Ceri’s Comments (group member since May 11, 2014)

Ceri’s comments from the Jane Austen group.

Well I haven't seen many Jane Austen sites but if you can do it I'd definitely have a day in Bath. It's a really gorgeous place. The Jane Austen Centre, The Assembly Rooms and fashion museum, The Pump Rooms (where you can have a lovely lunch and try the waters), No 1 Royal Crescent all worth a visit, and when you walk from the JA Centre to Royal Crescent you can go along the Gravel Walk that Anne and Captain Wentworth walked along after she read his letter :)

Andrea, that's a good point. I wonder how long it would have taken Edmund and Fanny to get together without the Crawfords to enlighten them? Since Edmund is blind and Fanny unable or unwilling to give him any indication of how she felt!

I don't think he saw her as a grown up woman until Henry Crawford was interested in her, she was the little cousin he needed to look after because everybody else ignored her or took advantage of her.

I hope Fanny made sure Susan got some chances of meeting people. She was only 14 when the story ended wasn't she so no need to rush!

I always wonder what happened to Susan Price, I hope she had some prospects, poor thing, because they didn't go out of their way to introduce Fanny to young men and they had two daughters out in society then. There would be far less cause for socialising once Maria, Julia and Edmund moved out.

I read Mansfield Park Revisited: A Jane Austen Entertainment which shows an idea on what may have happened to Susan, and in fact gives her a happy ever after, but if anybody can recommend a book featuring Susan Price please let me know!

I completely agree Soph :)

I always assume with things like this that they use JA's name in the headline just to get people to read the article because it's a recurring theme in her novels that people should not marry without affection, I think it's something she believed in very strongly.

Samanta wrote: "An interesting article...though I do not wholly agree with it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/a..."

Hmm, interesting article. It gets my goat when Austen's heroines are referred to as fortune hunters. It was just a fact that in those days, unless you had family you knew could support you or an inheritance waiting, as a woman if you wanted to do something 'extravagant', like for example eat and have some shelter to sleep under at nights you needed to marry. And you needed to marry somebody who earned enough to support you both and the possible half dozen children you'd have or you'd end up pretty miserable. That is not fortune hunting, that is reality, as unromantic as it is. These days women don't need to think like that because we are able to contribute financially, which is a luxury that Austen's heroines don't have, in the main (the exception that springs to mind being Emma, of course).

Poor Edmund! I wish JA had written the transference of his affections more romantically. I think he did love FP just as much as he ought, but the tone of the narrator in this part is pretty cynical.

And I will join Valshar in the Mary Crawford fan club :) I am glad she didn't marry Edmund, as they would have made each other miserable, but I would have liked to have seen a happier ending for her.

It's an interesting piece. I knew the Mansfield name was probably a reference to Lord Mansfield but I thought this bit was interesting:

'Jane Austen was being mischievous in using the name Norris for her villain. If the name Mansfield was synonymous with abolition, then that of Norris was known for its opposite. Robert Norris was an infamous slave trader and a byword for pro-slavery sympathies.'

That is interesting to know Samanta. I started watching Emma Approved but I didn't really gel with it. I've been meaning to give it another go for a while. Glad to hear it's getting so good.

I agree with you Valshar, it's one of the reasons I first fell in love with Austen's work, her characters are so real, which helps me relate to them and understand them and feel like I know them.

I think we all know people like that, who take no responsibility for their own decisions. Everything they do wrong is somebody else's fault, because (insert excuse here).

Morally, Mary's options and views are lacking, but she is practical in most of what she says. If Fanny had accepted Henry's proposal he wouldn't have been in London and available to elope with Maria. Plus, if Sir Thomas had left Maria with HC perhaps a marriage could have been arranged, but without the leverage of her living with him, it doesn't happen.

I think if Mary Crawford thought about things in a proper way it would have strained she and Henry's relationship, but I think she doesn't blame him for what's happened. Instead she blames Maria, and Fanny the most, but then also Sir Thomas for how he deals with it. Basically she blames everybody other than Henry!

There's another giveaway of this book going on over at Leatherbound Reviews - it finishes 26 June so there's still time to enter. You can read my guest review and enter the giveaway here: http://leatherboundreviews.blogspot.c...

I just finished it and I think it would have worked much better if it had deviated from S&S more. Society's attitudes and behaviours are so different to those of 1810 that some things just didn't ring true as normal behaviour for me.

Good to know you loved it, Kirk! I have just finished reading the first one and I wasn't bowled over by it.

Mary wrote: "Has anyone read Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid?"
I would be interested to know what people think of this one, haven't read it yet though I plan to.

Hope you're recovering well Soph!

I agree Soph, there is so much detail and layers to Austen's work. Although I'd have loved it if there had been more books, I think they benefited from all the working and re-working she did :)