anghraine

kungfunurse said:

Hiya! So I’m re-reading S&S (as one does) and I’ve got a couple of questions. 1) Do you think Mr. Palmer is on the autistic spectrum? The way he misses most social cues and whatnot - idk. And 2) Would it have been normal at the time for Marianne to go months without hearing from Willoughby and still not suspect that he’s lost interest, or was this another example of her being lost in fantasy? Thanks!!

I replied:

1) I honestly don’t know. I haven’t read S&S in a long time, so it’s hard to say. I’ll keep an eye out next time, though!

2) Willoughby couldn’t write openly to Marianne without raising very serious general expectations, so that’s probably how she justifies his silence to herself.

As a sidenote, this is why Darcy hand-delivers his letter to Elizabeth—it would be exceptionally awkward for her if he sent a letter. It’s also significant that the Gardiners wonder if he’s going to send a letter/note after Elizabeth when they leave Pemberley—they’re guessing that Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship has advanced much further than it really has.

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An anon said:

I'm glad you liked the question, I find the possible vagaries of Darcy's family fascinating (while the Gardiners are the only ones in Elizabeth's family of continuing interest to me) so I'm really enjoying your headcanons. And since he's close to Lady Mary, I can see Darcy doting on her daughters too, from the way you always write him as good with kids.

I replied:

Thank you! And yes, definitely—I was only thinking of the adults, but I imagine that he’s super fond of and indulgent towards the girls, and has a particular soft spot for Sophia, who is gangly and awkward and clever.

Current Location: Washington
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Mr Bennet: my brother-in-law probably paid at least ten thousand pounds to arrange my daughter’s marriage. :(

Fandom: Is this poverty?

Tagged: #am i still on this? yES #people go through such acrobatics to make the gardiner-bennets out to be facing down a desperate future and... lol #but it's like—austen was persistently and deeply concerned with the vicissitudes of female dependence on their relatives #you don't have to make that out to be a scenario where they were ever going to go hungry or become governesses or whatever #to be a real concern and a characteristic one! #ajkfdfjkdaf

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An anon said:

Darcy loving the Gardiners and becoming BFFs with them is one of the best and most underrated aspects of P&P. I'd love to see a fic where they visit Meryton before the ball and Elizabeth's shocked that Darcy actually gets along with them, once he realises they're nothing like Mrs B.

I replied:

It really is one of my favorite parts, and where I see the most actual change in Darcy’s beliefs. And that very fic concept has rolled around in my head for YEARS.

I think Darcy would be slower to warm to them than in canon because of his preconceptions at that point, but that he pretty consistently is able to adjust his initial opinions of people to account for new data. He doesn’t question the underlying worldview until really shocked out of it, but he can adapt on an individual basis—as with his friendship with Bingley, say. He’s certainly perceptive enough to see that the Gardiners are very different from Mrs Bennet, and I think could make a mental ‘adjustment’ there; they’re special, like Bingley.

Alternately, it’s possible that their profound difference from his assumptions about what they’d be like could startle him enough that it begins the (in the AU) gradual process of him reconsidering his basic preconceptions and not just his application of those preconceptions to particular people. I think which happens would depend on the strength of his impression of them and the course of their relationship and so forth, but either could happen.

Either way, I do agree that he would soon come away with a positive impression of them and conduct himself agreeably enough towards them, which I also agree would be pretty !!?!???!? to Elizabeth in itself. On top of that, the stark contrast between his behavior towards the Gardiners and e.g. Mr and Mrs Bennet would make it clear that some level of personal disapproval is at work there, not just general elitism, which is harder to take (as we see in her response to the letter, his opinion of them does trouble her—I think in part because she fundamentally agrees with it and has tried not to think about it). And I don’t think Darcy at that point (maybe any point) would be inclined to hide his preference for the Gardiners, so it would just be very apparent and strain her assumptions about him.

Whether that would extend to straining her general reliance on assumptions about people, once she’s realized that she wasn’t quite right about him, is a more complicated matter, as with the “Alternately…” for Darcy above. But it’s possible that this all results in slower and less painful but no less profound epiphanies for both.

I’ve thought of both very specific and general scenarios for all this, so … maybe someday I’ll get to one of them.

Tagged: #i didn't get into what the gardiners think of him and wickham in the au #or how wickham figures at all #but that's also part of it in my head

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I reblogged a set of quotes I had posted the previous year, on Christmas of 2019:

Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?

I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.

<3

In 2020, I added:

It's that time of year!

Tagged: #i always love imagining that first christmas at pemberley #with georgiana and the gardiner kids and mr and mrs gardiner and darcy and elizabeth all together #i just #:')

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An anon asked:

How old do you think mrs. gardiner is? could she be as young as mr. darcy

I replied:

She could be, though I think early- to mid-thirties is more probable.

The only direct statement about her age, as far as I recall, is that she’s “several years” younger than her sisters-in-law, Mrs Bennet and Mrs Phillips. Mrs Bennet can’t really be under about 40. While “several” is pretty vague and you can interpret it as you will, IMO you have to stretch it pretty far to encompass an age gap of at least 12 years and quite possibly more.

We do know that Mrs Gardiner was unmarried some 10 or 12 years earlier, when she lived in Lambton. Her oldest child is 8. So, if you want to skew younger, let’s say she married Mr Gardiner 9-10 years earlier (though canonically it could just as easily be 11-12). IIRC, historical research suggests that women of the gentry typically married at around 24, while those from the more middling classes tended to marry later. If she was, say, 25 when she married, that would make her 34-5, which I think fits pretty well with her being several years younger than an around 40-y-o Mrs Bennet.

But, of course, nothing says she has to marry at a historically typical age. Maybe she was younger than usual! Make her 19, pick the shortest likely duration of marriage, nine years, and then she’d be 28—Darcy’s age. So it is possible, yes.

Tagged: #i do feel like the dynamic with elizabeth makes more sense with a larger age gap than 7-8 years #but it's not beyond the realm of possibility at all! #ngl even with my preferred version #it's weird to think of her as my age

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The post thanking me for rejecting Mrs Bennet apologetics is now getting Mrs Bennet apologetics on it

>_<

#people reallyyyyy want to dismiss how well-off the gardiners are tbh #i guess it makes a certain amount of sense bc the defenses of mrs bennet are contingent on her being actually right about their futures #but she's not #/shrug

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A Tumblr anon said:

Thank you (for that comment about the Bennet women and poverty). I'm pretty sure we saw the same post and I was like 'i don't know enough about the source time period to say, but I'm pretty sure that's not right'. The Gardiner's were my first thought-Lizzy and Jane both seemed pretty tight with them-but at the end of the day, there's 5 of them yes, and I understand Mrs. Bennet wanting them to get married, but uh, shes not doing a great job of presenting the family if she does? Tiniest violin yes

I replied:

You’re welcome! I’ve seen a lot of those posts (and a lot of articles to the same effect) and it’s just incredibly grating because it largely disregards her very real faults (she’s short-sighted, mean-spirited, self-absorbed, extravagant etc) to make her out to be some poor overlooked Cassandra. And yeah, everything she does impedes her goals.

The Gardiners are really important to this, as you say! They can afford a long, winding tourist trip for three people, they frequently have Jane and Elizabeth living with them, Mr Bennet has no difficulty believing that Mr Gardiner could have shelled out ten thousand pounds for Lydia’s marriage, Mr Gardiner did intend to pay several thousand pounds, and Mrs Bennet shrugs off any gratitude a normal person might feel because she would have inherited Mr Gardiner’s money if he hadn’t gone and had children (uhhhh). The Gardiners are well-off and certainly would have looked after her and the girls—but it would be a major step down from life as the Bennets of Longbourn, and that’s the real problem.

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I still think about Donald Greene’s article about how the (maybe) Tory-aligned Bennet-Gardiners force the Whig-coded Darcy-Fitzwilliams to take them seriously, and … the underlying concept is so interesting!

but, also:

1) there’s no suggestion that Elizabeth cares about her family’s politics, whatever they may be, or that they bear on her choices and perspectives; additionally, she’s often positioned as out of sync with most of her family and it’s implied that she and Jane have been strongly influenced by their frequent visits to the Gardiners, whose politics we also know nothing about

(otoh, Darcy’s combination of elitism and progressivism is super stereotypically Whig, not to mention his name)

2) even if you see the Bennets as Tory-aligned, Darcy is in no way assimilated into their world and its politics; there’s no indication that he ever likes Mr Bennet; it’s Elizabeth who is longing for Pemberley by the end; and the final emphasis is on the tight connection between her, her powerful landlord of a husband, and her mercantile relations.

It would, of course, be odd to say it’s the other way around and the Darcy-Fitzwilliams force Elizabeth to take them seriously (lol Lady Catherine), because the dynamics of the novel are very much more complex than that. But it is certainly Elizabeth who is actively eager to enter Darcy’s world while Darcy is at all points uneasy with hers. If Darcy and Elizabeth are politically active as a couple, it is vastly more likely for Elizabeth to become a Whig hostess than Darcy a Tory sympathizer.

(And in my headcanon, that’s exactly what happens!)

( tags )

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It’s funny when people are like … but would Darcy and Elizabeth really be happy together? We just don’t know!

Austen:

they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.

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awesomenell65 reblogged this post, and added a comment about how regrettable it is that the Gardiners are so sidelined in adaptation.

I replied:

I think it throws off the balance of who is really important, and what behaviors are being held up as admirable in Austen’s work, in this novel in particular.

This, exactly. It’s especially important because of Austen’s enduring preoccupation with the effects of education and upbringing on how people develop and who they become. P&P in particular highlights the failures of parents and parental figures over and over (even Mr Collins has a bad parenting backstory!). The Gardiners are virtually the only exception to this (both w/ their own children and with their influence on Jane and Elizabeth), and their intermittent but persistent presence right up to the last line centers the qualities that are really important in going forward, and undercuts the importance of others, especially class.

Tagged:

#the gardiners are both some of the lowest-ranking characters in the book #and the most purely benevolent #in a way that's not really saccharine at all #but it's... not sure how to put this #but #adaptations are always choosing to foreground certain elements and minimize others in their retellings #this is an inevitable part of adapting things—and /what/ is chosen for each can be very suggestive #beyond just weighing judgment on whether it's faithful / unfaithful #it would be perfectly possible for adaptations to foreground class /more/ than the book does #and instead it's largely diminished and when addressed it's in a super reductionist way #and that reflects a general lack of interest in it that i think particularly influences the treatment of the gardiners and mrs reynolds

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I reblogged this post:

Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?

I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.

<3

tagged: #reblogging for today's ramble tbh #the gardiners are so important and so sidelined in discussion

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There’s a fairly famous article about Whig allusions in Austen, and specifically in P&P (where the plausible deniability gets very shaky). The article is interesting and all, but then it’s like … this isn’t about specific politics as such, but about (implicitly Tory) rural middling gentry making (all but explicitly Whig) great landowners take them seriously, as mediated through Elizabeth and Darcy’s relationship. And that’s how it squares with Austen’s presumed Tory politics.

aghhh

( Read more... )

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There are a lot of funny moments in P&P, but personally, it’s hard to think of any surpassing one that is probably not even intended to be funny:

At length every idea seemed to fail him; and, after standing a few moments without saying a word, he suddenly recollected himself, and took leave.

The others then joined her, and expressed admiration of his figure

So. Elizabeth is wandering around Darcy’s own property, receiving uncomfortable revelations about him, and almost the last time they met was when she refused his proposal of marriage (and it went down from there), and then suddenly he’s right there and they have the most awkward conversation conceivable, and then her uncle and aunt are going on about what a great body he has.

I mean, everything about this is utterly delightful.

#mr gardiner and mrs gardiner chatting about how hot darcy is while elizabeth is too overwhelmed to even notice is everything #the adaptations really drop the ball on the sheer comedic value of this moment imo #the pemberley scenes are GOLD

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It’s funny when people are like … but would Darcy and Elizabeth really be happy together? We just don’t know!

Austen:

they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.

Darcy and Elizabeth were always grateful to the Gardiners for enabling their own marriage! Such a mystery if they were happy together, though.

Current Location: Washington
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... four months later. Oh, well.

title: tolerably well acquainted (5/?)
verse: Comforts and Consequences
characters: Elizabeth Bennet, (in absentia) Fitzwilliam Darcy; Mr Gardiner, Mrs Gardiner, OCs—Mr Bromley, Mrs Bromley, Thomas Bromley, Miss Bromley; Darcy/Elizabeth
stuff that happens: Elizabeth and the Gardiners meet their Lambton friends, and discover more about Darcy—now deliberately.
previous sections: one, two, three, four

She spent hours concealing uncertainty and discomposure behind very unnatural reserve, reserve which must appear suspicious to the Gardiners. She could only imagine what they thought now. Well, whatever their conclusions, she would sooner or later be forced to declare them without foundation. That much was a certainty, unless—

Unless they were not without foundation, after all. Unless her feelings had changed.

( Read more... )

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The date is purely because I posted various short things on the 13th that don't merit separate crossposts, but I am a completionist.

[warning: fic-spoilery references to canonical sibling incest]

( Read more... )

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title: tolerably well acquainted (4/?)
verse: Comforts and Consequences
characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy; Mr Gardiner, Mrs Gardiner, Georgiana Darcy, Charles Bingley; Darcy/Elizabeth
stuff that happens: Elizabeth manages to meet with Darcy, Georgiana, and (unexpectedly!) Bingley without disaster.
previous sections: one, two, three

“Once,” said Elizabeth impulsively, “when I was at Rosings, your aunt ordered him to lecture you about practising on the pianoforte. He told her, without a moment’s pause, that you did not need it.”

Miss Darcy coloured, but looked almost happy.

“I have only just met him,” remarked Mrs Gardiner, “but that is exactly what I should expect. I am not sure I would always know what to expect from him, however. I have the impression that his is a complex character—do you not think so, Lizzy?”

How could she not?

( Read more... )

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title: tolerably well acquainted (3/?)
verse: Comforts and Consequences
characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy; Mr Gardiner, Mrs Gardiner, Miss Mortimer (OFC); Darcy/Elizabeth
stuff that happens: Elizabeth survives her Pemberley conversations, and pays very little attention to anything else.
previous sections: one, two

Elizabeth dared a glance at him, which thankfully went unnoticed. Darcy had turned his head away, exposing little beyond a handsome profile. It seemed a softer one than heretofore—perhaps. At the moment, she felt sure of very little with him.

She would take the gesture for what it was, Elizabeth decided: a compliment of the highest order, from a man who had very little reason to offer one. The thought did not set her at ease; nothing could do that, in the circumstances. But it pleased both her rational mind and her vanity.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished
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title: tolerably well acquainted (2/?)
verse: Comforts and Consequences
characters: Elizabeth Bennet, Fitzwilliam Darcy; Mr Gardiner, Mrs Gardiner, unnamed servants; Darcy/Elizabeth
stuff that happens: Elizabeth doesn't have the heart to disrupt the Gardiners' time at Pemberley, with predictable results.
previous sections: one

They all exclaimed at the sight, and Mr Gardiner snatched up one of the nearer flowers and stuck it into the little bunch of blossoms on Mrs Gardiner’s hat.

“There,” he said. “Now you have a real one.”

Mrs Gardiner shook her head, but both ladies laughed. Elizabeth, nevertheless, felt a faint melancholy as they continued. She could not imagine a more happily suited couple—and to think that only by sheer chance had their paths crossed at all! How many others could expect their good fortune?

( Read more... )

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Pemberley fic, Ch 5

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