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#i just love ending the volume with TO PEMBERLEY THEY WERE TO GO DUN DUN DUN
anghraine · 3 years
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I’m too lazy to dig up all the quotes, but one of the things I find interesting about Pemberley in P&P is how it’s gradually built up, both directly (as when Bingley says it couldn’t be replicated) and indirectly (it’s easy to associate it w/ Rosings right up until we see it). 
It’s built up not only in the sense of physical grandeur and elegance, but in something like mystique. When Caroline says Bingley should imitate it and Bingley says it would be impossible, we don’t know why it would be so difficult to imitate it, just that there is some inimitable quality about it. Wickham talks about how grand it is. I think Lady Catherine mentions it when she’s boasting of Georgiana’s stature; it’s the source of the Darcys’ influence and consequence. 
But we don’t know much about what it’s like, specifically, until we actually go there. The distant, private residence that gets built up throughout the story, that the heroine herself finally reaches, is always going to be a revelation. In a different sort of story, it would be the revelation of some dark secret or ominous implications or something. 
But in this story, we already had the revelation of the dark secret, only to undercut it by exposing it as a tissue of lies. But there’s still a certain DUN DUN DUN with the announcement that they’re going to Pemberley, and we do get the grand revelation—
—that Darcy has good taste and is really nice where it matters most. 
IDK, I just find the total reversal of the ~mysterious manor trope a lot of fun.
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