(no subject)

[chocolatepot]

I started reading The Thinking Woman's Guide to Magic because it has a very attractive cover, and when I flipped through the beginning I could tell it was starting out fairly quickly with the main character enchanted by fairies, with the whole "they're creepy and fake but hide it under glamour" trope, which was kind of a brave choice - having her spend ~100 pages obviously brainwashed early in the book, you know? It starts starts with her as a grad student writing about Donne, which is incredibly annoying to me at this point (female characters who are English lit grad students are one cliché that "doing it fully and earnestly" doesn't make it more fun for me; just no) but that slipped by fast. Overall I was having a pretty good time with it, but then the obvious Romantic Interest revealed himself and I just dunnooooo. He's older, gruff, knowledgeable, etc. while she's younger and naive and a newcomer to the fantasy world, which isn't terrible. But from reviews and the text I can tell it's supposed to be something of a P&P parallel, and it really annoys me when people's P&P parallels show that they don't really get P&P (especially if they went to Harvard like the author, most likely for English lit given the heroine). They don't go off P&P, they go off Beauty and the Beast, or something like it. It's never nuanced enough and giving us the Darcy's PoV ruins it, imo. This guy's just kind of a megajerk and the way he treats the heroine is less due to position and perception and more to do with him just being a megajerk.

Comments

[lliira]

It sounds more like a Jane Eyre parallel. But only if the heroine stands up to the hero and calls him out for being a jerk whenever he is, which rarely seems to happen these days. Also only if he does some seriously shady things that the reader is meant to see as seriously shady, instead of handwaving it with some "poor tortured soul" justification.

I also don't get why so many people try to shove P&P into the Gothic/Jane Eyre-esque mold. Darcy's not dangerous, ever, and Elizabeth never thinks he is. I also don't get why so many romance authors seem to think Heathcliff is the person they should base their so-called "heroes" on, when he is canonically pretty much Satan. And doing this is popular! It sells books! So frustrating.

[chocolatepot]

I think a lot of people think P&P and Jane Eyre are parallels, tbh - did you ever read Shades of Milk and Honey? It was basically a mash-up of the two, made me so annoyed.

They really miss the fact that half of P&P is about Elizabeth thinking worse of Darcy due to ... forgot the word, the thing where you're biased against someone? TIP OF MY TONGUE. Because you're right, he's not dangerous! In Thinking Woman's Guide, the guy definitely is, and he really treats her like dirt. That's especially where it frustrates me - the girl's stranded in another world, no money, no connections, no skills, she's totally dependent on him and he completely fails to care about her beyond her most basic safety.

Which is where I ask myself regarding the parallel, if Darcy had originally come across Elizabeth stranded somewhere with no money and unable to be taken immediately back to Longbourn for some reason, what would he have done? Would he have thrown her some gross old clothes and made her alternately follow him around or sit with the housekeeper, talked down to her, and not tried to figure out a long-term solution? Um, no. God.

Bridget Jones's Diary is more faithful than quite a lot of things that are supposed to parallel it. Austenland, too.

[lliira]

It's been a long time since I read Bridget Jones' Diary, but yeah, I remember it being a pretty faithful parallel re: Darcy. And that's the thing -- you cannot parallel P&P without 1) the heroine being unfairly prejudiced against the hero and 2) humor. While I believe it is a romance novel, it is also a humor novel and a satire and there's "deconstruction" there too.

And ffs, this guy sounds worse than Rochester, let alone the moral paragon and protector of women that is Darcy. Definitely more like Heathcliff. Yuck. I do not understand why "man who condescends to me and treats me like garbage" is considered hot by so many women. I guess if he ends up completely humiliated and crawling at her feet at the end, it's a power fantasy, but what you have to get through to reach that point is not worth it.