Bitch In a Bonnet by Robert Rodi

Author:Robert Rodi [Rodi, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT000000, LIT004290, LIT004120, LIT004180, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, LITERARY CRITICISM / Women Authors, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, LITERARY CRITICISM / Gothic & Romance
Publisher: Robert Rodi
Published: 2011-11-07T19:20:00+00:00

We all know, or have known, someone like this: someone who always has an excuse for inaction, for inertia, for failure, and is only too ready to produce it. Never mind that it’s a good excuse; it still grates on our nerves. And here we have it in Fanny; her pattern is set from this moment.

Edmund takes her into the breakfast-room where he not only supplies her with paper but rules her lines for her, “with all the good will that her brother could himself have felt, and probably with somewhat more exactness.” Those of us who have read Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice now realize exactly where this is headed, and are free to settle back and wait for Mrs. Norris to push her way back into the narrative.

It doesn’t take long. The lady is taking her duties as Wicked Step-aunt seriously, and we find her encouraging the worst character traits of the Wicked Stepsisters, answering their reports of Fanny’s stupidity with the assurance that, “though you know (owing to me) your papa and mama are so good as to bring her up with you, it is not at all necessary that she should be as accomplished as you are;—on the contrary, it is much more desirable that there should be a difference.” In other words, let Fanny’s dullness and dumpiness make you look all the more hawt by comparison. Which is just the kind of advice these girls gobble up like mixed nuts. The author then notes:

… it is not very wonderful that with all their promising talents and early information, they should be entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity, and humility. In every thing but disposition, they were admirably taught.

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