PumpkinDoodles

Much Ado About Nothing - Text Posts (viii)

Instead of a cutesie reference to film censorship it was an explicit statement of defiance of Maryland's criminalization gay sex, which was not repealed until 2002. This wasn't a guy saying "Oh they can't put what I do in the movies according to a completely voluntary industry code" he was saying "The State of Maryland wants to put me in jail for being gay and having gay sex."

unsurprisingly, 'learning technologist' aka my job is not listed as one of their occupations. weirdly neither is 'IT support' which was the next closest position i could think of, but whatever, still not too unusual, but then i started scrolling down the list of what this website DOES have for accepted occupations and now i have some questions about how they establish what jobs need to be included as options

I don't really agree, because what we see again and again in Austen is that the heroines who act the most proper also seem to carry the most pain.

Elinor Dashwood suffers alone in complete silence, not reaching out to her family. Anne Elliot wastes away at Kellynch, ignored and unappreciated. Fanny Price's story is genuinely hard to read. I'll add Jane Bennet, she behaves exactly as a modest woman should and still suffers. Jane Fairfax probably fits in here somewhere.

They may be right, but it doesn't actually help them.

Elizabeth Bennet's lesson isn't to be more like Jane, it's to reserve judgment and examine her cynicism. Catherine Morland just needs to grow up, it isn't about being feminine or not or even more well-behaved. Emma Woodhouse has to demonstrate compassion worthy of her high station. And even Marianne, it's more about not causing her family so much pain by proxy and assuming that those who don't show pain can't be feeling it.

I think Jane Austen's feminism is in showing women as fully formed and fleshed out "rational creatures" with just as much interiority and intelligence as men. I think she also shows that no matter where women are placed in gentry society, from governess-to-be Jane Fairfax and poor relation Fanny Price to the rich Emma Woodhouse and high rank Anne Elliot, that they are generally at the mercy of the men around them. They are expected to marry and often must for survival, but cannot control the circumstances around that, except behaving as they can within the constraints of society.

Sure, Jane Austen is more conservative, she doesn't seem to want to burn it all down, but she's not happy and her heroines, all of them I think, have ways in which they push back or show flaws in the system they exist in.

Also, see this post:

I don't really agree, because what we see again and again in Austen is that the heroines who act the most proper also seem to carry the most pain.

Elinor Dashwood suffers alone in complete silence, not reaching out to her family. Anne Elliot wastes away at Kellynch, ignored and unappreciated. Fanny Price's story is genuinely hard to read. I'll add Jane Bennet, she behaves exactly as a modest woman should and still suffers. Jane Fairfax probably fits in here somewhere.

They may be right, but it doesn't actually help them.

Elizabeth Bennet's lesson isn't to be more like Jane, it's to reserve judgment and examine her cynicism. Catherine Morland just needs to grow up, it isn't about being feminine or not or even more well-behaved. Emma Woodhouse has to demonstrate compassion worthy of her high station. And even Marianne, it's more about not causing her family so much pain by proxy and assuming that those who don't show pain can't be feeling it.

I think Jane Austen's feminism is in showing women as fully formed and fleshed out "rational creatures" with just as much interiority and intelligence as men. I think she also shows that no matter where women are placed in gentry society, from governess-to-be Jane Fairfax and poor relation Fanny Price to the rich Emma Woodhouse and high rank Anne Elliot, that they are generally at the mercy of the men around them. They are expected to marry and often must for survival, but cannot control the circumstances around that, except behaving as they can within the constraints of society.

Sure, Jane Austen is more conservative, she doesn't seem to want to burn it all down, but she's not happy and her heroines, all of them I think, have ways in which they push back or show flaws in the system they exist in.

Also, see this post:

remember that these novels were published in the 19th century. and that some of the things that were written in these books may seem trivial to us today but would have absolutely fucking shook readers in the victorian era

like,,,,,elizabeth rejecting mr collins because she doesn’t love him even though it would have been considered her duty in her family to marry him? or jane eyre not agreeing to marry mr rochester unless it was on her own terms? hell even anne brontë wrote a lesser known novel about a wife leaving her abusive husband with her five year old son to live a better life?? do y’all realize how unheard of that would be in the 1800′s?? where women were considered more of a commodity than actual human beings??

Incidentally, this is why I don't care that the recent Wuthering heights wasn't realistic period dress or society etc. It was blatantly symbolic (and Symbolic!) and wasn't trying for realism or period accuracy, so I don't criticise it for period inaccuracy. Like, who walks across the moors in a massive tulle gown in real life? No one ever, and that's the point. It's obviously performance, and that's what its going for. My criticisms are based on other criteria.

But this new adaptation of S&S seems realist - the colour palette and grading, the costumes and hair that aren't accurate but look like something real people at some point in time have worn, the characters that read like real(ish) modern women... It's trying to read as realist without being realistic and just. What's the point in setting it in the past then?? Why adapt Sense and Sensibility, a realistic realist novel, into an unrealistic realist movie?

I'm just so tired of earth tones being "realist." People wore bright clothes! The past wasn't drab, honestly it might have been brighter than now given our whole obsession with beige minimalism.

But no, it's not realistic unless it's BROWN and BORING

This is just modern minimalism imposed on the past. Just make a modern.