Fandom meme

[nineveh_uk]

This was going round a while ago and I had no time to do it. But now I will!

Give me a character and I will tell you...

* How I feel about this character
* All the people I ship romantically with this character
* My non-romantic OTP for this character
* My unpopular opinion about this character
* One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
* Something about them I consider true, even though it's only my head canon/fanon

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

How I feel about this character
Poor Fanny Price, winner of the “Least Favourite Jane Austen Heroine” award for 150 years running. I read MP first aged 20 as part of my degree course and loathed it, but then I was really not in the mood for anything of the period that term and it annoyed me that OF COURSE we’d get the least fun Austen to read. I read it again some years later and found out that it is in fact really, really funny as long as you can jettison the bizarre idea that Fanny Price is meant to represent some Austenian ideal of womanhood.

*pause for laughter*

One of the pleasures of reading MP in without this perspective is thinking what Fanny might mean in other ways. I’ve had some great conversations about her. A friend believes that she is Austen deliberately setting out to write a heroine who is good by contemporary standards and showing the horror that results if you actually succeed in bringing up a girl like that. Personally, I see her as a typically flawed Austen heroine, the flaw in this case being a sterile virtue, that keeps itself clean, but is powerless to influence others – the comparison being with her sister Susan, untaught and messy, but who can change people for the better in a way that Fanny doesn’t.

All the people I ship romantically with this character
I find it impossible to ship anyone with Fanny. But for her sake I am glad she doesn’t marry Henry (not that it would have done him any good, either) and Edward is similarly dull and deserves her.

My non-romantic OTP for this character
Fanny and the Rules of Righteous Conduct? They are, inevitably, childfree.

My unpopular opinion about this character
See above! Fanny isn’t good! At least, she is good, but it doesn’t make her happy, it doesn’t set an example, and it doesn’t make anyone else happy. A better person would have joined in with the Am Dram, but exerted positive influence and got them to do a much less dangerous play.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon
I do feel sorry for little Fanny, away from her home and unable to cope with Mansfield Park. Despite above complaints about her not being a better person, perhaps she would have been one had she been happier. I suppose it is technically possible that she becomes one, but since she and Edmund have the multiple livings, the signs are not good.

Something about them I consider true, even though it's only my head canon/fanon
I don’t think that I have any Fanny headcanon. I shall have to make some up. OK, because Fanny does try to be good, she genuinely feels sorry for Maria, and writes regularly to her in her Exile. Naturally, Maria never answers, but Fanny assumes that this is because she is too insignificant for it to matter, and she continues to write anyway. Maria, while blaming Fanny for her own Misfortune, nonetheless comes to depend a great deal on her letters and news from Mansfield – well you would, living with Mrs Norris.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Thanks!
Personally, I like Fanny (although I would like to read Mary Crawford's further adventures as written by someone who is not constrained by contemporary norms of propriety). I don't think it's her job to make all those big Losers around her into better people.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It's not her job to make them better, but she seems to me kind of the opposite of the people on tombstones that are all about "Despite her quiet life spent mostly having twenty children, everyone who knew her was influenced by her excellent character and way of life". She makes the things she stands for unattractive - the opposite of Mary Crawford with her dubious glamour.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

"She lives for other people--you can always tell the other people by their haunted look"?