Okay so Jane Austen is making me retroactively like a bunch of these characters I originally found annoying by simply surrounding them with actual demons. Well done.
I like that Charlotte Brontë was basically telling a soapy saga about how the world is a hard and complicated place and sometimes Shit Happens, and Jane Austen is just like, “I’ve met the worst and simultaneously most boring people you can imagine. Hunker down, let me tell you all about them.”
I’ve barely touched on Jane and Bingley because they’re just two hot people who straightforwardly like each other, and I’m sure these crazy kids will be fine. It turns out, though, that firmly believe that Mrs Bennet should have a gun.
Oh I fully blew past Mrs Bennet conspiring to get her daughter a touch of the cold to stay at Netherfield with Bingley lmao what a lady. No ruth at all.
I wonder what the conversation was like at home when Mrs Bennet got Elizabeth’s note about sick Jane.
Mrs B: Jane is unwell! We must go to her!
Mr B: Yes, certainly.
Mrs B: And I’m bringing all the girls.
Mr B: Oh, this is a You project.
I’m at the part where they’re taking a walk in the woods, and I think Darcy and Elizabeth are flirting, and also Caroline is there doing that thing where she’s trying to charm Darcy by making herself sound a little unworldly and thereby super impressed by him, and it is awkward.
Elizabeth leaves the conversation because someone else joins them, and “the path is too small for all of us,” and I’m having trouble picturing that kind of path. But it occurs to me she’s just grabbing a perfunctory nonsense excuse to leave a social situation, which just makes me root for her.
*someone rude joins the chat*
Elizabeth: WELL, I have to go suddenly because uh the sun is at a weird angle that makes our shadows a size that displeases me, so see you later, nice chatting, good-bye.
I love her.
I went from “Wow Elizabeth Bennet kinda feels like a manic pick-me dream girl” to “I will take a blunt object to anybody’s car lights if they say a bad word about Liz.” Jane Austen. Is so good.