brain percolating

Let's take the common Person Falls, Is Caught in Arms, They Look at Each Other trope. The most memorable take I've seen on this one is Character A was carrying a musical instrument and Character B caught the instrument and let A fall (A's easier to repair). Is Character B too slow or weak to catch the other person (do they hate that about themselves)? Do they even care; do they watch them fall, bemused? Do they catch with reflexes, see the other person and then purposefully drop them? Then Character A, did they slip out of clumsiness, manipulation or because of a trap? Are they embarrassed to be in a vulnerable position? Do they act pitiful for more sympathy? What is the contrast? Would A catch a possible Character C differently?

So because I'm an Austen blog, for example!

Anne Elliot of Persuasion stumbles because she's tired from the long walk, Captain Wentworth catches her because even when he's pretending not to pay attention, he's really focused on her. He catches her, for one moment they are in the past again, and it's alright to hold her in his arms, but then he comes back to the present. His expression goes cold. He sets her upright and walks away without looking at her again. Anne is left there, feeling that though he still doesn't want her to be hurt, the past can never return.

Edward Ferrars of Sense & Sensibility catches Lucy Steele, but of course she fell into him on purpose. She smiles shyly at him while in his arms. He blushes. He helps her stand and then notices her clothes are askew, but clenches his hands awkwardly. It's not proper to touch her again. He can't figure out what to say. Then she tries to walk and cries out in pain. He quickly offers her his arm. She smiles slyly at the camera...

Caroline Bingley of Pride & Prejudice wants to be viewed as graceful, so no, the slip wasn't on purpose, but when it happened she tried to make the most of it. Unfortunately Darcy was surgical in his precision, he caught her and set her upright, no chance for gazing lovingly into each other's eyes. What a shame! When Elizabeth, flustered to be found at Pemberley and struggling to find a safe subject of conversation, tripped on a tree root, he somehow couldn't help himself from stealing a moment with her in his arms...

Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey would catch Catherine Moreland, be sure she wasn't sneaky enough to do it on purpose, and then make a quip about how cliche they were being. Catherine would be in awe.

No it was never mentioned in the novel— it’s like… 100% vibes based to be honest.

So.. to explain: I think Darcy, who already has crazy amounts of land to manage wouldn’t feel any pressing need to enclose the commons. His sense of noblesse oblige, his own understanding of the land under his management, and how all of his dependents think he’s absolutely amazing gives me the vibe that even if he was feeling pressure to increase his income/ grow his holdings/ etc he wouldn’t find enclosure to be the right and moral choice. If anyone did try to pressure him into it, he would balk even further. He also seems to have a lot of liquid net worth since he could bribe Wickham a huge sum of money without too much difficulty getting his hands on it.

From there I thought: well, Knightley does not have a lot of liquid net worth, to the point where he doesn’t keep horses— which is one of the first and most important status markers of the gentry (he walks everywhere, having “no horses, having little spare money and a great deal of health, activity, and independence”

His money is all tied up in the land, which he is constantly reshaping in the novel.

Knightley’s “downright, decided, commanding sort of manner” also leads me to think he is less, like Darcy, instinctively interested in the particulars of the situation and what the right thing is to do in that situation and that situation only, but more interested in a unified system or hat applies everywhere. He also seems more class-conscious than Darcy, which I didn’t expect until I was skimming Emma for mentions of Knightley to answer the question. That is, Darcy finds a lot of people beneath him but it’s always due to their behavior. Knightley kind of automatically buys into the class system and thinks Harriet isn’t an appropriate friend for Emma at first, and then thinks Harriet is insane for hoping for a higher ranking gentleman than the farmer Robert Martin. He goes on quite a tear about how Harriet is inferior to Robert Martin.

“True, true,” cried Mr. Knightley, with most ready interposition—“very true. That’s a consideration indeed.—But John, as to what I was telling you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly the present line of the path…. The only way of proving it, however, will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you shall give me your opinion.”

shows so much concern about the people in Highbury. It doesn't seem like the sort of statement that a man would make if he didn't care about everyone. Mr. Knightley is also very charitable, especially to Jane Fairfax. It seems odd to me that someone so concerned about the common people would do something so disastrous to them.

Then again, looking over all the novels, it's really not clear that Austen has a strong position on enclosure one way or another. It seems like Mr. Dashwood might have been doing something like that and it's morally neutral:

Mr. Dashwood’s disappointment was, at first, severe; but his temper was cheerful and sanguine; and he might reasonably hope to live many years, and by living economically, lay by a considerable sum from the produce of an estate already large, and capable of almost immediate improvement.

What this improvement was exactly we don't know, but it easily could be enclosure, if it's something so easily done. Austen seems much more concerned about destroying cottages/cutting down trees to improve prospects, as seen in Northanger Abbey, Sense & Sensibility, and Mansfield Park.

In college there was one TV on the whole dormitory floor so again: I didn’t do this

After college I bounced between apartments so often that it wasn’t practical to pay for cable

You are transported back in time and into the body of a young noblewoman in the 1400s. Your parents have married you off to an awful, abusive, rapist husband whom literally no one else would marry despite him being very high nobility because he's that terrible. You successfully produce a baby boy and then plan to murder this man for the good of everyone and yourself. Here is the question: do you think you could murder him in a way that is undetectable to the historical people around you? Note: they aren't stupid, you are the prime suspect as the battered wife AND you can't just say poison. Where are you going to buy poison? Do you know anything about poison actually? NO GOOGLING! You were sent back without a plan!

THEN construct a plan. Ideally, I'll be a day or so travel away when shit goes down. Can I incite a duel with some well placed words to an enemy? Does he have a drinking buddy who might recklessly induce him to fence or ride after too much liquor? I didn't do anything, I wasn't even there when he got that wound.

When I come back to nurse him (if I do) it's with all the modern day knowledge that I won't apply. Not that anyone would listen to me, of course, but I can ask questions, after all I'm just a female? What is happening? Isn't bleeding the patient good? This water from the stagnant pond was blessed by the priest, surely God will favor him if we anoint his wound with it?

I get nowhere near my husband, especially without witnesses. The sick room is no place for a delicate lady, and besides, on no accounts can we risk his heir. I should probably be sent away - for my health, you understand.

Sometimes people die young. Women are widowed early.

To clarify about the poison, you can use poison if you actually know how to identify it, I'm saying you can't just go "Poison!" with no knowledge about poison. Buying it probably means they know that poison and you're caught. Your personal knowledge when you read this post is all you have.

but you are still a woman in the 1400s with a great house and likely an excellent fortune. how are you going to keep opportunists from blaming you as an excuse to get their hands on your property, especially in the face of rumours that your husband's death wasn't natural? it wouldn't even be that hard to make what is essentially theft look legitimate, it could still pass to the son, and he will need a trustee or guardian of some sort until he comes of age, and who better than the local lord justice, who also happens to be a greedy shit but basically is the law, so who's going to stop him?

who's going to stop anyone with better claim to their accusations (because again, you are a woman, and possibly not even a noblewoman yourself but by marriage) from depriving you of your property? what's going to stop your son from doing so once he comes of age, in the event that you can't legally inherit?

i think the question is not 'can you make it look good enough to get away with it,' but 'is anyone going to let you get away with it no matter how good you make it look'? i mean, it wouldn't take much, an accusation of witchcraft—sensationalised, of course, but it is hard to refute—and whipping up a very public campaign ending in a death sentence, and...that's it. game over.

In this particular work, the husband is the heir apparent, his father is still alive and holding the title. Grandpa loves the little baby grandson and will definitely make him the new heir if his son dies. The husband has such a bad reputation that I really think if the wife kills him with plausible deniability, the gossip will be, "god has struck him down and he deserved it." Then she gets to bask in being in control of the household until her son grows up and then she retires as a dowager when he marries.

"Look Charles, there are five of them, four are pretty, they all have different personalities so there must be one who clicks with you, take her off my hands."

"Yes, Mr. Bennet STILL refuses to let me take them all to London. I could get these girls married off so quickly if I could get them there, you cannot even imagine."

You get me @captain-kit-adventuress

I think they might actually get along. Caroline is very good at mirroring people, as she does with Mr. Darcy, and she'd quickly catch on to Mr. Bennet's way of cynically mocking those around him and join in. Caroline is well educated and intelligent enough that Mr. Bennet would probably enjoy talking to her, even if she's not quite at Elizabeth's level. And I think with Caroline getting the house in order, Mr. Bennet might be less likely to retreat to the library.

i always thought that was what louisa hurst was for, besides being her sister, lol.

but honestly, if caroline wasn't in london much because mr bennet hated it, i'm not sure louisa would be so content to stay at longbourn as she is at netherfield, so if the hursts go back to london, i think caroline would naturally look to one of the girls to fill that role, and who better than kitty, who's already had so much experience at it with lydia and is still in some way of being influenced by caroline?

i've always read caroline bingley not necessarily as mean and horrible like a lot of people say, but snobbish and self-centered, which is quite different. she'd want good matches for the girls for its own ends, but she'd be thinking of herself, too, because good matches for the girls reflects well on caroline. after all, what an accomplishment, to get happily- (or at least well-) settled those particular five girls, who started out with so little to recommend them! and as i said before, it's not like she wouldn't use it to help herself, either, by building the added social caché into the caroline empire, because being a person of high influence in society, even if only behind the scenes, was just as important then as it is today. imagine being able to say that you had the ear of the prime minister because your stepdaughter married an important MP or something! now imagine four more super important sons-in-law as well; caroline would dearly love being at the centre of that.

caroline would probably care about their happiness, too, if for no other reason than even one unhappy or ill-suited marriage would reflect poorly on herself, and three or four would put her own social position on much more precarious footing. unlike mrs bennet, who's ready to dump most of her girls, excepting jane, with the first decent man who gives them a second glance; this only reflects mrs bennet's own poor judgment in marrying off her girls, which is also a judgment on her. it's why she says that jane marrying well will put the other girls in the way of marrying rich men, both because of the social networking, and because it will help raise the social standing of the rest of the bennets. even if caroline thinks the same thing, she'd never be so crass as to say it out loud, because people knew how the system worked and didn't need the reminder. it's just mrs bennet bragging about her eldest in ways that actually hurt her chances rather than increasing them.

Anyway, yes, it is in Caroline's interest to get the girls good matches, which reflects well on her and gives her more social networking.

HOWEVER, the AU I originally proposed is ILLEGAL since Charles Bingley would be the Bennet girl's uncle by marriage and I'm pretty sure that is not allowed. So Caroline Bingley could be an older cousin, same personality, still works. Ou, cousin and ward of the Bingley family, so her, Charles, and Louisa still grew up together but everything is legal. And she still has her 20k because I need to work with that.

St. Aubert was much pleased with the manly frankness, simplicity, and keen susceptibility to the grandeur of nature, which his new acquaintance discovered; and, indeed, he had often been heard to say, that, without a certain simplicity of heart, this taste could not exist in any strong degree.

This reminded me a lot of Lady Catherine for some reason: There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste

But, Kat, what the fuck are rickets? (infodump incoming)

I think the Bennets would be bad parents in any setting given their personalities (lazy and selfish), but their biggest problems are also deeply rooted in their era, meaning that a lot of the damage would be ameliorated.

For example, Mr. Bennet is so detached because he's very unhappy with his choice of wife. In a modern setting, nothing is stopping him from getting a divorce and trying again.

The lack of education? The Bennets would happily send their daughters to free public school. They probably wouldn't bother saving for university, but with scholarships, student loan programs, and the fact that the girls are allowed to work, it doesn't matter as much.

Modern Bennets don't need to have a son and heir, so they don't need to keep trying for a baby boy. They can have as many children as they want, maybe that's none. Maybe that's just Jane and Elizabeth.

The Bennet girls don't have to marry in the modern world, they can get jobs. Their mother's vulgarity matters a lot less. Their father's lack of saving for their future matters less. Lydia's big scandal matters less.

I think the Bennet sisters have a pretty normal sibling relationship and that probably wouldn't change much. Most people love but don't like all their siblings. It's normal for some siblings to get along better than others. Siblings are genetically-related forced roommates, there are going to be squabbles, you don't just automatically all like each other.

I can imagine plenty of scenarios where one sister’s behavior would affect the others’ reputations — in high school especially, or in a really small community. But not their whole future. Family relationships just don’t matter the way they used to.

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.

(So far I’ve watched Blossom, The Double and a similar one you didn’t mention, The Princess Royal.)

I hadn’t thought about them as a redemption arc for the woman. My experience of them was more like fate saying oooooooops! In American terms we might phrase it as, “This timeline has gone so horribly wrong that we’re going to cut it off entirely.”