Lolo314

Meanwhile Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters:

What I love about this story line is it seems to solve what Anne Brontë with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other authors were trying to figure out in their feminist works: how can you prove that a woman has done all she can to fix her marriage before leaving a terrible husband? It's hard to argue against, "She did everything perfectly and still died for it." I feel like when the woman is still alive, people want to argue that she could have tried harder, or done something better instead of accepting that no woman is obligated to or really able to fix a man. Or they want to see a groveling reconciliation between the couple no matter how unrealistic that may be.

Also, it's a far better repudiation of the mercenary side of arranged marriage to have someone who has been there and done that and now rejects it, rather than having a whiny teenager who dreams of true love. Her family's political schemes aren't worth more than the death she knows is coming.

I love this narrative. I love watching a woman follow all the stupid, hollow rules that society created and failing anyway, because it turns out that it was always a lie that being a perfect wife would somehow produce the perfect husband. I love women waking up from that lie, and from their death, and changing the entire narrative to alter their circumstances. And I love the writers screaming at every defender of the patriarchy in the audience.

If Anne Brontë lived today, I feel like she would have appreciated these stories.

The day-to-day Markham family life is so funny and so familiar. Almost everything they’ve done so far could be so easily transposed to right now and be considered incredibly normal 21st century family behaviour.

To start, the things that have amused me:

1827 Gilbert despondently and ineffectually trying to console himself about his job he doesn’t like when he’s walking home in the pissing rain, absolutely filthy, after a day of running around doing things he doesn’t like. His consolations include things such as “ Farmers are really important. It’s a good, stable career. Surely *getting increasingly less certain* mankind will be bettered by me looking after my sheep.”

Narrator Gilbert immediately denouncing his 24 year old self as immature.

We meet Fergus as he tries to pick a fight with his older brother. Very 17 year old, youngest sibling behaviour.

Mrs Markham asking her sons, “what did you get up to today?” and Gilbert providing a list of the various difficult tasks he had to do, one task he had to do because of the incompetence of a coworker. Fergus just says, “I was doing dumb shit all day”

Mrs Markham’s eyes glazing over as Fergus goes into all the details of his dumb shit. Then as soon as Fergus pauses for breath, Gilbert interjecting with “Get a job.”

Rose choosing violence by saying “Well I saw your girlfriend today, I really can’t wait for you to get married--” knowing full-well Mrs Markham does not approve of Eliza Millward.

I really, really enjoy the constant sibling teasing.

Fergus clearly thinking he is the funniest person in the room. Then inhales his tea laughing at his own joke (that no one laughs at) and has to run outside and try not to puke in the garden.

Gilbert repeatedly remembering Fergus inhaling his tea and therefore being incapable of drinking his own because he starts laughing each time he lifts his cup.

Fergus surreptitiously trying to needle Gilbert in the middle of a sermon. Gilbert stomping on his foot and internally vowing to defer “further vengeance till we got out of church”

"I loved him for it better than I liked to express: and I took a secret delight in pressing those slender white fingers..."

anyway we like pacing around together and ranting in the attic but sometimes instead of pacing one of us will just hang on the pole and spin, and the other person will watch on the beanbag, which makes for these really goofy conversations where the person on the bag will say something that gets the other persons goat, such as, hypothetically, that xylophones do not belong in rock music, and then the other person will go on a tirade about this, but they'll actually only be facing the Hot Take Speaker half of the time, what because of the pole, so the response will sound something like

I can't believe

you would even suggest such

a stupid opinion. You've

been to a Danny Elfman

concert! How can you

have heard Oingo Boingo

live and say with a straight face

that they alone do not justify

rock and roll xylophones

and then that person will continue until they get too dizzy, then they'll get off the pole, and by unspoken agreement, the person on the bag will get up and trade places with them to deliver their rebuttal while also spinning and it just creates this sort of crazy strip-court lawyers debating absolute nonsense for no reason kind of vibe that frankly just really does it for us.