Rereading Pride & Prejudice

[resonant]

Because it's cold and I just had to buy a car I didn't want ...

Has the Austen pro fanfic industry produced any tolerable books on the life of Charlotte Collins?

Comments

[fox]

Oh, I'm sorry about the car, but I am tuning in to hear if anyone has anything good to say in answer to your question.

[resonant]

Oh, I ended up with a car pretty much just like the one I lost, so it was the best of bad outcomes -- it's just that at no point would I ever have said, "I think I'll spend five thousand dollars to make my car one year newer, give it some nifty striping on the outside, and give it a mysterious history that may only hint at its details with funny smells the first time I turn on the air conditioner in the rain."

[watersword]

Not that I'm aware of, but it is definitely something I would pay money for if it existed.

[resonant]

I've just been wondering ... could she improve him? Before he becomes rich and people begin reinforcing his worst tendencies?

[watersword]

If anyone could, it would be Charlotte. Lizzy would be a dismal failure. But, hmm.

You know, suddenly I'm wondering about what kind of relationship Sir William and Lady Lucas have. I wonder what Charlotte's models were like. We see Sir William being a pompous snob, par for the course, but a quick search in the ebook suggests that Lady Lucas never speaks directly, her conversation appears only via the narrator. Hmmmmm. I wonder ...

[resonant]

That's very interesting.

Like, the spouse is famously absent-minded, on a level where he could easily be the clownish semi-villain in a comedy of manners. Among the kidlet's very first sentences were things like "Uh-oh Dada pen! Pu' 'way! Uh-oh Dada notebook! Pu' 'way!" -- and thus, if they wind up permanently bonded to someone who sometimes loses keys in the refrigerator, this will not seem tragic to the kidlet at all.

The only problem is that dealing with Collins also means dealing with Lady Catherine. But maybe she's on the verge of death ...

[castiron]

I don't know of any novels, but the only story in Arielle Eckstut's Pride and Promiscuity Austen-porn short story collection that really worked for me was her take on the Collins's intimate life.

[resonant]

That is ... mercifully hard to imagine.

[travels_in_time]

I read this one when it was a free Kindle download: http://www.amazon.com/Charlotte-Pride-Prejudice-Continues-Series-ebook/dp/B0080ELL9M

It was tolerable, at that price. :) If it had been on LJ, I would have suggested a beta-reader.

[resonant]

Hm -- looks like they're setting Charlotte up with Col. Fitzwilliams, if I'm correctly reading the foreshadowing in the Amazon sample.

I'm also reading Jo Baker's Longbourn, which retells the same story from the point of view of the servants, and Mr. Collins comes off surprisingly well there -- he's about the only one of the Austen characters who actually addresses servants and listens to what they say.

[travels_in_time]

Well, I don't want to give away spoilers, but it is an Austen plot, so.

I'll have to look up Longbourn, it sounds interesting.

[resonant]

I'm enjoying it, but I think not quite the way the author wants me to -- I'm less interested in the thematic bits (which are hitting me with increasing frequency as I get near the end) than in the bits that tell you things about living in that time and in that place.

A neat example of the latter: Darcy and Bingley (who don't actually play much of a role in the book) come to the Bennet house on horseback. Ignoring whatever paths/roads there may be, they jump the fence into the meadow -- and all the Bennet horses, grazing in that meadow, come over and run with them until they jump the fence out of the meadow on the other side.

[fox]

Two Christmases ago I got Longbourn as a gift separately from both my mom and my brother. I guess once in a while I'm predictable. :-) I think I've enjoyed it the most of all the P&P profic I've read. (Mind you, I haven't read extensively--one of my earlier samplings was Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, so the bar is not very high.)