Comments on OnFiction: From Pride to Persuasion

You know, I've been thinking about this claim that...

2010-03-19T09:45:15.329-04:00

You know, I've been thinking about this claim that readers want "complex" characters, and it just never rings true for me.
I think it's rather a case of readers wanting main characters they can believe while reading, and support characters that help to drive the story.
How complex they have to be or not, is in the end up to the story that the writer wants to tell.

And let's face it, real people are seldom complex either, they just are sometimes complicated.

It's interesting you bring up Mr. Bennett, Carolyn...

2010-03-18T12:58:48.081-04:00

It's interesting you bring up Mr. Bennett, Carolyn. I think it very much true he wasn't a good father - not necessarily for abdication of the familial duties, but rather for hypocrisy of pretending to make fun of his wife's values, while holding them himself. But the point is that Austen signals with her prose we should like him more than his wife (if only by making clear there is an affectionate loving relationship between him and the protagonist).

And yes, you are right, Carolyn, that many of her heroines do not seem noble or long-suffering, but silly and self-deceptive. I think, though, we are meant by the author to dislike those qualities in them. We are signaled, for example, to dislike Emma for her superficiality. If I had to think which of her own female characters Austen liked best, it would be the smart, sensible, understated (and long-suffering) women. Women who knew better than those around them, yet did not violate the expectations of propiety. Women a bit like herself.

Hmm. I would disagree that Mr. Bennett was cast as...

2010-03-16T11:01:36.157-04:00

Hmm. I would disagree that Mr. Bennett was cast as a good father. More sensible than his wife, yes, but he did nothing to protect his daughters against the certainty of his daughters' disenfranchisement upon his death. Mrs. Bennett, for all her irritating qualities, was well aware of that danger. Mr. Bennett, at least in my opinion, preferred reading and leaving the management of his family to his sensible daughter, and that can certainly be viewed as an abdication of his parental duties. I think Austen very carefully arrived at the qualities of both Bennett parents, both of whom are flawed. It's just that Mr. Bennett's flaws are less abrasive, but no less damaging, in the end.

I think I disagree that all Austen's heroine's are noble -- Catherine, in Mansfield Park, might be long-suffering -- though without the self-knowledge, but she was certainly silly, which was the point of Mansfield Park. And Emma was in fact self-involved, to the point of disaster, not only her own but to the lives of two other women.

Charlotte Bronte, in one of her letters (an excerpt is in the forward in my copy of Vilette, I believe) refers precisely to the manner of resistance -- that flash of intelligence observed in a woman's eyes, quickly suppressed lest she be discovered. And though Bronte, of course, comes after Austen, her observation of the ways in which woman suppressed their intelligence in the public sphere could hardly have been uncommon.

I agree, Elizabeth, and also wish we were more pri...

2010-03-15T22:42:05.176-04:00

I agree, Elizabeth, and also wish we were more privy to their manner of resistance. All of Austen heroines are noble and 'long-suffering.' I guess I wish there was at least one that was immoderate and short-tempered. But then, Austen wouldn't not be Austen.

It's hard not to measure the past in contemporary ...

2010-03-11T23:45:00.252-05:00

It's hard not to measure the past in contemporary terms, but I'm inclined to agree with you, Maja. It must have been horrible for women in Austen day, particularly intelligent and sensitive observant women like Austen herself. Although they presumably took taken it for granted. Though I also imagine they might at times have railed against it.

Austen did so in her writing simply by making these injustices transparent on the page.