a smile made for war @thervnkings - Tumblr Blog

Jane Austen gets a lot of credit (correctly, obv) for writing banger romance and biting satire about class but I don't think we spend nearly enough time talking about how she absolutely clowns on vanity and self-importance.

bethanydelleman

Not to be cliche, but Jane Austen's novels are a lot about how great power & wealth should come with great responsibility, and how most of the wealthy and powerful fail at that. She's asking questions like, "Is that insanely wealthy person polite, charitable, and considerate in a way that befits his station in life?" and she's finding most of them wanting.

mithrandirl

BILL NIGHY as MR. WOODHOUSE EMMA. (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde

greengableslover

Period-/Fantasyfilms + dancing

MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006)

CRIMSON PEAK (2015)

LITTLE WOMEN (1994)

KAMA SUTRA: A TALE OF LOVE (1996)

THE UGLY STEPSISTER (2025)

EXCALIBUR (1981)

ANNA KARENINA (2012)

SINNERS (2025)

LEGEND (1985)

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (2004)

EMMA (2020)

SNOW WHITE: A TALE OF TERROR (1997)

evidenceof

costume + color + scene

CHER HOROWITZ and EMMA WOODHOUSE 2/2 Clueless (1995) and Emma. (2020) adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma | Costuming by Mona May and Alexandra Byrne respectively

toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account

emma woodhouse is the funniest austen girl. she has one-sided drama with the most reserved girl who has done nothing but literally just mind her business. she gets angry about not being invited to a social event even though she would have said no just because she would have liked to be asked. she's said she's aiming to read more for years but has never actually read more. she refers to her best friend as being naive and not very smart and kind of manipulates her while simultaneously both complicating her life greatly from the moment they meet to being her ride or die. she is literally The Problem. she denies that she is The Problem. she makes me want to pull my hair out. I love her more than anything.

romancegifs

With whom will you dance?

EMMA (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde

evidenceof

"So okay, you're probably going, 'Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?' But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl." "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress her."

CHER HOROWITZ and EMMA WOODHOUSE 1/2 From Clueless (1995), Emma. (2020) adaptations of Jane Austen's Emma

sentrysvoid

EMMA. dir. Autumn de Wilde | 2020

nnschneider

"I asked ChatGPT--"

Well I asked George Knightley and he said it was better to be without sense than misapply it as you do.

fictionadventurer

Emma Woodhouse's story is about what it's like to be a side character in a Jane Austen novel.

Emma doesn't have an Austen heroine's story. She's not leaving home. She's not in danger of losing her home. She already has a comfortable home, and she's the beloved mistress of it. She doesn't have to worry about money, doesn't need to marry, and doesn't have any desire to marry. Yet she gets to be a supporting character in other Austen stories.

Harriet is the heroine of a Persuasion story--she falls in love at a very young age, and is persuaded to refuse him because of his low rank. She gets the Anne Elliot moment of rushing into a shop to avoid the rain, and unexpectedly encountering the man she rejected. She even gets the Lizzie Bennet moment of seeing a beautiful view of the house and grounds that could have been hers if she'd accepted his marriage proposal. Emma is the Lady Russell who persuades her out of a love match, but she's only a bystander for these other parts of the story.

Jane Fairfax is a poor orphan who has no home of her own, only friends and relatives to stay with. She and Frank have an entire romance plot happening off the page, but Emma gets only the barest glimpses of it. Emma has to piece together the truth based on the little she knows, and she gets it wildly wrong. But that's what you'd expect from a side character. Everyone was surprised when Darcy and Lizzie got engaged--from an outside perspective, no one else could see their convoluted romance plot. This book gives us that outside perspective--puts us on the periphery of the story instead of right in the middle of it.

Emma does get her own romance and her own happy ending, but for most of the book, she's at the edge of other people's stories. And it feels a bit like Austen's showing that you don't need to be the center of the story to have a story worth telling.

oatmealaddiction

I feel like some of you guys think "bad art" is like someone gluing rhinestones to a water melon, or a guy who made his own armchair out of Ohio license plates, or a trashy romance novel where someone says "the blue-eyed one kissed the brown-eyed one," when in reality bad art is a 1000000 Billion Dollar movie where none of the workers got paid and every single creative decision was market tested to see how lucrative of a profit it could foreseeably make to wow shareholders.