It Just Struck Me Why Professor Bhaer In Little Women Uses «thou» Instead Of «you» - It’s Because

Can’t believe Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in the 2000s

And in 2015 Emily Brontë released literary clsssic Wuthering Heights

Thank God someone paved the way for them…

Sorry, still not over Darcy critical-failing that proposal! Not that sorry, though. I have no idea why Pride and Prejudice hits so hard when most of Austen's other novels are like "They're fine! I like them! Anyway..." for me.

But, here's the thing. Darcy is being an asshole. Darcy isn't an asshole, generally, but he's really being one about his whole Regency Era situationship with Lizzie. Like, he rolls in on day one with this giant fucking chip on his shoulder, acts like he's too good for everyone, and why? Well, he's rich, and he's got lofty connections.

Except who's he rolling with right then? His spineless dustmop of a bestie and his bestie's godawful sisters. Bingley's the sort of guy who can be peer-pressured out of being in love!

Like, you know that thing where you have a friend, and they introduce you to another friend, and that friend is such a wet sock that you find yourself reevaluating your friend because they're hanging around with this guy? Like, okay, Darcy, do you have friends, or do you have toadies? Is this your bestie, or did you find a gentleman's companion that you didn't have to pay?

Later on we meet his aunt, who's the goddamned worst.

Like, we all hate Mr. Collins, right? This woman has Mr. Collins over twice a week for a quiet evening of performative dickriding. That's the kind of taste Darcy's family has. Voluntarily spending hours with Mr. Collins on a regular basis.

There's no talking about Mrs. Bennet's lack of decorum or matrimonial grasping or entitlement without talking about Lady Catherine flying in on her broom to scream at her nephew's fiancee, right? Especially considering that her basis for doing so is a cradle engagement that she seems to have never spoken to her nephew about as an adult and a fucking rumor that she assumes pertains to Lizzie.

She doesn't even talk to her fucking nephew before spending half a day in a carriage to make a blazing spectacle of herself in front of the entire Bennet household! He finds out she did that afterwards when she tries to make him break off the nonexistent engagement that she's announced to half the fucking kingdom by that point.

I mean, unexpected point to Mrs. B, who notably did not even walk down the road to Netherfield to act disappointed at anyone.

Also hard to get on too high a horse after Georgiana's near-elopement with the country's biggest asshole! Like, oh, the Bennet sisters are embarrassing? The Bennets lack propriety?

Buddy, you hired a sex trafficker to look after your sister and then your sister almost fucked the one-man-crime-wave son of your late property-manager. And you didn't even manage to hush it all up properly! Sure, he's keeping your sister's name out of his mouth, but he's running you down like a dog in every other respect to the whole county!

Like, "Oh, look at me, I'm Fitzwilliam Darcy! I'm not going to lower myself to correcting any of The Plebes who now think I deliberately misadministered a will to fuck over The Help out of cheapness and spite, especially when all it would take is one conversation with That Fucker's commanding officer, but god forbid I ever have to go out in public with a Bennet! I might die of shame and secondhand cringe!"

So he's got all of that going on, and then he busts in on Lizzie with a proposal that's got huge "I don't consent to being attracted to you" energy and runs her entire family into the ground. This is after Lizzie's spent approximately three centuries being negged by his mannerless nightmare of an aunt, so that's at least one extra level of "Really, bruh?" in there.

And then he fucking claps back at her rejection! Instead of going "Oh. Huh. Whoops. Guess I'll just have to go marry one of the other ten thousand women lined up waiting to marry me!" he's like "What the fuuuuck did I ever do to you, you fucking menace?". At which point she checks him so hard he spends the next three months bluescreening and looking up how to be polite to people you haven't already known for five years.

So like I said, he is being an asshole here. He knows how to act right, he just hasn't bothered to do so once since posting up in Netherfield because idk, he's on vacation or some shit.

Critically! However upsetting Lizzie finds The Proposal Incident (half-hour crying jag, spends the rest of the day hiding in her room), she is at no point worried about Darcy's subsequent behavior.

This is while she still thinks he genuinely did Wickham dirty and before she's had a chance to get character references from the 500 people working at Pemberley. This is the guy about whom her dad later says "Kidding-not kidding I can hardly say no to this rich fuck, can I?" when asked for his blessing. This is after Mr. Collins literally said "I've heard no means yes these days" to her fucking face and then her mother tried to make her marry him anyway.

She preached a full on sermon about the man's shortcomings to his face immediately after saying she wouldn't bounce on his dick if it was the last one on earth and after the adrenaline crash wasn't like, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck my entire life, he's going to burn down the vicarage and frame my father for tax fraud."

Everything that she's seen with her own eyes about this snobby bastard tells her he's not going to go crying to his aunt and get her cousin's patronage revoked. He's not going to go out of his way to fuck her or her family over. He's pissed, and he was definitely playing the ass with that proposal, but he's not going to lash out over it.

So this is Lizzie seeing Darcy at Peak Asshole, with extra assholery that he didn't even do but he couldn't be bothered to tell anyone he didn't do, and Lizzie's still like "omg you're such a fucking prick, how do you even get out of bed in the morning" instead of "Well, RIP to my prospects, there's no way that man doesn't have the lot of us consigned to a convent by parliamentary decree now."

“His mind was indeed my library, and whenever it was opened to me I entered bliss.”

– Villette, Charlotte Brontë

“Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.”

– Villette, Charlotte Brontë

I watched the movie “Secretary” for the first time last week and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. So obviously, I’m now searching for books recs that are similar to the movie’s themes and all I’m getting are smut novels 😭 Like the bdsm relationship is a big part of it but that’s not what fascinates me about the movie y’know? Basically what I’m saying is I need recs please.

The biggest consistent lie that Pride and Prejudice adaptations tell (yes, even the one you like) is that Mr. Darcy is stiff, diffident, joyless, whatever.

That is not the personality of the character in the book. The dude is consistently described as smiling in the first half of the novel. In fact, I would guess he's the smiliest of Austen's heroes, or a close second to Knightley or Edmund Bertram. He's not "chatty", but when he engages Elizabeth he's usually described as doing so with a smile on his face. Combine that with the arch exchanges they have, his proposal becomes way less shocking.

Him actively resisting the attraction he feels is what makes his behavior obscure to the characters in the novel who suspect his partiality (so, Charlotte.) Caroline Bingley can see his interest immediately and actively try to sabotage it by fanning the flames of disapproval. The fact that Elizabeth doesn't see his growing feelings for her is meant to be proof of her prejudicial attitude in regards to him, not...evidence that he's a socially awkward weirdo.

I guess this is one of those adaptational choices that people just decided to make to en masse because we no longer live in a culture where there's so much formality, politeness and reserve in manners that it's plausible for a woman to hate a man who loves her and them both to be so restrained they misinterpret one another.

The 1967 TV serial might be the only one where he actually smiles for the first half of the story (as he does in the novel!)

Me at 14 and me at 22 are having a bonding moment

Forgive me if I don't state this as clearly as I might.

I'm watching pride and prejudice 1980, when lizzie visits pemberley. This is where it seems that she first truly realizes her feelings for darcy, as she later admits.

We see through the housekeeper that darcy is respected and respectable, his house is well run, his servants and tenants like and admire him.

This responsibility must be especially attractive to lizzie after the way she had grown up with her father - call it "daddy issues". Mr Bennet routinely shows he cannot handle his finances wisely, has little control over his household, and puts in little effort to manage anything in his or his family's life.

It is my supposition that it is not necessarily how grand the estate is, or even darcys marked improvement in gentlemanliness, that truly impacts lizzie. Rather, it is his abilities in contrast to her father, to be a responsible landlord, brother, friend, and potential husband, that first turns her feelings.

She realizes he is truly dependable, and it is that which makes him lovable in her eyes

Thoughts?

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones." - Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (Chapter XXIX; paragraph 15)

"I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love." Villette by Charlotte Brontë