i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point
these exchanges and this fiddling about for the collective to appreciate in passing is, to me, true artistic spirit. I don't know what the past was truly like to live, but in my heart i know that humans have always been... like this
listening to fleetwood mac is like. i don’t know this song but let’s give it a shot. oh wait i do know this song. i’ve heard it a million times and always liked it, i just didn’t know the name. on some level i kind of assumed that song was just an ambient part of the world the way the sound of the wind or birdsong in the trees was but apparently it’s by fleetwood mac. neat.
Anyway shoutout to John Williams, amazing composer and probably the one who made the other 50% of "holy shit amazing" soundtracks (Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Superman, and incidentally the original Harry Potter theme and score) who famously worked closely with the first openly transgender woman to be nominated for an Academy Award, Angela Morley. He respected her, and so far as I can see, has never made transphobic remarks.
Adding to anyone who's interested that I personally am currently obsessed with the works of Max Richter!! He did soundtracks for e.g. the recent Hamnet, Mary Queen of Scots, and My Brilliant Friend (the series)
Just read that in the past people described panic disorders as “suffering from nerves” and realised Mrs Bennet literally had panic attacks that were turned to comedic effect in the book and the movies and it probably stemmed from lack of emotional support from Mr Bennet and the fact that once her (much older!) husband passed away, she and her five daughters might remain homeless unless one of them married that terrible Mr Collins.
And I just feel so guilty for seeing her like a caricature until now. Like yeah she wasn’t educated and she suffered panic attacks everyone made fun of and she was a gossip but tbh aren’t we all a bit like her? Like why make fun of her for never having an opportunity to study and never having been encouraged learn how to behave in high society? Tbh I’d have been a lot more vocally displeased at my husband if I found myself married to someone as emotionally avoidant as Mr Bennet.
To sum it up, we need justice for Mrs Bennet. We don’t even know her first name 😭😭😭😭
I don't think such a desire to want 'justice' for Mrs Bennet is inherently a bad thing. I think it comes from a good place, of having empathy for a woman who was mistreated by a man who rushed into marrying her because he, to be slightly crass, thought not with his brain but with his... y'know...
But I do think it is somewhat misguided, as the circumstances are not as simple as poor-innocent-Mrs-Bennet-being-a-point-of-ridicule for everyone around her.
It should be noted that Mr Bennet being older is fanon, rather than canon. We have no idea how old either of them are. Though Mrs Bennet is often depicted as being older in adaptations, she could still be in her forties (or even her late thirties!) if she married young.
While Mrs Bennet being denied those opportunities is sad to think about, she was far from the only woman to have been denied them (not that this makes women being denied a similar level of education as men okay, it's just important to hold her to similar standards as her contemporaries) and crucially that is not why she's a bad parent. It is her selfishness and vanity that caused her to make numerous mistakes and behave inappropriately in a society that she would be well-used to, as she has been a country gentleman's wife for a couple of decades by the time of the novel. She would know that outstaying one's welcome, like the Bennets do at the Netherfield Ball when their carriage is the last to depart, is wildly inappropriate. She does it anyway, because she doesn't care about propriety.
Austen conceived Mrs Bennet as a funny character, and she absolutely is. She knows she is being dramatic, and she relishes in the attention she gets (even though it has long since began to wear thin on those she lives with). Mrs Bennet constantly goes on about her nerves and then complains that nobody understands how much she suffers with her nerves! She's not a passive participant in this whatsoever, she actively draws attention to her 'nerves' (and her being so worked up about the future is due to her neglect).
But there is also a more sinister side to her character, aside from the humour...
She has no sympathy for her daughters who may actually be suffering from physical complaints (she snaps at Kitty for coughing, and remarks that 'people do not die of little trifling colds' when Jane is sick, which is obviously wrong in a time before antibiotics!!) as though she cannot stand that they might get a crumb of attention/sympathy. Mrs Bennet isn't an example of a woman who had a serious mental health condition that was dismissed due to misogyny (I'm currently reading The Woman in White and that has a pretty clear case of a woman confined to an Asylum by men with nefarious intentions) or was unfairly scapegoated.
As I discussed here there are multiple examples in the novel of how she behaves inappropriately; she is responsible for neglecting the education of her daughters and ruining their chances by not putting aside an appropriate sum of money for their dowries. This reblog from @taradactyls further discusses her shortcomings and provides an excellent breakdown of the extent of the Bennets' financial irresponsibility.
Lastly, Mrs Bennet not being given a first name shouldn't be read into much, other than perhaps showing us that she and Mr Bennet don't enjoy a close/happy marriage, as if they did perhaps he would've called her by it at some point. But other than that, I don't think it's for any malicious reason that her name is omitted from the narrative, it's reasonably common in Austen novels. We are never told the first name of Colonel Brandon for example, and he's one of the main characters in Sense and Sensibility!
Anyway, it is absolutely possible to feel sorry for Mrs Bennet, as her husband unquestionably failed her... but that sympathy must be tempered by acknowledging her numerous character flaws, and understanding that if she was in distress due to the future, it was only because she was responsible for creating one so bleak for herself and her daughters. Ultimately, she is not meant to be viewed as a sympathetic character, and I don't believe that she should be treated as such.
Jumping into the discussion even though the tag wasn't actually a summons, lol.
So, OP, I absolutely love how you're looking critically at something dismissed in literature that we've now got greater empathy for and understanding of. Keep doing that.
I think there is a fascinating conversation to be had about Mrs Bennet's nerves and how they're treated, but to me that's more about Jane Austen herself and the society she was writing in rather than the character. Because as bennetsbonnet says, Mrs Bennet the character isn't secretly a sympathetic person whose serious concerns and medical issues are being overlooked. There absolutely were real women whose medical concerns were treated as trivial (as they still are today) and characters where I think this reading can be supported (Mrs Hale in North and South comes to mind) but I don't believe the text supports this interpretation of Mrs Bennet's nerves.
(As a side note, I think not only that we definitely can't say that Mrs Bennet had a considerably older husband, but that the text most supports that they both married young. The way we see Mr Bennet talk about and reflect on his past very much fits someone who matured considerably after marriage instead of just growing jaded. And there doesn't seem to have been an established habit of saving the estate's income before he married nor evidence of anything which would explain how he was burning through all that money himself before marriage - so him coming into possession of the estate, and his marriage, may have all happened quite quickly. Particularly since her father was located in Meryton, the phrasing of which in the novel doesn't imply it was a super recent thing, and yet somehow they didn't know each other well before they married. Perhaps Mr Bennet was away for schooling or doing a continental tour, both of which would make him very young. I also feel the discussion of the money makes it seem like there wasn't much parental oversight over spending or how to manage the estate, which also speaks to youth rather than having had time to learn from his father or as an adult himself. I actually think it would be easier to argue, with the textual evidence, that Grandpa Bennet died when Mr Bennet was young and so Mr Bennet was about 21 suddenly managing an estate without guidance when he met the pretty Miss Gardiner and married her. But both that specific scenario and him being much older is speculation - I just wanted to demonstrate how the exact opposite could be just as likely.)
But back to Mrs Bennet.
She actually gets a lot of attention when complaining of her nerves! No one ever tells her to stop because she's just being silly or imagining it, even when they privately think she's overdoing it, and her daughters and servants remain obedient to her whims and are seen waiting on her. At the worst of it, when she's very justifiably upset over Lydia's elopement, she's able to shirk her responsibilities towards the household and other daughters and hole-up in her room and no one stops her. Her eldest daughters (despite their own extreme stress) and the housekeeper quietly pick up the slack, and keep the place running.
Even though Mr Bennet makes the comment: '"This is a parade," he cried, "which does one good; it gives such an elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same; I will sit in my library, in my nightcap and powdering gown, and give as much trouble as I can;"' (ch48) he also leaves Mrs Bennet alone to cope with her nerves how she will. As a character, her nerves are extremely indulged.
And given how the nerves present themselves, I don't think they're panic attacks. Obviously mental health isn't uniform, but as someone unfortunately familiar with anxiety disorders and panic attacks I don't see any similarities to that in Mrs Bennet's nerves outside of those times when other characters are also experiencing anxiety (Lydia's elopement, primarily). Her nerves generally manifest when she's annoyed and wants others to know it, isn't getting her way, and is thinking about issues she will continue to knowingly make worse rather than fix. They also never stop her from doing anything she wants to do, and can immediately disappear as soon as she's gets her way or finds a happy distraction. Which is not at all similar to someone in the midst of a panic attack.
I think if we're going to diagnose with modern terms in mind, there's more evidence for Mrs Bennet to simply be someone self-centred with a low emotional IQ who doesn't know how to express her negative emotions without complaining. Whether this is entirely her own responsibility, or exacerbated by her situation, is debateable.
Obviously this makes Mrs Bennet an incredibly unsympathetic example of someone who complains of nerves. And I think Jane Austen is consistently derogatory towards vaguely-ill or weak women in her books who push their conditions onto others via avoiding responsibility or being very vocal about it (I'm classifying Lady Bertram in this category, and the sisters in Sanditon too). Notice that Jane Fairfax, who does seem chronically ill but isn't treated as ridiculous by the text: isn't known to complain, never expects others to adjust for her, and goes out of her way to appear nothing but healthy when her health does allow her the energy to function normally. That seems to be when chronic illness is acceptable and believable instead of being a mark against the weakness of one's character.
There's a lot of theories that this stems from Austen's own mother being a hypochondriac (though I'll explain later I dislike applying that dismissive term to her) and having to live with that all her life made Austen sceptical and unsympathetic towards anything we might now classify under terms like chronic illness or mental health struggles.
But this idea that women who randomly complain of feeling poorly and are often weak and out of spirits are overplaying the issue for whatever reason is definitely not exclusive to Austen. Elizabeth Gaskell can sometimes be very bad with it. The trope's been around for centuries, and continued to persist in opposition to the Victorian appreciation for consumption symptoms to survive well into the modern day. I've often read, in historical novels, what amounts to 'so-and-so was simply too busy to have time to fancy themselves ill' in contrast to a character whose weakness and problems were being dismissed as unserious. Or using poor women still working and not laying about 'inventing' ailments for themselves as some sort of gotcha for indisposed wealthier women.
Again and again healthy characters, authors, and real contemporary people dismiss the vague lack of physical and mental fortitude in others (usually married mothers) as fancies of the mind or the symptom of laziness, not enough to do, or selfishness.
Personally, I hate this!
And I hate that the most vocal proponents of pushing this dismissiveness are often other women via their writings!
I don't blame them as individuals, it's much more the fault of society and lack of knowledge, but it sucks. Mental health wasn't understood, any health issues about reproductive systems were kept quiet, etc. A huge range of issues just got condensed to nerves and weakness that were mostly visible to others by the sufferer's actions in withdrawing more from society and not being lively.
Even today women with drastic period pains or complications with sex or lingering post-childbirth issues etc can get dismissed by women who also suffer/ed similar (but at a manageable level or for a shorter time) as dramatic and the feeling of 'well I got over it so you're just being weak.' How much stronger must that sentiment been back then, when they not only had less knowledge but were fighting to be seen in society as rational creatures and not constantly weak in body and mind? I can imagine some saw chronically ill women as traitors who preferred to buy into the infantising of women in order to have a more indolent life. Now we know it's likely 10% of women were suffering endometriosis, let alone the huge percentage who would've had serious and untreated mental health issues and other ailments.
And far from being healthier because they were busy, poor women simply didn't have a choice! They had to work or starve, or end up in a poor house. They also had worse life expectancies than wealthier women. They should've had the chance to lie down and rest when they were suffering, the injustice is that they couldn't, not that wealthy women were using their position to overreact and pretend at illness when they had nothing better to do. Which is a possibility that historical authors seem to not think of at all. That would require more introspection about the injustices inherent in class-based systems than their society was prepared for.
I also think it's telling that so many of those real and fictional women dismissed as hypochondriacs are married middle aged mothers. Some is sexism - men were/are both more likely to be believed, and back then had the means to seek treatment far easier than women - but I think there's something else too. Mental health and other chronic conditions can affect everyone, but lets look at some things specific to their situations:
How many women were anaemic from successive pregnancies? That wasn't understood. Or calcium deficient from breast feeding leading to weakening bones?
Woe be the women that had postpartum depression or the like.
UTIs would hardly be a 'respectable' conversation topic so it wouldn't be apparent to others what was going on, but are more common in women who have had children and are sexually active. To an outside observer, nothing would really be wrong and they don't seem sick until it's really dire, but they're still suffering without antibiotics and just have to hope their body can fight it off. And so how often did the infection linger? Or reappear? How many knew how to properly clean themselves to help mitigate that risk of a new UTI after sex?
How many got an STD or the like from their husband? Even if he was faithful during the marriage, he could've picked up something earlier. And that something could be as serious as syphilis. How many women felt they were able to be open about struggling with something like that? Or did they explain it away in vaguer terms that others could dismiss.
And on that note - there was no such thing as needing consent in a marriage. I'm not saying every woman was being violently raped, but since they genuinely believed it was their duty to be available when their husband showed an interest, how many were agreeing to sex when they weren't really feeling it because they believed it the objectively right thing to do? Even if the husband respected when his wife said 'not tonight,' how often would a wife express that honestly when she felt saying 'yes' was a God-given responsibility? What does that do to a psyche over years, especially when you love your husband and he genuinely cares about you and your wellbeing? Plenty of husbands who would never physically force or consciously coerce their spouse, and women who would have called themselves willing, would be in situations we would now recognise as deeply problematic and traumatising. The way sexism and a marriage functioned meant even the best-meaning of husbands was almost certainly unintentionally complicit in some form of abuse because how freely given can consent truly be, if there's no legal right to object?
If anyone had discomfort during sex - did they feel empowered to work out solutions with their partner, if it was something to do with the mechanics? Did they just expect that's how it was so it was never raised as a problem? What about if it was fine until tearing and scarring post-birth? How much was this just an accepted part of life? And it's not the sort of discomfort that you could explain to people, when you said you felt poorly, so would be some invisible complaint easy for others to dismiss.
No one appreciated how drastically menopause can affect women. Add that to the list of things minimised as nerves and over-reacting.
It just goes on and on and on.
I feel so much anger for all the women whose physical and mental health problems were dismissed. Who still continue to be dismissed.
Mrs Bennet isn't one of them per the text of the novel, but it's an interesting question about why she wasn't. Why were so many female characters who suffered from nerves or something vague depicted as overreacting by their authors in a way which indicates they felt most women who behaved this way were overreacting? Regardless of whether she's a symptom of Jane Austen's own biases or the character just fit best this way, there was a stereotype in society of reducing real women with real health problems into hysterical caricatures. And though Mrs Bennet isn't being ridiculed for panic attacks (I'm afraid she is just ridiculous) her characterisation may be both the product of and reinforcing that stereotype which is so detrimental to anyone (but particularly women) suffering from invisible ailments.
It appears that boredom lies behind the most creative ideas. That's why quarantine has produced some of the most entertaining activities. One of them is the Getty Museum challenge, that so many of you have already seen in our previous article here.
These are art in themselves, in a some of them point out what lockdown was like for us, they’re expressed themselves in a really cool way. But I think these are going to be talked about in the future.
areudirty
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
origamiaround
vaporwave
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
