jane austen was so lit because she wrote about men the way men typically write about women i.e. her stories just centered around women and men were only there for the sake of women, and her books could have been all bitter and sad about the state of women in that century, but instead they’re sweet honest observational stories of friendship, family and love *sighs* what a lady i am sorry i ever doubted you cos I was bored in high school
no seriously her books do not pass the REVERSE bechdel test and it’s perfect
Jane Austen never wrote a single scene without a woman present.
Pride and Prejudice takes place in a society where you’re not supposed to talk to/dance with/*cough*proposemarriagetocoughcough* anybody without first going through a highly formalized little “introduction” ritual. This can involve going to someone’s house and leaving your card, and then waiting for them to return the visit, which is what Mrs. Bennet is badgering Mr. Bennet to do re. Mr. Bingley in chapter one, or, if you’re out in public, say at a ball, you get a mutual acquaintance or master of ceremonies to do the honours and vouch for everybody’s good character. At the Meryton Assembly, Darcy refuses to be introduced to Elizabeth or anybody, because he’s a Grade A Snob. They’re all too low-ranking/provincial/unattractive to notice, and he doesn’t care who knows it. Seriously, bro, if you don’t want to dance, just go play cards in the other room with the geezers, or go home and put your grumpy ass to bed. Stop wallflowering and making a spectacle of your arrogance. You have options, here.
A few weeks later, after Darcy has maybe unbent a bit (read: decided Elizabeth is pretty), Sir William Lucas tries to introduce them again. But! Because Sir William is a country bumpkin, he goofs the phrasing in such a way as to imply Darcy is Elizabeth’s superior (“Mr. Darcy, allow me to present this lady…” instead of, “Miss Elizabeth Bennet, allow me to present this gentleman….” If a man and a woman are of equal rank, you’re supposed to introduce the gent to the lady.). Elizabeth doesn’t even let him finish. This time she declines the introduction and skedaddles, flat-out refusing to launch their acquaintanceship on any supposition of inequality.
After that, there’s really no non-mortifying way to remedy the situation, sooooo….these idiots spend the rest of the novel yammering awkwardly and irately at each other apparently without ever having been introduced, which is fucking hilarious and taboo as fuck.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Jane Austen was doing something VERY interesting here.
“The roof constitutes an introduction.”
All that business with Jane being taken ill and Elizabeth essentially inviting herself to stay at Netherfield – after that, Elizabeth is officially acquainted with everyone else who happened to be staying in the house at the time. All of them are now obligated to acknowledge each other’s correspondence and bow when they meet in public. They can quite properly converse.
The ladies at Netherfield start out imagining, and with good reason, that Elizabeth has come to ingratiate herself with them. But Elizabeth really is only there because she was worried about Jane. (In those days, it wasn’t all that unusual for a cough to turn into a corpse overnight.) Elizabeth makes a point of not intruding on her hosts at dinner, or at all, until Jane is well enough to boot Lizzie out of her room. Even after that, Elizabeth has to be pretty much begged to talk to the others there. From here in the 21st century it looks like Elizabeth just doesn’t like them much. From the Darcy/Bingley point of view, she is not presuming on their acquaintance. Elizabeth is signaling as hard as she can that, as far as she’s concerned, all of them can forget they ever met her the minute they leave Netherfield, and no hard feelings. She is not trying to turn her sister’s cold into an occasion for her own advancement.
Mr Darcy, being both shy and the constant target of opportunists of all stripes, is utterly smitten by Elizabeth’s insistence on not presuming or intruding.
Oh ho, I have lured a true geek out of the woodwork! Thank you; I stand corrected; I kind of wondered if that would happen. My source was Helena Kelly – a lecturer at Oxford who has published a decent amount of Austen scholarship – whom I hoped would have researched to hell and back before making such an audacious claim!
The Bennet women have already visited the Bingley sisters by the time Jane falls ill, so Elizabeth wouldn’t be out of bounds in showing up on their doorstep (early hour and her hair, Louisa! aside). So the piece Kelly missed is that as soon as Elizabeth spends the night at Netherfield, she’s acquainted by default with all the gentlemen too.
It’s worth noting that none of this has happened when Elizabeth first addresses Darcy. She notices him staring at Sir William’s party and cheekily demands an explanation before Charlotte dives in to extract her and hustle her off to the piano. So their relationship still begins with a bit of boundary-pushing. But your explanation of her behaviour at Netherfield is really cool, and applies neatly to both her initial appearances and that amazing bit in the garden where she refuses to “ruin the picturesque.”
god i want the problems of a jane austen heroine so badly specifically sense and sensibility like oh no my dad died and my horrible brother left us destitute and by destitute i mean we only get to retain two of our Servants when we go live in a beautiful two story, stone house with a garden and farmland and caring if overbearing neighbors and it’s so sad bc despite attending balls I know I have no dowry so I’ll probably just have to marry for love ONLY instead of for love AND wealth as originally planned but little do I know in one month I’m going to marry rich anyway thank GOD life was getting hard having only two (2) servants : (
me: *goes for a walk by our wealthy young single neighbor’s house which by all rights is a Palace* oh no, I think it may rain……. *catches the cold in the rain and faints*
the neighbor, out on one of his brooding mid-rain horseback jaunts: >: O *picks me up and carries me into his home and insists to my family I shouldn’t be moved from his bed until I am well*
in a dnd game i had to role-play my bard asking the princess to marry him so i word-for-word quoted mr darcy’s proposal to elizabeth from the end of the book and now the half of my group that has never read pride and prejudice thinks im a hopeless romantic
“Darcy needs a woman to force him to change” Lizzie does NOTHING!!! she yells at him ONCE and then AVOIDS him meanwhile he’s sitting around agonizing over being A Little Bit Rude in that letter he wrote after his crappy proposal and probably moping to his baby sister about how he completely blew the only chance he’ll ever have w this girl by being a dumbass!! they interact ONCE between the two proposals (not counting him wingmanning Bingley bc he’s still operating on the assumption that she thinks he’s an asshole and doesn’t want to talk to him so he leaves her alone) and then she can barely look him in the eye she’s so mortified about how harsh and wrong she was in her first impression i cannot stress enough how little effort Lizzie put into encouraging Darcy to suck less!! She worked significantly harder at the end of the novel trying to convince him that he actually didn’t suck that much to begin with and she was just being a judgmental jerk than she ever did trying to Change Him For The Better
Yes! This. Darcy does all the heavy lifting. Basically, Lizzie’s rejection puts up a mirror for Darcy to see himself as the wider world does, and it shames him because he doesn’t see the man his parents are trying to raise. And then he goes about trying to do better, make a real effort at civility, and he doesn’t expect to get anything out of it. He only proposes again because Lizzie’s response to Lady Catherine awakens hope that he might have a chance. And that response was borne out of the same blunt honesty that informed Lizzie’s rejection of the original proposal. It wasn’t like she was trying to do anything.
I was re-reading the ending of the book to pull quotes for my rebuttal against that dumbass marysue article and may i just say one of the best parts of the ending is both of them apologizing to each other over and over and being like “i was wrong about you you’re perfect” “no I was wrong YOU’RE perfect” back and forth anyway here’s a good Darcy quote from the end of the novel re: him reacting to and changing in the face of her criticism
“The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.’ Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;—though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.” (ch 58)
the jane austen fandom has come out swinging today and i’m so here for it
honestly besides the romance my favorite part of pride and prejudice has to be how much of a complete Disaster the bennet family is,,,,,,,like mr bennet is sarcastic af and never tells his family anything until like the hour before it happens (“btw ur cousin that you’ve never even met before and who could throw ur asses out on the streets one day is coming for dinner at 4”),,,,,mrs bennet is the total Can I Speak To The Manager mom who always threatens to pass out even if she’s never passed out once in her entire life,,,,lydia practically stalks military men and was once voted most likely to run away from home forever for a laugh,,,,,kitty would probably burn the house down if lydia told her it was a good idea,,,,,mary is the epitome of that one person who memorizes only six lines from a textbook and says “knowledge is power” for three days after,,,,,,,,jane would practically apologize to someone who was stabbing her,,,,and im almost 1000% sure that elizabeth has at least once stood up on the dining room table and yelled at her family “fight me then” when she’s angry,,,,,,literally the original sitcom family
I just rewatched the entirety of the 1995 series and this is precisely my sentiment
i'll apple your turnover 