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The First Lines of JANE AUSTEN
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I dislike people calling Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park manipulative because on the whole, she just isn't. Yes, she coerces Fanny into taking Henry's secret present of a necklace, but mostly, Mary is very open about who she is and what she wants. Henry is the manipulative one, who manufactures love in women without any intention of marrying them. Mary, on the other hand, is hot and cold with Edmund because she literally does not know what she wants.
Mary is very cynical about men and doesn't seem to believe that love is real or reliable (Henry is similarly cynical about women). She has been raised and trained to marry a wealthy heir and to rely upon wealth for her happiness, hence her brief attempt to marry Tom. Finding herself falling for the honourable but "poor" Edmund, she doesn't know how to reconcile her understanding of his merit with her worldview. This tension is what drives her actions. In the end, she never gets to choose, as Henry's actions separate her and Edmund forever.
Edmund, on the other hand, should know that Mary is wrong for him, but keeps returning to her even after she clearly reveals her opposing moral code and beliefs to him. This is not on Mary. He is the one who can't help himself and returns even after fairly harsh words from Mary at the ball (she tells him she could never marry a clergyman). Edmund deceives and convinces himself, something Fanny points out multiple times.
I think the central tension of Mary's story is about the choice between wealth and happiness. At Mansfield, she learns to value morality above material possessions, but when she returns to her friends in London, she falls back into her old ways. Her growth is then tragically cut short, though the narrator gives a hint that knowing Edmund has changed Mary's beliefs permanently, though not completely.
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, Henry Crawford is the most salvageable of Austen's dubious men. Like yes, he has issues, but at least before the affair you could work with them. They haven't doomed him yet.
There are so many reasons. Unlike Willoughby, Wickham, and Mr. Elliot, he has yet to ruin anyone's life. His fall is in his future, not hidden in his past. Unlike almost every negative character in Austen's works, Henry is neither greedy nor in debt. And the benefits! Beautiful house. Good at renovations. Can read you into a Shakespeare trance. Genuinely intelligent.
Sir, if you had just gone home to fix that issue with your steward and not gone to that stupid party, we really could have had it all.
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As always, click on the images if the text is fuzzy! A belated Happy New Year, folks 🎊 And a heads up that the two below the cut are maybe a bit angsty (ymmv), with one referencing the final 15. It's been a pretty rough start to the year for many of us, so I hope these silly little memes bring you a little bit of joy (or at least help you feel perceived 😅)
Angst(ish) ahead!
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From the Wikipedia page on loons
Been thinking about this image a lot today.
Thinking about the super nice woman I met at the thrift store like a year ago.
I was looking at sheets/curtains/tablecloths trying to find anything 100% cotton. Because I had enrolled in a "learn to sew" class, and then got anxious that I didn't know how to sew and so I should probably practice??? I was so worried I'd show up and the rest of the class would be more advanced and that I didn't belong (again, the class was called "learn to sew").
This lovely woman clocked me checking tags, asked if I was looking at the fabric to sew it, and was so kind and encouraging! She told me about how she makes clothes and such from sheets, asked about my class, gave me a few tips for my practice project (she was a sewing tutor for kids!), and said I'd probably have a blast in class. And she was right.
When I finally got to class, I no longer felt anxious. The funny thing is half my classmates *were* more advanced - they'd taken the class before, and re-enrolled to get help from the teacher on their next project. But everyone was there to learn. Everyone was friendly and happy to be there and excited to see what others were making. It was such a great experience for me.
Sometimes people are the best.
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deep space nine is such a good show. they have an entire enemy spy on board and they give him such incredible storylines as "unwilling to entertain the idea of being hired as an assassin until he realizes he gets to workshop quark's death with him via holosuite" and "distracts odo from his terminal illness by surreptitiously implying he assassinated important people to the point that it gets odo's blood pressure up"
