education, and generally treating him like another son. (We never hear what Lady Anne thought of this.  Or her sister.)

The two boys, Fitzwilliam and George, were apparently close friends and companions until Fitzwilliam saw enough of George’s ‘unguarded moments’ to cut off the friendship. Mr Darcy never realised this.

So, off they went to university — young Wickham to Cambridge. We don’t know where Darcy went, though I tend to think Oxford (mostly because Austen only sends unsavoury sorts to Cambridge). Wickham seems to have lived an entirely dissipated life, which Darcy disapprovingly observed while continuing his own presumably blameless pursuits (not like the wild young men nowadays). Then Mr Darcy died.

They went to Pemberley, where Wickham resigned all claim to the living that was supposed to be his in exchange for three thousand pounds, plus a one thousand pound legacy, and racked up debts all over the country before heading off. Darcy paid all his debts. Old Mr Wickham died not much later.

Three years later, after more vice and dissipation, the incumbent of the living died and Wickham returned to claim it. Darcy refused to give it to him, Wickham hurled invective at him for a bit, then went away again.

In 1799, Wickham and his cohort Mrs Younge arranged to get a position as governess to Miss Darcy, and when the ladies went to Ramsgate for the summer, Mrs Younge informed Wickham, and he followed them, then pretended to fall madly in love with fifteen-year-old Georgiana, his patron’s daughter, and according to some theories, his half-sister, playing on her fondness for him as a child. With Mrs Younge aiding and abetting him, she finally consented to a secret elopement, but was evidently not altogether thrilled about the idea, since she told her brother all about it the instant he showed up.

Darcy wrote something to Wickham, and whatever he said caused Wickham to leave immediately (I expect something along the lines of ‘my cousins and I will strangle you with our bare hands and throw your body into the Thames if you come near my sister again’ phrased in suitably Darcyish terms). Wickham was presumably at financial odds before a friendly acquaintance, Mr Denny, encouraged him to join the militia, and he did so, and by pure coincidence, showed up in the same place that Darcy was staying in. Thus endeth the backstory.

(I probably shouldn’t ever answer backstory questions. But I always do.)

He was, by his own account, denied the promised living of Kympton with its ‘excellent parsonage house.’
— That’s true, too. He was denied it, when he asked for it. Gosh, Wickham could be a good liar if he would give up the smarm and clichés. Oh, and I really hope that the clergyman Kitty eventually marries is the one who’s at Kympton in Wickham’s place. Because that would make Bennet family gatherings hilarious.

His father, he claims, was an attorney turned steward. Miss Bingley portrays him as the son of an upper servant, not a gentleman.
— She’s right; that’s what a steward is. Even before then, though, he was never a gentleman, socially. An attorney is effectively ‘in trade,’ like Elizabeth’s uncle Phillips.

Who bought Wickham’s commission? We assume it must have been Darcy, to get him out of the way.
— Commissions in the militia didn’t need to be bought. Anyway, that doesn’t seem to fit the facts. Wickham is white with terror on the street in Meryton; he left Ramsgate immediately, and doesn’t dare occupy the same ballroom as Darcy at Netherfield. I suspect that he nearly wet himself when Darcy showed up in London. Bribery was not required to get him out of the way.

(12) What fault of good manners does Mr Collins display, in introducing himself (with welcome bulletins about Lady Catherine’s health) to Darcy, and how does he justify the breach?

A1: LOL, welcome bulletins. Love it. Anyway, Darcy is more important than Mr Collins, therefore Collins can’t introduce himself to him. This is why the Merytonians are so outraged when Darcy refuses to be introduced to any young ladies at the initial assembly. He’s effectively made himself unavailable; they can’t flirt with him, can’t talk to him, can’t anything. (A win-win scenario from Darcy's point of view, of course.) Mr Collins says that social rules don’t apply to him because he’s clergyman. (Except when they do, of course.)

A2: As Elizabeth warns him, Darcy is his ‘superior in consequence’, and he should wait to be introduced or approached. Collins replies, reasonably enough, that clergy are above the protocols that bind the laity.
— Reasonable my foot. Joining the Anglican clergy is not like becoming a monk; it’s not a vocation, but a career move (well, some individuals might consider it a vocation — but not society at large). Clergymen are treated essentially as landless gentlemen, the exact degree of consequence affected, as ever, by their places in the hierarchy, birth, connections, and so on. They are not, however, afforded exceptions to ordinary social laws.

He seems, for all his fatuity, to be making a good point.
— No, he isn’t. This is treated as a very basic, simple, and unalterable social law which has nothing whatsoever to do with snobbery. As a very simplistic, modern example — imagine that you find yourself attending the same function as a millionaire who is also the nephew of a senator. Do you, Rev Smith, walk up and introduce yourself because you work for the senator’s sister? Uh, no.