Comments on: Seducing Mr Darcy

By: Adrien

Adrien — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 07:30:33 +0000

GOD DAMN!!!!!
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My Mr Darcy Poll went bung. Obviously peaple were really annoyed. But it’s back on and it works..
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Please vote: I’m curious.

By: paul walter

paul walter — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:22:01 +0000

Don’t know how relevant this is, but apparently were related to the Dukes of Chandos, freebooters associated with Marlborough; also Warren Hastings, the probable model for colonel what-’is-face in one of Austen’s novels ( Sense and Sensibility? ). Hastings got caught with his fingers in the till in a big way during his defacto vice regal time in India.
BTW, of little known historical concern is the story of the Bengal famine of the early seventeen seventies, that occurred in the wake of Robert Clive but before Hastings, induced by the whole sale plundering by the civilised British. Several millions died, but usually we only read of stories of brave Clive overthrowing dastardly Nawabs.
By the early nineteen forties the British, by then on the way out, still managed to create a massive famine in Bengal that also killed millions, in misappropriating rice harvests for their war effort.
But we all know, the only war crimes that occurred in WW2 involving the deaths of millions, was the jewish holocaust.
And no, am not mentioning the blood bath of the division of India in the late forties; that is a seperate issue, again. Lest there is confusion on this point.

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 09:59:57 +0000

Sorry, Adrien, I missed the “son” bit.

By: Adrien

Adrien — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:09:54 +0000

Lord North died in 1792. . Which is way before 1800 I'm sure. His private secretary's son was a near contemporary of Austen's and had some small influence on the times. . And now the online poll we had to have: Who was the best Mr Darcy? - ~ flexiPoll: free online web poll ~

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:59:25 +0000

Lord North died in 1792.

By: Adrien

Adrien — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:51:13 +0000

wrong century and wrong social class
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Que? Jane Austen 1775-1817 (25 in 1800). To be sure Austen’s father was one of those scruffy bourgeois upstarts (apparently he knew how to do something other than riding horses and playing Faro. Scandalous!). But her mother was the daughter of the Leigh family (tho’ not the Baron). In fact I’m not sure there was a Baron at the time but doesn’t Baron sound better than Squire? .
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And now I’m off. Old Brownstain’s arranged for us to hunt one of the butler’s children. Cheerio!

By: Kim

Kim — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:24:36 +0000

Err, wrong century and wrong social class, Adrien. Parody is more effective if it’s vaguely accurate!

By: Adrien

Adrien — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:08:22 +0000

Oh how vile.
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The plebs are sullying the Baron Leigh’s most famous grand-daughter yet again with their perfectly commonplace fantasia and just look at that version of Mr Darcy. Egad! Man! He has a tan. That probably means he did a job of work sometime. Shockin’.
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Sink me. I declare I have no intention of indulging the middle-classes at play.
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Fawsells, Fawsells! Fetch my snuff poste haste! And have four footmen bring me to my carriage. Lord North’s private secretary has a son who spends seventeen hours tyin’ his cravat. I will not be outdone. Away to Paris before the bill arrives.

By: Adrien

Adrien — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 05:00:57 +0000

Austen’s generation, those who came of age around 1800 are really remarkable. That generation beats the shit out of the 1960s for libertarian outrageousness. And they were sexy and stylish as well. Hardly surprising we’ve got a fetish for it.

By: Marks

Marks — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 00:06:37 +0000

TimT at 23.

I agree with you that JA is making people aware of their own fallibilities. Though how many actually ‘get’ that is probably fairly few.

It can also be seen as a template of how and why prejudices form and are maintained in the face of however many facts might oppose that prejudice.

Starting off with the first sentence of the book:

“It is a truth universally accepted that a {insert recipient of prejudice here} must be {insert form of prejudice here}.” etc.

By: klaus k

klaus k — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:11:18 +0000

Another victim of the purple-eyed monster?

By: Mary Bennet

Mary Bennet — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:36:33 +0000

If I am going to deliver a lecture on L’Austen, that slut in the blue dress would do well to know that a woman’s reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful.

By: TimT

TimT — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:09:06 +0000

Marks’ phrase ‘rather than being the sole construct of the author’ may have put me in mind of poststructuralism.

Anyway, I was going to say (before my brother came in and we went off to see a show), if Austen is playing a joke on readers, or even sharing in a joke with them, then doesn’t that also suggest that she intends to make them aware of their own fallibility/shared fallibilities as people? That is, that although there is not an explicit meaning in the novel, the way that Austen structures the book and the manner with which she describes her characters suggest an implicit meaning and moral, beyond the prejudices of her readers?

After all, Lizzy Bennet’s prejudices clearly mislead her, for at least the first half of the novel. Doesn’t this then suggest that the readers prejudice mislead them, too?

That sounds to me like a more than adequate moral! (Looking forward to my own prejudgments getting ripped apart in further comments!)

PS That lecture looks like great fun. Hope you get a good crowd Laura!

By: Marks

Marks — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:22:53 +0000

Oh no Laura, I certainly would not accuse Miss Austen of the grave impoliteness of trying to confuse those who are not intellectually adept. I merely suggest that she is not writing for them, and that perhaps their follies and whims might divert her. On the other side of the coin, I am also convinced that she has a sense of humour and would share that with those who understand it. However, I do believe that whatever the specific circumstance of that quote, she was writing for those who do not understand.

Having said that, part of her commercial outcome would have been the Lydias of this world who saw only a lurve story where big bad Mr Darcy insulted Lizzy, and haha fate makes him fall in love with her and be rejected, only to be redeemed by the power of lurve and vanquishing that nasty Mr Wickham. Like I said before, part of Austen’s genius is that this is a story that people can make sense of at many levels. Whether they see one book, or many is up to the individual.

By: danny

danny — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:05:00 +0000

Back when the world wide web was just starting up, I and a similarly technologically inclined friend had a local cottage industry building, configuring and servicing personal computers. Our select clientele was drawn largely from Teh Academy. We made two models: The Lizzie, and The Mister Darcy. One was basic, solid, dependable, and economical, the other we would customise with the latest, greatest, and flashest components, money occasionally being no object for that crowd, then. No-one ever asked for Mr Collins, or a Lydia.

By: laura

laura — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:32:05 +0000

Marks, the ‘dull elves’ remark is related to JA’s mild dismay at the many typos in her novel, including the leaving-out of speech cues which make it look as though Mr Bennet is saying some of Kitty’s speeches. She certainly wasn’t trying to confuse the dumber members of her readership.

By: Marks

Marks — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:23:06 +0000

Not postmodern. RB Sheridan commented on the cleverness (bu**ered if I can find the ref though), and I think that JA built on the observation of Mark at 18 as part of her novel framework. (The reason being that she quite consistently leaves out information, that could ‘prove’ certain character traits in some of her characters, or uses language that on the first reading means one thing, but on the second…may well not mean that at all).

Definitely a joke on her readers at one level (those she described as ‘dull elves’) and a joke with her readers at another.

(‘I do not write for such dull Elves As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.’”

letter to Cassandra on the release of Pride and Prejudice
January 29, 1813 )

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:01:52 +0000

I don’t think that’s particularly postmodern, TimT – it’s just a truism, I’d have thought, that different readers find different things in texts.

By: TimT

TimT — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 05:00:36 +0000

So is that a postmodern, post-Barthes interpretation then, Marks? But assuming that you are right here –

In other words, Pride and Prejudice is an extremely clever novel whose meanings and lessons depend ultimately on the prejudices of its readers.

- then maybe this, too, is a joke played on the reader by Austen: as indicated by the title!

By: Marks

Marks — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 04:47:26 +0000

For me the appeal of Jane Austen is that her books are multi-level – one can read them as ’stories’ for light entertainment, or at other differing levels depending on how clever you feel at the time.

Pride and Prejudice not only has this multi-level approach, but also many of its characters and their actions can take on different meanings depending on the viewpoint of the reader, rather than being the sole construct of the author.

For example, ask a group of Jane Austen fans whether or not Mr Darcy is shy – then stand well back as opposing sides try to prove the unprovable (they will ultimately rely on their opinions rather than any ‘facts’).

In other words, Pride and Prejudice is an extremely clever novel whose meanings and lessons depend ultimately on the prejudices of its readers.

It is these deep complexities that elevate Pride and Prejudice and Jane Austen to the ranks of the Greats of English Lit. – not how long Mr Darcy’s pen is.