why can’t i be PERFECT
“so i don’t blame you if you want to bury me in your memory i’m not the girl i ought to be. but maybe when you tell your friends you can tell them what you saw in me, and not how i turned out to be”
- Mitski ‘Goodbye My Danish Sweetheart’
movie enola: I can take the heat best believe that’s the moment I shine. Cause every romance shakes and it bends don’t give a damn…when the night’s here I don’t do tears baby no chance. I could dance I could dance I could dance
book enola: think I forgot…how to be happy (something I’m not, but something I can be. Something to wait for…what was I made for?)
mitski was right on sunny days I do go out walking and I do end up on a tree-lined street and guess what ! I do look up at the gaps of sunlight and wow !!! I do miss you more than anything !!
Oh yeah I recently had a moment of realization, which is that Lady Catherine's main underlying motive for pushing the Darcy/Anne marriage isn't actually her ideas about keeping property in the family etc, or her agreement with her late sister at all.
The number one reason she's so wedded to it is the same basic reason Mrs. Bennet is so eager to have Mr. Collins as a son-in-law.
Because while Rosings isn't entailed, which has allowed her to lady it over the demesne all this time on the strength of her daughter's status as heiress, property law is such that as soon as there's a man in the family--as soon as Anne weds--it will all belong to him.
And while she won't be forced to find other lodging or anything unless a truly dreadful groom winkles his way in, she'll no longer be the mistress of the place as she has been all this time, not even as much the mistress as she was before she was widowed, because that will be Anne's place now. She will be only the mother of the wife of the master of Rosings.
And there is not likely to be any great supply of fellows of sufficient distinction and lineage to meet her high standards, who will want Anne (whose main appeal is her property), who will also allow their mother-in-law to rule the roost.
Darcy is a known quantity, who doesn't especially want Rosings and can be relied upon to prioritize Pemberley. And he is very respectful of his honorable aunt. Lady Catherine makes it clear she believes her sway over him is considerably higher than it actually is, because he values his family so highly and hates a fuss, so she has always always gotten her way with him before.
If she could get Anne married to Darcy, then she could fulfill her maternal obligation to Anne, and her lineal obligations to the de Bourghs and the Fitzwilliams. Without having to give hardly anything up herself.
And it's really cool how it's set up like this! Because the fact that the system is rigged so a woman fulfilling her duties to family and society inherently obliterates any power base of her own is totally fucked up, and wanting to resist that is understandable and sympathetic.
But as is so often the case, the easiest way to resist or evade such compulsions and injustices is by finding a way to exploit other people, and gain your own security and independence by taking theirs away.
And so Lady Catherine, like Mrs. Bennet, is ultimately a tacky and appallingly selfish human being.
“I never wish to be easily defined. I’d rather float over other people’s minds as something strictly fluid and non-perceivable; more like a transparent, paradoxically iridescent creature rather than an actual person.”
— Franz Kafka
seasonally depressedidk what i'm doing here✧https://deritera.carrd.co✧
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