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In regency times when someone would convalesce at someone else's house or at an inn, especially if that included them being unconscious for some amount of time....how did they handle that person's bladder and bowel stuff? Was that just considered a normal part of care from the woman of the house and her servants, like were they taught linen changes the way nurses are today? Or were they all left to just figure it out once it happened do you think?

The thing with being unconscious for a long time is...you're not really going to be eating and drinking much. Like they might wet your lips to try to hydrate you, but they won't risk you choking on anything more, and don't have ways of giving nutrition by other means that we have today, so normal bowel and bladder function would cease pretty rapidly, and at that point you've got bigger problems than what happens if you wet the bed, like you're gonna be dead soon.

Housekeepers and servants would definitely have a handle on changing bedlinens and maybe absorbent padding for invalids with bowel-control issues, (or say for people who have given birth/having post-partum bleeding or other uterine discharge issues while bedridden,) but they'd probably have some kind of bedpans or focus on getting someone up and moving enough to at least get onto a chamber pot ASAP.

I'll be honest, I work in healthcare and when it comes to incontinence, if you're not keeping someone clean and dry and repositioned while they're also bedridden, you're very quickly going to get bedsores, and if THOSE aren't kept clean, you're going to get an infection, and again, in the Regency era, you're very soon not going to have to worry about long-term incontinence in a bed.

Back then, if you largely stop moving/pooping/drinking on your own, you're going to be very dead very soon.

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen #wow it's rare I get to bring my real-life work experience into the discussion but I am kind of an expert on dealing with incontinence

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Which Austen adaptations do you think are the most overrated?

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen #gif

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I'm rereading S&S and wanted to figure out how badly of the Dashwoods were with 500£ a year. How small is that budget for 4 women to live on? Is Sir John being about as generous to them with all his help as John Dashwood initially wanted to be when planning to give each of them an additional 1000£?

I've seen estimates that for a single gentleman to live with the leisure befitting that station (that is, simply not working to earn an income,) would cost about 250 pounds a year, and that's without any 'unnecessaries' like a horse and extra servants. So presumably renting some modest city lodgings and having decent clothes and genteel food; maybe a housekeeper and maid-of-all-work or something (but a servant's wages and the rental of an entire house would take a LOT of that budget, so we're talking maybe some rented rooms and shared landlady/maid services with other tenants.) He absolutely would not be entertaining in his own home.

So when you double that and consider that four women will be living on it...yeah, things like beef and sugar are going to be very very dear. Like the Bateses in Emma, the Dashwood ladies would probably rely on gifts of meat and produce from kind landowning neighbours, and all those dinners and parties Sir John invites them to up and the big house will absolutely save them money on their food budget and give them access to society they otherwise could not afford to mix with.

Elinor would 100% be trying to sneak some leftovers into a Tupperware she brought in her handbag.

A thousand pounds is probably more generous than the help Sir John is giving them; but the point is more that Sir John is actually helping them, while their half-brother is doing dick-all after talking about helping them and being actually generous. Fanny talks him DOWN to "presents of fish and game when they are in season" and then there's zero indication they ever do any of that. (And in practical terms, sending fresh meat or fish from Sussex to Devonshire is just not going to happen before the meat rots.) So Sir John is doing the barest minimum which Mr. John Dashwood decides to do and then...doesn't/cannot.

I think the point is that what people actually will commit to doing matters far more than whatever they may talk of doing.

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen #Sense and Sensibility

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Do we know what Sir Lewis de Bourgh's exact rank is? Is he a knight or a baronet?

I've always seen him categorized as a knight.

#Pride and Prejudice #Jane Austen #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #Lady Catherine de Bourgh

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Happy Rational Creatures S2 Premiere Day!

I recommend watching with closed captioning on for some fun moments. ;)

#persuasion #jane austen #rational creatures

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so... any thoughts on the new Persuasion (if you've watched it ofc)?

Not seen it yet, planning a watch-party with friends!

#Persuasion #Jane Austen #AMAAA #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent

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Why was Emma heir to Hartfield instead of Isabella?

They were both the heiresses to the estate in terms of fortune; though it's my understanding that Hartfield the property will pass to the eldest of their sons, in this case, Isabella's boy.

#Emma #Jane Austen #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA

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May I ask your thoughts on Lucy Steele? I really like Elinor so I disliked Lucy on my first readthrough because of how she kept rubbing her engagement in Elinor's face, but I feel like I'm being unfair to her given that she has if anything fewer resources at her disposal than the Dashwood girls do.

Personally I love Lucy for being an audacious bitch who goes materially unpunished. There are shades of Lady Susan in her but I feel like Austen saw that a side-character was as far as she could push that limit. (And Lucy is certainly two-faced but her betrayal of her betrothed isn't as unchaste as we see in other self-serving women in other novels.)

The whole of Lucy’s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

Just a masterwork of praise undone by the utter disdain of the final word in the sentence.

I'm not saying Lucy is a role model for ethics but she's a hoot and will go far in life. She's a proto-Becky Sharp and I wish that Austen had lived longer and written many many many more novels, and had more opportunities and more boldness in what she could publish to give us more of these magnificent vamps.

#Sense and Sensibility #Jane Austen #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA

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There's a controversy about Sanditon where the girls wore their hair down. Was that done?

No, but they're far from the first period drama to fuck around with hair because they want to present the fantasy version of Regency the target audience expects to see.

#Sanditon #Jane Austen #AMAAA #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent

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Thoughts on Joel Kim Booster's "Fire Island"? It's his adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, from the perspective of a gay Asian man combatting stereotypes in the queer community!

It's not available to me legally in Canada so I haven't got around to seeing it yet. :(

#Pride and Prejudice #Jane Austen #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA

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When referring to the Emma movie, what do you mean by "Mia Goth" Styling?

They forgot to give that poor girl eyebrows.

#Emma #Jane Austen #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA

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Hi! Hope you're well, what did you think about the trailer for persuasion if you've seen it?

I mean the 1995 Persuasion trailer is a shitshow unto itself so while I understand some of the side-eye the Netflix trailer has been getting, I'm not scared by it, either. I'm very much looking forward to black/biracial Musgroves and Richard E. Grant's Sir Walter. The casting is pretty excellent across the board, honestly. (Yes, Johnson too, she has great acting chops in her, everyone still mad that she was in 50 Shades like that's all she'll ever do can choke. I hope she makes bank from that thankless can of worms and succeeds in all her endeavours.)

#Persuasion #Jane Austen #AMAAA #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent

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What are your thoughts on the apparently semi-popular idea that Elinor should've ended up with Colonel Brandon? Frankly, I'm kind of on board with it - though that may have something to do with my having always had a Thing for Brandon but also being much more an Elinor than a Marianne, lol!

I do believe it's borne out of exactly what you've said--self-identified Elinors who inwardly yearn for the romanticism of a Brandon. It's a classic semi-Cinderella trope of the quiet long-suffering heroine who is swept away by the broody hero. (I feel like a lot of Elinor/Brandon shippers probably have a thing for Jane Eyre, while they're at it.) Which is fine, and there's nothing wrong with it, because everybody is different--but I would point out that few if any of us are an exact copy of Elinor (or any character) in all points, no matter how much we may identify with them; and that's where I struggle to feel like Elinor, as she is in the book, would be happy with the Colonel. She wants Edward and the life he can offer her, and at times (rightly) feels like the Colonel is a Bit Much.

The thing about Edward is he's kind of a more prosaic version of the second-attachment. Brandon and Marianne have far more dramatic losses of their first loves, but Edward's story arc is him engaging himself secretly to Lucy while very young, and, far from this being terribly romantic, just turns out, in time, to have been a Bad Call. His heroism in disinheriting himself to stand by a woman he no longer cares for is played as tragedy because we have been so rooted in Elinor's perspective, and know what pain it must cause her. But honestly, Edward is being far more true to Marianne's ideals in that moment--truly proving by his actions that he prizes honouring his first attachment over material wealth.

Edward puts his (mother's) money where his mouth is, so his and Elinor's happiness feels earned, and honestly he's doing way more to earn it than Marianne and Brandon ever do with their passive submissions to their longing and heartbreak. Edward is out there not facing his angst so much as running at it head-on while screaming "BRING IT. DEATH (or a shitty marriage) BEFORE DISHONOUR!"

As for the Colonel and Elinor, I do see them getting along pretty well as friends and later brother and sister by marriage, but I also can't get past the line where Elinor is inwardly very dubious about the Colonel's fighting a duel with Willoughby, because she cannot see the point of it. (And personally, I think she's right, and I think Austen agreed with her, there, or why include such glimpse of Elinor's unspoken opinion?) And that, for me, is the nail in the coffin of any hopes that Elinor and Brandon would suit one another. Brandon's honour is of a different strain than Edward's, and Edward's is the kind that will actively toil to support his own modest household, which is what seems to truly matter more to Elinor. Brandon's kind of reckless romanticism seems to belong to a slightly different world--perhaps a more old-fashioned one--and certainly one that is more overwrought and performative than what Elinor aspires to.

#Sense and Sensibility #Jane Austen #Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA

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I apologize if this is a stupid question, and maybe it’s just my version, but a few years ago when I read Pride and Prejudice, I remember there were times when it said something along the lines of ____shire; do you know what the deal with the underscores is?

I believe it was common for authors of the time to keep exact locations vague to avoid confusion or errors, if they were not thoroughly familiar with the place they were meant to be writing about. So they just used blanks for certain areas; and also sometimes for names/titles of individuals referenced, possibly to avoid libel issues if the resemblance was too strong and not entirely flattering.

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen

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Weird question. So, the norm was if sisters were being introduced it would be the eldest as Miss [Lastname] & the younger ones as Miss [Firstname] [Lastname]. Example: Miss Bennet, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, etc. What if their unmarried paternal aunt was also present? Was it Miss Bennet [aunt] and Miss Jane Bennet or were both just addressed as Miss Bennet? Seems like it could cause all sorts of confusion. Thanx

I'm pretty sure they would both be Miss Bennet, and any potential confusion might be staved off either by context clues or, if necessary, referring to one as the aunt/the elder Miss Bennet.

#Ask Me Anything Austen-Adjacent #AMAAA #Jane Austen

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#sometimes the blogrunner gets stoned and makes memes #Bridgerton