Mansfield Park at 200
Sep. 7th, 2014 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neadodsI'm taking another run at Mansfield Park, and this time I think I'll actually finish it. That is one of my goals, this being the 200th anniversary, although it's a pity that the Shepard Annotated won't come out until *next* year. I like his annotations and would find it a help getting me over some of the hurdles.
Mansfield is also the theme of this year's JASNAcon (technically the Annual General Meeting, but I know a convention when I go to one!) I hadn't planned on going and it's a good thing because the thing sold out in *a day.* For one of the "problem" novels! I'll have to be fast on my feet when the Emma and Northanger anniversary ones roll around, because I don't want to miss those!
The JASNA News that announced the sellout had a cover with quotes from Austen's family regarding Mansfield. It makes me feel a bit better knowing her mother considered the heroine insipid, one of her brothers essentially called it boring, and one of her nephews only liked a single character in it.
Mansfield is also the theme of this year's JASNAcon (technically the Annual General Meeting, but I know a convention when I go to one!) I hadn't planned on going and it's a good thing because the thing sold out in *a day.* For one of the "problem" novels! I'll have to be fast on my feet when the Emma and Northanger anniversary ones roll around, because I don't want to miss those!
The JASNA News that announced the sellout had a cover with quotes from Austen's family regarding Mansfield. It makes me feel a bit better knowing her mother considered the heroine insipid, one of her brothers essentially called it boring, and one of her nephews only liked a single character in it.
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Date: 2014-09-07 08:52 pm (UTC)How fascinating! Here everything with wings gets stuffed with marigold to turn it yellow at all seasons. I have no idea when that started, but the concept that flesh should change colors is lost.
the contemporary equivalent was, "Awful news from the Middle-East, isn't it - do you think there's ever going to be a solution?"
Ah! I could tell from context that he was covering his ass, but how or why America I didn't know.
Thank you. There will doubtless be more questions... (There already are, I just can't remember any other than those two.)
I don't think it's just Mary's cynicism about marriage - Henry gets that speech about how everyone who gets married was taken in over the real character of their spouse, and has witnessed the same things Mary has. It goes a fair way to handwave his own rotten behavior in my eyes, especially his flirting.