Edmund
Posted by Stolzi on December 13, 1997 at 12:51:35:
In response to Edmund, written by Ayelet on December 06, 1997 at 00:14:51
] Edmund actually annoys me more than Fanny, so consequently I can't agree with, although I can understand, the attraction to him.
Edmund must have attracted Mary Crawford, but of course she was trying very hard to change him, something which most writers on love and marriage agree is very difficult to do! Perhaps he was good looking -- I am sure he had excellent manners. But she really should have had better sense, for as he himself points out to her, it is too late for him to choose another profession. And Mary is not about to marry someone who can't support her handsomely. Did she hope his father would set him up somehow as a landed gentleman? Did she really secretly hope Tom Bertram would die and leave Edmund the heir?
CS Lewis (not agreeing with JA's own preference for Knightley and Edmund B) writes:
"Her [Fanny's] love is only calf-love -- a schoolgirl's hero-worship for a man who has been kind to her when they were both children, and who, incidentally, is the least attractive of all Jane Austen's heroes. Anne [ in Persuasion gains immeasurably by having for her lover almost the best. In real life, no doubt, we continue to respect interesting women despite the preposterous men they sometimes marry. But in fiction it is usually fatal."
And Rudyard Kipling, in his poem about Jane finding a husband in heaven, picks... Captain Wentworth.
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