Old Books, New Readers discussion

I'm currently meandering through Middlemarch by george Eliot, and it reminds me yet again of a subject that has come up with many of the older classics I have read: the issue of inheritance. I have to wonder, was this a literary theme that reflected occassional real world values, did it apply to one class of people, was it a driving concern in the real world of the 19th century,or what? I see individuals in books identified by their inheritances, or women who become 'independent' because they finally have some money of their own, etc etc.
I have trouble relating to this, and almost never think of inheritance from my family. That may simply be because there isn't much to worry about!
Our class statuses seem to rely more on education, celebrityhood, or job income.
Has anyone else thought about this in relation to the old classics?

Inheritance is more than just money and it applies to every class of person even to this day. True when rich you leave money, houses and other such worldly goods to your children, but more important than these you are leaving your name and thus also your reputation. Many a man was ruined by the ill reputation of a child and so to me at least inheritance of the name is really what you are passing down and nothing could be more valuable.

That's right...I hadn't considered that. I was going by a more narrow definition.
Along those lines, is it fair that an entire family be ruined in their reputation by the actions of one individual? I remember thinking about this a lot when I was reading Pride and Prejudice- when the one girl (Lydia?) ran off with Wickham. I can see it casting a certain amount of suspicion on the family, both the other girls and the parents, but to ruin everyone's reputation forever? I have trouble comprehending that.

Well, it's rather like this. The parents are in charge of raising their children right? In the case of Lydia what she did was so awful and unspeakable that if the parents raised a child who did that what might the other girls be like?

Or if a parent has a child who is a murderer, it could be the child is just strange, but it could also have something to do with the parents that made the child that way. And if one child is that way what are the other children like?

Not to say it is always the parents fault, but in the case of Lydia her father let her do whatever she wanted, he never tried to curb her bad habbits and attitude and the mother encouraged it! What kind of parents are they? Luckily Lizzie and Jane had more sense but it was likely both father and mother spent more time with them making sure they grew up proper. After a while though they gave up, when they had no son.

Yes, the old adage 'the apple never falls far from the tree' comes to mind. It's something I can 'get' rationally, but it has only had a fifty-fifty chance in my personal experience. So while I can see how folks might wonder about the rest of the family, especially with some rather wacky parents, at the same time, I think the general populace of P&P was quite judgemental, too. It was exquisitely portrayed by Lady whatsername, Darcy's aunt.

And if you have seen YENTL (the Barbara Streisand-Mandy Patinkin movie) you may recall that Avigdor could not marry the girl he wanted because his brother had committed suicide. This made him unacceptable to all decent Jewish families. Only the various adventures of the movie (Which I will not spoil for you here) made his beloved equally unacceptable, so that the family allowed him to marry her.

Oh, wow, I haven't seen Yentl since it first came out. Do they ever show it on TV? I may have to borrow from the library.

Christa - Ron Paul 2016 wrote: "Well, it's rather like this. The parents are in charge of raising their children right? In the case of Lydia what she did was so awful and unspeakable that if the parents raised a child who did tha..."
A fascinating time: picture a very closed society in which it was virtually impossible for a woman to inherit - money always stayed in the male line. Then it is possible to view the various social functions (balls, for instance) as very like cattle markets where the prime stock was paraded for examination by the 'best' families; and wherein women desperate to stay beneath the best possible financial panoply had to put forward their prowess - personal 'comeliness', artistic ability (a woman was at least expected to play an instrument well, and preferably sing), and social skills: wit and sarcasm were highly prized among the intellectual set.

Mixing a metaphor, the best horses always went to the best stables, and any imperfections in the breeding line would be (and, in the case of P&P were) quickly picked upon by your competitors. If you were clever enough (I'm thinking Becky Sharpe here) to overcome lack of financial status and the unforgivable crime of living outside London, the last thing you wanted was to have a rampant sister running off with a soldier! Imagine what it can have been like if your immediate ancestry included Lady Caroline Lamb!

Men, however, could get away with almost anything. Ignoring the probability that many of them were so inbred as to be essentially mad, their 'japes' or 'eccentricities' were lauded no matter what the damage. Come to think of it, when you strip away the veneer, not very much has changed - at least, not in British 'society'.

Frederick wrote: "Christa - Ron Paul 2016 wrote: "Well, it's rather like this. The parents are in charge of raising their children right? In the case of Lydia what she did was so awful and unspeakable that if the pa..."

I agree with the fact men could get away with anything and that is wrong. But I disagree with the negative impute you place upon the fact that women had to behave themselves and indeed be useful.They could not go parting late at night without a chaperone, and they couldn't spend a lone time with any man.

We can see it in today's society what happens when women rule and are allowed to run around with no consequences. I believe it was a good thing that women who ran away without parents consent and got pregnant outside of marriage had real consequences and they were not pleasant. I hope to read soon the "Scarlet Letter" which will I think show me more of how that worked.


KK- Lydia ran away while Jane and Mr. Bingly were separated, the fact that he came back and married her after that shows how hugely attached he was to Jane and that he truly cared for her. Now had Lydia ran away before Mr. Bingly even met Jane? This I am not so sure about. Mr. Bingly is so kind and caring and gentle I think he still would have danced with Jane at their first meting and thus still fallen in love with her. But Mr. Darcy would never have had anything to do with the Bennett family and tried even harder to separate Jane and Bingly and never invited Jane over or visited the Bennett's house. So of course he and Elizabeth would never have gotten married.

As for it being unfair to judge the sisters for what one did I am not so sure about that either. Rather like the military where what one does effect all of them, so the men try and keep each other out of trouble. Today it is pretty much accepted "It's my life and it doesn't affect you so leave me a lone, I'll do what I want". Back then you could just do what you want because it affected the whole family. It goes to show just how selfish Lydia truly was. So it forced parents and siblings to take interest in what the others were doing, forced them to try and keep each other out of trouble and protect one another.

On the other hand many upper family's hated each other because of that very fact.

The key societal change is birth control. In the Bennetts' time, sex essentially led to pregnancy. If you are going to have primogeniture (the property descending only in the male line) then necessarily you need to enforce virginity on brides; it would never do for Downton Abbey to be inherited by a son who is not a Crawley!
But pop the Pill into the mix, and things immediately shuffle. With birth control, the power passes to the female. She can wait (with some caveats) to have a baby with the right male. If the Earl wants a male heir for Downton he doesn't need to look for a virgin; a congenial spouse who is not pregnant at the altar will be fine.

If you are talking about only legal then perhaps so. But if you are talking about morally then no, even that would not work. The Church was huge back then, and everyone went to church regardless of whether or not they believed the preaching. For myself I do believe, for the most part, the people went to church and believed what was said and children outside of marriage were not allowed in the church and neither were the parents of said child.

Also there are many many many ways of natural birth control. Herbs, ways of preforming certain acts, diet and yes even abortion they had back then. Of course it did not always work even as it does not always work now-a-days, but the idea of birth control is not new.

There were real fears behind a lot of the social mores: we enjoy love in an age of antibiotics - not the case in Georgian/Regency/Victorian Britain. Fidelity was inspired by STD at a time when STD could be fatal. Soldiers were not reviled only because of their wandering habits and their perpetual poverty, but because of the life-style they 'enjoyed'. Armies marched at the head of a raggle-taggle column of camp-followers of various kinds, from the starving who would do anything for food to the wives who were anxious to keep watch. There was a lot of disease bred in those columns and not only sexually transmitted: looming over everything was the huge spectre of cholera.

I don't think my portrayal of the society cattle market was necessarily negative, within a looser frame you might say the same rules apply today. But the compelling influence of 'society' was felt more strongly in a time when women enjoyed few legal rights, and certainly had no acceptable independent path. The woman's role was very clearly defined, and anyone who in any way broke the mold was penalized: to break it by running off with a ne'er-do-well showed a flaw in the breeding that was unforgivable - everyone felt threatened in case it visited their doors.

I don't think applying any kind of analogy to animals and women or society will ever be accurate. Assuredly not in history; which is mostly a matter of opinion.

As for women in war, consider this, there have always been those looked down upon 'camp followers'; breakers and benders of "the clearly defined" but what I want to know and study and suspect will never likely be realized - at least not to the history taught today; is what occurred when those camp followers faced a enemy on the battlefield alongside the regular troops. Did they sit on their thumbs and wait until they came back?

I think that's laughable, really. If I were to follow any man, father, brother, lover into war instead of waiting far away safe at home - I would certainly not watch from the sidelines when he might be killed.

Did they (the women) act to defend the camps the troops had? Did they engage in combat with the enemy? At least in one case, yes. That being Phoebe Hessel (1713 - 1821) she was a enlisted soldier; where there is one woman, there are more.

Rena (Greeksays) wrote: "I don't think applying any kind of analogy to animals and women or society will ever be accurate. Assuredly not in history; which is mostly a matter of opinion.

As for women in war, consider thi..."


It is very appropriate to liken men and women unto animals,as we find that without law and social structure that you so lambast we return unto our primal state.

And the reason women who follow a war party are looked down on,is because they tended to be whores. And you will find here that this is the REASON (not the effect) for these social standards.

Besides all these reasons,we find it in Gods word that women are to be keepers at home,and this should strike all doubt from you heart that what Lydia did was wrong.

Oh dear! Having said that we are, of course, all animals (albeit the lucky members of the dominant species) let's move on. My 'cattle market' analogy remains valid, I'm afraid, although perhaps you take it a little too literally. Social occasions were so for as long as the initiative for selecting the right partner or mate remained with the male line. The Bennetts were teetering on the edge of acceptability anyway - not very well off, a fairly anti-social father and a truly ghastly mother - the last thing they needed was Lydia's indiscretion!
As for camp followers - I partially agree; war in this period was a much messier affair than today. Wives often followed husbands and joined in the skirmishing, but so did the dispossessed, the scavengers, and inevitably the whores. And in such dire circumstances, who would blame the owners to these labels for interchanging them to some extent?

Austen wrote from within the climate of that time. 'Society' was a fortress against so many threats: England may have fought abroad, but was never far from invasion at home, the industrial 'newly rich' and disease were always close by. And looked upon with equal horror!

Sorry, but Lydia was a very, very naughty girl!

Victor wrote: "It is very appropriate to liken men and women unto animals,as we find that without law and social structure that you so lambast we return unto our primal state.

And the reason women who follow a war party are looked down on,is because they tended to be whores. And you will find here that this is the REASON (not the effect) for these social standards.

Besides all these reasons,we find it in Gods word that women are to be keepers at home,and this should strike all doubt from you heart that what Lydia did was wrong. "

Prove it Victor. Tell me about one former English social structure which had laws which no longer does and devolves into a animal-like condition; oh, and by and by, animals have social structures all their own alien to ours which are to this day being studied. Trainers have to work within these structures or the results are often poor for both. This is the core of the reason why I look down on any analogy which likens human social structure to any animals.

"They tended to be whores", really? That's the only reason for a woman to be a camp follower in war by your way of thinking? So it was a job, in other words, in a time when few women could otherwise find employment. Not forgetting beyond sexual favors, that camp followers sold other trades like cooking, laundering, liquor, nursing, and the sutler's other goods.

A camp follower might well be a woman who was the soldier's wife and might have no other choice but to raise her children (daughters and sons) in a camp, having no other kind of protection offered in that kind of society?

"Besides all these reasons,we find it in Gods word that women are to be keepers at home,and this should strike all doubt from you heart that what Lydia did was wrong. "

I'm talking historically, true facts, not Pride and Prejudice (which I've never read). Nor whatever version of the bible you keep at your bedside.

Frankly, I think if a author ever fairly wrote Lydia's life thereafter, it would make a interesting book. The first of it's sort you might say.

I love fables where animals talk and their very human behavior sets example of what not to do. Individual animals in real life have taught me many great truths. I also would not want to lose a society of law and order anyway, because animal societies can be just that brutal. Our laws never quite banish that aspect, but they control its becoming an epidemic. Well, usually...looking at recent news I see us having more trouble than ever.
What Lydia did was wrong. It's not that morals are outdated. She disregarded her family and society for selfish reasons, not as well thought out actions. She really made a life changing decision on impulse, which looked to be her usual way of doing things. I wonder if at some point she would realize the potetntial for folly there. Would she also maybe realize that her parents had been a little too undisciplined in their childrearing?
Mrs. bennet drove me nuts. I think the younger girls took after her more and the older ones took more after their father. You can't really control a lot of this in your children, but you can shape and guide them to avoid foolishness. I kinda doubt either Bennet did that, especially not later in life when their parenting became more lax from whatever standard it had in their early days.
War women I can't comment on. I suspect there was quite a continuum of different types. But if my husband went to war, I would move in with my mother or sister or brother or MIL. I would not be hanging around an entire army of men with their varying ideas of how to treat women. I have two teen daughters to think of as well!
Now I know that in some ages, the families usually were with the armies, and if that was the case, then their entire set of social ideas would be different from those societies where this was not the norm.
I am also reminded of some revolutionary war women who were present on the battlefields, loyal to their husbands, and probably were not quickly assumed to be whores. Also, men away from home could find it comforting to have women about, say, doing chores, making things look more comfortingly normal to them.
There's also nothing wrong with relying on the Bible. It's how a person uses it that makes all the difference.
I really appreciate the discussion on historical societies and how they affected family/individual life. It could be very hard to be a woman in past times! It is very hard to be a woman now, too. And don't think the same doesn't apply to men in their way, as well. Or parents!

Frederick wrote: "Oh dear! Having said that we are, of course, all animals (albeit the lucky members of the dominant species) let's move on. My 'cattle market' analogy remains valid, I'm afraid, although perhaps you take it a little too literally. Social occasions were so for as long as the initiative for selecting the right partner or mate remained with the male line. The Bennetts were teetering on the edge of acceptability anyway - not very well off, a fairly anti-social father and a truly ghastly mother - the last thing they needed was Lydia's indiscretion!
As for camp followers - I partially agree; war in this period was a much messier affair than today. Wives often followed husbands and joined in the skirmishing, but so did the dispossessed, the scavengers, and inevitably the whores. And in such dire circumstances, who would blame the owners to these labels for interchanging them to some extent?

Austen wrote from within the climate of that time. 'Society' was a fortress against so many threats: England may have fought abroad, but was never far from invasion at home, the industrial 'newly rich' and disease were always close by. And looked upon with equal horror!

Sorry, but Lydia was a very, very naughty girl! "

I've never read Pride and Prejudice, sorry, but basically it sounds like a case of "things couldn't get worse" thinking and, bam! Lydia did "it", and things sunk from bad to worse. Well, if things were so bad, Lydia probably saw that from the start and decided to take her chances rather than end up the worse off when someone else inevitably did something stupid.

It doesn't tell, I'm betting, Lydia's conversations or meetings with this soldier ( Wickham, from Wikipedia?) nor what his own inheritance or standing in society was, only their passion/flirting.

Anyone at sixteen is often "a very very naughty", boy or girl. I'm thinking that if Wickham was raised by Mr. Darcy's father (thus being something of a adopted brother) he was in Darcy's shadow but he is likely not without his own means. It (wikipedia) says he marries her?

Lora wrote: "Lora (lorabanora) | 134 comments I love fables where animals talk and their very human behavior sets example of what not to do. Individual animals in real life have taught me many great truths. I also would not want to lose a society of law and order anyway, because animal societies can be just that brutal. Our laws never quite banish that aspect, but they control its becoming an epidemic. Well, usually...looking at recent news I see us having more trouble than ever.
What Lydia did was wrong. It's not that morals are outdated. She disregarded her family and society for selfish reasons, not as well thought out actions. She really made a life changing decision on impulse, which looked to be her usual way of doing things. I wonder if at some point she would realize the potetntial for folly there. Would she also maybe realize that her parents had been a little too undisciplined in their childrearing?
Mrs. bennet drove me nuts. I think the younger girls took after her more and the older ones took more after their father. You can't really control a lot of this in your children, but you can shape and guide them to avoid foolishness. I kinda doubt either Bennet did that, especially not later in life when their parenting became more lax from whatever standard it had in their early days.
War women I can't comment on. I suspect there was quite a continuum of different types. But if my husband went to war, I would move in with my mother or sister or brother or MIL. I would not be hanging around an entire army of men with their varying ideas of how to treat women. I have two teen daughters to think of as well!
Now I know that in some ages, the families usually were with the armies, and if that was the case, then their entire set of social ideas would be different from those societies where this was not the norm.
I am also reminded of some revolutionary war women who were present on the battlefields, loyal to their husbands, and probably were not quickly assumed to be whores. Also, men away from home could find it comforting to have women about, say, doing chores, making things look more comfortingly normal to them.
There's also nothing wrong with relying on the Bible. It's how a person uses it that makes all the difference.
I really appreciate the discussion on historical societies and how they affected family/individual life. It could be very hard to be a woman in past times! It is very hard to be a woman now, too. And don't think the same doesn't apply to men in their way, as well. Or parents! "

Aesop's Fables are some of my favorites, as well as the Native American and African American fables, I recently re-read Aesop and found most to be quirky and enlightening, sometimes a downright mockery of certain quirks of society by way of animals. We do that today in newspaper comics too.

Society changes, that is what is it is supposed to do, because people in a generation can and do change rapidly; look at just the past thirty years! It's when a society with it's laws and order tries to overreach and mold all people into not a narrow focus of not changing that I think it loses it's effect. There will always be people, by and by, who just don't see government (and all it's laws and order) as changing anything; being nothing but a habit.

I haven't read Pride and Prejudice, I tend to think that a mix of genetics and raising play a part in shaping a person. It's sort of like how as you grow older you look like your parents, but you are who you are as well.

Lydia doesn't sound like she had the best of upbringings, and I take it she is a minor character too; but if you try sympathizing with her rather than judging, perhaps it is simply easier for me not having read the book?

Young people (14-30) more often went to war then older ones in that time (of course there are exceptions, but that's how it seems today too) but if we are talking about a society alike Pride and Prejudice; your mother/mother in law would not have her own household, she would live either with her husband or your brother and be subject to their say-so; if your sister could take you in with your daughters would likewise be determined by her husband (or your brother if she were not married). Your brother might, or might be at war as well. If your husband went to war and said you were to go with him, you and your daughters would not have that choice to begin with.

Very different from how it is today, isn't it. By and large, it's a good difference, it offers change and choice.

There have always been civilian people (men and women) who follow armies - it happens today, it happened in the time of the Romans; they might have had a choice, or they might not have.

I'd say using the bible to tell me what I should be doing and thinking and feeling is wrong when it is done only to get a point across.

("Besides all these reasons,we find it in Gods word that women are to be keepers at home,and this should strike all doubt from you heart that what Lydia did was wrong.")

Those are all good points. I think I am hard on the fictional Lydia because she is so very foolish in the book. What happens is that she runs away with a soldier and it's at about the same time that her older sisters are learning facts about this young man- that he looks for easy money from families. So he was rather grooming her to run away with him so he could make money demands upon the family. Lydia just fell into the trap...and then later, she seemed to show her own shallowness and greed, in certain scenes. It's been a little while since I read the book. It could almost be said that while Lydia didn't know exactly what she was getting herself into, neither did she ever see anything wrong with it ever after, not that I could tell. That would make for interesting reading.
She really makes a reader wonder how her mother chose to marry...could it be that Mrs. Bennet did something as impulsive? These things sometimes start/continue cycles.
Men historically have had a huge control in womens' lives, yes. I imagine some were used to counselling with their women as well as counselling at them. I come across clues to this in literature throughout history, but at the moment I can't bring them to hand.
It is neverhteless a sobering thought how thin the line can be that separates a woman from abject poverty or other hardship.
Jane Austen has had quite a few fans who tried to continue her stories...but I have yet to hear of any that succeeded really well at it. It would be interesting to hear more about these characters, who they became, what they learned later in life, etc. I hear one of the problems is that modern attempts come from too entirely modern a viewpoint- they assume so much based on their own background, from language to social setting. For instance, being able to intimately grasp the society of the time, it just couldn't be done unless you had lived it. My comments above just assumed that I could make certain choices that might not have been mine, a couple centuries ago. It was a different society, and hard to grasp from this distance. Ours will be that way for someone else, I suppose. I know already, my kids can't imagine running loose miles from home alone or with other kids, in the woods, for nearly the entire day. And we didn't do anything immoral or illegal, we just were kids.

Lora wrote: "Those are all good points. I think I am hard on the fictional Lydia because she is so very foolish in the book. What happens is that she runs away with a soldier and it's at about the same time tha..."

I believe there are one or two things which perhaps need picking up that we haven't covered here. A soldier who 'took the King's shilling' could be away on foreign campaigns for protracted periods. Communications were rudimentary, wages poor. There would be no way of sending money home to wives and families.
Males and females in Austen's time were educated separately and in different ways: men were taught the classics and etiquette; women were taught domestic duties and to entertain - sing and to play. Educating a woman in our sense today was considered a waste of time. The bridges were simply too wide to cross! A large number of women died young, from lack of medical attention and often from what amounted to abuse. The most genteel of men could treat their wives abominably.
This didn't substantially change in UK until after the 1st World War. Some might argue it still hasn't changed as much as we would like!

Can I bring our attention to the title of the book? I think it is Austen's best, because it so completely encapsulates the plot.

Yes, the title really is an excellent choice for the book. I really like the experience of picking up a book, wondering what the title means, and then putting the book down again, having read it, and the title stands as the perfect commentary on what I have read.

The negative aspects of the old ideas of women and their value still resonates today: in my own experience, when I married, many people assumed I would stop my college education and 'support my husband'. And yes, I even heard, more than once, that I was wasting the university's time and space that should go to a man.
I don't even mind the idea that men have to get the best education they can to provide best for their family, so that the woman can stay home in a stable environment to raise the children- I'm all for that. I didn't appreciate the underlying assumption that in the knowledge of the world there was somehow a dearth of resources and that women were somehow vacuously frittering it away on their silly little brains, brains they would never use once pregnancy kicked in.
Thank heavens that throughout history there have been those who saw beyond such nonsense.

Rena (Greeksays) wrote: "Victor wrote: "It is very appropriate to liken men and women unto animals,as we find that without law and social structure that you so lambast we return unto our primal state.

And the reason women..."

The truth of our animal nature is self evident You need not look to far into the past in England's own history to find them painting their bottoms blue and fighting over scraps of meat.
"
"They tended to be whores", really? That's the only reason for a woman to be a camp follower in war by your way of thinking? So it was a job, in other words, in a time when few women could otherwise find employment. Not forgetting beyond sexual favors, that camp followers sold other trades like cooking, laundering, liquor, nursing, and the sutler's other goods."

All of these things would have been just as wrong for lydia to do,as being a whore. She had no want for a home,or food. She was provided for quite well. And this is why it is a shock that she would slap her parents in the face and run off to "do laundry and wash cloths". She was giving up her title as a gentleman's daughter when she did this. And lowering herself to the status of a "wage earner".

Now,having answered you're assualt i would like to make my own.

You say not to liken animals to humans,yet you say animals are just as evolved as humans. Wich,i am afraid,is likening animals to humans..... You have given rise to you're own ignorance in that statement.

You also say you have never read the book. Then how can you define what the correct course of action should have been,if you do not know the circumstances. This again gives rise to you own ignorance and prejudice.

In closing,the bible IS true fact,and is the greatest source of knowledge in the world.