The Biggest Consistent Lie That Pride And Prejudice Adaptations Tell (yes, Even The One You Like) Is

I'm starting to accept the fact that I am destined to mainly draw trees and the occasional little Snufkin. So here's the next sketchs, after long hikes everyone needs a rest, even little Snufkin.

The Fairy Ring

Artist : George Vernon Stokes (1873-1954)

That Hamlet post reminds me, people blame Romeo and Juliet for "getting everyone killed", but the text itself very specifically blames the lords Capulet and Montague. If you want to get to the nitty gritty:

Mercutio got himself killed. Romeo was very specifically trying to not have a swordfight, and Mercutio decided to start one because he thought Romeo was being a pussy. Tybalt actually killed him, but if you're talking about who "got him killed," that was Mercutio fucking around and finding out.

Romeo killed Tybalt. This is the one death that I think you can reasonably lay at Romeo's feet. If he had run off with Benvolio and got the Prince's men, Tybalt would have been arrested. That said, if my best friend (no matter how stupid) was killed right in front of me and the killer told me that friend sucked and so did I, I cannot guarantee I would do differently.

Lady Capulet said she hired people to kill Romeo. He beat them to the punch on that, but I think it should be pointed out.

Romeo killed Paris in self-defense. There's a lot of different ways you can play this, and Paris did think he'd broken in to vandalize the tomb of his girlfriend, but once again Romeo specifically begged someone not to fight him and that wasn't enough.

Romeo killed himself because he thought Juliet was dead. Friar Lawrence had a stupid idea and Juliet followed through on it because her father was going to force her into bigamy (and arguably marital rape), so if anyone "got" this to happen it was Lord Capulet.

Juliet killed herself because her husband was dead, her cousin was dead, her parents had turned on her, the woman who she thought of as a second mother abandoned her, and she was in a room with one guy stabbed and another guy poisoned right as the law was about to break in. Once again, I don't know what I'd do in her situation.

My Shakespeare professor said that Romeo and Juliet is the only Shakespeare tragedy not caused because of anyone being evil- Lord Capulet and Tybalt (and Mercutio) are dicks, but they're not Iago or Richard III. None of them wanted the play to end in a pile of bodies. You can't even point to one specific act and say 'that was the specific action that caused all of this.' It's a surprisingly modern (as opposed to mythic) play in that regard.

“How often, while women and girls sit warm at snug firesides, their hearts and imaginations are doomed to divorce from the comfort surrounding their persons, forced out by night to wander through dark ways, to dare stress of weather, to contend with the snow-blast, to wait at lonely gates and stiles in wildest storms, watching and listening to see and hear the father, the son, the husband coming home.”

– Vilette, Charlotte Brontë

i like to believe that ophelia’s madness gave her a kind of meta knowledge of the plot— that she saw the tragic ending coming, knew that hamlet’s indecision would be his hamartia, that she realised gertrude and claudius were both poisoned with corruption from the beginning and instead of the customary funeral goers laying flowers at a grave, it was Ophelia— mad, at death’s door, about to die in less than 2 scenes— who handed flowers to the king, queen and protagonist as if the dead girl was mourning the living

"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)

People who want female characters to cry less? No. Stop it. You're doing it the wrong way. Make male characters cry. Make those beautiful men sob on their knees. Down with all this stupid emotional constipation! Here, I can fix it:

Colonel Brandon after he tells Elinor about his lost love Eliza? Stumbles out of the room, finds somewhere private, and bawls. Edward after leaving Barton Cottage thinking he'll never be able to marry Elinor? Make him weep! Mr. Knightley was glad it was raining when he rode back to Hartfield after learning about Frank's engagement because it gave his tears plausible deniability! Wentworth thinks Anne will marry her cousin? Sobbing mess of a man. Bingley can cry during the proposal when he thinks about all the time he lost not being with Jane. Edmund cries alone in his room after Mary calls clergymen "nothing". Henry Tilney cries without realizing it when Catherine accepts his proposal because he's so glad that no one is angry with him and confronting his father was way more emotionally taxing than he let himself acknowledge at the time. Henry Crawford feeling wretched and alone after the affair and sobbing into his hands. Show us post wedding and make Darcy cry after the birth of his first child.

Make them cry! MAKE THEM ALL CRY

When Jane says she’s cold while Rochester is holding her hand… and he replies in question, “Cold?”. He can feel she is not, quite the opposite, her hands were very warm (so warm home girl felt feverish and couldn’t sleep all night bc of that stirring passion awakening). The text doesn’t explicitly say this but I think it’s implied. We are reading from Jane’s POV who in this moment is just trying to leave his room bc the feeling of desire is unfamiliar to her at the moment and she wants to avoid it in the present. But the clue lies with Rochester’s reply when he questions her “Cold?”. To Rochester’s silly lil brain Jane saying “I’m cold” translates to “Get away from me you unlovable beast I want to leave now and you’re ugly” in Rochesterian. So he plays along and is like “oh yes yes and standing in a pool! go Jane😐 ( 10/10 acting) obviously Rochester being Rochester does the totally rational thing any normal person would do and leave immediately, go get Blanche and execute plan make Jane jealous. Because waiting until morning to find to your surprise Jane is absolutely down bad simping for you is too long of a wait. Clearly spending roughly a month on this plan is way faster (Rochester math).

In 1847 the stereotypes for male and female writers were very rigid. Critics expected from a male writer strength, passion, and intellect, and from a woman writer they expected tact, refinement, and piety. They depended on these stereotypes so much, in fact, that they really didn't know how to proceed, what to say, or what to look for in a book if they were unsure of the author's sex.

So Jane Eyre created a tremendous sensation, and it was a problem for the Brontës. The name Currer Bell could be that of either a man or a woman and the narrator of Jane Eyre is Jane herself. The book is told as an autobiography. These things suggested that the author might have been a woman. On the other hand, the novel was considered to be excellent, strong, intelligent and, most of all, passionate. And therefore, the critics reasoned, it could not be written by a woman, and if it turned out that it was written by a woman, she had to be unnatural and perverted.

The reason for this is that the Victorians believed that decent women had no sexual feelings whatsoever—that they had sexual anesthesia. Therefore, when Jane says about Rochester that his touch "made her veins run fire, and her heart beat faster than she could count its throbs," the critics assumed this was a man writing about his sexual fantasies. If a woman was the author, then presumably she was writing from her own experience, and that was disgusting. In this case we can clearly see how women were not permitted the authority of their own experience if it happened to contradict the cultural stereotype.

But even more shocking than this to the Victorians was Jane's reply to Rochester, a very famous passage in the novel. He has told her he is going to marry another woman, an heiress, but that she can stay on as a servant. Jane answers him thus:

"I tell you I must go," I retorted, roused to something like passion. "Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton, a machine without feeling and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I'm soulless and heartless? You think wrong. I have as much soul as you and full as much heart. And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should've made it as hard for you to leave me as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionality, nor even of mortal flesh. It is my spirit that addresses your spirit, just as if both had passed through the grave and we stood at God's feet equal—as we are."

This splendid assertion violated not only the standards of sexual submission, which were believed to be women's duty and their punishment for Eve's crime, but it also went against standards of class submission, and obviously against religion. And this sort of rebellion was not feminine at all.

The reviews of Jane Eyre in 1847 and 1848 show how confused the critics were. Some of them said Currer Bell was a man. Some of them, including Thackeray, said a woman. One man, an American critic named Edgar Percy Whipple, said the Bells were a team, that Currer Bell was a woman who did the dainty parts of the book and brother Acton the rough parts. All kinds of circumstantial evidence were adduced to solve this problem, such as the details of housekeeping. Harriet Martineau said the book had to be the work of a woman or an upholsterer. And Lady Eastlake, who was a reviewer for one of the most prestigious journals, said it couldn't be a woman because no woman would dress her heroines in such outlandish clothes.

Eventually Charlotte Brontë revealed her identity, and then these attacks which had been general became personal. People introduced her as the author of a naughty book; they gossiped that she was Thackeray's mistress. They speculated on the causes of what they called "her alien and sour perspective on women." She felt during her entire short life that she was judged always on the basis of what was becoming in femininity and not as an artist.

-Elaine Showalter, ‘Women Writers and the Female Experience’ in Radical Feminism, Koedt et al (eds.)

JANE EYRE — Chapter XIV & XXXVII

She’s iconic, period.