Being Fanny Price.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger      3 comments      link this post     


The ideal heroine is Elizabeth Bennett, of course, but whenever I read the book or watched the films I always felt that out of all of Jane Austen's wonderful heroines, I was most like...the servants in the background. I'm not kidding. I really, really think that asking "if I were in that story which main character would I be" is a deceptive question. Who said we'd be the main characters?

"See that guy in the back, leading the horses into the stable? That's me. If Mr. Darcy would just step to the side, you could see me better."

I can identify.

One reason I liked the movie Gosford Park was that it gave me a view of the world of the servants which I knew, had I really lived in some previous era, would be my lot in life. I would be a servant person. The one who slopped the pigs.

Whatever.

There are about three million different online "which Jane Austen character are you" quizzes on the web.

::That was not a scientific estimate. I'm not good at estimating amounts and distances and I no longer feel like attempting anything ballpark.::

I think I took one of those quizzes once, but noticed none of the options included "peasant servant girl in background" so I doubted the qualifications.

So my friend Naomi invites me to add the "Which Jane Austen character are you?" application on Facebook a few days ago.

Grrr.

I take the quiz and find out it's one where you can't get your results unless you invite something along the lines of 200 friends which, if you do it, you'll have less friends. I might be a servant person, but I'm not dummy. So I canceled it out.

But, through the gift of crappy application programmers, my results still showed up on my profile despite my rejection of the order to invite, and I found out which Jane Austen character I was most like. At long last, I can agree:

Your result is: Fanny Price
You are smart and shy, a quiet beauty with brains that intimidate everyone around you. You often feel out of place, homeless and alone. As an intellectual idealist, you long to be heard and understood, but rarely waste your time trying to defend yourself to those who could not possibly understand. Time and experience is making you bolder. Despite your clever genius, you long for simplicity, and the love of your soul mate, who is a socially surprising and unlikely match.

Ha ha ha. What tripe. "That's me! That's me! Clever genius!"

These dumb quizzes annoy me, like some kind of literature-based horoscope.

I do, however, admit that I loved Fanny Price's character in (OK, I haven't read Mansfield Park and I know the movie is a severe bastardization but nevertheless, her character was fantastic) the movie Mansfield Park. The quiz is referencing the movie and not the book. In the movie (unlike in the book), she was smart and sharp and a witty writer and had a backbone and also came from more realistic non-elevated servant-esque family and circumstances and...was a servant of sorts.

And no one told her what to do.

Which is tricky, when you're a servant. Even a servant of sorts.

::Go, Fanny, go. It's unfortunate about your name, but we can't have everything, can we?::

Labels: books, facebook, friends, internet, movies, my life

Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger  3/03/2008 08:19:00 PM   (3) comments   Links to this post    

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