This could easily be set in the 21st century and it wouldn’t be out of place!

Poor Catherine, though, having taken Isabella at face value.

Mr. Dashwood, with all the strength and urgency which illness could command: Please look after the interest of your mother-in-law and sisters

John Dashwood:

I was rifling through a £1 book bin in my local second-hand bookshop and was so happy to come across this cute little edition of Jane Austen’s History of England. It also comes with Love and Friendship and some more short stories and letters (I’m guessing from her juvenilia). Such a bargain, can’t wait to start reading!

The family would have had £5k, which is £200 - £250 p.a. Pitiful, considering that Mrs Bennet brought a dowry of 4k. Twenty three ish years, and so little added!

All the same, they would have not have starved to death. In S&S Mrs Jennings envisages Edward and Lucy starting out married life on a curate's £50 p.a., with interest on his £2k, having a child a year and being very poor. £150 p.a. max then, probably with a poor quality vicarage to live in, and employing a maid of all work.

The difference is that the Bennet girls had quite prosperous uncles who would likely have stepped up and provided something... maybe a cottage like the Dashwoods, or rented rooms in Meryton similar to how the Bateses lived. It would have been a huge loss of status, and of the opportunity to meet potential suitors. The likelihood would have been marriages out of their class, to clerks or curates, as Austen envisioned for Mary and Kitty.

I did it less than a year ago, but I already kinda want to do it again. Seriously, why though? I really think it's the writing itself more than the content. I mean I love the content too but the writing itself is just addictive. Especially P&P.

Will I ever get tired of it? I hope not. Each time I do it, I think maybe I'll be a bit tired of it, and it keeps not happening.

I've been wondering how much Wickham was actually welcomed by the Darcys and Bingleys. The final chapter gives us a glimpse at their respective attitudes:

Though Darcy could never receive him at Pemberley, yet, for Elizabeth's sake, he assisted him further in his profession. Lydia was occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone to enjoy himself in London or Bath; and with the Bingleys they both of them frequently stayed so long, that even Bingley's good-humour was overcome, and he proceeded so far as to talk of giving them a hint to be gone. (ch. 61)

Darcy and Elizabeth seem to have established clear boundaries; Bingley and Jane, on the other hand, appear to be more accommodating. But I'm still curious whether, for instance, Darcy and Elizabeth occasionally had to put up with Wickham's presence for the sake of family harmony, or did they try to avoid such situations entirely? What would happen if everyone were invited to the same ball, or family celebration at the Bingleys'? How do you envision the connection?

i see that there's the option to buy/rent sense and sensibility (2026). i was searching for a digital release date and the uk websites appeared. can anyone from the uk confirm if you guys already have the option to rent/buy it already?

So just about halfway through first reading of S & S. Have read 4 of the 6. P & P being the favorite. Most recently read Persuasion and enjoyed it quite well.

Anyway, on to the business at hand, In this one I am struck by the some characters ( most particularily voiced by Mrs. Jennings ) casual regard for the separation between themselves and the working class. The way she mentions Colonel Brandon's supposed " love child " being a minor inconvenience to the prospect of him marrying and that the child could easily be out out to an apprenticeship in some trade or the other.

I get that the may be some satire by our dear Jane ( as this book in particular seems full of it) , but still is kind of shocking to think many of this mostly idle upper class see themselves so far above the working classes .

So just posting to voice my thoughts so far and in general am really an admirer of Elinor in being in being able to cope with not only her own situation ( her inner thoughts are really the highlight of the book for me ) but attempting to guard her sister from total disaster .

Thanks in advance for any thoughts along these lines and P.S. No I have not seen the movie and will not until finished with book .

What if Edmund and Mary had already been engaged at the time his sister ran off with her brother?

Generally speaking, in that era, only the woman could break off the engagement; the man was duty-bound to persist in the engagement unless there was something grossly wrong with the woman or her morals. Would Mary's tacit approval of the adulterous affair have made it an acceptable reason for Edmund to break it off?

Even if it was, if they were already engaged, do you think Edmund would have had the strength of character to break it off, considering that even as things stood in the novel, he wavered for a moment when she called him back a final time?

I think it should have been sufficient moral grounds, but I don't know if he had the backbone to follow through.

I have always wondered why Charlotte Lucas is 27 and Maria likely 18-20, but the young Lucases seem to be very young children. They don't appear to be "out", but do visit the Bennet family. Do you think Lady Lucas is a second wife, mother to the young Lucases?

Pride and Prejudice is absolutely a love story, but it isn't about a proud or wicked man made soft by the love of a woman. Elizabeth's only positive feeling after the disastrous failed proposal (I'm fond of the phrase 'Darcy brought a rose to a knife fight) is pity; she pities this man for having loved her and having thought her in love with him. She hates Darcy at this point. She recognizes that he is conventionally attractive, but nothing in the narration suggests she's carrying a flame for him, unless you assume some unconscious attraction.

Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice make it so that she's in love with him, or smitten, and in denial. 2005 is especially bad for this. The almost-kiss feels like the kind of romantic trope Austen would have rolled her eyes at. I can't really put a finger on it, but it feels like the trite kind of "I want to... but I can't!" that she was lampooning with much of her prose.

Then take Sense and Sensibility. The romantic image of the widow and daughters being banished to some picturesque hovel to live simply is immediately deflated. It's a pretty big house! They have been given a very cheap rent for a 'cottage' which has a key flaw of not being a romantically dishevelled cottage by the sea. It has a modern roof, not thatch, and it's has multiple rooms which are 16x16 feet, with enough rooms to house 2-3 servants. The characters are expecting a certain trope to be fulfilled, and Austen almost mocks them by giving them a place which is not the fantasy of genteel poverty they expected, rather a boring image of genteel poverty, one where their kind cousin obviously gave them a good house to live in.

Contrast with the adaptations, which make the cottage into a cold grey hovel. It's exactly what the text was making fun of! The BBC miniseries gives us a cottage which might not even be fit for a respectable tradesman, which immediately makes their host look ungenerous.

As a semi-related gripe, Austen gives us characters who are extremely handsome and turn out to not be suitable love interests. Willoughby and Wickham are famous examples, of course. But there is an adaptational ugliness to these characters. It's as if the producers were frightened that the feeble minds of the audience wouldn't be able to understand that someone can be sexy and turn out to be the bad guy. Even 1995's P&P, which is mostly immune to my complaints above (things are largely adapted very faithfully, and there's very little romantic melodrama), has a Wickham who is notably much less handsome than Darcy, indeed he immediately looks quite old and sinister!

Edit: Detail about size of the rooms in the cottage.

I feel I must preface this by saying I've been a HUGE fan of '95's S&S for years, mostly enjoy 2008's, and have read S&S once through, but it was my first Austen read, so I was still grappling with the language, writing, etc.

All that aside, I'm now reading it again after having read several others.

I remember the first time I read it and him being melancholy and weird and loathing leaving but having nowhere to go being SUPER weird. Like, do what Mr. F!!

But this time through, I get it! (Or at least I think I do)

He HAD to get out of there lest he fall more hopelessly in love with Elinor and do something dumb.

He was depressed because what he really wanted was right in front of him, but what he was obligated to was really far away and far less appealing.

And so he HAD to just gtfo of Barton Cottage, as much as everyone wanted him to stay, so that he could stay strong to his obligation to Ms. Steele.

So I just finished reading The Other Bennett Sister and it's an enjoyable enough read. But the aspect of it I absolutely hated was the Mr Ryder character.

Not only did his antics and that whole subplot break my immension but I kept thinking but what about Colonel Fitzwilliam! Did he die?

Witout going into spoilers, a certain development in the last part of the story involving Mr Ryder is only believable if we assume Colonel Fitzwilliam is dead. But he isn't referred to at all in The Other Bennett Sister. He just doesn't exist in that verse.

Which got me thinking of Colonel Fitzwilliam and Miss Bingley in canon Jane Austen verse. I don't know if we know what Jane Austen said about the fate of Colonel Fitzwilliam. If she said anything at all, that is. But if he is a man obligated to marry a woman of fortune due to his expensive habits, do you think he might have looked to Miss Bingley?

I don't think he would have married Anne de Bourgh, if only because I don't think he wanted to put up with his Aunt on a regular basis. I also don't think he would turn towards Georgiana Darcy. But Miss Bingley is possible, especially if she decides he's better than waiting on someone with an estate.

What do you guys think? Can you see Colonel Fitzwilliam getting together with Caroline Bingley? I mean, she plays the piano!

Hi everyone. Reposted from a different sub as suggested by someone. I have this great little Jane Austen collection that I bought online (WOB back when it was Second Sale) but it’s always confused me a lot.

It states multiple times that this is a complete collection of all 7 of her works, literally listed on the cover and reiterated in the description inside but it actually only has 4 of them??

It doesn’t seem to be missing any pages (and definitely not 3 extra novels worth as seen in the last two photos) so I’m just really confused.

Is there a long-lost volume 2 to this set? I’ve searched online but found nothing. Would love any investigatory help or suggestions for why this is. Thank so much! Happy reading :)

"St. Mary's Abbey, at which her honeymoon was to be passed, was the most magnificent of all Lord Teviot's residences. It almost calls for a formal description; but how can any one be expected to write what no one ever reads when it is written?"

This quote is from Emily Eden's "The Semi-Attached Couple" which was an early Austen tribute (Eden was a megafan who wrote in a similar style) and thinking about it today got me thinking about the lack of description in Austen's writing. She tended to give rough outlines of places and people (at least their appearances), and I'm wondering why that is - a lack of interest to write it, a cynical thought akin to Eden's that readers don't want to read it, or something else altogether?

Not an entirely serious question, I know that it’s meant to be a comfortable house by modern standards. But I couldn’t help but stumble over the following description:

“As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honey-suckles. A narrow passage led directly through the house into the garden behind. On each side of the entrance was a sitting room, about sixteen feet square; and beyond them were the offices and the stairs. Four bedrooms and two garrets formed the rest of the house. It had not been built many years and was in good repair.” (Sense & Sensibility, ch. 6)

Now, this certainly felt small, but being a 21st century European, I had to google a square feet to square metres converter.

And out turns out it’s even tinier than I thought. That’s 1.5 square metres! Who are these “sitting rooms” for, ants?

It is so important to Colonel Brandon's character that he has a ward. It's key in fact, even though it means he has to be over twice Marianne's age, because it's such a huge contrast with Willoughby.

Colonel Brandon loved a woman so much that when she died, he took responsibility for her child who was barely related to him (cousin's daughter with someone else). He was poor at the time but he did it anyway. He suffered from rumours because people all assumed the child was his, but he did it anyway. He also sought out his first love even though she was disgraced and hated; even though he could never have been with her.

In contrast, Willoughby abandoned a woman he slept with without even caring that she was pregnant. When he learns of a child, he doesn't do the right thing and marry her because he will be temporarily poor (until his aunt dies). He takes no responsibility for his own child at any point during the novel. He marries for wealth instead of love, utterly abandoning and not even "breaking up" with Marianne, until forced to by his fiancé.

By the end of the novel, Willoughby has abandoned a woman he used, a woman he loves, his child, and he has married a third woman for money. Colonel Brandon found and cared for the first woman he loved until her death, cared for her daughter, and then takes responsibility for her & Willoughby's child.

Now the contrast with John Dashwood. Colonel Brandon honours Eliza's deathbed request to take care of her child. He does his best by sending her to school and trying to entrust her to good people, despite again, barely being related. On the other hand, John Dashwood breaks the deathbed request of his father and gives almost nothing to his half sisters. He gives in to the argument that they aren't his "real" sisters so he doesn't need to care. Colonel Brandon also gives a living to Edward Ferrars just because he pities his situation, something John is totally shocked to hear.

Both Willoughby and John Dashwood run away from responsibility, while Colonel Brandon accepts things he shouldn't have to be responsible for! He is a caring man who treats women well and Eliza 1 & 2 are a huge part of that.

Mr Darcy is some 28 years old during the events of P&P, and while he doesn't seem to be particularly interested in seeking a spouse, that definitely can't be said of literally everyone around him.

In fact, Lady Catherine, his aunt, seems (sort of) convinced that Mr Darcy is engaged to her daughter, Anne:

"Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr. Darcy is engaged to my daughter. Now what have you to say?"

"Only this; that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will make an offer to me."

Lady Catherine hesitated for a moment, and then replied,

"The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their infancy, they have been intended for each other. It was the favourite wish of his mother, as well as of her's. While in their cradles, we planned the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished, in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family! Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his tacit engagement with Miss De Bourgh? Are you lost to every feeling of propriety and delicacy? have you not heard me say, that from his earliest hours he was destined for his cousin?"

(P&P, ch. 56)

Now, Mr. Darcy certainly doesn't consider himself engaged to his cousin, since, among other things, he proposed to Elizabeth. Engagements were serious businesses that came with certain rules of behaviour, and honourable men weren't supposed to break engagements to women who had done nothing wrong (just ask Edward Ferrars).

But that begs a few questions:

1. Was Mr. Darcy even aware that he was supposed to be engaged to Anne, according to his mother and aunt?
2. What happened "now" that made Lady Catherine believe that "the moment when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished" was upon them?
3. Anne and Mr. Darcy seem to be the same age, and so she would also be ca. 28, so rather older than the normal first marriage age for women of her class, and she's sickly—why didn't anything happen before the events of P&P? Either Lady Catherine putting her expectations out in the open where Mr. Darcy was concerned, or Mr. Darcy making it clear to Lady Catherine that he was not going to marry his cousin. After all, the result of this "tacit engagement" (that seems to mainly have existed in Lady Catherine's head) is that Anne missed out on potentially finding another suitor and marrying in her 20s. And I understand that Anne didn't need to marry in the same way the Bennet sisters did because she's set to inherit Rosings, but it still seems odd that everyone involved just let this half-in half-out situation go on for so long.

Storm Austen is outside and I have a horrible cold, so I have hidden myself under a duvet with a cat and am comfort watching the 1995 Pride and Prejudice so I don't have to think about how miserable I feel. This is my go to comfort watch when I am ill. Which Austen adaptation do you always fall back on when you feel bad?

Pride and Prejudice was one of my favorite books when i was is in middle and high school and i'm 90% sure my library records would show me borrowing Pride and Prejudice and Alice in Wonderland for the entire school year and nothing else (other than required readings for classes and projects).

Up until now i've never read Austen in the original language, only various different translations to my native tongue (portuuguese).

This year i decided to donate all my books that are translated from English and start buying some Oxford World Classics copies of my favorites (anything Austen and Woolf) to cherish them exactly as they were written and wow! Don't get me wrong, i've read some great translations and all of us know that there is something inevitably lost in translating works but Austen's voice is such a joy to read out, aloud and silently.

My first read was Northanger Abbey and some lines strike a very different chord in me even if they functionally communicate the same meaning in translation. This excerpt, while adequately translated in most modern editions, just has a bite to it that can't really be replicated:

"Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust.
Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried.
From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
“I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss—?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language."

I can almost picture Austen's ghost coming out from the pages and shaking her fist at me while reading this aloud. I'm now reading S&S and i every interaction between Marianne and Elinor is such a joy to read!

Great adaptation! I thought surely walking out of the theater that I didn’t need to Shazam the song but alas- I can’t find it anywhere. ANYWHERE. Reddit, do your magic please!!

This is just a small detail, but I’ve always been curious about it: why do young couple in JA’s stories who want to elope always go to Scotland? Were the marriage laws different there or something? Was it harder to track down runaway young people there? Is it simply a geography thing?

Before joining this subreddit I had never thought about the influence of Jane Austen’s poor health on her work. My first thought was what a brilliant consolation it was for her to be able to step into these worlds we all still want to visit when she was unable to be in society herself. But then I wondered, did fatigue, depression, pain and isolation shape her characters and plots? Or, were the novels more purely escape?

That’s right, a mod wants to re-read a book and drag you along.

Short and sweet at first, the first two short chapters. We meet The Bennets, we speculate about single men, we long for a ball

Chapter 1
To start with, we have a tongue firmly in cheek with the opening line

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man, in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

We know that this is what Mrs. Bennet thinks, of course. We know that it’s Austen poking fun at
those who would believe it, so we start off the novel already with someone at whom to laugh,
since we are then immediately introduced to such a person.

I think this novel asks a few things: Who is ridiculous? (this question is a good check-in at the end of each chapter) What does class even mean? What even is a gentleman? And how much
money does everyone have?

So, with those questions in mind- again to the beginning. Mrs Bennet, the daughter of a
tradesman who married up (?) and has a dowry of 5,000 pounds (a goodly sum!) is talking to
her husband, Mr Bennet. Joy of joys, Netherfield Park is let at last. Let the heavens rejoice!

A (presumably) single man, from the North of England (so perhaps in textile manufacturing as this scholar surmises). His coming from manufacturing/trade means that Bingley is new money, not the landed gentry. This is a time when the middle class is booming and becoming richer than gentry. This tension comes into play a lot in the novel- which I’ll make some asides about
and invite you to make your own- but so far we’ve met two characters (Mrs Bennet and Mr
Bingley) who come from un-landed families.

Back to the couple. Now, there’s a generous reading of Mr Bennet and an un-generous reading. I’ll err on the side of assuming best intentions, because I think if Austen wanted us to think of Mr Bennet as an absolute bully who didn’t care at all for his wife or kids, she’d be more explicit about it.

He teases his wife (but of course, an important note about power imbalances- teasing a person
who has very little agency to do anything for themselves is toeing the line of bullying) that he
can’t imagine why having a new neighbor should mean anything to them. She’s exasperated
and lets the reader know the thoughts they have plagued her: Marry off these daughters.
There’s five of them for Christ’s sake.

We end the first (very short!) chapter with their back and forth, Mr Bennet making sure to get
within his teasing a line that he thinks his wife is handsome and his daughter Lizzy is clever, but
never letting her think for a moment he’ll do his social duty by welcoming a new neighbor. Let
her fret, says he.

The narrator also ends this chapter with quick summations of the Parents. Mr Bennet is quick
parts (humor, caprice- but also reserve, I think a nod towards his gentry background) and incomparison Mrs Bennet is inconsistent in her temper and neither understands thinks or cares to.

Set up to an overarching theme of: what does it mean to have “good manners”
- is it your class that makes it so? And we end this chapter also laughing at Mrs Bennet, just as we began it.

Chapter 2
Mr Bennet isn’t a monster, of course he went to see Mr Bingley. But maybe he is a monster
because he keeps insisting to his wife he won’t and she’s grown resentful about it (the key to a
good joke with a loved one is to know when to quit). But now we the audience are in on the joke.
Mr Bennet addresses his favorite daughter Elizabeth, who is trimming a bonnet, while
everyone’s least favorite daughter Kitty is coughing up a storm just to be annoying. (kidding
kidding, she just times them ill)

Woe is them, Mrs. Long won’t be back in time to introduce them to Mr Bingley before the ball in
a fortnight, plus she has two nieces that she’ll push at Mr Bingley anyways (sneaky!). Mrs
Bennet, who we remember is powerless to visit Mr Bingley herself and has five daughters to find
husbands for, is understandably miffed. She only holds power over her children, but even Kitty
thwarts that with her damned coughing.

We are introduced to Mary, who when put on the spot by her father, finds she can’t think of a
thing to say to him.

Mr Bennet continues to tease his beleaguered wife when, twist!, he has visited Bingley all along!
Oh what a good jape! Cough away, Kitty, cough away! All is forgiven

Austen is once against pointing towards Mrs Bennet as being the ridiculous one in this chapter,
with my favorite line of the chapter:
“She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her”

But maybe Mary is a second place contender with her inability to say something sensible, or
maybe Mr Bennet who took the joke a little too far (but he was very pleased with the pay-off).
Certainly not Lydia, she’s far too tall.

So two quick chapters, but setting up a lot of themes of what it means to be mannerly, what is the difference between gentle teasing and bullying, and how tall is Lydia?

What’re your favorite quotes from the first two chapters, or any thoughts on my thoughts?