JANE AUSTEN's Rogue Gallery

[seldonp38]

Comments

[jill_rg]

Very interesting observations

[seldonp38]

Fanny should have told Henry the truth about why she had rejected his offer of marriage. She didn't have to tell the Bertrams. But Henry deserved the truth, no matter how "callous" he is. It's apparent that you really hate Henry, which makes me wonder if you had encountered someone like him. The thing about Henry is that I have never viewed him as a figure of one-dimensional evil, like you seemed to. In fact, neither did Jane Austen, who had hinted that if Fanny had accepted his marriage offer, he could have made her a happy and faithful husband.

I'm not saying that Fanny should have married Henry. If she didn't love him, she didn't love him. But she could have at least told him the truth, instead of hiding her true feelings behind a mask of self-righteous morality. And it's Fanny's self-righteousness and hypocrisy that makes her my least favorite Austen heroine.

[whswhs]

I've always thought of Emma Woodhouse as the villain of the eponymous novel.

[seldonp38]

Considering that Emma was being used by Frank to hide his engagement to Jane, I find it hard to view her as the "villain" of that novel.

[whswhs]

Her breaking up Harriet Smith and Robert Martin, who is both an advantageous match for her and a decent prospective husband, as well as being smitten with her, strikes me as villainous, motivated as it is by vanity, contempt for the commercial and entrepreneurial classes, and a conviction of her own superior ability to manage other people's lives. Though admittedly she reforms by the end of the novel.

[seldonp38]

If you want to label Emma Woodhouse as a "villainess" or "rogue", go ahead. Be my guest. I just don't agree with you. End of story.