Dear Miss Austen,
You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. Your mastery of the English language - minor grammatical lapses notwithstanding - is all but unparalleled. Your insight into human nature continues to boggle the mind - not merely for its breadth, but because your particular genius seems to have all but destroyed the pesky artificial barriers to understanding. You do not throw your creations into an abyss of despair, and you do not limit them to one-dimensional symbols of some contemporary cause. Truly, my admiration knows no bounds.
Alas, your art is so smooth and seamless, so profound, that it's all but impossible to ignore your occasional gaffe. I know you like your surprises, but really, why on earth should Robert Ferrars have married Lucy? Oh, I can see why she'd have accepted him - but Robert? True, I can think up three different explanations, but it's not my job. It's yours. At other times, the actions of four or five different characters, all acting entirely true to form, will contribute to a single plot-point - and the motivations, the behaviour, everything, falls together so neatly - usually, you do such a splendid job of it. Here, there's no explanation, no justification, no - anything.
I won't complain about Brandon and Marianne, because I think their marriage - and their happiness - is supposed to be unsettling, a la Reginald de Courcy/Frederica Vernon there (and we both know that there's no way that wasn't intentional!).
And there's this other thing. You're not forward-thinking so much as universal. Some powerful men are brilliant; some are idiots. Some mothers are efficient, some are utterly incompetent. You show brothers and sisters and children, sailors and clergymen and gentlemen, as people rather than roles - with one exception.
Women with authority.
Now, mostly you're fabulously accurate and show women's lives as they really were - which mostly didn't involve a lot of personal authority. But sometimes they did. Widows like Mrs Ferrars and Lady Catherine exercised power on their own accounts; so could sisters or daughers with easy-going, or impressionable, or passive brothers/fathers, or even wives. We just know that Caroline Bingley gets away with much more than she would if her brother were more like Darcy or Mr Knightley or even Henry Tilney. Mrs Bennet, likewise, can only do as much as she does because Mr Bennet has all but abdicated his authority.
But look at them. Lady Catherine, Mrs Ferrars, Mrs Churchill, Lady Russell, Mrs Norris, Lady Susan, Mrs Bennet. Overall, they're varying degrees of awful. Even Emma Woodhouse's attempts to use her authority to help others are treated as ill-conceived at best - since she's not exactly a brilliant judge of character, it's easy to see why but - but still. It's frustrating, because it starts to look as if they're not awful so much because they're awful, but because they're usurpers of masculine authority. On the other hand, at least a few of the young, comparatively powerless women will clearly grow into authorities in their own right - in twenty or thirty years, where will Elizabeth Darcy be? But she's paired with a coolly rational schemer of a husband who is an excellent judge of character, and whose propensity for cunning plans makes Emma Woodhouse look like a rank amateur. Left to her own devices - suppose that he dies young (perish the thought!) - would she, too, become another feminine usurper?
Oh, and here's another thing. You get a lot of praise - most of it fully deserved - for Persuasion, but seriously, where on earth did Mrs Smith come from? A TARDIS? It's like Lord ---- in Northanger Abbey, only then it was a joke. Mrs Smith is just awkward. And the revelation of Mr Elliot's character comes straight out of the 1790s.
Kudos, however, on Wentworth - the only really dashing hero - and the tone, and especially the Crofts. And while other people complain vociferously about 'poor Richard,' I don't mind that much.
Hoping that you will accept my humble devotion,
Your humble servant,
E B
Alas, your art is so smooth and seamless, so profound, that it's all but impossible to ignore your occasional gaffe. I know you like your surprises, but really, why on earth should Robert Ferrars have married Lucy? Oh, I can see why she'd have accepted him - but Robert? True, I can think up three different explanations, but it's not my job. It's yours. At other times, the actions of four or five different characters, all acting entirely true to form, will contribute to a single plot-point - and the motivations, the behaviour, everything, falls together so neatly - usually, you do such a splendid job of it. Here, there's no explanation, no justification, no - anything.
I won't complain about Brandon and Marianne, because I think their marriage - and their happiness - is supposed to be unsettling, a la Reginald de Courcy/Frederica Vernon there (and we both know that there's no way that wasn't intentional!).
And there's this other thing. You're not forward-thinking so much as universal. Some powerful men are brilliant; some are idiots. Some mothers are efficient, some are utterly incompetent. You show brothers and sisters and children, sailors and clergymen and gentlemen, as people rather than roles - with one exception.
Women with authority.
Now, mostly you're fabulously accurate and show women's lives as they really were - which mostly didn't involve a lot of personal authority. But sometimes they did. Widows like Mrs Ferrars and Lady Catherine exercised power on their own accounts; so could sisters or daughers with easy-going, or impressionable, or passive brothers/fathers, or even wives. We just know that Caroline Bingley gets away with much more than she would if her brother were more like Darcy or Mr Knightley or even Henry Tilney. Mrs Bennet, likewise, can only do as much as she does because Mr Bennet has all but abdicated his authority.
But look at them. Lady Catherine, Mrs Ferrars, Mrs Churchill, Lady Russell, Mrs Norris, Lady Susan, Mrs Bennet. Overall, they're varying degrees of awful. Even Emma Woodhouse's attempts to use her authority to help others are treated as ill-conceived at best - since she's not exactly a brilliant judge of character, it's easy to see why but - but still. It's frustrating, because it starts to look as if they're not awful so much because they're awful, but because they're usurpers of masculine authority. On the other hand, at least a few of the young, comparatively powerless women will clearly grow into authorities in their own right - in twenty or thirty years, where will Elizabeth Darcy be? But she's paired with a coolly rational schemer of a husband who is an excellent judge of character, and whose propensity for cunning plans makes Emma Woodhouse look like a rank amateur. Left to her own devices - suppose that he dies young (perish the thought!) - would she, too, become another feminine usurper?
Oh, and here's another thing. You get a lot of praise - most of it fully deserved - for Persuasion, but seriously, where on earth did Mrs Smith come from? A TARDIS? It's like Lord ---- in Northanger Abbey, only then it was a joke. Mrs Smith is just awkward. And the revelation of Mr Elliot's character comes straight out of the 1790s.
Kudos, however, on Wentworth - the only really dashing hero - and the tone, and especially the Crofts. And while other people complain vociferously about 'poor Richard,' I don't mind that much.
Hoping that you will accept my humble devotion,
Your humble servant,
E B