Oh Mr. Darcy!

I've been reading a lot lately (see previous post about work visa application) and, because they're free and readily available, I've found myself nose-deep more than my fair share of 19th century British novels. In the past few weeks I've read Jane Eyre, The Woman in White, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Sense & Sensibility, and a few Sherlock Holmes short adventures. I think Middlemarch will be my next undertaking, though I'm a bit daunted by the first page.

With the exception of the Holmes stories and Alice, my text choices have been largely...similar. Strikingly so. Without meaning to, I wonder if I haven't chosen the three most similar narratives ever written. Perhaps this similarity would not be quite so pronounced to me if I hadn't chosen to read all of them in sequence, but while I've enjoyed all three to a similar extent, the same difficulties have dampened my enjoyment to the same extent in all. I'd like to document these themes here--of plot and language most particularly--for my own future reference. As a reader, you may find this dull, as this is a posting wherein you may find my thoughts, not my fury.

Similar Plot Points and Characters in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, and Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility

-All three involve at least one young woman being bedridden and on the verge of death because of illness, but no men. Jane Eyre, Marian Halcombe, and Marianne Dashwood catch some form of stress/hanging out in the rain-related disease.

Likewise, clearly-doomed girls (the excessively-innocent ultra-pious who talk about how lovely death would be) Helen Burns (Eyre) and Anne Catherick (White) spend some time bedridden before kicking it.

-All 3 protagonists are between age 17 and 20, and all marry men between age 35 and 40. Each marriage must be for love, because though the women are all of high birth (Jane Eyre unknowingly) the men they marry are handicapped in some way. Edward Ferrars (Sense) has lost the bulk of his inheritance, Edward Rochester (Eyre) has been blinded and lost a hand in the destruction of his manor house, and Walter Hartright (White) is sickeningly middle-class, and Laura lost her fortune when her (deceased) first husband declared her dead and stole it. While everybody is still fairly wealthy at the end, they all lose a significant investment or holding.

-All three are caught up in inheritance issues equalling or exceeding £20,000.

-All three involve a nasty elderly woman who screws things up royally for the protagonist with her selfishness. (Mrs. Reed, the Countess, Mrs. Ferrars)

-All three involve one major female character being pressured by a guy that she doesn't like to marry him. (St. John Rivers, Colonel Brandon, Sir Percival Glyde) Only Brandon's pressure ends in something resembling love and financial stability.

-All three involve at least one pair of close, affectionate, inseparable sisters, and it is generally understood that there's a prudent one and a pretty one. (Marian and Laura, Elinor and Marianne, Diana and Mary Rivers) At least one of the sisters has a Mary-based name.


Similar Thematic Elements in the aforementioned text group

-The female protagonist through who's eyes much of the story is told is invariably well-educated, exceedingly honest and forthright, and never makes a statement or decision that is not perfectly well-justified both to her religion and her caste. She likewise spends a lot of paper justifying her decisions and statements to the audience, imploring us to realize that they're being utterly selfless in all things and are only seeking to do what is best for everyone involved.

-People who start high end in the middle. People who start in the middle end with a compromised version of high.

-Women who have choices they can make are just as likely to make ones that cause them harm as good, because they must consider what is righteous regardless of their best interests. Jane Eyre nearly goes to India, where she's sure to die within days of arrival of disease or heat-stroke, because she knows that God would want her to be a missionary. The only thing that stops her is she also knows that God would not want her and St. John to marry without loving each other. Likewise, Laura Fairlie marries Sir Percival, despite the fact she doesn't like him, because she agreed to the engagement to please her father on his death-bed, and it would be shameful to break it. Elinor Dashwood, meanwhile, keep's Lucy's secrets, despite how badly they hurt her and despite how useful it would be to disclose them, because she promised she would. Virtue always wins over self-interest and intelligence.


Similar Endings in the aforementioned

-Everybody gets married.

-Everybody has babies, or there's hints of babies.

-All the women fall into their roles as subservient wives, though they had the capacity to be powerful and respectable women in their own right.


Similar Things That Piss Me Off in the aforementioned

The ladies always have the option of doing something deemed vaguely improper but better for everyone--and always decline. The authors, rather than congratulating their heroines for their good deeds, make things kinda suck for them as a consequence, but they nevertheless feel better in their hearts for having done what was socially accepted, in spite of the fact that no sensible person around them would have done the same.

Jane Eyre clearly acknowledges that Bertha Mason is not really Mr. Rochester's wife, as she's not only batshit but hell-bent on Mr. Rochester's immolation, but rather than see what is an unfortunate circumstance and run off to the south of France as his beloved mistress (while maintaining Bertha's safe upkeep), which would ensure everyone's estates and safety, she runs off to develop pneumonia and endure abuse under St. John, and lets Bertha burn the house down and severely handicap Rochester. Her virtue screwed her over and left her with half an estate and half a man. Jane grins and bears it, and Brontë seems to think she got off no better than she should have.

Laura Fairlie will be coming into possession of £20,000 in under the space of a year, and her guardian is a douchebag. But rather than refuse to marry Sir Percival until her finances are hers to control, she does what the men around her want, because that's 'right,' and loses everything. Had she said "hey buddy, let's wait 6 months" the story probably wouldn't have happened, but she would not have wound up with the line in her will that gave him everything upon her death (she probably would not have wound up married to him at all) so Marian probably wouldn't have gotten typhus, she wouldn't have wound up in an asylum, and neither the Count or Sir Percival would have wound up dead. Had she taken this one step in her best interest everyone, even the jerks, would have been better off.

Had Mrs. Dashwood stood up for herself against her stepson after her husband's last wishes were for him to provide for her and her daughters, they could have moved somewhere besides the little cottage their income afforded them. They really don't meet anyone that great or helpful on account of it, Marianne wouldn't have had to endure the BS that was Willoughby, Elinor could have been in money enough for Mrs. Ferrars to approve of her relationship with Edward, and Lucy probably would have wound up with Robert anyway but with less money to taunt Elinor with. But no, Mrs. Dashwood doesn't seem to think it's proper to say "look, buddy, I know you're a sucker and your wife's a bitch, but you're not weaseling out of your obligation to your family." so Marianne wound up with a "putrid fever." Bleh.