Bank of England are letting you vote for what animals you want on their new bank notes: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/help-us-design-our-next-series-of-banknotes
Pine martens are an option!
PINE MARTENS??!?
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let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open

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Bank of England are letting you vote for what animals you want on their new bank notes: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/help-us-design-our-next-series-of-banknotes
Pine martens are an option!
PINE MARTENS??!?
You're right and you should say it.
"Stop saying 15 year olds with weird interests are cringe, they're 15" this is true however you should also stop saying adults with weird interests are cringe because who gives a shit
To wit:
I want to share some wisdom from my high school art teacher.
In my AP Art class, there was a girl who was just starting to experiment with mixed media. At this point she was still playing around, trying to decide what direction she wanted to go with her portfolio. So one critique day, she brought in an abstract canvas with some rhinestone highlights and painted and real peacock feathers. She loved sparkles and peacock feathers so she thought she’d try introducing them a *little*. And after everyone had given some input, the teacher gave her his advice, VERY roughly paraphrased here:
“So here’s the thing… I do not like this style. These are just elements that do not speak to me personally, but I see that you like them, and you’re doing interesting things with them.
“My biggest critique is, I only merely *dislike* this piece. I want you to make me HATE it. Go crazy with the things that you like. Don’t hold back trying to make it palatable to people like me. Because I am NEVER going to like it. And if the audience does not like it, it should drive them crazy seeing how much YOU love it.”
Her portfolio was chock full of neon colors and glitter and rhinestones and splashes of peacock feathers and it was a delight. Our teacher despised every piece lol, but she got great marks and I think even won some awards. And more importantly, she was happy and proud of the results. Because she didn’t limit herself by trying to appeal to people who were never going to enjoy what she enjoyed.
Takeaway here: be as cringe as you want. Don’t limit yourself based on other ppl’s tastes. They’re not you, and you are incredible 💕
This is the most inspirational thing I've read all week. Possibly all year
The chapters where Valancy goes full IDGAF and snarks at her family are my favourite ones in The Blue Castle. It’s absolutely hilarious to see her go off on them. And it highlights an amazing irony – for 29 years Valancy’s peen picked at over and over for a few tiny childhood incidents, precisely because she’s always so compliant and so little trouble. If ahe steps out of lime even a little she gets pushed back into it. But when she steps out of line a lot – there’s so many things her family can’t pick just one. Any one of her comments by itself would be something her family would jump on her for and pick at endlessly, but all of them together make any individual one pale in comparison to the whole.
The ‘difficult’ people in the Stirling family get catered to; the compliant ones get browbeaten and sat on. As soon as Valancy becomes ‘difficult’ her family start taking her wishes and reactions into consideration, because there’s now a cost to not doing so.
Some of Valancy’s greatest hits:
“Won’t you try to remember you’re a lady?” she pleaded.
“Oh, if there were only any hope of being able to forget it!” said Valancy wearily.
Mrs. Frederick felt that she had not deserved this from Providence.
And:
“Doss,” he chuckled, “what is the difference between a young girl and an old maid?”
“One is happy and careless and the other is cappy and hairless,” said Valancy. “You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don’t succeed.”
Ooh, that’s cutting!
“Aunt Alberta, to save her dinner, plunged into an account of how a dog had bitten her recently. Uncle James, to back her up, asked where the dog had bitten her.
“Just a little below the Catholic church,” said Aunt Alberta.
At that point Valancy laughed. Nobody else laughed. What was there to laugh at?
“Is that a vital part?” asked Valancy.
“What do you mean?” said bewildered Aunt Alberta, and Mrs. Frederick was almost driven to believe that she had served God all her years for naught.”
Innuendo! She’s making innuendo! Pretty tame, but it’s such a change from all the previous chapters!
“Aunt Isabel concluded that it was up to her to suppress Valancy.
“Doss, you are horribly thin,” she said. “You are all corners. Do you ever try to fatten up a little?”
“No.” Valancy was not asking quarter or giving it. “But I can tell you where you’ll find a beauty parlor in Port Lawrence where they can reduce the number of your chins.”
She’s not being any ruder to them than they are to her!
“Oh, but you know we’re all dead,” said Valancy, “the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried and some aren’t—yet. That is the only difference.”
Basically laying out the reason behind her behaviour change, though they don’t know it!
“Don’t worry about my stomach, old dear,” said Valancy. “It is all right. I’m going to keep right on eating. It’s so seldom I get the chance of a satisfying meal.”
It was the first time any one had been called “old dear” in Deerwood. The Stirlings thought Valancy had invented the phrase and they were afraid of her from that moment. There was something so uncanny about such an expression. But in poor Mrs. Frederick’s opinion the reference to a satisfying meal was the worst thing Valancy had said yet.
It’s so mean, and her mother deserves it!
“If you mean,” said Valancy passionately, “that Barney Snaith is the father of Cecily Gay’s child, he isn’t. It’s a wicked lie.”
In spite of her indignation Valancy was hugely amused at the expression of the faces around that festal table. She had not seen anything like it since the day, seventeen years ago, when at Cousin Gladys’ thimble party, they discovered that she had got—SOMETHING—in her head at school. Lice in her head! Valancy was done with euphemisms.
Poor Mrs. Frederick was almost in a state of collapse. She had believed—or pretended to believe—that Valancy still supposed that children were found in parsley beds.
“Hush—hush!” implored Cousin Stickles.
“I don’t mean to hush,” said Valancy perversely. “I’ve hush—hushed all my life. I’ll scream if I want to. Don’t make me want to. And stop talking nonsense about Barney Snaith.”
This feels like a turning point – when Valancy’s rebellion turns from anger on her own behalf to anger on someone else’s, and sets up her going to care for Cecily. It starts with her being willing to be frank and unembarassed about the truth.
“When I was a young girl I never thought or spoke about such matters, Doss,” said Aunt Wellington, crushingly.
“But I’m not a young girl,” retorted Valancy, uncrushed. “Aren’t you always rubbing that into me? And you are all evil-minded, senseless gossips. Can’t you leave poor Cissy Gay alone? She’s dying. Whatever she did, God or the Devil has punished her enough for it. You needn’t take a hand, too. ”
The justaposition of “crushingly” and “uncrushed” is so great. Valancy’s realized her family are tedious and loveless and undeserving of her fear, but this is where it turns to a moral opposition and moral condemnation of their cruelty and judgement.
“Doss,” said Uncle James heavily, “the Ten Commandments are fairly up to date still—especially the fifth. Have you forgotten that?”
“No,” said Valancy, “but I thought you had—especially the ninth. Have you ever thought, Uncle James, how dull life would be without the Ten Commandments? It is only when things are forbidden that they become fascinating.”
It’s a great rebuttal, and the one of the core themes of the book – the difference between being polite and being good. Valancy is being impolite for the first time in her life, and she is liberated to be good for the first time, because for the first time she can take a stand. (The fifth commandment is honouring one’s parents; the ninth is a prohibition against slander, which is what Valancy’s family have been doing.)
This chapter is so great
Also Valancy is down bad for Barney
“One of his eyebrows is an arch and the other is a triangle,” said Valancy. “Is that why you think him so villainous?”
Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.
“How do you know his eyebrows so well, Doss?” asked Olive, a trifle maliciously. Such a remark would have covered Valancy with confusion two weeks ago, and Olive knew it.
“Yes, how?” demanded Aunt Wellington.
“I’ve seen him twice and I looked at him closely,” said Valancy composedly. “I thought his face the most interesting one I ever saw.”
“There is no doubt there is something fishy in the creature’s past life,” said Olive, who began to think she was decidedly out of the conversation, which had centred so amazingly around Valancy. “But he can hardly be guilty of everything he’s accused of, you know.”
The ‘difficult’ people in the Stirling family get catered to; the compliant ones get browbeaten and sat on. As soon as Valancy becomes ‘difficult’ her family start taking her wishes and reactions into consideration, because there’s now a cost to not doing so.
This is such a good point from @warrioreowynofrohan! She has forced them to actually take her feelings into account, because now there is a cost if they don't, because she refuses to be downtrodden anymore.
Uncle James lifted his eyebrows. Generally when Uncle James lifted his eyebrows the world came to an end. This time it continued to function.
Such a good passage!
This is such a good point from @warrioreowynofrohan! She has forced them to actually take her feelings into account, because now there is a cost if they don't, because she refuses to be downtrodden anymore.
Mrs. Frederick resented the hair but decided it was wisest to say nothing on the eve of the party. It was so important that Valancy should be kept in good humour, if possible, until it was over. Mrs. Frederick did not reflect that this was the first time in her life that she had thought it necessary to consider Valancy’s humours. But then Valancy had never been “queer” before.
I know "queer" didn't mean that yet, but I think Valancy *is* doing "queer as in fuck you" in this part of the book.
This is 100% me being a crank, but I'm getting real annoyed at seeing Ancient Traditional Crafts™ videos that depict people grinding minerals to make pigments with no respiratory protection. Like, yeah, an N100 mask isn't Authentic and shit, but do you know what powdered mica does to your lungs?
@sawdust-emperor replied:
Watching any green or blue-green mineral being ground to make pigment in these, praying it's just rough glass or some shit and not any of the almost always notably poisonous green minerals:
Being as I've also seen examples where the craftsperson is handling what appears to be raw cinnabar with their bare hands, I wouldn't say the odds are good there.
I hadn't realized until this round of The Blue Castle book club that the Stirlings don't ever celebrate Valancy's birthday?? It goes so unremarked, in fact, that it's unremarkable to Valancy or the text itself.
LMM is just... so good at the tiny detail work that makes unhappy families so unique. No one is like, pushing Valancy down stairs like she's in an 80s soap opera, they're just neglectful and thoughtless in ways that seem so true, and their petty tyranny is something you'd expect to see in an r/AmItheAsshole post. And YET it is so different from the unhappiness of Jane's family in Jane of Lantern Hill or the unhappiness of the extended Starr family in the Emily of New Moon trilogy.
The Wellingtons are influential (rich) enough in the clan that they get to celebrate the anniversary of their engagement, even though it falls on the same day as Valancy's birthday. So her birthday gets pushed aside for their celebration - the celebration of when a Stirling was able to attract money to the clan?
Someone else pointed out that Cousin Stickles celebrates her birthday (something intrinsically about her), whereas Mrs Frederick only gets to celebrate her wedding anniversary - the moment that brought her into the Stirling clan. Their household doesn't seem to have much spare money or food, but I wonder if Mrs Frederick makes a point of celebrating that anyway to remind everyone that she 'belongs' in the family? She's obviously so desperate to retain the Stirling connection that she lets many of the other Aunts and Uncles dictate what her own daughter can and cannot do.
"the moment that brought her into the Stirling clan."
OMG YES THIS THIS THIS!!!! YOU HAVE FOUND THE UNIFIED THEORY OF STIRLINGS!!!
And I'd also noticed the asymmetry that one of our widows chooses to celebrate her anniversary and the other her birthday. But put that way, Christine's birthday and Amelia's wedding are events marking their entry into the Stirling clan. And Valancy, born a Stirling but always set apart in a subordinate role, doesn't get any celebration at all--her joining the family is something to be tolerated, not celebrated.
forever grateful i was simply too lazy to let the makeup industrial complex get its hooks in me. I was just like im not doing all of that. in fact. im doing none of that
What's sort of funny about what is, as far as I've observed, the commonest reaction to Charlotte Lucas accepting Mr. Collins's proposal, is that people tend to think think they're being very mindful of the historical realities surrounding marriage when they say that Charlotte did the right thing & Elizabeth was needlessly judgemental—and yet I think "Charlotte did the right thing & Elizabeth was needlessly judgemental" is a take that's, like, dramatically out of phase with Regency ideas about (and realities surrounding) marriage.
I don't quite know how to organise this post but here are my thoughts:
1. "Elizabeth Bennet represents romantic idealism; Charlotte Lucas represents pragmatism"
This take usually has reference to Elizabeth's younger age, as something that is causing or allowing her to be idealistic.
This take I regard as purely nonsense. Elizabeth never says or implies that she will only marry for "love." She says something of this sort in a couple of the adaptations—but it doesn't appear anywhere in the novel.
For another thing: if the point of this character comparison were that Elizabeth demanded erotic, romantic love, while Charlotte was happy merely with a practical arrangement, wouldn't Mr. Collins's characterisation be very different? He would be a reasonable, sensible, respectable man, who was nevertheless very boring. Elizabeth might respect, but not love or feel attraction to him, and would make it clear that she was rejecting him for this reason.
This isn't the case. Elizabeth rejects him because she doesn't respect him, and she sees all of his pompousness, selfishness, and ridiculousness; Charlotte accepts him despite the fact that she doesn't respect him, and has pretty much the same opinion that Elizabeth does of his mind. The disagreement between them isn't about whether they need to love their husband to be content, but whether they need to respect him.
2. What does Elizabeth think of Charlotte's engagement?
Elizabeth doesn't merely act like what Charlotte is doing is too self-sacrificing, or unpleasant, or boring, or not what she (Elizabeth) would do. She acts like it is indelicate, improper, and even immoral. Whether or not you agree with Elizabeth is of course up to you—I just want to try to lay out why, in her historical context, she thinks this way, because I don't think I've ever seen anybody address it.
What does Elizabeth think about this engagement (and remember, in her defence, that she never actually says any of this to Charlotte 😅)? She implies that accepting Mr. Collins means that Charlotte is lacking in "merit" or "sense." Jane advises her to "be ready to believe, for every body’s sake, that she may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin”—but Elizabeth rejects this idea, as she believes that Charlotte's "understanding" precludes her from feeling "regard" for Mr. Collins. She tells Jane:
"Mr. Collins is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man: you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who marries him cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Charlotte Lucas. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger security for happiness."
So Elizabeth thinks Charlotte accepting Mr. Collins is a decision that shows a want of "merit," "principle," and "integrity"; she rejects the idea that accepting Mr. Collins is a prudent choice (i.e. she does not believe that Charlotte has made a pragmatic decision); she thinks it is an improper, a selfish, and a dangerous choice.
3. What is the danger in marrying a man you don't respect?
"Dangerous" in what respect? Charlotte is in "danger" of what, exactly?
Elizabeth is speaking guardedly, but a clue to what she means can be found in Mr. Bennet's wariness about Elizabeth marrying Mr. Darcy, when he believes she doesn't respect him:
"I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband, unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing you unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about.”
So we see a theme of suitable versus unsuitable marriages in Pride and Prejudice. In the repetition of the word "esteem," a comparison is perhaps being drawn between Charlotte's engagement to Mr. Collins, and Elizabeth's engagement to Mr. Darcy; in Mr. Bennet's emphasis on the word "you," a comparison is certainly being drawn between his engagement to Miss Gardiner and Elizabeth's engagement to Mr. Darcy.
But I digress. The "danger" for a woman in a marriage that is unequal as to sense and understanding, wherein she does not respect or esteem her husband, is that she will face a temptation to lose her "credit" (basically, her reputation) and enter into a state of "misery," by engaging in an adulterous affair. (Here we might consider Maria and Mr. Rushworth.) A woman's affections, her mind, her ambitions and energies, her sexual pleasure and activity, are (by this way of thinking) only to be routed through the conduit of her home life in a heterosexual, reproductive marriage. Any other state of affairs (no pun intended) is an assault against religion, morality, and the very fabric of society.
As a piece of nonfictional context here, The Lady's Miscellany for February, 1812 includes an article "Upon Female* Infidelity, and the Corruption of the Present Age," which, like P&P seems to, attributes the cause of female infidelity to an injudiciousness in choosing a husband to begin with. It should also give you a sense of what at least one contemporary thinker believes the stakes of adultery to be:
Marriage seems [by the ladies of the present times] to be sought for to be despised, and the conjugal oath is taken to be violated. Yet it is acknowledged on every hand, that adultery is an heinous crime, and that nothing tends in so great a degree to disfigure society. [...] Adultery is not only allowed to be a crime by all polished nations, but it has been classed as the next in atrocity to homicide. It is a theft, of all others, the most cruel. It is an outrage that may lead to assassination and murder. Nor indeed is there any excess so deplorable, to which it may not give rise. [...] The husband, when he is informed of the infidelities of his wife, loses all affection for her; and she has already renounced all love to him. For her children she entertains no maternal tenderness; and her husband disdains an issue that is spurious. The children [...] grow up without education, and without manners; and when of age they are thrown upon the world to dirturb their fellow creatures, and to add to human calamity and wretchedness. The pleasures which the Almighty has annexed to the marriage-bed, are the means of multiplying the human species; and this effect is the certain consequence of marriage when regulated by virtue. On the contrary, irregular loves and disorderly embraces are pernicious to population. They produce barrenness; and while they lead to remorse and shame, they diminish the numbers of mankind.
So women who "seek for" marriage without having the appropriate reverence either for their husbands or for the institution, are in danger of violating the conjugal oath, which is immoral, and leads to the degeneration of all of society (maybe it sounds silly to put it like that—but remember that the modern attitude towards "cheaters" and "home-wreckers" is not precisely positive...). And Charlotte does, indeed, meet the description of a woman who wishes to be married despite not having a high opinion of her husband, or the institution of matrimony:
Charlotte herself was tolerably composed. She had gained her point, and had time to consider of it. Her reflections were in general satisfactory. Mr. Collins, to be sure, was neither sensible nor agreeable: his society was irksome, and his attachment to her must be imaginary. But still he would be her husband. Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object: it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want.
*The title perhaps addresses female infidelity in particular because it is printed in a magazine intended to be read by young ladies; the text of the article does also lambast the immorality of "men of fashion," and call for "both sexes" to preserve their "virtue."
4. But why esteem your husband "as a superior"?
cw: misogyny, domestic violence, implication of marital SA
Wives must obey their husbands in every respect, unless their husband orders them to do something which goes against a higher law—namely, that of God. It is ordained by religion ("your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you"), and by morality, and by nature, and whatever, that wives are naturally, rightly, justly, and properly in a state of religious, moral, and legal subjection to their husbands. When Eve sinned by attempting to gain preeminence over Adam, this subjection was the punishment. A husband ought to avoid giving orders his wife finds insupportable, if he can; he may choose to yield in trifles for the sake of domestic peace, or because he's a real nice guy, or because he's improperly weak (depending on the opinion of the writer in question)—but the final decision always rests with him, as a matter of the law.
Henry Venn, in The complete duty of man or, A system of doctrinal & practical Christianity (1811), writes:
If it be urged, that the wife has frequently more understanding and ability to govern than the husband, and on this account ought to be excused from living in subjection, the answer is obvious: she hath liberty to use her superior wisdom in giving counsel. But if her advice is not accepted, subjection is her duty. Suppose a servant, as is often the fact, endued with more capacity than his master, would it not be insufferable insolence, should he urge this as a reason for refusing to be any longer under control, which, on another account, was indisputably his duty, viz. from his station in life? An attempt, therefore, to gain the ascendency is an attempt to subvert the order which the sovereign Giver of all wisdom has appointed. Base return for his bounty! The Christian rule is positive against such an usurping spirit: the command is, "Let the wife see that she reverence her husband." In opposition to natural pride, let her carefully check the first desire to have her own will, and see she be not wanting in submission; for this behaviour is most becoming a woman professing godliness. Let her remember that God, the author of the marriage state, has appointed this subordination.
You owe your husband your obedience, and have pledged it to him before man and God. Your only choice is the choice of husband in the first place—your only power is the power of veto. If you did not feel that your husband merited your obedience, and was suited to be to you what Christ is to the Church ("For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church")—the intermediary between yourself and God, the person who is charged with ensuring your understanding of and compliance with the precepts of religion, your Saviour—then your chance of not electing him to that position was before you married.
You cannot file for divorce unless you can prove desertion or cruelty (and the bar here is high—your husband is allowed to inflict "corporal chastisement" for your own good if you are disobedient). Even then, you cannot remarry—once you have gotten married, you have chosen your one and only sexual partner for life, unless he dies. You owe him your body, you need a very exceptionally good reason to deny him that right, and you cannot re-transfer that right to anybody else while he lives.
This is why young ladies are advised so particularly to mind that any man they accept be virtuous, industrious, sober, & without a colourful past.
I think it's also why Jane urges Elizabeth to "Consider Mr. Collins’s respectability, and Charlotte’s prudent, steady character." Mr. Collins is at least not likely to physically harm his wife, or drink to excess, or gamble away household funds; and Charlotte is too "steady" to be likely to engage in an adulterous affair. She's telling Elizabeth that at least the most dramatically bad effects of an unequal (in terms of sense and understanding) marriage are unlikely to apply here.
The point remains, though, that Charlotte does not believe Mr. Collins to be capable of guiding her, or even collaborating with her, in her religion, her housekeeping, childrearing, or any other aspect of life. She knows him to be her inferior in understanding, and yet is electing him to be her superior according to the law and the Church.
For Henry Venn, when husbands are not obliged to rule over their wives with "benign influence," but find their wives sensible enough that they may collaborate in religion, then
Their spiritual good will be a chief and mutual concern. They will be tender-hearted inspectors of each other's conduct, meekly correcting errors, which unnoticed would have struck root, or pointing out faults before they are confirmed into habits. [...] As the nuptial union gives the parties much influence to be either greatly serviceable or hurtful to each other's eternal interests, they must look upon themselves as bound in conscience to use all their weight against the corruptions of the heart, against pride, unbelief, and wordly lusts, through which their salvation is most endangered.
But Mr. Collins is too prideful to accord with these precepts, and too foolish to be corrected in this way. When Charlotte is able to influence his behaviour, it is through more underhanded means, and is usually in an effort to avoid his company (encouraging him to be out in his garden; choosing for her sitting-room a room which he does not value).
This is the kind of context we have to keep in mind when evaluating Elizabeth's statement that "the woman who marries [Mr. Collins] cannot have a proper way of thinking." Mr. Collins is not competent to the role of spiritual guide: the woman who marries him either believes that he is so competent, and is thus lacking in "understanding"; or she marries him even though she knows that he is not so competent, and is thus lacking in "integrity" (because she swears her obedience despite knowing she may be unable to keep the oath).
My argument isn't so much that Elizabeth necessarily believes women's subjugation to be natural and right—rather that, since the reality is that you are legally obligated to obey this man (and to have sex with him), it is more sensible, more moral, and more practical and prudent (!!!) to select a man you have a reasonable chance of being able to abide doing those things with. It saves you the trouble, and the dishonesty, involved in trying to finagle your way around a husband you don't respect.
5. Does P&P agree with Elizabeth?
Hopefully you can see that "the implied author's perspective," "Elizabeth's perspective," and "the reader's perspective" are all different things. In this post I have tried to explain (as I see it) what Elizabeth's position is and why: this is distinct from arguing that P&P argues that Elizabeth is right, which is distinct again from saying that I think Elizabeth is right.
What do we know about P&P's perspective on Charlotte's marriage? We have the above-quoted Mr. Bennet conversation. We have a pattern of equal marriages contracted through mutual respect and esteem, in which each partner may influence the other for the better (the Gardiners, the Bingleys, the Darcys); and unequal marriages, contracted for reasons of lust, pride, security, acquisitiveness, or social climbing (the Bennets, the Wickhams, the Hursts, the Collinses).
Regarding Wickham's courtship of Mary King, it is said that:
The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most remarkable charm of the young lady to whom he was now rendering himself agreeable; but Elizabeth, less clear-sighted perhaps in this case than in Charlotte’s, did not quarrel with him for his wish of independence. Nothing, on the contrary, could be more natural; and, while able to suppose that it cost him a few struggles to relinquish her, she was ready to allow it a wise and desirable measure for both, and could very sincerely wish him happy. (emphasis mine)
This might support the case that the implied author feels Elizabeth to be seeing clearly when it comes to Charlotte—then again, it may mostly emphasise her lack of clear-sightedness when it comes to Wickham. But either way, the implication seems to be that this sort of "prudence" without affection is not wise or desirable, and Elizabeth is not seeing clearly when she thinks it is. In Wickham's case, but not in Charlotte's, Elizabeth is fooled into thinking that "selfishness is prudence."
We know Mrs. Gardiner to be a sensible woman, to whom Elizabeth and Jane owe much of their own good conduct. Mrs. Gardiner does not seem to approve of Wickham's engagement:
“But, my dear Elizabeth,” she added, “what sort of girl is Miss King? I should be sorry to think our friend mercenary.” “Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end, and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is mercenary.” “If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall know what to think.” “She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of her.” “But he paid her not the smallest attention till her grandfather’s death made her mistress of this fortune?” “No—why should he? If it were not allowable for him to gain my affections, because I had no money, what occasion could there be for making love to a girl whom he did not care about, and who was equally poor?” “But there seems indelicacy in directing his attentions towards her so soon after this event.” “A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant decorums which other people may observe. If she does not object to it, why should we?” “Her not objecting does not justify him. It only shows her being deficient in something herself—sense or feeling.”
Everyone, including Elizabeth, admits that Wickham does not care about Mary King. His match with her is not, to Mrs. Gardiner, better than his match with Elizabeth would have been. For Miss King to accept him even with the evidence before her that he does not care for her (i.e., he switched from Elizabeth to Marry after she gained a fortune) means that she is not thinking or behaving rightly. This is pretty much what Elizabeth thought of Charlotte for accepting Mr. Collins—who also switched his affections, in a short period of time, from Elizabeth to her (& recall that Charlotte feels Mr. Collins does not really care for her). It seems like, for Mrs. Gardiner to approve of a marriage, we need both: the partners need to respect or care for each other (Mrs. G does not say which); and the couple need something to live on. All of the "good" marriages in P&P meet these requirements.
We do not, however, see Charlotte Collins sinking into distress and misery. P&P is a novel uninterested in real, lasting calamity (even Lydia manages to cling onto respectability). When Elizabeth sees Charlotte in Kent, we read that:
[The Parsonage] was rather small, but well built and convenient; and everything was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency, of which Elizabeth gave Charlotte all the credit. When Mr. Collins could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout, and by Charlotte’s evident enjoyment of it, Elizabeth supposed he must be often forgotten. [...] Elizabeth, in the solitude of her chamber, had to meditate upon Charlotte’s degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding, and composure in bearing with, her husband, and to acknowledge that it was all done very well.
In the end, Charlotte is making the best of a bad situation. When she reflects that marriage "was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their pleasantest preservative from want," it is an acknowledgement that, however desirable it may be for women who don't have a high opinion of men or matrimony to get married, it isn't always practicable, because a genteel woman making any other provision for herself (e.g., by going into service, or doing sex work) is varying degrees of un-respectable or dishonourable.
6. In Summation
Elizabeth does not see the decision of accepting Mr. Collins as a decision between romance and practicality. Romance doesn't enter into her thoughts here, and she does not think that accepting Mr. Collins would be a practical thing to do.
The ideological / historical context of Elizabeth's world helps to explain why she thinks this. Other characters seem to agree with Elizabeth (Mr. Bennet; Mrs. Gardiner; even Jane, when trying to make the best of the situation, does so by arguing "that [Charlotte] may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin," not that it doesn't matter whether she does).
The novel arguably does something to present this as a societal problem, rather than only a result of Charlotte being individually lacking in sense.
Bird drama
A few days ago I saw a few crows making some noise, and I noticed they were looking at a leafy tree across the street. Something was moving around in the tree, something on the largeish side. At first I assumed it was a squirrel, but then I got a glimpse of what was clearly a raptor. And then I got a better look: it seemed to have a dead crow in its talons! The raptor had a boldly striped tail and a blondish head, and the back seemed sort of uniformly brownish, but I didn't have binoculars, so there may have been more patterning. It eventually flew off, carrying what looked like a dead crow, and pursued by two other crows. A few minutes later I saw at least a half-dozen crows circling around and landing in the top section of a very tall conifer; I imagine the raptor had landed there.
I didn't think the raptor was large enough to be a red-tailed hawk, but it certainly could have been a (maybe immature?) red-shouldered hawk? I don't think the top of the head was flat enough for a Cooper's hawk.
The thing is... most hawks do not hunt crows, do they? They sometimes eat crow nestlings, but the bird it was holding appeared to have adult feathers.
@lies, any thoughts?
gif for frolicking and prancing and such
I've seen a little bit of questioning over the categorization of TBC, so let me share a journal entry from Montgomery as found in the introduction to The Blue Castle: the Original Manuscript, emphasis mine:
On Wednesday [February 4] I finished a novel, The Blue Castle—a little comedy for adults.
So while TBC may be shelved as YA, Montgomery wrote it with an adult audience in mind.
It was definitely not wrote for children, even if people were seeing Maud as children literature author only! Entry from biography Lucy Maud Montgomery. The Gift of Wings by Mary Henley Rubio says:
This novel was certainly not written for children. It was even banned from some church libraries. First, it has an unwed mother in it, but, worse, when Roaring Abel skewers religious hypocrisy, he is so funny that readers cannot help laughing. Apparently, no one saw that this novel was close to being Maud’s own spiritual autobiography, a spillover mid-life crisis. It is ironic that at the same time Maud was choosing older heroines and mature themes for her novels, she was being demoted to the children’s shelves of bookstores and libraries by changing literary styles and other forces. This novel was the first to be banned in some libraries.
And that one:
Frustrated by what was happening to her [Maud's] own reputation through the latter 1920s, she began to grumble privately about being demoted to “only a children’s author.” She had written The Blue Castle in 1926, intending it to be a story for adults. Instead, it was often treated as a children’s book and, as a result, its mature content got it banned for children in a number of places. While she was censored for mentioning an unwed mother (who dies, no less), young writers like Callaghan were earning praise for sympathetic treatment of down-and-outers and prostitutes. It did seem unfair. The only consolation was that, despite the fact that it shocked her Sunday School readers, The Blue Castle sold well, and her publishers wanted more of the same.
Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her.
I want to put a pin in this for later to track. Because Valancy says here that what hurts her isn't being an old maid (she ranks that above being married to a man she doesn't love or respect) but that No man had ever desired her.
It's a real highlight of the patriarchy here. Valancy wouldn't marry someone she didn't want to be married to, but there's a sense that because men in general have not deemed her worthy of their desire, that she has failed in being a woman. There is a hurt for her in this. Not only because she wants romance, but because every other girl or woman in this story has been wanted but her.
What I want to track is how/if Valancy develops her sense of self away from this patriarchal idea of men's opinion of her determining her self-worth.
The reblogs to this post point out that Valancy has an abusive family and a material interest in getting married. These things are definitely true but I think they do not take away from the fact that Valancy also defines her self-worth through men desiring her in a way that goes beyond the independence from her family that marriage entails and the material interest of marriage in her time period. And The Blue Castle, being a romance novel, ultimately doesn’t necessarily challenge that idea.
But despite the possible criticisms of Valancy’s mindset here and of her worth being “proven” by a man’s love in the novel, I felt this sentiment in the quote above. This part hadn’t yet changed in 2026. An “undesired” woman is still considered worthless. And I admired the book’s honesty here and when I read this paragraph for the first time I had already loved the book and I loved Valancy. Valancy doesn’t need to be a flawless feminist in her sense of self-worth. She is a flawed woman from early 20th century.
I don’t know. This book is about a woman in an abusive family dynamic becoming independent, that’s true, but it is also about a previously undesired “unattractive” shy late-bloomer daring to desire and be desired. Both parts are important in my opinion.
the fact that it's both is so important and one of the reasons it still resonates! all this stuff is so tangled up in valancy's mind and in society! one of my favorite quotes about writing is katherine anne porter's "there's no such thing an exact synonym and no such thing as an unmixed motive." both valancy's feelings (and the why of how she feels) and maud's choice to dive into them are absolutely mixed.
and the material considerations may be more important or resonant to one reader and the gender expectations may be more important or resonant to another! that's what good writing does!
this book is a wish fulfillment fantasy. but it isn't a fluffy and shallow one both because maud leans hard into the ugliness of life in the first few chapters, rooting the story in a world that we recognize as our own and not a fairyland, and it still has enormous appeal to readers (especially women) a hundred years later because it's got so many different fantasies to offer to different people!
do you dream of falling in romantic love and being loved in return? do you dream of just having a wonderful companion who understands you and speaks to your soul and also knows when to give you your alone time? do you dream of not having to worry about money? do you dream about escaping from your abusive family and/or their expectations? do you dream about just saying out loud all the things you've been choking back your entire life? do you dream about building a life of your own choosing? do you dream of living in a little house in a forest? do you dream of proving everyone wrong about you? do you dream of showing the whole world that you're more than they ever thought you were or allowed you to be?
i would venture to say that all of us who love this book dream of at least one of these things, and most of us dream of multiple ones, and it's so cool that maud manages to speak to all of us across the world and the generations!
the faded old motto, “Gone but not forgotten,” worked in coloured yarns about Great-grandmother Stirling’s grim old face; the old photographs of ancient relatives long banished from the rooms below.
Valancy's room is where they keep all the relatives that nobody cares about.
This is such a great point— Valancy is already dead in some ways, before the diagnosis. She’s breathing in the odor of dead things, shes living in a mask lurk to the family. Her family has slowly killed her and entombed herd
Blue Caste Book Club thoughts on Chapter 1
It's a rainy May day where I am, and I am so delighted to be diving into Valancy's world again, as miserable as she may be at the outset.
Queen Maud is at it again with her evocative descriptions, and I feel every wince and cringe of Valancy's in her cramped and neglected room. I was also surprised to see a few French terms I didn't recognize, which revealed some interesting layers once I looked them up in the Merriam Webster online dictionary:
Lambrequin: ": a short decorative drapery for a shelf edge or for the top of a window casing," otherwise known as a valance. Surely Queen Maud meant some wordplay here, no?
Passe-partout: "a method of framing in which a picture, a mat, a glass, and a back (as of cardboard) are held together by strips of paper or cloth pasted over the edges." Very fitting for the theme of cheap lack of artistry, or at least artistry to Valancy's taste.
Regarding her imaginary ideal lover, I love how her taste changed as she grew older, encompassing a wide variety of physical features and personality traits. I also find it interesting that she doesn't imagine herself past 25--is this based on her personal ambivalence around getting older or the limited expectations and tactless jokes from her relatives? I'm inclined to think the latter, as she also mentions not particularly minding being an "old maid" in itself.
The choice of descriptors for Aunt Mildred--"oppressively competent"--is contradictory yet somehow makes complete sense to me. More brilliant and effective wordsmithing from Queen Maud.
Reading the following passage about John Foster's books, I see an echo of her family's sentiment around being alone in one's room, particularly in the use of the word "dangerous":
Valancy was never allowed to read novels, but John Foster’s books were not novels. They were “nature books”—so the librarian told Mrs. Frederick Stirling—“all about the woods and birds and bugs and things like that, you know.” So Valancy was allowed to read them—under protest, for it was only too evident that she enjoyed them too much. It was permissible, even laudable, to read to improve your mind and your religion, but a book that was enjoyable was dangerous.
Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but after @wildhoneyvalancy's post I can't help but think that it also might be a reference to masturbation or other forms of female pleasure. The books might not be novels, but "woods and birds and bugs and things like that" is a vague enough description that it could very well encompass thrilling, titillating, or otherwise taboo material, under the guise of nature education. Which makes me like the librarian character even more, even if Valancy doesn't actually experience his writing that way.
The last thing I'll mention from this chapter is the curious choice of family nickname for Valancy. Does "Doss" mean anything in the context of the time, or is it literally as defined in the dictionary, "a crude or makeshift bed"? There may be another metaphor here, but I'm mystified as to what it might be. Unless it's a reference to their belief that Valancy is sickly and inclined to stay in bed often, an irony in itself given their suspicion of women who prefer solitude.
Ha! I never realized that John Foster’s novels are literally Vacancy learning about the birds and bees and the pleasures they can come from knowing them! Subtle LMM.
in the tags whats something you love that has been discontinued
Weekend in the mountains
This weekend we went to the mountains for a brief change of scenery. A friend of ours was willing to drive, which was what made this possible. We had a great time, despite non-ideal weather.
Overpacking report
Upon returning from any trip, I post an overpacking report in order to try to cure myself of tendencies that I first became fully aware of after the Great Sock Overpacking Incident of 2015.
Wife and I went with a friend to the mountains for the weekend. Packing was slightly complicated because it was pretty hot when we left home, but the temperatures at nearly 7000ft of elevation were considerably lower (despite daytime highs having been warm during the preceding week).