pride and prejudice

i just started reading it again. and thought i'd post and say so. cos noone has posted in ages... :(
kthnxbai

Colin Firth, Hottie or Nottie?

PS. Colin Firth looks sooooo much more attractive in Bridged Jones' Diary. Actually kissable. :P

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Hey, has everyone heard about Shadi's new blog?

You should have received an email about it.

gypsyrose forever :)

Shadi is almost as awesome as the Jonas Brothers and Pretty and Stuff.

PS. Leish didn't really type this. Her signature is in this typy box for some reason. Shadi typed it. Obviously. :P

....?

Whats going on here? Whats happened to everyone??????

...HI?

Someone say something about Pride and Prejudice before I scream!!!!

Dang this text. Its blue!!! And italic-ed!!! And underlined!!!!

Aaanywho.

Random bio of Shadi:

Hi. My name is Shadi. I love to procrastinate, and I like eating weird things together. Like chicken and icecream. And philadelphia cream cheese and jam. And lemon/lime sorbet and dairy chocolate icecream. I love my mummy, and Harry Potter. I think I am a bad person. I love my friends. I like reading stuff, just about anything really. I'm a book whore. Except I can't stand war novels. I like doing this ":P" smiley alot. I wish I could play the guitar, and have magical powers, and fly to the moon. I want so very desperately to fall in love. I'm afraid that when it comes to my wedding night, I'll be too tired to ... ya know. Or I might do it wrong. Or I might be too.... down there. Ehem. I want to be the worlds first singer/doctor/archaeologist/space lady. I like caves, but I don't want to live in them. I want to punch the first boy who made me cry. I miss my grandma. I should treat my mum with more respect. I hate school. I like maths. I miss you lot. I never realized, but I need you to breath. xoxo

Dearest Shadi,

It has been brought to my attention that I am not a member of your blog.

This fills me with deep sadness.

Invite me? :)

Love,
Lauren. xox

ps. I miss you!

Mr Bingley

Hi Girls and Possibly Boy Readers,

I'm taking a short moment in my ridiculously boring and relatively safe life to say how much Mr Bingley annoys me. He's such a pushover. And considering that I am one myself, this is saying something. I mean, why is he so easily persuaded that he doesn't love Jane? If he was my future husband, I'd give him a good spanking. :P. And he's so HAPPY, all the TIME. I mean, wouldn't that peppiness get annoying?

No, I'm not PMS. :) Mr Bingley is my pet peeve.

Love y'all.

'Do you think Charlotte Lucas was straight or a lesbian?'

I did originally post this as a comment but I may as well post it here as an answer to the question. Its short and not very well thought out, but here it is:

I know it just seems like a silly, immature topic, but I think it's fairly valid. Charlotte doesn't place a lot of value on marriage, and gets married to Mr Collins as just a means to get a stable life. She, unlike the other girls in the book, did not even consider that marriage should be for love, and was willing to put up with a completely insufferable man. Conversely, she was devoted to Elizabeth, and loved her in a way she would never love her husband. At the time, homosexuality would have been abhorred, so if she was romantically inclined towards her friend, she would have had to suppress it. However, Austen was, in her own way, a feminist, even though she has a bad reputation for writing novels centred around marriage. It wouldn't seem out of place at all for a lesbian to feature in her books, even if it was subtle, an in joke of sorts. Opinions?

Time to get serious

So I'm assuming we've all read pride and prejudice by now. So here are some questions for us all to think about. You can pick one, or a few, or all of them and post a blog explaining your answers.

• Jane Austen's original title for P&P was 'First Impressions'. Do you think this title would have suited the novel better? why? What role do first impressions play in the novel?
• Would you say that Mr Bennet is a positive or negative character? Explain.
• How important is dialogue to character development?
• How important is social class in the novel, especially concerning Lizzy and Mr Darcy?
• Pride and Prejudice is a novel about women who feel they have to marry in order to be happy. Taking Charlotte Lucas as an example, do you think Austen is making a social criticism of her era's veiw of marriage?
• Was Charlotte Lucas a lesbian or straight? What makes you think this?

Tada, have fun. Everyone has to write a blog about one or more of these topics, (feel free to add any others you may think of), sometime within the next week or so. Have fun :D

Oh my gawsh it's like we all died or something. Hello? People?

I'm going to assume the best and say that everyone is obviously too engrossed in Pride and Prejudice to realise that this blog has pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. If not, Louise, your last post scared everyone away.

Things I never thought I'd do

1. Batt my eyelashes for a full two minutes.

2. Wake up on a boat in Ha long Bay

3.Laugh while reading Pride and Prejudice

its good stuff :)

mr bennett is golden :)

PS. why is this whole thing underlined? I cant get it to go away!

Things I never thought I would do

1. Batt my eyelashes for a full two minutes.

2. Wake up on a boat in Ha long Bay

3.Laugh while reading Pride and Prejudice

its good stuff :)

mr bennett is golden :)

Hellooo

Hey all, just want to say hi and thanks for letting me join.
I have to say, Pride and Prejudice is one of Austen's best. It also happens to be the only one that I've read. But its the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
I also really love that movie which Shadi quotes constantly. Jane Austen Book Club I believe. Awsome movie with very sexy Hugh Dancy as Grigg. mmmm
anyway, that's all for now; can't wait for this discussion though I'm not sure my insights will be very deep. I'm more a J.R.R Tolkein kind of girl so..yeah
Bye, Alana

hi, welcome. my random bossiness

hey, just want to welcome alana to the group :D Also, louise you'd better start reading cos youre the only one who hasnt <3 we shall start discussing stuffs next week mmk? if anyone ha a problem with that.... let me know lol.

New Member Alert!

How do you add new members? Here she is!!! She wrote a little something for y'all:

I'm Alana, a friend of Shadis, and she introduced me to this blog.

My email is alllama.xs@hotmail.com

I'm not sure how this blog thing works, could someone please add her? Awesome.

And Leish, I have read P&P, as has Alana. Just so you know.

xxx. 

What Would Jane Do?

Have you read Pride And Prejudice yet?

Hey everyone,

so we were thinking we should probably start... Can everyone please follow the blog so that you get alerts on your dashboard when someone posts?

We're going to start with Pride And Prejudice and work our way from there, so yeah. Comment and let us know if you've read it yet so that we can start discussing.

Thanks guys

hopefully the new header is better and everyone likes. hey, at least it doesn't say 'music by aaron zigman' right? :) Also if anyone else wants their results for the Which Jane Austen Female Character Quiz posted, take the quiz and email me the html code. It will be posted down the bottom with the rest of the results. Also, your character will be added to the header until we can no longer fit any other characters in. Yeah, right. As if this blog will ever end up that popular. Oh well, we can dream right? Maybe we should actually start discussing some Austen stuff.

Lol thanks Lauren. I think I might enjoy this, I already learned some interesting things about Jane Austen. As long as we have a lot of time to read the other books as well.....cos it's gonna take me a long time to read just one book *blush*

New Members

If you'd like to join the blog club, please comment a post and we will add you to our members list. Also, if you parrticipate in or know any good Jane Austen blog sites, please let us know. Thanks.

I would just like to extend an awesome welcome to our newest member Kelsey, she hasn't actually joined yet, but she will. /glare.

Love youuuu. :)

I suck, I posted a blog here that wasn't supposed to be here. oopsy. :S

before I forget:

my devastatingly fictional crush

'Who would you pick as your love; Mr Bingley or Mr Darcy?'

Well Leish you can have Mr Bingley but I call shotgun on Mr Darcy.
a. He is Colin Firth
b. He is richer
c. He is Colin Firth

Well he's played by him at least. Which is enough. Because everytime I think of Mr Darcy I go OMGOMGOMGOMGCOLINFIRTHISSOHOT.


These are all very superficial reasons for being in love with Colin Firth Mr Darcy. I suppose that really Mr Bingley would be way more suited to me; he's open, cheerful and charming, whilst Mr Darcy is more reserved and prone to Mr Grumpy Time. And I don't have Lizzy's resilience: if he had called me merely 'tolerable' I would have gone home and slammed my head in the oven a few times.

But seriously.

COLIN FIRTH.

The End. :)

July 18, 1817

Today is the 192nd anniversary of Jane Austen's death.

It is most likely that the cause of her death was Addison's Disease, which is the tubercular disease of the kidneys. However, it is possible she died from anaemia, or stomach cancer.

Jane died in the early hours of the morning (believed to be around 4.30 am) in her sister Cassandra's arms. She was only 41. Of her six books, only four had been published (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma and Mansfield Park), and all anonymously with only a close circle of friends and family knowing of the author's true identity. Her other two novels, and the short story Lady Susan, were published after her death, in her own name, by her brother Charles.

The Austen Novels

One thing I find odd is that Northanger Abbey was finished in 1798. But then Jane didn't finish Sense and Sensibility until 1811. And from then on, all of her books followed pretty soon, one after the other, with Pride and Perjudice in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and both Persuasion and Emma in 1816. Also, Lady Susan in 1794.

What I'm curious about is why it took her so long between Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility. I mean she was a new author, just starting out and that could have somethign to do with it. But why did it take 13 years to finish another book?

Her father died in 1805, which would make a lot of sense considering Sense and Sensibility was the next book she wrote. Could the death of her father be the reason she stopped writing?

Jane...who?

I absolutely agree. I don't think that Jane and Elizabeth are one in the same, simply that there are very particular similarities that strike me.

She has characters like that in every book. Take Marianne Dashwood for example.

I love her books.
I love what she has created.

Bigwither is a terrible last name. I'm sorry, to any Bigwithers, you may be beautiful people. But there's something very...insensible..about that name. haha :P

What would Jane do? xoxo

:P

Elizabeth Bennet

'but I think Jane would be more of an Elizabeth Bennett'

Shadi, you said this the other day. And while I don't necessarily disagree with you, I'm nto sure that I agree either. I mean... I love Lizzy's character. I think she's one of Jane's most timeless characters, one of the most well known and the most loved.

But... Wouldn't it make you just a little bit sad to find that Jane's most well known, most well loved character... was in fact just a shallow echo of the author? I am inclined to believe that Elizabeth's life was somewhat molded around that of her creator, and even that Mr Darcy may indeed be Harris Biggwither. That the way things went with Mr Darcy for Lizzy, are the way Jane had indeed hoped her life my pan out.

I do think that Jane has written some similarities into Elizabeth. I do think that Elizabeth is made to echo her creator's satirical outlook on society and her ability to make fun of that very society in which she lived.

I do believe that Jane has put a lot of herself into the character of Elizabeth. However, I would like to think that Elizabeth was also a unique creation, that a lot of that much loved character was created by Jane, not just mimicked from her own behaviours.

Marianne?

"You are Marianne Dashwood of Sense & Sensibility! You are impulsive, romantic, impatient, and perhaps a bit too brutally honest. You enjoy romantic poetry and novels, and play the pianoforte beautifully. To boot, your singing voice is captivating. You feel deeply, and love passionately."

Like I said in the email to Leish, I agree with most of those things. Except, I'm never too brutally honest. I should probably be more forthcoming about my opinions.

Your thoughts?

What Would Jane Do? xoxo

- Shadi

Which Austen Character Are You?

Memo: Shadi, take the quiiiiiiiz. You have to email me the code so i can post it down with mine and Lauren's'. I actually think Elizabeth Bennet and Elinor Dashwood suit the two of us quite well. Lol. :)

Also I stand by what I said the other day, while Mr Darcy is like the heart-throb of Austen novels, Mr Bingley is sooooooo more my type lol.

P&P

Members!!! Yay :)

Aaaalso; I'm half-way through "Pride and Prejudice" (the novel). Its proving to be a very entertaining book. I mean- its actually funny :) I didn't think people back then had senses of humour. I thought they sat around drinking large amounts of tea and saying "well, old chap, i think its time to hunting for some fox. which isn't cruel at all." (kidding) Haha. I love Mr Bennett. Much to my surprise, the film is based very heavily on the book, which is nice. But its harder to fall for Mr Darcy in the book as it is in the film. Probably because I've seen the film already? And Matthew Macfayden is HOT. :P.

Mr Bingley is a ginger :) :) :)

Now, on to discuss a more serious topic. Who do you think Jane Austen is most like in P&P. I mean, one of the characters is called Jane, but I think Jane would be more of an Elizabeth Bennett. I mean, if you seen "Becoming Jane", you'd agree....right?

My blog pals, by all means, reply :) Have fun reading.

Also, answer this question; who would you pick as your love; Mr Bingley or Mr Darcy.

PS. I am NOT like Lydia OR Kitty in any way. I'm more of a Janeziabeth.

What Would Jane Do? xoxo

THE ORDER!

Okay, so we start with Pride and Prejudice in the hopes of Kelsey joining us.

Then Mansfield Park because none of us have read it yet (i don't think...).

Then Northanger Abbey and Persuasion because they were originally published together so Lauren tells me which means we may as well read them together.

Follwed by Emma then Sense and Sensibility. Any complaints?

New Member !!

Hey Shadi,

Guess waht!

New member alert :P

Grand welcome to our new member LAUREN!

teehee

Members

Now recruiting :P

Hello and Welcome

to the official Jane Austen Blog Club. Yay! :)