Can’t Believe Jane Austen Wrote Pride And Prejudice In The 2000s

So another interesting thing about Jane Eyre is its take on relationship inequality.

Like, Jane is 18 at the beginning of the story and Rochester is said to be something like 35-38. And it's not casually brushed aside like that was normal back in the day. It wasn't. Concerns about the age gap are raised within the text. But the story emphasizes that Jane feels comfortable accepting Rochester's proposal, despite the age difference, the class difference, and him being her boss, because Jane feels that Rochester regards her as an equal. When they converse, Jane doesn't feel any tension, like she has to impress him or try to read his mind and say whatever he wants to hear. She feels that he respects her and values her thoughts and isn't compelled to use his power against her if she says something to displease him. Around the midpoint of the story, Jane believes that Rochester is going to marry another woman, and resolves to leave because she's heartbroken, believing that because she is poor and plain Rochester can't possibly be as hurt by their parting as she is, and he'll forget her and move on long before she does. But it turns out to be the opposite. After finding out about Bertha, Rochester begs Jane to stay and insists he'll be miserable forever without her, while Jane, still thinking she's too poor and plain to ever attract someone like him again, resists all temptation and leaves him. And she does this specifically because she feels that if she were to compromise her morals and self-respect to be Mr. Rochester's mistress, then he would lose respect for her and the relationship would fall apart. It was only by maintaining her integrity that the relationship could stay in-tact when the reconciled at the end.

St. John Rivers on the other hand, I don't think is given a definite age, but I think he's intended to be a much younger man, probably in his early 20s. He is poor and without relations aside from his sisters or any other connections, just as Jane. Jane finds out they're actually cousins at the same time she learns she's come into a vast fortune that was willed to her rather than the Rivers, but decides to share her fortune equally with them. So she arguably had more social capital, even though she made an effort to put St. John on equal footing with her, because the money was hers by right and she could've presumably cut him off at any time, just as easily as Rochester could've terminated Jane from her job.

And yet, Jane's relationship with St. John is vastly more unequal than her relationship with Rochester. Even though Jane practically worshiped Rochester but only cares for St. John as a brother and is acutely aware of his faults, she still finds herself desperately craving his approval in a way she never did with Rochester. And St. John is willing to exploit that intentionally. He asks her to do things she doesn't want to and make sacrifices for him just because he knows she'll do anything to please him, and that's why he thinks she's the perfect wife for him. Where Rochester tries to explain himself and persuade Jane not to leave him by addressing her concerns, St. John basically tries to command Jane to marry him and refuses to accept her "no" as final. He withholds affection from Jane as a tactic to get her to compromise in order to reconcile with him when he's the one who should be apologizing to her and considering her needs and not just his own. Jane knows that she can't ever be happy with him because he doesn't respect her and his lack of respect only makes her want to seek his approval, which he is all too happy to exploit for his own benefit.

But Jane ultimately stays firm and rejects St. John's proposal of a loveless marriage, just as she rejected Rochester's proposal of an unlawful marriage, because both situations were doomed to fail if she didn't put her own self-respect first.

So this novel from 1847 was really saying that power dynamics aren't pure black and white. Age and class and wealth and status can be a factor in making a relationship unequal, but you can also be equal on pretty much all social axis and still have inequality in a relationship. What's really important is that there's mutual respect.

"I like to see flowers growing, but when they are gathered, they cease to please. I look on them as things rootless and perishable; their likeness to life makes me sad. I never offer flowers to those I love." Villette by Charlotte Brontë

Just a thought… Rochester delays paying Jane her wages until she leaves to visit Mrs. Reed. Could it be that the reason behind this delay is more psychological than practical?

Consider this: Rochester might associate paying Jane with the transactions he had with his former mistresses, whom he paid for their company. Rochester never truly viewed Jane as just an employee. In his mind, he already had a deeper, more personal connection with her. Paying her would shatter this fantasy and reduce their relationship to a mere employer-employee dynamic, something he’s clearly uncomfortable with labelling their relationship as.

It's not that Rochester is stingy or unwilling to part with his money—quite the opposite, in fact. He enjoys being generous, almost to a fault. Even when Jane asks for leave, he doesn’t merely pay her the wages he owes; he offers her a £50 note, an amount far exceeding what she’s due. He wasn’t paying her as an employer but rather a “friend”. This suggests that Rochester’s reluctance to pay her isn’t about the money itself but rather the social implications of the transaction.

Rochester despises his past actions of hiring mistresses, equating it to "buying a slave." This disdain likely influences his feelings toward paying Jane. He doesn’t have an issue with paying his other female employees, but with Jane, it’s different. His romantic feelings complicate things. For Rochester, paying Jane is too reminiscent of paying for love, a notion that deeply disturbs him. This is why I believe he delays paying her.

Her father says her name harsh and angry and firm, divided into four syllables, O. PHE. LI. A, never shouting, and that is somehow worse. 

Her brother says her name quick, like it’s a slur, o phe lia, the syllables blending and blurring together, like he cannot wait to stop. 

The boy who once defined her whole world told her that Ophelia sounds like Ō filia, which means Oh, Daughter in Latin. 

Latin is a dead language, and she is no one’s daughter, now.

Okay, whoever wrote this, I wish I wrote it. Bravo, my friend <3

Sorry, still not over Darcy critical-failing that proposal! Not that sorry, though. I have no idea why Pride and Prejudice hits so hard when most of Austen's other novels are like "They're fine! I like them! Anyway..." for me.

But, here's the thing. Darcy is being an asshole. Darcy isn't an asshole, generally, but he's really being one about his whole Regency Era situationship with Lizzie. Like, he rolls in on day one with this giant fucking chip on his shoulder, acts like he's too good for everyone, and why? Well, he's rich, and he's got lofty connections.

Except who's he rolling with right then? His spineless dustmop of a bestie and his bestie's godawful sisters. Bingley's the sort of guy who can be peer-pressured out of being in love!

Like, you know that thing where you have a friend, and they introduce you to another friend, and that friend is such a wet sock that you find yourself reevaluating your friend because they're hanging around with this guy? Like, okay, Darcy, do you have friends, or do you have toadies? Is this your bestie, or did you find a gentleman's companion that you didn't have to pay?

Later on we meet his aunt, who's the goddamned worst.

Like, we all hate Mr. Collins, right? This woman has Mr. Collins over twice a week for a quiet evening of performative dickriding. That's the kind of taste Darcy's family has. Voluntarily spending hours with Mr. Collins on a regular basis.

There's no talking about Mrs. Bennet's lack of decorum or matrimonial grasping or entitlement without talking about Lady Catherine flying in on her broom to scream at her nephew's fiancee, right? Especially considering that her basis for doing so is a cradle engagement that she seems to have never spoken to her nephew about as an adult and a fucking rumor that she assumes pertains to Lizzie.

She doesn't even talk to her fucking nephew before spending half a day in a carriage to make a blazing spectacle of herself in front of the entire Bennet household! He finds out she did that afterwards when she tries to make him break off the nonexistent engagement that she's announced to half the fucking kingdom by that point.

I mean, unexpected point to Mrs. B, who notably did not even walk down the road to Netherfield to act disappointed at anyone.

Also hard to get on too high a horse after Georgiana's near-elopement with the country's biggest asshole! Like, oh, the Bennet sisters are embarrassing? The Bennets lack propriety?

Buddy, you hired a sex trafficker to look after your sister and then your sister almost fucked the one-man-crime-wave son of your late property-manager. And you didn't even manage to hush it all up properly! Sure, he's keeping your sister's name out of his mouth, but he's running you down like a dog in every other respect to the whole county!

Like, "Oh, look at me, I'm Fitzwilliam Darcy! I'm not going to lower myself to correcting any of The Plebes who now think I deliberately misadministered a will to fuck over The Help out of cheapness and spite, especially when all it would take is one conversation with That Fucker's commanding officer, but god forbid I ever have to go out in public with a Bennet! I might die of shame and secondhand cringe!"

So he's got all of that going on, and then he busts in on Lizzie with a proposal that's got huge "I don't consent to being attracted to you" energy and runs her entire family into the ground. This is after Lizzie's spent approximately three centuries being negged by his mannerless nightmare of an aunt, so that's at least one extra level of "Really, bruh?" in there.

And then he fucking claps back at her rejection! Instead of going "Oh. Huh. Whoops. Guess I'll just have to go marry one of the other ten thousand women lined up waiting to marry me!" he's like "What the fuuuuck did I ever do to you, you fucking menace?". At which point she checks him so hard he spends the next three months bluescreening and looking up how to be polite to people you haven't already known for five years.

So like I said, he is being an asshole here. He knows how to act right, he just hasn't bothered to do so once since posting up in Netherfield because idk, he's on vacation or some shit.

Critically! However upsetting Lizzie finds The Proposal Incident (half-hour crying jag, spends the rest of the day hiding in her room), she is at no point worried about Darcy's subsequent behavior.

This is while she still thinks he genuinely did Wickham dirty and before she's had a chance to get character references from the 500 people working at Pemberley. This is the guy about whom her dad later says "Kidding-not kidding I can hardly say no to this rich fuck, can I?" when asked for his blessing. This is after Mr. Collins literally said "I've heard no means yes these days" to her fucking face and then her mother tried to make her marry him anyway.

She preached a full on sermon about the man's shortcomings to his face immediately after saying she wouldn't bounce on his dick if it was the last one on earth and after the adrenaline crash wasn't like, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck my entire life, he's going to burn down the vicarage and frame my father for tax fraud."

Everything that she's seen with her own eyes about this snobby bastard tells her he's not going to go crying to his aunt and get her cousin's patronage revoked. He's not going to go out of his way to fuck her or her family over. He's pissed, and he was definitely playing the ass with that proposal, but he's not going to lash out over it.

So this is Lizzie seeing Darcy at Peak Asshole, with extra assholery that he didn't even do but he couldn't be bothered to tell anyone he didn't do, and Lizzie's still like "omg you're such a fucking prick, how do you even get out of bed in the morning" instead of "Well, RIP to my prospects, there's no way that man doesn't have the lot of us consigned to a convent by parliamentary decree now."

I love this quote. But at the same time - EXCUSE ME? I’m going half crazy with the fact that Charlotte Brontë DOES NOT think happiness is a potato, EVEN THOUGH she came to Belgium in 1842, where - SINCE THE LATE 17TH CENTURY - they were already making FRIES (aside from the whole France vs. Belgium as the inventors of fried potatoes dispute).

Ma’am? EXCUSE ME?

Maybe that’s why Lucy got sick of loneliness. A walk in the garden is a wonderful thing, but what would be a better balm on your achy heart??! Watching the bees buzzing around or EATING SOME TASTY DELICIOUS FRIED POTATOES?

Well. That’s the end of my crash out. Lunch?

“Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining far down upon us out of heaven. She is a divine dew which the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of Paradise.”

– Villette, Charlotte Brontë

Me at 14 and me at 22 are having a bonding moment

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones." - Charlotte Bronte Jane Eyre (Chapter XXIX; paragraph 15)

wax seal stamp pngs ♡

People who want female characters to cry less? No. Stop it. You're doing it the wrong way. Make male characters cry. Make those beautiful men sob on their knees. Down with all this stupid emotional constipation! Here, I can fix it:

Colonel Brandon after he tells Elinor about his lost love Eliza? Stumbles out of the room, finds somewhere private, and bawls. Edward after leaving Barton Cottage thinking he'll never be able to marry Elinor? Make him weep! Mr. Knightley was glad it was raining when he rode back to Hartfield after learning about Frank's engagement because it gave his tears plausible deniability! Wentworth thinks Anne will marry her cousin? Sobbing mess of a man. Bingley can cry during the proposal when he thinks about all the time he lost not being with Jane. Edmund cries alone in his room after Mary calls clergymen "nothing". Henry Tilney cries without realizing it when Catherine accepts his proposal because he's so glad that no one is angry with him and confronting his father was way more emotionally taxing than he let himself acknowledge at the time. Henry Crawford feeling wretched and alone after the affair and sobbing into his hands. Show us post wedding and make Darcy cry after the birth of his first child.

Make them cry! MAKE THEM ALL CRY