Town and Country

Fandom: Pride and Prejudice Words: 86.5k (120k projected) Status: WIP Pairings: Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy; Jane Bennet/Charles Bingley (background) Rating: General Audiences Setting: Regency

Summary: Elizabeth Bennet is South Asian.

Sample:

When an Englishman desires activity, inactivity, change, stasis, simplicity, intricacy, strangeness, familiarity, or the pleasure of managing, of not managing, or of having his own way, he will look—very naturally—to India. However little calculated that land, in itself, may be to fulfill these little caprices, its ideal is so fixed in his mind, that he is sure to find something within the stores of its ancient civilisation to answer to his notions.

Such was the case with Mr. Edward Bennet. The second son of a minor country squire, he was faced, at his majority, with the necessity of fixing upon some course, which would enable him to make his own way in the world. From a scholarly bent, which gave him a good deal of inborn curiosity; and because the idleness of habits, which he had heard to be common in the East, attracted him more than the manly rigour required for the practice of the legal or ecclesiastical professions in England; from these reasons, and perhaps still others, he left a country happily enlightened by sound philosophy, and the only true revelation, for one burdened with superstition and gross idolatry: he joined, in short, in the service of the East India Company at Bombay, soon after it was ceded to the English. Once his innate indolence had overcome the exigencies of the journey thither, it was not often further disturbed by any requirements of his post. His work as a writer for the Company kept him largely within its settlements in the western part of the state of Hindoostan; on the rare occasions when he left Bombay, it was only for Chaul or Bassein.

Mr. Edward Bennet had always intended to marry upon returning to his native England, when his contributions of learning to the Company would have earned him an independence. He was yet in India, however, when he was nearing forty; he grew increasingly susceptible to beauty, and ripe for picking; he was caught at last by a girl with gentle manners, a generous dowry, and remarkable beauty (so far as we can reconcile beauty with the olive complexion). She was the daughter of a Mahomedan merchant and moneylender, who had much to do with the India Company, and was very pleased to furnish one of its votaries with this his most precious good.

Volume 3, chapter 1 is now up!

I feel like sometimes JAFF authors don't understand that they do need to give Darcy at least 1 (one) redeeming feature. I understand that he's meant to be a flawed character but he needs to have something (other than money) that would make a sensible woman willing to marry him

You can't make him snobbish and rude and a garden-variety misogynist and dismissive and belitting towards his sister & Elizabeth and a little dissipated. He can't make up for all of that with sheer sexual charisma. I don't care how sexy he is. He sucks. I can't root for him

concept (I say this lovingly / the call is coming from inside the house): P&P fanfic BINGO

I say these ones unlovingly

concept (I say this lovingly / the call is coming from inside the house): P&P fanfic BINGO

I say these ones unlovingly

Here's what would go on Hakima charminglygrouped bingo:

I can't think of any more lmao, I'm necessarily not conscious of all the rote phrases I use

• Darcy having submissive tendencies

• correcting a misconception about canon

• subtly (?) correcting/addressing a weird/toxic/problematic fanon

• decolonising the text somehow

Here's what would go on Hakima charminglygrouped bingo:

I can't think of any more lmao, I'm necessarily not conscious of all the rote phrases I use

why do the breasts on baroque paintings look Like That

we all know that boobs go right up under your armpit but stay perfectly round when you raise your arm. also that there's a firm shadowed line on the upper curve of the breast as if it's being pushed up from below, even when the figure is nude. actually breasts are best done by drawing the figure without them, and then just imagining a perfectly spherical globe of clay that you cut in half and plop on there

Now that we've established that the painting most likely isn't a Carracci (and if it is, a very early one), i can finally proceed (I'm sorry if this all seems like a masturbatory intellectual exercise, but I swear it's kind of important if the painting is indeed a Carracci or from any of their group of early modern yobbos).

Here's what we're working with:

Sleep, An Image of Death (»MORTIS IMAGO SOPOR«), unknown painter (Northern Italian, OR: Dutch, French, or German), oil/canvas, ca. 1540–60 (after 1534), Basel Kunstmuseum.

(tl;dr at the bottom)

OK.

Many (if not all) early modern paintings are characterised by their incorporation of the antique. This you can find as early as the late 1450s (you can find it much earlier, but we're doing broad strokes here), but especially from 1500 you get what to us seem like “weird” or “wrong” anatomical depictions, but which can be simply explained by a desire to use classical statues as the foundation for painting. I could bore you with long explanations about the deeper meaning behind it, but it's enough to say there is one. You can think of it as an early practise of sampling and remixing; just like using a sample is never just about the aesthetic, it's also about the connected meaning. It's however not, as contemporary audiences often imagine, 'that they didn't know any better'. (This, btw, is also applicable to non-Western art. The answer is almost never a lack of competence, and almost always a conscious decision for something else.)

Back to the painting. This is actually such a genius example for the LAYERS of early modern art, because (if I'm not mistaken) the painter is taking this idea of sampling to the next level (after all, we've already had a century of using straightforward classical references), and this he does by using a couple of extremely famous models, but better (kinda): Michelangelo; specifically his Allegory of the Night (completed 1534) in his sepulchre for the Medici brothers and his painting of Leda and the Swan (original lost, dated 1529), kinda.

First, the Night.

For this type of lying figure, Michelangelo drew inspiration from classical sculpture, specifically the lying Ariadne figures (then thought to be nymphs), which usually lie with their head supported by one arm, as seen in these examples below from the Vatican collection and the Uffizi in Florence.

We immediately see that Michelangelo took the Ariadne as rather lose inspiration. Especially the positioning of the legs—parallel with one leg bent instead of outstretched and crossed at the ankles— is a lot more reminiscent of another classical model: the sleeping faun, aka as Barberini Faun or Drunken Satyr.

Especially in its side view, the similarities to Michelangelo's Allegory of the Night become evident: the positioning of the legs (though mirrored), the propping up of the head (which has been titled forward instead of back), as well as the muscular build (though now used for a woman, thus the added breasts).

From here, the distance to our original painting is almost too easy: Our painter took Michelangelo's cross of Adriane and the barely feminised Faun, and rendering her a bit more womanly: her belly, the curve of her hips and arms, and the shape of her breast have all been softened (if still not enough to satisfy our visual experience today).

The fact the Basel painting is titled Sleep (An Image of Death) illustrates that picking Michelangelo's sleeping Night as a reference wasn't just about riffing on a famous work of art (indeed, Michelangelo was the quintessential famous artist already during his lifetime). It was equally about sampling the content. Just like today when music nerds dissect every sample K dot used for his Superbowl performance, learned viewers then also recognised the references, their contexts, and meanings.

Our unknown painter could've referenced only the Ariadne (then nymph), or just the Barberini Faun. But he didn't. Instead, for his Sleep (An Image of Death), he uses all of them by referencing the quintessential sleeping allegory of his time, Michelangelo's Night from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici.

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

tl;dr: the breasts are so weird because they're refering to a sculpture with weird breasts.

If you're now wondering: “wait—didnt she forget Michelangelo's Leda?” in that case, continue under the cut 👇🏽

why do the breasts on baroque paintings look Like That

we all know that boobs go right up under your armpit but stay perfectly round when you raise your arm. also that there's a firm shadowed line on the upper curve of the breast as if it's being pushed up from below, even when the figure is nude. actually breasts are best done by drawing the figure without them, and then just imagining a perfectly spherical globe of clay that you cut in half and plop on there

I feel like sometimes JAFF authors don't understand that they do need to give Darcy at least 1 (one) redeeming feature. I understand that he's meant to be a flawed character but he needs to have something (other than money) that would make a sensible woman willing to marry him

You can't make him snobbish and rude and a garden-variety misogynist and dismissive and belitting towards his sister & Elizabeth and a little dissipated. He can't make up for all of that with sheer sexual charisma. I don't care how sexy he is. He sucks. I can't root for him

Here's what would go on Hakima charminglygrouped bingo:

I can't think of any more lmao, I'm necessarily not conscious of all the rote phrases I use

concept (I say this lovingly / the call is coming from inside the house): P&P fanfic BINGO

I say these ones unlovingly

I feel like sometimes JAFF authors don't understand that they do need to give Darcy at least 1 (one) redeeming feature. I understand that he's meant to be a flawed character but he needs to have something (other than money) that would make a sensible woman willing to marry him

You can't make him snobbish and rude and a garden-variety misogynist and dismissive and belitting towards his sister & Elizabeth and a little dissipated. He can't make up for all of that with sheer sexual charisma. I don't care how sexy he is. He sucks. I can't root for him

Here's my bingo board btw. So close but so far!