A more detailed question today! I've heard a variety of opinions on Caroline's true intentions in warning (or "warning") Elizabeth about Wickham -- how do y'all see it?
Here's the full exchange for reference.
"So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham! Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man quite forgot to tell you, among his other communication, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late Mr. Darcy's steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother thought that he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the way. His coming into the country at all is a most insolent thing, indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you, Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt; but really, considering his descent, one could not expect much better."
"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same," said Elizabeth angrily; "for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and of that, I can assure you, he informed me himself."
"I beg your pardon," replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a sneer. "Excuse my interference—it was kindly meant."
Was it in fact kindly meant? Or is the sneer more telling? Something in between? Some plausible primary motivations:
To help Elizabeth by hinting that Wickham isn't a good/safe person (it's clear from the book that the Bingleys have not been told anything about Wickham's seduction of Georgiana, but maybe she's picked up on enough to understand that he's a rake and/or dishonest)
To help Elizabeth by telling her about Wickham's parentage (i.e. make sure Elizabeth is fully informed before attaching herself to someone of low birth)
To defend Darcy's reputation
To mock/insult Elizabeth for being interested in Wickham (because of his birth and/or his character)
To provoke Elizabeth into defending Wickham (so that Caroline can tell Darcy about it later)
Of course there is a lot more nuance we could get into, but I wanted to allow for some combined options too so I kept the list very short!
What is Caroline's real motivation for giving Elizabeth this warning?
Reason 1 (kindly-meant warning that he's a bad person)
Reason 2 (kindly-meant warning about his parentage)
Reason 3 (defend Darcy's reputation)
Reason 4 (insult Elizabeth)
Reason 5 (provoke Elizabeth into defending Wickham)
Both 1 and 2, or something along those lines
Some combination of 1, 2, and 3
Both 4 and 5, or something along those lines
Some combination of 3, 4, and 5
Some combination of 1+2 AND 4+5 (with or without 3), she contains multitudes
Something else wildly outside the scope of all of these options
This batch of polls was a follow-up to the first batch about the main love interests. I kept the response options exactly the same so we could do direct comparisons.
Notes for context:
Respondents were asked to rate each protagonist "as a person, not as a character" (which is what I intended on the love-interest polls as well but it was a little more explicit this time.)
The polls also asked people to base their ratings on the books only, not on any adaptations -- "see results" explicitly included not having read the book or not remembering it well enough.
As before, who knows whether people followed the instructions -- tbh I personally found it harder to separate my opinions on "as person" vs "as character" for the protags than for the love interests. Regardless, these are Official and Binding.
Here they are, with the "see results" responses taken out. (Image description under the cut at the very end, didn't want anyone to be stuck listening to 42 numbers in alt text)
Some takeaways:
Anne is the most liked overall, with 90% positive responses (would date + love + like all count as positive). Elizabeth, Catherine, and Elinor are all in the 80-90% range, Emma at 75%, and Fanny and Marianne both in the low 60s.
Unsurprisingly, the top 4 most-liked are also the least-disliked, at or under 5% dislikers with no haters. The bottom 4 have notably more dislikers but still basically no haters -- very different picture from the men!
Fanny seems like the biggest surprise, I feel like she's stereotypically disliked a lot? Not by tumblr, apparently! 10% is nothing compared to Edmund, and she got way more love than Marianne.
And we can't let it go unmentioned that while Emma got the most dislikes, she's very far from living up to the prediction by Jane Austen of "a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like."
Anne is the most dateable protagonist, but didn't come close to Tilney (who got 30% dateable). Catherine and Marianne are the least dateable. (Obligatory disclaimer that the tumblr userbase is not representative of general dating preferences at large.)
Nobody on here is as polarizing as Edmund, but Emma just beats Marianne for most polarizing protagonist (with the metric I used last time of being able to start the most 1v1 arguments between positive and negative respondents).
To help us compare with the love interests, here's a combined version showing the couples next to each other, formatted to focus on the overall positive and negative spreads. (Image description under the cut)
The most striking differences are of course between Elinor & Edward and Fanny & Edmund; those guys definitely married up personality-wise. (As did Wentworth, but less significantly.) Lizzy, Emma, and Marianne were all slightly beaten out by their respective love interests. Catherine and Tilney are almost perfectly tied, although with a massive difference between would-date and love.
For completeness's sake, here's the percentage of "see results" votes. (Description in alt text for this one)
As with the men, this definitely doesn't correlate with popularity of screen adaptations, as I had originally expected would be the case if people wanted to see the results for a book they hadn't read. It somewhat correlates with controversy, so maybe it's a lot of undecided/nuance votes. No particular correlation between the couples either (except that Lizzy & Darcy both had the least see-results) so I won't bother posting a chart for that.
Thanks for voting, and as always, feel free to suggest poll ideas!
Image description for the first two charts under the cut:
Image #1: A stacked bar chart showing the responses for each poll.
A stacked bar chart showing the same data with each protagonist's love interest's data underneath hers. The bars are formatted such that Date, Love, and Like are combined, and Dislike and Hate are combined. OK is a transparent gap.
it's been a while since i posted any original polls, so for want of other ideas i'll set up the general opinion polls for the protags. feel free to send in suggestions!
Austen characters are coming to your house for a Thanksgiving potluck dinner! Hooray! But first, you've got to spin two wheels.
🦃 Spin this wheel to see which character is coming
🦃 Spin this wheel to see which dish they're bringing
Important notes! If you get a character who:
you don't know -> spin again
you don't like -> too bad, they're on your doorstep right now
is dead -> no they're not, they're alive now
is a kid -> yes they're still a kid, yes they still have to bring a dish
is Pug -> he doesn't have to bring anything, just lays in your lap, congrats!
If you don't celebrate US Thanksgiving, pretend it's any other holiday feast or dinner party if you like, but all the dishes on the wheel are typical US Thanksgiving foods.
How's your character's dish going to be?
Perfection
Excellent, but only because they bought it pre-made
Good enough for polite compliments but not seconds
Not very good, but hey, they tried
Not very good because they definitely did not try
Garbage
They brought the wrong thing entirely, oops
They forgot to bring anything at all, oh no!
They "forgot" to bring anything at all (they came empty-handed on purpose)
PUG!
Voting ended onNov 29, 2025
If you like, reblog and tell us which character you got, what they brought, and how Thanksgiving dinner went with them there.
So during the confession to Elinor in Ch 44 of Sense & Sensibility, Willoughby says this:
“To have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness! Is there a man on earth who could have done it? Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even then, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here—nor will I stop for you to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim—in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private—a circumstance occurred—an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort...."
When I first read the novel, I took this at face value and thought, "He would have proposed for sure," but now I read it and I have to wonder, he already had so much opportunity, I wonder if he would have bitten the bullet, given how much debt he was in at the time. So what do you think?
If Eliza had not been discovered, would Willoughby have proposed to Marianne?
Yes, he would have that day
Yes, eventually
No, the threat of poverty was too strong
No, for another reason
I'm not sure, but it would have been a disaster if he did
Voting ended onOct 23, 2025
Important note: I do believe that Willoughby loved Marianne, 100%, but love was not enough to conquer his greed or make him willing to suffer the consequences of his own actions. Selfishness won, but that doesn't mean the love didn't exist.
Time for another Jane Austen crack poll! Which Austen character would make the best superhero? Keep in mind that there are lots of different types of great superheros. Some are cheerful and idealistic vs dark and cynical, selfless vs self-centered, humble vs arrogant, physically strong vs mentally strong. There's no one superhero personality. You decide which is best.
If you like, reblog to say which character you picked and what their superpower would be.
Which Austen character would make the best superhero?
"Pride and Prejudice" poll: What is the reason for Kitty's apparent sickliness?
None: sickly sisters were just a fact of life before vaccines and antibiotics
An outward symbol of her weak-willed, high-strung personality
The cause of her weak-willed, high-strung personality
A trope subversion: you think she'd die, or at least fall ill, but she doesn't
Several or all of the above
Other
Voting ended onSep 30, 2025
Kitty is introduced coughing, is described as slight and delicate, tires easily, gets motion sickness in a carriage with drawn curtains, is deemed too frail to help nurse her mother when the latter takes to her bed after Lydia's elopement, and claims Aunt Phillips has told her that a trip to the seaside would do her good.
Fictional characters are normally in perfect health unless there's a plot reason for an illness. So why does Jane Austen paint Kitty as being sickly, when (a) she doesn't die, (b) she never has any health crisis, and (c) her sickliness doesn't define her character, the way it does, for example, with what little we see of Anne de Bourgh?
Is it just realism, because so many people were chronically sickly in the days before modern medicine? Os it an outward symbol of her personality? Or is it her "Freudian Excuse" (as TV Tropes would say) for her personality, explaining why she's such a hanger-on to her robust and strong-willed sister Lydia? Or since Jane Austen loved to subvert literary tropes, is this another case of it: introducing a frail, coughing girl, whom you'd think would either die or almost die by the end, only to make her state of health completely irrelevant both to the general plot and to the girl's own storyline?
Bed, wed, befriend, banish*: four Austen playgirls
(male playboys)
Bed
Lady Susan (Lady Susan)
Lucy Steel (Sense & Sensibility)
Maria Bertram/Rushworth (Mansfield Park)
Isabella Thorpe (Northanger Abbey)
Voting ended onOct 3, 2025
*as the punishment for sexual misconduct already falls more heavily on women, I am following Austen's example and banishing instead of murdering fallen women. Also, I don't think any of the "play" women do anything close to as bad as Willoughby or Wickham.
That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend his share of the offence is, we know, not one of the barriers which society gives to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than could be wished; but without presuming to look forward to a juster appointment hereafter... (Mansfield Park)
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