Fell in love with Austen high school senior year reading P&P, but never admitted it as I was joining the Army and naively feared such femininity would hinder my combat performance. Now as a grizzled vet I see it doesn't contradict masculinity but rather complements it. Wish I knew then as my service would've been stronger for living a more fully (in)formed moral life, but we all have to learn somehow. "Real men read Austen" indeed.
A suggestion for men in want of a wife: To attract a woman with the feminine qualities & character of a Jane Austen heroine, Strongly consider the study & embrasure of the positive masculine qualities & character of a Jane Austen hero.
43:07 The thought that Darcy's rescue mission is motivated by aristocratic _noblesse_ _oblige_ seems to undervalue the magnitude of the condescension and personal cost involved in redeeming his bride-to-be from the scandal of a bad family name. Many other noblemen would have considered the case a hopeless one, even if they were sensible of the qualities of those "fine eyes" and the person to whom they belonged.
Yes, Darcy did all that truly for Lizzy, because for Lydia to be ruined would mean that he could not marry Lizzy. Despite Darcy not keeping with social expectations- being best friends with a non-gentleman, for example- his marriage and the future of Pemberley would be a much bigger deal than his personality.
D'arcy had known Wickham intimately since childhood. So he knew very well Wickham's many weaknesses. One of the severest being his ever present need for money. So I think D'arcy rather confidently expected, once they were uncovered, that enough money exchanged would ensure Wickham's marriage to Lydia.
I do think it quite likely that Miss Bates influenced Agatha Christie. The interpretation of that particular portion of Mansfield Park is too twisted (and the overall view of Mary Crawford decidedly evangelical).
Got done reading emma as well. It gets so addicted at the end just can't stop. But I learned Clueless is based on Emma and it does. It's a cute modern take. I liked it very much
Doesn't 'Sanditon' begin with an overturned carriage & doesn't someone fall out of a tree in 'Persuasion'? Jane catches a bad cold in 'Pride & Prejudice' but Marianne has something much worse in 'Sense & Sensibility'.
I think Sanditon would have had more action than most Austen novels, had it been finished. The overturning carriage is described with detail in the original manuscript. Good point.
Jane Austen was a pioneer of the Individual Ethic versus Morality as the detritus of conventions, patriarchy, and the collapse of the Gentry. She presented a set of case histories of young women at the cusp of discrimination between the genuine and the fraudulent. She was not a reactionary nor indeed a 'Conservative'. One of the problems of Marilyn Butler's thesis is a complete misreading of Burke and the cosy assumptions abut the family, on the contrary all the families in JA were failures except the Crofts in Persuasion and the Gardiners in Pride and Prejudice . JA depicted the collapse of the Gentry, and it culminates Persuasion in Anne Elliot preferring the Navy to the Gentry. She depicts the eventual failure of of the mores of the age and recommends the acquisition of education,, reason, ad discernment to penetrate the conventions, manners ad mores of the age. The American Conservatives have chose their totems ill, because in actual fact they do not endorse the ideology of reaction. The influence of Kant was more influential through the medium of Thackeray, and the position of Jane Austen is closer to Kant. Kant's antecedents were Lutheran Pietism and that Pietism in a diluted form contributed to the formation of the Wesleyan Methodist but the Church of England settlement of Elizabeth I was, because of Anne Boleyn and the Cambridge Platonists much closer to Lutheranism than Calvin , One can find a direct line of Individual Ethics through Coleridge from Melanchthon and Spinoza and ant than the standard misreading of Burke propagated by Americans who show an eclectic bias towards quotation than exegesis. In short the Conservative exegesis of Austen, and Burke and their cultural ambience is as much rubbish as their reading of Burke, and the absurd Christian Nationalism which is an oxymoron and certainly moronic, It is a disservice to Austen to discuss her in terms of Morality because morality is the lowest common denominator of the rabbland owes nothing to reason. Jane Austen is not a comfortable cosy read for people wanting a cosy retreat from reality, nor does she defend patriarchy nor families. The idea that Austen chimes well with Mozart, Cucumber sandwiches Earl Grey Tea and Victorian Sponge cakes is misreading her, and the idea that she endorsed the conventions of the age in a fight against Radicals is as mistaken as the idea that Christ and the Bible read literally is a manual for living. They are both tripe, I have been reading Jane Austen over seven decades and studying the eighteenth and early nineteenth century for as long and the one major fault in the cosy reading of Jane Austen is the idea that she is a sedative and a bastion of cosy conservative reaction to changing reality. Morality is the collapse into attitudes, unthinking, unanalysed, the dereliction of principles in favour of manner, Morality is the collapse of ethics, and what Democracy should do is to demonstrate that every vote for anti-social reactionary legislation is as responsible for the evils as the perpetrators. Morality is mob rule, Ethics is the age of Reason. I was educated in France and there they teach people how o think rather than what to think and such drivel as the rabble having a say in education, and libraries and Banning books is as invidious to Austen as to any one with a brain. The object of education iss to make the children as little like their hideous parents as possible and that is the essence of JA
@@Mediation_is_the_Solution Always liked Austen but only in recent years realised just how much depth there is...perhaps try reading a more recent commentator who doesn't see Austen as a refuge from the real world?
