u/LuminousDee

I keep thinking about how unbelievably strong-willed Marian is but also … how can she be so reckless? If her aunt Agnes ever has enough of Marian’s sharp tongue, this young woman will be in serious trouble. Yet she continues to act like nothing bad can ever touch her.

How is this even possible? She arrives at her aunts’ doors as a poor young relative who’d be out on the streets and most likely working them in real life if she didn’t have Agnes and Ada. There’s no one else in the world who cares about her. She has no money. She lives in their house, does what she wants, eats and sleeps well, gets a load of beautiful dresses (quite an expensive thing at the time) and an allowance. She is invited everywhere, courted and fetted, a nobody who is so incredibly lucky to have a rich AND well respected aunt.

Anyone with half a brain would understand all of this is because of her aunt only, but Marian just keeps on doing and saying whatever she feels like. Whether her aunts like it or not, whether the society considers it appropriate or not doesn’t seem to bother her at all. It’s not like she’s testing her aunt or anything. She is just oblivious to what could happen to her if Agnes ever snaps!

This is the Gilded Age in America we’re talking when any young woman without money or connections in a new city would be at the bottom in two seconds flat. I’m thinking The House of Mirth realities.

So, what’s up with Marian? Is she unbelievably strong or unbelievably stupid?

Looking for a novel where the protagonist very suddenly becomes/wakes up rich/poor/famous/forgotten - in other words, as someone in exact opposite circumstances to what their normal life was like before.

On rewatching the show I notice that she does not get as much screen time as her relatives, but by the looks of it we learn that she might have had the best deal: rich, titled, fairly healthy, with a ton of relatives she could see whenever she chose to, the woman pretty much did what she wanted when she wanted to. She was an aristo and invited everywhere so she wasn’t lonely, her house looks fantastic and she had every comfort one could find at the time. Probably traveled widely too (not just to Switzerland) and bought whatever she wanted. And no annoying husband who needs attention all the time. She should have gotten her own show - there are probably stories!

what kind of questions should I ask myself in order to figure out if I want to have children, or if I want to have a family? The reason I’m asking this is I’ve never felt that pull of the biological instinct, but from what I understand it’s not something that necessarily happens to all people, but many still have children (and some are very glad they did). So what should I ask myself to figure out if I want children or if I’m just lonely/afraid of being lonely in the future?

I just read in the news about a young woman who died in Water Mull, NY because she was struck by a car while out on a morning run. If there was a sidewalk this could have been avoided. Why are sidewalks almost nonexistent in so many towns in America?

(no, it doesn’t matter who was at fault - a human life is lost, another human life is destroyed)

I make friends easily and have lots of girlfriends, yet I have noticed that white American women are the worst friends. They are the most fake friends among my girlfriends. I can rely on my Hispanic friend if I need help, my Russian friend is the one I can talk openly about anything without trying to be cautious and politically correct, my African- American friend is a no-nonsense person, who will help and tell me the truth. But white women - what is the deal? They are fake nice, they are never there if you need help, they talk sh!t behind your back, they don’t want to hear about your problems, only the good stuff but they compare and compete when it comes to your dating lives, looks or kids... Is there some kind of culture of frenemies that the white girls in America are being raised with exclusively?

Her behavior baffles and bugs me: she constantly feigns interest in the lives of her neighbors, friends and colleagues in order to establish closer bonds with random people, but isn’t really involved in the lives of her own grown up children. I mean, she goes so far as to give people little gifts for some silly occasions, but hardly ever calls up her children to see how things are going.

What is up with that? Mind you, most of these people hardly ever respond in kind. THEY are busy with THEIR families. She had even heard herself getting laughed at behind her back at work for being too desperate for attention (according to what she‘s told me.)

So she often ends up complaining how these people ignore her on holidays, don’t call, don’t ask about her, etc.

She has always struggled with living too far from relatives (she’d moved away back when she was very young), but why not focus on her immediate family? It makes no sense to me and every time I hear her telling me how she’d written a poem to some colleague at work for their bday she doesn’t even get invited to, I just don’t understand it.

I’m not saying she shouldn’t invest in healthy friendships. I’m asking why do it to the exclusion of her children? Why not show the same affection to her own kind? Wouldn’t it make more sense? Wouldn’t it be a much better investment on many levels? We, her children are always the ones calling and checking in, taking her on trips, sharing pictures, sending gifts, etc.

So, what causes such a strange behavior?

I adore her writing but this is something I find a bit annoying - she is never serious. we never get to see what she actually thinks or feel, as an author or a person on the subject or a person in question. When I read Tolstoy I feel like I explore the character in full. whereas with Jane Austen, as soon as she hints at something, she flips it around and gives a completely opposite view of it. And that makes her writing feel entertaining and witty but sort of evasive and insincere even.

Anyone else ever felt that way reading Austen?

I moved to the US when I was 19 and having had no family here, I had to figure out every thing on my own. I always had a job or two, put myself through college, and paid rent. I had to learn to be an adult in a new country by myself. I’m not even going to mention that I had to learn English from scratch, that’s obvious but not something anyone who actually grew up in the US ever takes into account. I was not easy.

Anyway, fast forward two decades, I can now afford not to work. Im married, I don’t have children to take care of and my parents continue to live abroad. I love to spend time by myself - read, garden, go to museum, etc. Speaking from experience: I don’t want to work for anybody and I don’t want to start my own business. I don’t want to get up at 5am to be at the office at 8, to count the register at the end of the day, to make sure someone I’ll never see again is happy with their choice of an entree or deal with a boss who is going through malopause. I also don’t want to hustle and make jewelry to sell on Instagram - theres plenty of stiff in the world already. I enjoy having an empty schedule and doing what I want when I want.

So why do people often ask me if I don’t want to do something, meaning get a job? Is it really so incomprehensible? I know if I were a mother these questions would be irrelevant yet people are confused by someone who just does what she wants all day and is never bored, and has zero desire to get a job.

Do Americans really love to work and hustle so much? Even people who retire and have enough say they got a job bc they can’t “just sit at home.” I can sit at home all day happily. Do people really need to have a job to be happy even when they can afford not to work?

There’s only so much interesting things you can manage to do after a certain age, and most of them are not anything hugely exciting anyway, but some grandparents are in demand amongst their family and friends, while others cant get their phone calla picked up. So, what do they do differently?

or do they actually feel like they create the music? Prompting the machine sounds so boring to me. I know next to nothing about song writing but as an artist working in a different filed, I wouldn’t want to give away the joy of actively creating something. Thats the whole point! Some people argue that A I is the same as any new medium but it isn’t - you literally give away the thing that makes you happy, the act of creating. It’s like asking someone else to eat your cake for you and then describe what it feels like.

Or is it completely different when it comes to writing music? thanks!

I could never understand why the character of Tom ended up with one of the longest and most important storylines. Especially, if you consider how many really great characters seemingly disappeared for no good reason (Charles Blake?) at all.

Well! I just scrolled though the recent “Can you explain this” post on Mary and her suitors.

So it seems that Tom was not cuter or more interesting than anyone else, nor was he much needed for the audience to understand the world of the aristos.

It‘s just because Leech was willing to stay on with the show for years and didn’t chomp at the bit looking to “do other things.”

Does anyone feel like there is a peculiar parallel between the characters of Lucy Steele and Charlotte Lucas?

I‘ve finished “P&P” a little while ago and am about to start “S&S.” I’ve seen all of the film and TV adaptations, so obviously I know what happens but it is my first time reading the original source which I’m very excited about. Every adaptation offers a different take on her characters but only Jane Austen’s novels of course, contain the original, “authentic” version.

After I was done reading P&P I began to wonder if there might be some parallels b/w the characters of Charlotte and Lucy, possibly albeit unwittingly, meant by Austen?

For example, both come from genteel but not very wealthy families and have to rely on their own wits to make a life for themselves. Both are very pragmatic and clear eyed. Both use whatever little social cachet they have to secure a comfortable future. Both had to become a smooth operator bc neither has a momager Bennet to steer her towards a nice option.

Lucy is universally hated and seen as a scheming character. Charlotte is usually praised for being realistic and pragmatic. I won’t go so far as to say that Lucy and Charlotte are similar, but what strikes me is that they are both women with severely limited resources who must game the patriarchal system as best as they can. Ultimately each marries a man she doesn’t love. Marrying for love is of course, reserved for the heroine which in turn makes Lucy and Charlotte to be more similar in their “realness.” They go about it in a very different way but I feel there is a strangely unsettling parallel here.

And now, I’m going to go read the original source, S&S to see if I still feel this way, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on this?

I’ve been reading (as well as speaking, of course) in English for over two decades, but I’m still so MUCH slower than I am in my native language, that I’m starting to wonder if it’s even possible to ever get better.

The thing is I prefer good quality books (literary fiction, historical fiction, memoirs, biographies, essays, classics) which of course take a lot more effort than some fun beach read that you could fly through in a day but I’m just not interested in it. I’ve been focusing on reading exclusively in English for years and yet, if I pick up a Russian classic in Russian, not only do I properly enjoy it, I also finish it fairly fast, AND understand and remember everything after.

I’m thinking, more practice will probably be the best possible advice, but perhaps some of you have improved your reading skills in a NON-NATIVE language and care to share some tips?