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Pride & Prejudice variation where eldest half-sister Caroline Bingley marries a widowed Mr. Bennet with five daughters and then gets her brother to rent Netherfield Park so she can throw her stepdaughters at him and his friend Darcy so her son doesn't have to support 5 spinsters

"Look Charles, there are five of them, four are pretty, they all have different personalities so there must be one who clicks with you, take her off my hands."

"Yes, Mr. Bennet STILL refuses to let me take them all to London. I could get these girls married off so quickly if I could get them there, you cannot even imagine."

All the girls have pristine educations and dowries because Caroline wants them GONE and she knows how to do it

bethanydelleman

Wouldn't she just marry them off to whomever just to dispose of them?

Caroline? The Queen of Networking? No, she's got five chances at making advantageous connections and she's gonna use them

bethanydelleman

#caroline bingley would be planning an entire caroline empire based on the advantageous connections she can make for the girls#i don't know why people are changing austen ladies into girlbosses when caroline bingley is RIGHT THERE

You get me @captain-kit-adventuress

Girl has PLOTS

bethanydelleman

#i do wonder if their marriage would be better or worse than w Mrs Bennet tho#like on one hand Caroline is smart and tuned in#on the other hand she probably wouldnt just leave Mr. Bennet alone w his books all the time#and she WOULD notice and get upset if he made fun of her#they also dont share very similar values#prob theyd end up just as dysfunctional in another way (from @sandersgrey)

I think they might actually get along. Caroline is very good at mirroring people, as she does with Mr. Darcy, and she'd quickly catch on to Mr. Bennet's way of cynically mocking those around him and join in. Caroline is well educated and intelligent enough that Mr. Bennet would probably enjoy talking to her, even if she's not quite at Elizabeth's level. And I think with Caroline getting the house in order, Mr. Bennet might be less likely to retreat to the library.

It might be unfortunate for the girls if they have two parents making cutting remarks about them instead of one, the dynamic in P&P is that Mr. Bennet insults his daughters and Mrs. Bennet defends them, but hopefully it doesn't go too far that way. Caroline would want to talk up the girls to others, so maybe she'd start good PR at home.

novawinter

I could see her also playing favourites. The favourite is Jane. She'd still dislike Lizzie for being cheeky and Mr Bennet would let Lizzie get away with it. However Kitty and Lydia would NOT be allowed to chase militia men with no prospects so Lydia's would be much less likely to run off with Wickham.

bethanydelleman

In the novel, Caroline likes both Jane and Elizabeth before she gets jealous, so she might prefer both of the older girls (though same age friends is different than being a stepmother). However, I think she might actually like Kitty best. If she sends Lydia away for strict instruction, I can see Kitty becoming Caroline's little shadow and Caroline would love having a toady.

captain-kit-adventuress

"[...]Caroline would love having a toady."

i always thought that was what louisa hurst was for, besides being her sister, lol.

but honestly, if caroline wasn't in london much because mr bennet hated it, i'm not sure louisa would be so content to stay at longbourn as she is at netherfield, so if the hursts go back to london, i think caroline would naturally look to one of the girls to fill that role, and who better than kitty, who's already had so much experience at it with lydia and is still in some way of being influenced by caroline?

i've always read caroline bingley not necessarily as mean and horrible like a lot of people say, but snobbish and self-centered, which is quite different. she'd want good matches for the girls for its own ends, but she'd be thinking of herself, too, because good matches for the girls reflects well on caroline. after all, what an accomplishment, to get happily- (or at least well-) settled those particular five girls, who started out with so little to recommend them! and as i said before, it's not like she wouldn't use it to help herself, either, by building the added social caché into the caroline empire, because being a person of high influence in society, even if only behind the scenes, was just as important then as it is today. imagine being able to say that you had the ear of the prime minister because your stepdaughter married an important MP or something! now imagine four more super important sons-in-law as well; caroline would dearly love being at the centre of that.

caroline would probably care about their happiness, too, if for no other reason than even one unhappy or ill-suited marriage would reflect poorly on herself, and three or four would put her own social position on much more precarious footing. unlike mrs bennet, who's ready to dump most of her girls, excepting jane, with the first decent man who gives them a second glance; this only reflects mrs bennet's own poor judgment in marrying off her girls, which is also a judgment on her. it's why she says that jane marrying well will put the other girls in the way of marrying rich men, both because of the social networking, and because it will help raise the social standing of the rest of the bennets. even if caroline thinks the same thing, she'd never be so crass as to say it out loud, because people knew how the system worked and didn't need the reminder. it's just mrs bennet bragging about her eldest in ways that actually hurt her chances rather than increasing them.

at absolute very least, caroline would have understood the entail, that there was nothing to be done about it, and that the business of marrying the girls well was her responsibility to take seriously, and she very much would. that alone would be a significant improvement on mrs bennet, and would probably be a relief to mr bennet, as well.

bethanydelleman

As for Louisa, I've always read her and Caroline as being in cahoots. A united front on capturing Darcy. After all, Louisa is married and she can't compete (I wrote a silly fic where Louisa is unmarried and they do compete for Darcy... but honestly I'm not sure they would. I think they would decide who had the best shot and try for that.)

Anyway, yes, it is in Caroline's interest to get the girls good matches, which reflects well on her and gives her more social networking.

HOWEVER, the AU I originally proposed is ILLEGAL since Charles Bingley would be the Bennet girl's uncle by marriage and I'm pretty sure that is not allowed. So Caroline Bingley could be an older cousin, same personality, still works. Ou, cousin and ward of the Bingley family, so her, Charles, and Louisa still grew up together but everything is legal. And she still has her 20k because I need to work with that.

(I did actually start this variation I while ago and now I want to go find it...)

#more

ekbelsher

She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.

#gorgeous

bethanydelleman

The Mysteries of Udolpho and Jane Austen, Volume 1 Chapter 3, Emily and her father, St. Aubert, are travelling through the mountains for his health (and to weep about the sublime), and they meet this man Valencourt:

St. Aubert was much pleased with the manly frankness, simplicity, and keen susceptibility to the grandeur of nature, which his new acquaintance discovered; and, indeed, he had often been heard to say, that, without a certain simplicity of heart, this taste could not exist in any strong degree.

This reminded me a lot of Lady Catherine for some reason: There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste

Or Edward Ferrars (said by Elinor Dashwood): "...He distrusts his own judgment in such matters so much, that he is always unwilling to give his opinion on any picture; but he has an innate propriety and simplicity of taste, which in general direct him perfectly right.”

#when I was reading this novel #which by the way I did not finish #(I feel it requires a multi day carriage ride)#I was going back and forth on whether he was Willoughby #or Brandon

katherinetheok

Been doing another Jane Austen reread and apparently this time around I've got on my Chronic Illness goggles because I can't get it out of my brain that Fanny Price probably suffers from a mild case of rickets.

But, Kat, what the fuck are rickets? (infodump incoming)

#fascinating #so many diseases linked to poor nutrition #read a book recently about scurvy — yikes — that one really sucks

heidi891

I think one of the biggest reasons why many people dislike Mansfield Park is that they expect a romance while it is not. None of Jane Austen's novels is just a romance, but Mansfield Park's romantic subplot is especially less enjoyable, compared to other books.

So Edmund? He's not that important. Fanny and Sir Thomas (as much as I despise him) are the main characters. Edmund is just a means to an end, which is Fanny becoming truly the daughter of Sir Thomas.

#mansfield park

bethanydelleman

How do you think the Bennet sisters parents would have raised them if the characters were all in a modern setting? Do you think the Bennet sisters would have had different parents? Or would they still be the bad parenting of Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Bennet? Would the sisters all have been closer in a modern setting?

I think the Bennets would be bad parents in any setting given their personalities (lazy and selfish), but their biggest problems are also deeply rooted in their era, meaning that a lot of the damage would be ameliorated.

For example, Mr. Bennet is so detached because he's very unhappy with his choice of wife. In a modern setting, nothing is stopping him from getting a divorce and trying again.

The lack of education? The Bennets would happily send their daughters to free public school. They probably wouldn't bother saving for university, but with scholarships, student loan programs, and the fact that the girls are allowed to work, it doesn't matter as much.

Modern Bennets don't need to have a son and heir, so they don't need to keep trying for a baby boy. They can have as many children as they want, maybe that's none. Maybe that's just Jane and Elizabeth.

The Bennet girls don't have to marry in the modern world, they can get jobs. Their mother's vulgarity matters a lot less. Their father's lack of saving for their future matters less. Lydia's big scandal matters less.

I think the Bennet sisters have a pretty normal sibling relationship and that probably wouldn't change much. Most people love but don't like all their siblings. It's normal for some siblings to get along better than others. Siblings are genetically-related forced roommates, there are going to be squabbles, you don't just automatically all like each other.

Pride & Prejudice is quite hard to modernize in my opinion because the tension is so tied to marriage and male inheritance. It has to be set in a conservative segment of society (2003 movie) or more conservative country, as they did in Bride & Prejudice. I have a hard time imaging how the story would work in mainstream Western culture.

volcanicmudbubbles

The way that Lydia’s behavior has such a profound impact on her sisters’ futures — this is also hard to modernize. (Especially in the U.S., the culture most familiar to me.)

I can imagine plenty of scenarios where one sister’s behavior would affect the others’ reputations — in high school especially, or in a really small community. But not their whole future. Family relationships just don’t matter the way they used to.

In a modern setting, Elizabeth would go to college clear across the country!

haveyoureadthisbook-poll

Have you read Persuasion by Jane Austen (1817)?

yes

no

I've read parts of it

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onApr 28

#hey Austen fandom have you read it

bethanydelleman

There is this common rebirth storyline I see in Korean/Chinese webtoons and dramas that goes like this: woman does what her family wants and gets married; she spends x years with her husband being the perfect wife but never getting anywhere/any thanks; then he kills her/she dies miserably and she is reborn before marrying her husband. At this point, she either gets revenge or just does her best to avoid her original timeline husband entirely and have a much better life.

What I love about this story line is it seems to solve what Anne Brontë with The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other authors were trying to figure out in their feminist works: how can you prove that a woman has done all she can to fix her marriage before leaving a terrible husband? It's hard to argue against, "She did everything perfectly and still died for it." I feel like when the woman is still alive, people want to argue that she could have tried harder, or done something better instead of accepting that no woman is obligated to or really able to fix a man. Or they want to see a groveling reconciliation between the couple no matter how unrealistic that may be.

Also, it's a far better repudiation of the mercenary side of arranged marriage to have someone who has been there and done that and now rejects it, rather than having a whiny teenager who dreams of true love. Her family's political schemes aren't worth more than the death she knows is coming.

I love this narrative. I love watching a woman follow all the stupid, hollow rules that society created and failing anyway, because it turns out that it was always a lie that being a perfect wife would somehow produce the perfect husband. I love women waking up from that lie, and from their death, and changing the entire narrative to alter their circumstances. And I love the writers screaming at every defender of the patriarchy in the audience.

If Anne Brontë lived today, I feel like she would have appreciated these stories.

(Some examples: Marry My Husband, Blossom, The Double, Perfect Marriage Revenge)

volcanicmudbubbles

I started watching these shows because you posted about them ❤️ I’ve enjoyed them so much! Although the 40-episode season is killing my sleep schedule.

(So far I’ve watched Blossom, The Double and a similar one you didn’t mention, The Princess Royal.)

I hadn’t thought about them as a redemption arc for the woman. My experience of them was more like fate saying oooooooops! In American terms we might phrase it as, “This timeline has gone so horribly wrong that we’re going to cut it off entirely.”

All of them so far have exquisitely capable women, and men who love and respect them for it, which ⭐️

#not Jane Austen

heidi891

I think one of the biggest reasons why many people dislike Mansfield Park is that they expect a romance while it is not. None of Jane Austen's novels is just a romance, but Mansfield Park's romantic subplot is especially less enjoyable, compared to other books.

So Edmund? He's not that important. Fanny and Sir Thomas (as much as I despise him) are the main characters. Edmund is just a means to an end, which is Fanny becoming truly the daughter of Sir Thomas.

#truth #mansfield park #it’s all about Fanny and Sir Thomas

bethanydelleman

I have to say Miss Bennet,

Finally they gave Caroline some good lines

#I am unable to watch this show #so I’m following the cliff notes version from b delleman #thank you for your service #the other bennet sister

To write a story in which women do women’s work, you have to find women’s work interesting — and you have to believe that other people will find it interesting, too.

Typically these are quiet little character-driven stories. Ursula LeGuin (myfavoritewriter) has written a lot of these but so has Austen — Northanger Abbey is a quintessential quiet story, where all that really happens is a girl goes to Bath and dances with a boy she likes, and then gets invited to his house (and kicked out, for zero reason). Well, that’s the plot; but in fact this is a coming of age story.

So: if you only write (or read) coming of age stories in which women pick up swords, there’s nothing wrong with it —

It’s just that you’re not writing (or reading) about all the other ways a person can grow up.

#misc #this is not meant to be gendered #I am referring to “’women’s work’ as a stereotype #regardless of who performs it

bethanydelleman

Transcript from Viking Women: wives, weavers, and warriors:

I want to pick up on exactly that last point that you've been talking about. And it ties us back also to the images that, you know, Greg, you conjured up at the beginning, it's sort of like Valky, shield maidens, hotness or not so hot. You know, it's like, it's feminist and it's also sort of quite reductive. And that's, it's a really tricky thing because there's a reason we love that, right? They're badass. I didn't go into Viking Age history because I want to sort of look at textile production all the time. I mean, don't get me wrong. Plenty of people do, but I didn't. I like the badass stuff, right? But there is an issue there, which is when we look back in time, especially at this sort of stereotypical hyper-masculine eras such as the Viking Age, it's that idea that women are only exciting or interesting and worth talking about if they're aping male role models and sort of like quite extreme ones at that. And what I'm trying to do in Embers of the Hands... it's like meet ordinary humans on their own terms. And that's particularly true of the women. It's a way to find, you know, it's how to bring their stories to life, not by shoving swords or axes in their hands, but, you know, although that does happen. In fact, there's one saga where a woman actually says, put an axe in my hands, okay? So that does happen there. But I think, historically speaking, women actually deserve better than that because their lives are so much more nuanced and multidimensional and more varied than these cartoon stereotypes. And so for me, that is my nuance window that women themselves are nuanced. - historian Dr Eleanor Barraclough

Join Greg and his guests to learn all about the fascinating women of the Viking age.

bethanydelleman

Tom to Edmund, "Our mother is so anxious right now!"

Lady Bertram:

RAMON CASAS, DECADENT WOMAN, 1899

Mansfield Park Memes, Ch 13

As he said this, each looked towards their mother. Lady Bertram, sunk back in one corner of the sofa, the picture of health, wealth, ease, and tranquillity, was just falling into a gentle doze, while Fanny was getting through the few difficulties of her work for her.

volcanicmudbubbles

One of the funniest moments in the book, especially because Tom and Edmund crack up over it.

Lady Bertram: the picture of health, wealth, ease and tranquility

#mansfield park

elumish

This may be a very lukewarm take, but I think one of the most important ways to establish tension in a story is to give actions consequences.

Not every consequence needs to be negative, and not every negative consequence needs to be catastrophic, but one of the easiest ways to kill the tension in a story is to teach your reader that it doesn't matter what the main characters do because everything will work out for them, and any setbacks won't have long-term consequences.

Because once you've taught that to the reader, then why should they care what the characters do? What does it matter whether they make the "right" decision because every decision will ultimately be the last one.

And once you've given your reader that for long enough, you can't really go back, because that will feel like a betrayal. You can't give the first negative consequence 3/4 of the way through the story, because you've already set up the story as one where actions don't have (negative) consequences.

When you're thinking about how to give actions negative consequences, consider that there are a many different types of consequences, including:

Physical (death, injury, disease, etc.)

Emotional (fear, concern, anxiety, sorrow, guilt, PTSD, etc.)

Social (loss of a relationship or friendship, mistrust from other characters, etc.)

Temporal (loss of time trying something that didn't work, additional time required for recovery, etc.)

Locational (loss of territory, displacement to somewhere else, etc.)

Autonomous (arrest, detainment, kidnapping, loss of ability to act of their own accord, etc.)

It can make the story more interesting (and more realistic) to not just focus on one type of consequence but instead to consider different kinds of consequences (positive and negative) a character would face for their actions. Maybe they end up better physically than they would otherwise--but they lose other people's trust by their actions. Maybe they save someone but lose time.

Make your characters' actions matter.

bethanydelleman

I think this can be a real problem in historical fiction, where for example, often characters will espouse very modern feminist beliefs and get basically no push-back. Or, there will be an emphasis on the strict rules of propriety, but then the heroine breaks them without facing any consequences (has sex before marriage, doesn't worry about disgrace or pregnancy).

If you set up the consequences of the past, then you need to carry out the consequences of the past or else it's just History as Aesthetic

#history as aesthetic #omg #is that a common phrase and I just never heard it?#let’s just put two modern people in carriages and funny clothes

bethanydelleman

Different Types of adaptations of written works:

Same names, maybe one or two broad concepts, otherwise it's a completely different story - this can make it easier to enjoy the work as it's own thing, but unfortunately for the original lovers, they won't be getting a faithful adaptation and probably not another for years and years. Makes you wonder why they couldn't just make it a new story (we know it's because of money) Examples*: The Bourne Identity series, Blood & Chocolate, iRobot, Ella Enchanted, I Am Legend, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Princess Diaries, World War Z, Love in the Clouds, Love of the Divine Tree)

It needed to be longer/shorter - making a novel into a movie meant sheering off a lot of interesting side-plots (poor Tom Bombadil and Goldberry!) or lengthening a book into an entire series (The Hobbit trilogy). This can be done well (writer understands how to snip), but more often it's done poorly (lost very important character development and plot)

Cannot stand on it's own two feet - characters actions and motivations are inexplicable unless you've read the original work. World-building is assumed and never explained. You read the original and spend the whole time going "Ohhhh"

Good Enough - but why did they leave out my favourite scene? (Timeline & The Time Traveler's Wife)

Captures the Spirit of the Original - may not be a perfect adaptation, but you really feel like the adapters loved the source material and tried their best to transfer it to another medium (Sense & Sensibility 1995, Warm Bodies)

Bane of your Existence as a Lover of the Original - if it was completely unfaithful it would be better, but if it's faithful enough, you'll spend the rest of your life fighting the incorrect portrayal of a main character (P&P 2005, Shy Boi Darcy) or explaining that the theme is actually completely different (Mansfield Park 1999)

Simplified the Themes Down to Pap - "You are the real monster" Frankenstein 2025

Foe Adaptation - did the creator hate the original work? Is this a complex and expensive revenge on their Gr 11 English teacher? Why did they make this if they dislike the original work so much!

Perfect Adaptation - does this unicorn exist? Captures the themes, vibe, and spirit of the original work while also keeping all your very favourite tiny scenes and characters. Everyone is cast like you imagine and the script is mostly taken straight from the source material.

*I only used examples that I've both watched and read

aceoftigers

I would add:

Too Close, a Little Too Close - slavish devotion to the source material without sufficiently considering how it works for the new medium (and potentially the new audience's contextual understanding)(Watchmen 2009)