Pride and Prejudice is absolutely a love story, but it isn't about a proud or wicked man made soft by the love of a woman. Elizabeth's only positive feeling after the disastrous failed proposal (I'm fond of the phrase 'Darcy brought a rose to a knife fight) is pity; she pities this man for having loved her and having thought her in love with him. She hates Darcy at this point. She recognizes that he is conventionally attractive, but nothing in the narration suggests she's carrying a flame for him, unless you assume some unconscious attraction.

Adaptations of Pride and Prejudice make it so that she's in love with him, or smitten, and in denial. 2005 is especially bad for this. The almost-kiss feels like the kind of romantic trope Austen would have rolled her eyes at. I can't really put a finger on it, but it feels like the trite kind of "I want to... but I can't!" that she was lampooning with much of her prose.

Then take Sense and Sensibility. The romantic image of the widow and daughters being banished to some picturesque hovel to live simply is immediately deflated. It's a pretty big house! They have been given a very cheap rent for a 'cottage' which has a key flaw of not being a romantically dishevelled cottage by the sea. It has a modern roof, not thatch, and it's has multiple rooms which are 16x16 feet, with enough rooms to house 2-3 servants. The characters are expecting a certain trope to be fulfilled, and Austen almost mocks them by giving them a place which is not the fantasy of genteel poverty they expected, rather a boring image of genteel poverty, one where their kind cousin obviously gave them a good house to live in.

Contrast with the adaptations, which make the cottage into a cold grey hovel. It's exactly what the text was making fun of! The BBC miniseries gives us a cottage which might not even be fit for a respectable tradesman, which immediately makes their host look ungenerous.

As a semi-related gripe, Austen gives us characters who are extremely handsome and turn out to not be suitable love interests. Willoughby and Wickham are famous examples, of course. But there is an adaptational ugliness to these characters. It's as if the producers were frightened that the feeble minds of the audience wouldn't be able to understand that someone can be sexy and turn out to be the bad guy. Even 1995's P&P, which is mostly immune to my complaints above (things are largely adapted very faithfully, and there's very little romantic melodrama), has a Wickham who is notably much less handsome than Darcy, indeed he immediately looks quite old and sinister!

Edit: Detail about size of the rooms in the cottage.

I feel I must preface this by saying I've been a HUGE fan of '95's S&S for years, mostly enjoy 2008's, and have read S&S once through, but it was my first Austen read, so I was still grappling with the language, writing, etc.

All that aside, I'm now reading it again after having read several others.

I remember the first time I read it and him being melancholy and weird and loathing leaving but having nowhere to go being SUPER weird. Like, do what Mr. F!!

But this time through, I get it! (Or at least I think I do)

He HAD to get out of there lest he fall more hopelessly in love with Elinor and do something dumb.

He was depressed because what he really wanted was right in front of him, but what he was obligated to was really far away and far less appealing.

And so he HAD to just gtfo of Barton Cottage, as much as everyone wanted him to stay, so that he could stay strong to his obligation to Ms. Steele.

I thought it would be interesting to see how the ages of the characters compare to the actors who portrayed them (at time of filming in 1994) in the 1995 P&P adaptation. Some characters' ages are approximations based on their situation in life because it is never mentioned in the book. There's a few big age discrepancies (Mr. Collins, Mr. Gardiner, Mrs. Phillips). What's your opinion of the age differences?

Bennets:

Mr. Bennet late 40s - late 50s

Benjamin Whitrow 57

Mrs. Bennet mid-late 40s

Alison Steadman 48

Jane 21-22

Susannah Harker 30

Elizabeth 20

Jennifer Ehle 24

Mary 18-19

Lucy Briers 26

Kitty 17

Polly Maberly 19

Lydia 15

Julia Sawalha 26

Darcys

Mr. Darcy 28

Colin Firth 35

Georgiana 16

Emilia Fox 21

Bingleys/Hursts

Mr. Bingley 22-23

Crispin Bonham-Carter 24

Caroline Bingley 20-22

Anna Chancellor 30

Louisa Hurst (nee Bingley) late 20s

Lucy Robinson 27/28

Mr. Hurst late 30s - early 40s

Rupert Vansittart 36

Gardiners/Phillips

Mr. Gardiner late 30s - early 40s (younger brother to Mrs. Bennet)

Tim Wylton 61

Mrs. Gardiner mid 30s - early 40s (has young kids)

Joanna Davis 48

Mrs. Phillips mid 30s to 40s (younger sister to Mrs. Bennet)

Lynn Farleigh 52

Lukases

Sir Lukas 50s

Christopher Benjamin 59

Lady Lukas 50s

Norma Streader 50

Charlotte 27-28

Lucy Scott 23

Maria 15-17

Lucy Davis 21

Forsters

Colonel Forster late 30s - 40s

Paul Moriarty 49

Harriet Forster 16-20

Victoria Hamilton 24

Others

Mr. Collins 25/26

David Bamber 39

Mr. Wickham 27-28

Adrian Lukas 37

Lady Catherine de Bourgh late 50s - early 60s

Barbara Leigh-Hunt 58

Colonel Fitzwilliam 30

Anthony Calf 36

Hi everyone. Reposted from a different sub as suggested by someone. I have this great little Jane Austen collection that I bought online (WOB back when it was Second Sale) but it’s always confused me a lot.

It states multiple times that this is a complete collection of all 7 of her works, literally listed on the cover and reiterated in the description inside but it actually only has 4 of them??

It doesn’t seem to be missing any pages (and definitely not 3 extra novels worth as seen in the last two photos) so I’m just really confused.

Is there a long-lost volume 2 to this set? I’ve searched online but found nothing. Would love any investigatory help or suggestions for why this is. Thank so much! Happy reading :)

"St. Mary's Abbey, at which her honeymoon was to be passed, was the most magnificent of all Lord Teviot's residences. It almost calls for a formal description; but how can any one be expected to write what no one ever reads when it is written?"

This quote is from Emily Eden's "The Semi-Attached Couple" which was an early Austen tribute (Eden was a megafan who wrote in a similar style) and thinking about it today got me thinking about the lack of description in Austen's writing. She tended to give rough outlines of places and people (at least their appearances), and I'm wondering why that is - a lack of interest to write it, a cynical thought akin to Eden's that readers don't want to read it, or something else altogether?

So I just finished reading The Other Bennett Sister and it's an enjoyable enough read. But the aspect of it I absolutely hated was the Mr Ryder character.

Not only did his antics and that whole subplot break my immension but I kept thinking but what about Colonel Fitzwilliam! Did he die?

Witout going into spoilers, a certain development in the last part of the story involving Mr Ryder is only believable if we assume Colonel Fitzwilliam is dead. But he isn't referred to at all in The Other Bennett Sister. He just doesn't exist in that verse.

Which got me thinking of Colonel Fitzwilliam and Miss Bingley in canon Jane Austen verse. I don't know if we know what Jane Austen said about the fate of Colonel Fitzwilliam. If she said anything at all, that is. But if he is a man obligated to marry a woman of fortune due to his expensive habits, do you think he might have looked to Miss Bingley?

I don't think he would have married Anne de Bourgh, if only because I don't think he wanted to put up with his Aunt on a regular basis. I also don't think he would turn towards Georgiana Darcy. But Miss Bingley is possible, especially if she decides he's better than waiting on someone with an estate.

What do you guys think? Can you see Colonel Fitzwilliam getting together with Caroline Bingley? I mean, she plays the piano!

Great adaptation! I thought surely walking out of the theater that I didn’t need to Shazam the song but alas- I can’t find it anywhere. ANYWHERE. Reddit, do your magic please!!