[ SECRET POST #1815 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1815 ⌋


Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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09. [ TRIGGER WARNING for self-harm/cutting ]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 41 secrets from Secret Submission Post #259.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeats ]
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Comments

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

This is a bit of a sidetrack, but really Jane Austen didn't seem to display much sympathy and respect for parents in her books at all. Most of the parent figures in the books are flawed at best and she seems to think very little of them. (Mrs. Bennett's the easiest example but it doesn't stop there. Look at Mr. Woodhouse, for example, he's just bizarre.) I'm generalizing heavily, and of course she stays away from highly idealized characters in general, but I've definitely noticed that about the parents. The only ones who seem to be decent are conveniently dead. Mr. Bennett's an exception but he's still deeply flawed, cynical, and sends Lydia off and we know how that ended up.

It's just something I've wondered. I mean, presumably Darcy and Elizabeth who are positive characters had kids and didn't raise them foolishly, but we don't see that.

Anyway, more on topic, I think assessing that bit with the Musgroves as "cold" isn't really off the mark, and certainly there are other examples -- Mrs. Price mourns her dead child too and is given no compassion. Whether it's an actual aesthetic flaw in her writing is I guess more debatable -- I can read it and not respond badly to it, mostly because I see it as a protest against sentimentality which can be a huge flaw done wrong in writing, but that's me.

Wow, I have more feelings about this than I thought.

[(Anonymous)]

I've noticed that with the parent figures, too. None of her protagonists have a truly admirable parent. I mean, the first time I read P&P I thought Mr. Bennet was awesome, but these days I'm a lot more critical of his lack of interest in the other children and constant jabs at their mother in front of them. He probably would have been a much better father if he'd married someone he respected, but that's hardly an excuse. I don't remember anything seriously wrong with Elinor and Marianne Dashwood's mother, but it's been a while since I've read S&S and I didn't pay much attention to her when I did.

I don't know that I'd go so far as to call Austen's apparent attitude towards the Musgroves a "flaw," but it does bother me. I can appreciate her honesty, and her refusal to sentimentalize, but her seemingly total lack of compassion for such a situation does jar me. Maybe it's just sort of personal for me. My brother is a destructive substance abuser, and his behavior just kept breaking my mom's heart for the last few years of her life (she died young of cancer). He's still causing a lot of pain for the rest of the family, and sometimes, like the narrator, I can't help but think how we'd be better off rid of him, but then I hate myself for thinking such a thing. Perhaps because of this, treating a character with scorn for loving and mourning a child who caused the family nothing but grief strikes me as particularly harsh and lacking in empathy for human foibles. I almost get the feeling that she doubts the display is truly genuine (a living prodigal son is a nuisance but a dead one is a saint), while I may be primed to assume it is.

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Mrs. Dashwood does seem to be all right, though you didn't see that much of her or her parenting. And I will say that it seems like Catherine Moreland's parents were good parents, though that was part of the point of the book -- that she wasn't a dramatic heroine from a Troubled Family.

And yeah, I do understand what you're saying. Her treatment of the Musgroves is very harsh, and it's not a personality flaw to love and care for someone who is hurting you. It's human nature.

I think the "dead one is a saint" thing is probably on the money. And does happen, and it the kind of thing Austen probably couldn't stomach. And yet I see what you mean, completely.

I'm really sorry to hear about your brother and your mother, by the way. That sounds really rough.

[(Anonymous)]

I know this is a really late comment, and you probably won't read it, but in case you do, it's ok. I didn't mean to bring out my personal baggage for sympathy so much as a disclosure of bias. This aspect of Austen's writing happened to hit a personal button that was really jarring from me.

Don't get me wrong, she is one of my very favorite writers ever, but at times I'm disturbed by a specter of that omniscient, morally superior narrator who can be so confident on the Judgment she passes out to each of her characters.

At other times, I wonder just what she had been through, especially in regards to experiences with her own parents.

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

Not sure you will see this comment either, but it's fine, I didn't feel like you were doing that. I just felt like saying something, since really it must have been rough for your mom and you to deal with that. And I had a friend who went through something very similar with his brother, so it reminded me of that.

Her narrators are definitely like that. Sometimes it's fun when they're delivering barbs about characters we're not supposed to like anyway, and sometimes it can be uncomfortable.

I wonder about that too, except I thought I'd always heard she got along all right with her family -- but maybe that's more her sister than her parents that I'm thinking of. Considering I'm a fan I don't know that much about her life, to be honest. I remember hearing about some awful sarcastic remarks she made in one of her letters and feeling like "Wow, she really could be nasty!" Though I suppose I've made a few remarks myself that wouldn't stand up well if someone decided to publish them after I died.