Jane Austen discussion

The answer may surprise you!

I'm not even being silly, the answer is probably Edmund Bertram of Mansfield Park. I collected relevant quotes from all six novels which you can see here:

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Wow this did surprise me! I love that you put this together! I figured Tilney & Edward would be low on the list, but I never pictured Edmund as handsome for some reason. I always imagined Darcy to be respectably handsome, and pictured Wentworth & Knightley as quite attractive. I guess memory twisted those descriptions a bit. I really would have thought Edmund & Knightley reversed. Mansfield Park has a special place in my heart but Edmund has always been a tough sell for me.

I would have guessed Darcy. I would have thought Bertram most attractive feature was money. It certainly was not his judgemental personality.

Katie wrote: "Wow this did surprise me! I love that you put this together! I figured Tilney & Edward would be low on the list, but I never pictured Edmund as handsome for some reason. I always imagined Darcy to ..."

I think poor Edmund has suffered from his depictions in film, but I'm not sure, after all the actor who played him in 1999 also played Knightley. So I don't know. But yes, he is hot, we have non-biased narration and people who say so.

Knightley is just hard to tell, his introduction in the novel gives no physical description!

Jan wrote: "I would have guessed Darcy. I would have thought Bertram most attractive feature was money. It certainly was not his judgemental personality."

Bertram doesn't have money! Mary finds a charm in, "his sincerity, his steadiness, his integrity"

thanks that was a fun read

Bethany wrote: "Jan wrote: "I would have guessed Darcy. I would have thought Bertram most attractive feature was money. It certainly was not his judgemental personality."

Bertram doesn't have money! Mary finds a ..."

The Bertrams are wealthy.

Jan wrote: "Bethany wrote: "Jan wrote: "I would have guessed Darcy. I would have thought Bertram most attractive feature was money. It certainly was not his judgemental personality."

Bertram doesn't have mone..."

The Bertrams are wealthy, but Edmund only has 700/year which is below what Mary is looking for. She wanted to marry Tom first, the heir of the whole estate.

Mrs wrote: "thanks that was a fun read"

You're welcome!

Jan wrote: "The Bertrams are wealthy."

Yes, but Edmund is a younger son, which makes a huge difference. He has to work for a living, and only has the income from the two parishes his father controls - and only one of them at the moment, because Sir Thomas has had to let Dr Grant have the other because of Tom's debts.
The Bertrams are wealthy compared to most of the population, in that the head of the family and his womenfolk don't have to work, but they still have money worries, which is why Tom's debts matter and why Sir Thomas has to go off the West Indies to sort things out over there.

Jenny H,

Well put! Edmund does have excellent connections, but he is not rich. Seven hundred a year as an income is definitely comfortable plus the living may include a parsonage or be close enough to Mansfield Park that he could live at home. But he will not inherit much from Sir Thomas. Don’t we also know that Lady Bertram had seven thousand pounds? How that may be distributed amongst her children, I don’t remember. Plus, young Tom’s indiscretions have had financial consequences for the family (or at least for Edmund). Do we know if Tom has reformed following his illness?

Shana wrote: "Jenny H,

Well put! Edmund does have excellent connections, but he is not rich. Seven hundred a year as an income is definitely comfortable plus the living may include a parsonage or be close enoug..."

Yes, Tom does reform after his illness.

What is interesting is that the Bertram brothers and the Tilney brothers both have living fathers - evidently, there must be some good genes in the pool because the life span was not what it is today, and not necessarily linked to the comforts and better diets that wealth provided. Good genes might imply good health and health, and a certain level of physical activity seemed linked to good looks.

J. wrote: "What is interesting is that the Bertram brothers and the Tilney brothers both have living fathers - evidently, there must be some good genes in the pool because the life span was not what it is tod..."

Yes! Catherine even thinks something when she sees General Tilney about how he's still pretty handsome. Good genes there.

People having living fathers was not unusual. What really made for longer life span was the decline in childhood and infant mortality. Living to be old was not uncommon. Having all of your children survive to double digits was what was uncommon and this greatly brought down the average life expectancy.

Decline in infant mortality. Sorry for bad typing.

I would say some of the quotes are not compeling testimony. I think the Wickham/Darcy comparison is more of a case of pretty is as pretty does. The locals found Wickham charming and he smiled. That made him more attractive to them than Darcy whom they did not like. Caroline Bingley would have begged to differ. We do not know what random women would have said if they were only looking at the man and not the personality.

I never know what to make of good genes. Darcy lost both parents by the age of twenty-eight. And we know he lost his dad when he was twenty-three.

Jan wrote: "People having living fathers was not unusual. What really made for longer life span was the deine in childhood and infant mortality. Living to be old was not uncommon. Having all of your children s..."

No, and I think unless the author mentions it in particular I don't think we can take it as meaning anything about their offspring: usually the presence or absence of a parent is more to do with how a parent would affect the plot.
Northanger Abbey depends on Pa Tilney being alive and Ma Tilney being dead, so that's what they are; Mansfield Park needs both Bertram parents, and both Price parents for that matter, still alive, but the Crawford parents out of the way. Pride & Prejudice needs the male leads to be orphans (so that they have their own money) but the females to have both parents ... and so on.
The presence or absence of parents affects the situation the characters find themselves in, but I don't think we can deduce anything else from it.
On the other hand, it was only when I read the Austen Project's Emma update (by Alexander McCall Smith) that it dawned on me what a holocaust there has been of everybody's mother in that! The only major character who still has one is Miss Bates. McCall Smith felt obliged to explain the reason for everybody's motherlessness in the C21st, which is why it sticks out so much, but I'm pretty sure it was really just because JA didn't want them cluttering the place up.

Jenny wrote: "Jan wrote: "People having living fathers was not unusual. What really made for longer life span was the deine in childhood and infant mortality. Living to be old was not uncommon. Having all of you..."

Lots of good points. It has more to do with plot development than anything else. I like that.

In other news. Have you ever seen if Disney princesses had mothers? It has been awhile but I remember it being fun. The one I remember is Beauty and the Beast and Belle's mother telling her it is Stockholm syndrome.

Some Disney princesses have mothers, recent ones like Mulan, Tiana (dead father), Rapunzel, Merida and Moana do, but others don't like Ariel, Belle, Elsa and Anna (both parents died) and the older ones.

The point of the comics were that the mothers would have made better decisions and Jasmin's mother would have kicked Jafar to the curb, told Pocahontas to dump any guy who called her people Savages, and so on. Just kind of a laugh at the expense of the lousy Disney dads.