1. Her first major novel (Northanger Abbey) was written solely because she was so salty about how dramatic and cliche and formula Gothic novels were. You know what I mean. Every castle is foreboding. Every villain is awful but can’t bring himself to kill the heroine because she’s Too Pure. Every middle-aged female companion wants to do the heroine in. The heroine is Pure and Perfect and Is Good At Everything Young Women Should Be and recites quotes and/or the Bible whenever she’s in danger and that makes everything better. All butlers are evil. Jane Austen wrote a book specifically to go “THIS is how NORMAL people react to things!!!”
2. “She never changed her opinion about books or men”
3. “As a girl she wrote stories, including burlesques of popular romances” and you know what that means. Jane Austen started off writing smut fanfiction. If that’s not writing reassurement that you can be great no matter what you choose to write, I don’t know what is.
(Both quotes from the Penguin Classics version of Northanger Abbey)
darcy doesn’t sing a single note even during conversations where everyone else is singing at him that is until the argument following his first attempt at proposing to lizzy where you can see his restraint fall away
his first big solo is the letter he writes her
gelsey bell is mary and the unofficial narrator and she sits down at her piano to describe whats going on but before she can ever reveal her feelings on the matter, starting with that gelsey bell scream, mr bennet comes over and does the whole ‘that’s nice dear but give someone else a turn’
mr wickham has this huge ballad about how darcy ruined his life and its super melodramatic and touching
mr collins proposal to lizzy is an absolute bop that he gets so into he forgets for a moment what he’s doing he’s just owning the stage
wickham has a song where he’s trying to seduce lydia but she’s not even listening she’s just monologuing about how excited she is to get laid
during darcy’s second proposal he keeps hesitating waiting for lizzy to interrupt him like she has done every time before but she doesn’t say anything until he’s finished
at the end mary sits down at the piano and right where she’d usually be interrupted, kitty joins her and harmonises
jane and bingley have the adorable upbeat romantic duet which is just them being super polite like ‘oh so nice to have you here’ ‘so nice to be here’ interspersed with their inner monologue which is just them being like fucking jesus I’m so in love
the bingley sisters probably have a really cool mean solo
lady catherine has this terrifying disney villain song in the garden
concept: an austen-inspired tabletop rpg where there are five classes
single man in possession of a large fortune who is in want of a wife
young woman with low connections who must marry so that she can secure her future
cad whose main goal is to convince someone to elope with him
wealthy, scheming woman whose goal is to ruin the happiness of the aforementioned young woman
tiresome & vulgar elderly busybody (can be either a man or a woman)
I’m gonna split this out a little farther, because I feel like we’re blurring the lines between classes and stats. First you should pick your Austen class:
Bachelor/Bachelorette
Cad / Floozy
Husband/Wife
Matriarch/Patriarch
Busybody
Then you roll for your stats across the 6 basic Abilities:
Money
Intelligence
Connections
Manners
Looks
Snark
10/10 would kickstart
I’ve written this up as a quick-play version! You need a d6, a d20 and 3+ friends who are as into Jane Austen as you are, or at least willing to have a go.
I’ll make it up into a proper printable with illustrations if I get a chance next week, but in the meantime if anyone wants to playtest it I’d love to know how it goes!
jane austen was so lit because she wrote about men the way men typically write about women i.e. her stories just centered around women and men were only there for the sake of women, and her books could have been all bitter and sad about the state of women in that century, but instead they’re sweet honest observational stories of friendship, family and love *sighs* what a lady i am sorry i ever doubted you cos I was bored in high school
no seriously her books do not pass the REVERSE bechdel test and it’s perfect
Jane Austen never wrote a single scene without a woman present.
hey remember when jane austen, a woman, referred to a character named richard as having “never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name” in 1817. yeah me too.
i can listen no longer in silence. i must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. you pierce my soul. i am half agony, half hope. tell me not that i am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. i offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. i have loved none but you. persuasion by jane austen.
The thing about Persuasion that just kills me is that the central premise— “I hope the person who broke my heart has a miserable life and I get to watch them be humiliated while I get everything I ever wanted” is so universal.
But Wentworth is only able to fully enjoy it for like A DAY before he starts realizing how terrible it is. He watches Anne suffer in silence and he hates it. He watches her being treated like an inconvenience and a joke and a piece of furniture and he hates it. He hears sneering comments at her expense and he hates it. He spends evening after evening in her company, where he is celebrated as a handsome, dashing hero while she is shoved to the side and ignored and he hates it.
He probably spent a lot of heartbroken hours out on the sea wishing revenge on her (like ten years’ worth), but then he gets to see it happening and revenge turns out not to be that sweet after all. He probably thought “I hope she never gets married to anyone else and she has to spend the rest of her miserable life with her miserable family, listening to them talk about nothing and regretting ever letting me go.” But then he has to watch her live through it, and it is just excruciating. Watching her bite her tongue. Watching her keep her eyes down on her clasped hands. Watching her silently accept everything as if she deserves it.
He’s like, “YES, it’s all HAPPENING! She’s all ALONE and PALE and OLD and…sad. And her family treats her terribly, and she’s— no one is talking to her. No one even knows that she’s funny and smart, they just— they just make her sit in the corner. She’s hardly eating anything. And she really isn’t that old, but they are acting like she’s dead? Her family is even worse than they used to be, how is that even possible? Why isn’t anyone helping her? Why is she the only person taking care of anyone? Why isn’t anyone taking care of her?”
And his nasty “she’s so altered I should not have known her again” comment that he KNOWS got back to her starts ringing in his ears. And his cocky “yeah I’m just here to find a YOUNG, HOT girl to marry now that I’m SUCH A CATCH, whatevs” approach starts to make him feel queasy, because she’s HELPING, she’s trying to stay out of his way and help him pick a young wife, and she hardly ever smiles anymore, not really. He watches her slip out of rooms when he enters them and he hears her laughing with her nephew sometimes but then go quiet when anyone else approaches, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Anyway, every fandom has a bunch of Pride and Prejudice AUs, but I WANT PERSUASION AUS. I NEED THEM. I NEED THEM.
You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am
too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself
to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke
it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner
than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but
you.
Reddit user TheABrown describes “nice guy” in literary terms and nails it:
A
friend of mine who is big into English literature has described a big
chunk of them as “The Mr Collinses of the world who are bewildered and
angry that not even Charlotte Lucas will have them now that she has more
options.”
For those who haven’t read Pride and Prejudice, Mr Collins is a
character who has a decent income, isn’t vicious, but he’s annoying and
unpleasant. After being rejected by the heroine, he marries another
woman called Charlotte Lucas, who marries him because she’s getting
older, not likely to have another proposal, and is worried about living
the rest of her life as the maiden aunt in genteel poverty dependent on
her father or brother. [source]
I also like the second comment:
I mean, the feckless Wickhams of the world will always attract the silly Lydias; and the genuinely decent and honourable Bingleys and Darcys seem to find their Janes and Elizabeths – but the modern Charlottes – well, lots of them, now that it’s socially acceptable, and financially viable, to be single, would much prefer to spend the rest of their lives living in their own little one-bedroom flats, working their sensible, modestly renumerated jobs, and spending their evenings with friends, pizza, wine, and their pet cats if their options for marriage and partnership are Mr Collinses, regardless of whether Mr Collins has a respectable career or a nice house in the suburbs.
The Mr Collinses are (usually) not vicious or nasty or even objectively a terrible life decision (like a Wickham), but most Charlottes don’t want to spend their lives with them if there’s another option.
The other problem of course is that a lot of Mr Collinses are under some sort of delusion that they’re Mr Darcy/Mr Bingley/Mr Knightley etc.
I think the best definition of a “Nice Guy” is “Someone who’s convinced he’s Mr. Darcy but is really Mr. Collins.”
^ Yes this.
Mind you his travelling fifty miles to…er…commiserate on Lydia’s disgrace? Is maybe not vicious in the physical sense but at BEST it’s horribly tone deaf and at worse outright gloating.
Also worth pointing out:
Collins is turned down by Lizzie and disbelieves her. She says several times in the strongest terms that she doesn’t want him but NOPE, she can’t possibly be serious. It takes her leaving the room to get it through his head.
Darcy, by contrast, is turned down and is shocked, but he doesn’t NOT TAKE HER SERIOUSLY. He’s appalled that she would ever think of turning him down, he demands to know why (and by gum does she let him have it) but he takes her at her word. At which point he leaves.
AND THEN TRIES TO DO BETTER.
Mr Collins bumbles off and proposes to the first woman who doesn’t roll her eyes at him. Darcy goes off and attempts to amend his faults, not to win Lizzie over but Because She Is Right and He Was Being An Arse.
“The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: “had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.” Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me; – though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.”
I love me some Pride and Prejudice. (points at videos)
So much Jane Austen reveals that there is nothing new under the damn sun.
As I said when the Google Memo hit: If there’s a story about gender out there, there’s probably an Austen quote for it.
From Persuasion:
Captain Harville:”I won’t allow it to be any more
man’s nature than women’s to be inconstant or to forget those they love
or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe… Let me just observe
that all histories are against you, all stories, prose, and verse. I do
not think I ever opened a book in my life which did not have something
to say on women’s fickleness.”
Anne Elliot: “But they were all written by men. ”
Reblogging to bold this bit:
Also worth pointing out:
Collins is turned down by Lizzie and disbelieves her. She says several times in the strongest terms that she doesn’t want him but NOPE, she can’t possibly be serious. It takes her leaving the room to get it through his head.
Darcy, by contrast, is turned down and is shocked, but he doesn’t NOT TAKE HER SERIOUSLY. He’s appalled that she would ever think of turning him down, he demands to know why (and by gum does she let him have it) but he takes her at her word. At which point he leaves.
The Mr. Darcy Fantasy isn’t based in what it’s usually made out to be based in
The fantasy isn’t that a brooding “tall, dark and handsome” man will come and swoop you of your feet.
Darcy changes for Elizabeth. She rejects him, she stands up to him, she insults him in a magnitude of ways, both warranted and not, and he takes all of that, and he reflects on it, and he changes his behavior. He tries to be better. Because he respects Elizabeth and he finds her opinion valuable.
Think about it. A usual response, both back then and today, would be to dismiss Elizabeth as a “crazy bitch.” He doesn’t do that at all, no, he takes valid criticism found among misunderstandings and takes it to heart.
The Mr. Darcy Fantasy is a fantasy about being respected and having your opinion be valued very highly.
The Mr. Darcy Fantasy is that a man would be willing to change his behavior just to be worthy of you.
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