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tieleen

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Mar 02, 2010 08:18

The new semester is starting, which is probably awesome for my sanity, if very sad for my love of vacation time. Of course, my uni being itself, most conversations about the new semester start and end with comparing how many of last semester's exams we still need to re-take, and how long it'll be before the last one finishes and we can actually ( Read more... )

recs

Comments 2

jae_w March 3 2010, 03:55:53 UTC

Hi! Glad you liked the stories! It's funny what you said about the Sense & Sensibility story vs. the Mansfield Park one. For S&S, I was thinking about a biography of Jane Austen that made a case that Austen's own opinion toward Marianne in the novel wasn't so much that she was a little too wild, or had too much sensibility, and needed to tone down, but more that she was acknowledging that society was not friendly or safe for women with Marianne's sensibility and passions. And when I re-read the ending of Sense and Sensibility, I was surprised to see how quickly and tidily Marianne is packed off to the Colonel. I like to think, though, that after the end of the story, after Marianne is married off to the Colonel, she does regain her sensibility and her passions -- perhaps with her children? I can see Marianne as an amazing young mother, romping with her children in the gardens, encouraging them in wild flights of imagination and never mocking or being dismissive of all their childish joys and tragedies ( ... )

tieleen March 7 2010, 18:31:07 UTC

Sorry for the very, very late reply! Please blame the new semester and its bad timing. On the other hand, it's a much-too-long reply, so choose yourself if that's compensation or an extra evil.

I've always kind of liked Fanny, really, although I have a hard time with her tendency to fold. But my actual problem with her, as well as some of the book, is that unlike some of Austen's other work, it feels like a display of a very precise moral code, and like Fanny is pointed to as a sort of ideal.

Some of the morality is clearly outdated, and some of it I actually agree with (sometimes both categories are true), but the utter certainty of it all bothers me. And since I know Austen could do better, and did, it all comes together so that near the end of the book I always find myself talking to it very sternly. *g ( ... )