Tag: Pride and Prejudice

adulthoodisokay:

dollsome-does-tumblr:

i just read a washington post article on romcoms aging poorly due to the pushiness (and oft-stalkery conduct) of the male characters therein, and it got me thinking about pride and prejudice, and specifically darcy saying, “one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

because, like, that’s the seldom-portrayed romantic dream in the patriarchal hellscape that is our world, isn’t it?

a dude being willing to say, “i understand if you don’t feel the same way about me, and i’ll leave you alone forever about this if my attention is unwanted.”

so simple, yet so wonderful in its basic human decency

and dudes to this day wonder why women still swoon over darcy

thejgatsbykid:

thejgatsbykid:

ok here’s a hot take: modern adaptations of pride and prejudice should replace Mrs Bennet’s obsession w/ marrying her daughters off with a determination to see them all be lawyers/doctors/engineers in their own right, and her frustration with Lizzie for refusing Mr Collins should be because she turned down the opportunity to have a lucrative and successful career in order to do what she wants, which is, like, journalism or something

Like it doesn’t help the plot in the same way but within context Mrs B’s motivations can be boiled down to “make sure all my daughters are taken care of and going to be comfortable in their lives” which, back in the day, meant marrying well, but nowadays would look more like a full ride to an Ivy League, and rather than being disinterested in their romantic endeavors Mr Bennet should be completely blase about Lydia and Kitty giving each other stick-n-poke tattoos and failing Spanish and getting arrested. Elizabeth tries and fails to talk him out of letting Lydia go to “leadership camp,” a lie she told her mother to cover up the fact that she’s definitely tagging along with some college kids to Mexico for spring break. Jane is in med school and Mrs B prays every night that she comes to her senses and decides to be a neurosurgeon instead of doing doctors without borders. Lizzie tells her mother she’s majoring in women’s studies over text message and ignores 16 furious voicemails in response, partially cause she doesn’t want to hear it and partially because she’s arguing with Darcy, whose first name she refuses to know because he’s too rich to deserve one, in her opinion. So, yeah, soccer mom Mrs Bennet.

nurs3gir1:

luvtheheaven:

darthmelyanna:

drst:

dollsome-does-tumblr:

i just read a washington post article on romcoms aging poorly due to the pushiness (and oft-stalkery conduct) of the male characters therein, and it got me thinking about pride and prejudice, and specifically darcy saying, “one word from you will silence me on this subject forever.”

because, like, that’s the seldom-portrayed romantic dream in the patriarchal hellscape that is our world, isn’t it?

a dude being willing to say, “i understand if you don’t feel the same way about me, and i’ll leave you alone forever about this if my attention is unwanted.”

so simple, yet so wonderful in its basic human decency

Darcy also brings up his proposal a second time after being rejected only after some significant time has passed and Elizabeth’s behavior toward him has changed. She also makes the first overture in that conversation, indicating to him it may be safe to revisit the subject.

By the end of the book, Darcy has taken Elizabeth’s criticisms wholly on board, and he’s gone from “you must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you” to “one word on this subject will silence me forever.” He’s even regretful that she knows what he did to help her family, what he did out of love for her.

The first proposal is a train wreck. It’s all about how he loves her but doesn’t respect her. The second must be agony for him. He’s still just as much in love as ever, but he respects her enough that he doesn’t want her to act out of gratitude. He loves her enough to respect her when she says no.

Somewhere there’s a post about how men think they’re Mr. Darcy when they’re actually Mr. Collins, who thinks it’s adorable when women say no. Silly females, trying to entice men by playing hard to get! Someone could probably write a whole dissertation on how men in Austen’s novels react to the word no.

And of course, as someone else commented, this was written by a woman….

This.