Chapter 2 discussion


I really feel for Sir Thomas. I feel like in many significant ways he's a single parent. (A wealthy single parent who can pay people to help him, but that's not quite the same as having a true partner in child rearing). He's a single parent who's also singularly unfit to be a parent.

I think this might also be one of the more frank discussions in Austen's work about money? Don't quote me on that, but while Austen has always written about class and money, but I don't recall such discussions of how estates got their money in other books. (I also feel a little teased... the mentions of the East Indies always make me think she's going to make some commentary on the British Empire, even though I know she's not going to. Ah, brains.)

As for Edmund... I think my ornery/contrary/tetchy streak is kicking in. His discussion with Fanny about her moving in with Mrs. Norris rubbed me the wrong way. No expressed sympathy for why she'd feel the way she did, no "I understand why you feel that way but think of it like this..." Just "Here's why what you're feeling is wrong and how you should feel about it." Which, I mean, worked for Fanny. She still felt comfortable enough with him to speak her own mind and her own feelings, so it's not even that his behavior was bad or at all offensive.

But if I were Fanny, I would have been fucking pissed about him telling me "You should feel ____." (Especially since he is so very wrong, and living with Mrs. Norris would have been deeply unpleasant for poor Fanny.)