Posted by Amy on April 30, 1997 at 00:41:37:
From tonight's AUSTEN-L. Lura thinks JA was going for something new and I'd have to agree with that. Just, what though. That seems to remain the question.
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> But in MP, we I share the experience that MP is different than Jane Austen's other I have earlier speculated that maybe she was going through some bad time in I have recently posted that Fanny is Cinderella, written with Jane Austen's But now I'm going to fly in from left field, if not outer space --- Consider Jane Austen the writer - the ironist - and the genius. (Scottie, What if Jane Austen was actually trying to do what she accomplished? Write On one hand, in the happy story we have a fairy tale Cinderella romance At the very same time, using the very same words, Mansfield Park is a I'm thinking along these Alice Through the Looking Glass lines because If so, this is a stunning accomplishment for a writer confident in her Returning to outer space now -- I've got to stop watching the X-Files :-) Lura P.S. The parallel universe train of thought recalls a recent news item: DISCOVERED: ------------------------------
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 20:28:49 -0700
From: L R
Subject: Mansfield Park - Parallel Universes
>are given a supposedly happy ending that involves Fanny marrying
>Edmund, but Fanny feels blind, abject devotion for Edmund while he
>feels nothing for her but the love of a brother. This is a very
>dissatisfying marriage because it is so unequal. It is a violation of
>JA's normal values to present this marriage to us as a happy ending.
>Throughout MP we see JA's usual values twisted in similar ways.
>
>I continue to be puzzled about why JA abandoned her usual moral code in
>MP. The book remains a great mystery to me.
>
>Karen
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romances and I wonder about it too. What was Jane Austen trying to do?
her life and found therapeutic expression in writing this novel. But there
is no (remaining) documentation to support this that I am aware of. All we
know is that her heroines kept their serious problems pretty much to
themselves and didn't extensively talk it out. Maybe Jane Austen dealt
with serious problems in a similar way so we would not have any
documentation, even if Cassandra had preserved it.
dead-on realism and irony. I will be reading through the novel this time
with this paradigm in mind.
fanzine alert!)
two novels in one?
with the happy ending of the very good, moral little girl, the 'stepchild'
in the attic, finally getting her prince, Edmund. Those she felt
persecuted by were suitably punished.
tragedy, where a smug righteous little martyr parades her virtue in the
face of these hapless males (Maggie did make the occasional point). Fanny
rejects Henry, who had a man's love for her and wins Edmund who is
hereafter consigned to a tepid brotherly love sort of marriage. This is
his penance for his smug righteousness in casting off the witty, beautiful
but worldly Mary Crawford, where he could have experienced adult passion,
and benefited from her wider knowledge of the world (as we're told Lizzy
did with Darcy).
that's what I hear from listening to the dichotomous responses from us
Listmembers. Mansfield Park inhabits parallel universes of interpretation.
We are living proof of this. Could Jane Austen have meant for us to read
her book both ways? Meant that it would hold up a mirror to ourselves,
like a complex ink blot test?
mature powers of written expression. Jane Austen must have known the
isolation of the very bright and could well have wanted to stretch and try
something unique and difficult which had not been attempted before.
An orbiting observatory has detected a mysterious cloud of antimatter
particles that appears to be boiling up from the center of our galaxy to form
a massive fountain spewing more than 17,400 trillion miles into space. The
discovery not only changes scientists perspective on our home galaxy but
should provide new insights to the workings of basic processes in other
galaxies throughout the universe. [In theory, antimatter particles, which are
exact duplicates of atomic particles but with opposite properties, could
combine to form antimatter objects, including antimatter worlds and even
antimatter people. This parallel universe has not yet been found, however.]
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