Status Updates From Heartsease; Or, the Brother...

“She has done the very deeds that I had neglected. My brother and sister, even my mother and Helen’s brother, all have come under her power of firm meekness—all, with one voice, are ready to “rise up and call her blessed!” Nay, are not these what Helen would have most wished to effect, and is it not her memorials that have been the instruments of infusing that spirit into Violet?”

The heart of the book!

There’s definitely not a 1 to 1 correlation to Mansfield Park but there are some interesting parallels. I think Violet/Fanny is the closest parallel. Mark Gardner/Henry Crawford is another. Mary Crawford could be Teresa Marstone or Jane Gardner.

Ugh Arthur! He drives me mad. I like John so much better!

Good zinger, Lottie!! “How wide a difference in moral courage there was between that tall grenadier and his timid delicate wife.”

I love this detail about one of the characters living over a toy shop in Piccadilly. He says he loves hearing the cheerful roar of the city.

The relationships are rather lopsided in this marriage. Arthur v. John too. I’m sure it will all come right but it is a bit odd now.

“He tried to draw out Helen’s example to teach Violet to endure, and in doing so the other side of the lesson came home to himself. Helen’s life had been one of exertion as well as of submission. It had not been merely spent in saying, ‘Thy will be done,’ but in doing it; she had not merely stood still and uncomplaining beneath the cross, but she had borne it onward in the service of others.”
Chapter 6

Violet is reading Mary Barton!

“but if John chose to shut himself up in a lodging with the most squallingest babby in creation, he was not the man to gainsay him”

😂😂

Oh dear the good old Victorian baby out of nowhere. 🤣👀

I’m trying not to read more than a chapter a day until vacation but it’s hard!

I currently despise Theodora so she’s in for a major redemption arc, I’m guessing. 😅

Whew, poor Violet! I can see how she is like Fanny.