Recent reading

[luzula]

The Ghosts of Glencoe by Mollie Hunter (1966)
Oh, this is excellent! I loved it; highly recommended to fans of D K Broster, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Kidnapped. It is not quite 'what if Keith and Ewen, but at the massacre of Glencoe?' but it certainly has elements of that. Robert Stewart is a young ensign stationed at Fort William in the winter of 1691-92, and is one of the party of soldiers quartered among the Glencoe MacDonalds—but he has no idea about the atrocities that are planned. During those two weeks, he makes friends with the chief's son Alasdair, and when he gets his orders, he has to decide whether to defy them or obey (I think we can all guess what he does, but the manner in which he does it is still very suspenseful!). Like Keith, young Robert ardently wants a military career and to follow in his father's footsteps, but unlike Keith, he has divided loyalties from the start. He's an Appin Stewart, but he grew up abroad with his father, who served in William of Orange's Scottish regiment in the Low Countries. His parents are dead when the story begins. Besides the excellent conflict of loyalties, this is also a great adventure story of winter survival while being chased by redcoats. The very end is perhaps resolved a little too easily, but then it is a YA book. It's available on archive.org, but it's also not hard to get hold of cheap secondhand copies. Go on, you can buy it for $1!

Emma by Jane Austen (1815)
Finishing off my Austen re-listen, with this excellent reading by Elizabeth Klett from Librivox. Emma is one of my least favorite Austens. To start with the positive, it does have the most femslash possibility, since she pours a lot of energy into relationships with female companions. If I could give her an alternate ending, it would be for her to find a female companion who can hold her own against Emma's strong personality and challenge her a bit--and of course Emma has the economic means to live like that. But I don't think any of the other women in the book would work. There are also some wonderfully observed social situations, such as the one with the in-law friction between Emma's father and brother-in-law, where Emma and her sister do all the emotional labor of smoothing things over.

And then to what I don't enjoy: it's not that I actually like Emma that much, but to have the whole plot set up to teach her a lesson and then for her to marry the older man who was always right when Emma was wrong, it just grates on me. Ugh, and then he talks patronizingly about what Emma was like when she was a child, and says that he fell in love with her when she was thirteen (when he was what, thirty?). I don't ship Jane Fairfax/Frank Churchill either--I think he's quite cruel to her during that extended period of secret engagement. Also, there's more snobbishness than in for example Persuasion. However, it's not like it's a hardship to do the dishes and do my physical therapy with Austen prose in my ears, so I don't regret the relisten!

My Austen ranking, based purely on enjoyment: Pride & Prejudice - Persuasion - Mansfield Park - Northanger Abbey - Sense & Sensibility - Emma. What is yours?

Comments

totally optional query, disregard if busy/disclined!

[yhlee]

:slides in: I have heard a lot about Rosemary Sutcliff but do not know where to start! Do you have recs on this front?

(I like Roman military history and military history generally, open to other things!)

[sanguinity]

*asks the library for Ghosts of Glencoe* As if my tbr list isn't already ridiculously long!

but to have the whole plot set up to teach her a lesson and then for her to marry the older man who was always right when Emma was wrong

The moderator of the Synchronous Emma project always linked to a bunch of the academic literature as we went through the novel. Some of that literature questioned whether Emma (the novel) really had a happy ending, given your complaint here. Others questioned whether Emma (the character) really was reformed/subdued by Knightley in the end, or whether we are meant to consider that desirable. Those latter readings seemed a stretch to me, but it was good to see that scholars of the text have been struggling with that ending, too.

[chestnut_pod]

Interesting rankings! For me, it goes Persuasion ----> Pride and Prejudice -> Northanger Abbey -> Sense and Sensibility --> Mansfield Park -----> Emma, which actually filled me with so much social dread that to this day I have not finished it.

[desireearmfeldt]

Yeah, I'm not a big Emma fan either, for similar reasons.

I forget whether the fic-writing folks who are fond of Mary Crawford from Mansfield Park have ever shipped her with Emma. I'm not a fan of her canonically either (from what I remember, MP is one I've read less often or recently), but she might fit the bill for someone of the right strength and temperament to hold her own and challenge Emma. (I am failing to find any such thing on AO3...)

Or what about Elizabeth Bennet or Charlotte Lucas from Pride & Prejudice? Maybe a little too sensible? It's hard to think of a character (of any gender) who is sensible enough to be good for Emma, without being too sensible to get along with her.

Come to think of it, maybe Catherine from Northanger Abbey? She has a similar "heart is in the right place, but overenthusiastic about certain things and oblivious about others" thing going on to Emma, except that the obliviousness is in different directions so they could potentially be good for spotting each other's blind spots.

[muccamukk]

I think my Austen preference depends on what I'm reading at the time! Searching for last time I wrote this down it was: Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, but I think now I'd rate Mansfield Park higher than P&P, and Emma might be my second fave? Should reread.

[antisoppist]

Persuasion - Sense and Sensibility - Pride and Prejudice - Mansfield Park (I only finally got to the end in my 40s having bounced off it at 18 so I've still only read it once and it's not part of my mental landscape like the others are) - Northanger Abbey (must reread as I was about 20 when I read it the first and only time) - Emma because I can't cope with her setting up Harriet and being all wrong and it's all so embarrassing.

My first two are because I really like people suffering stoically in silence before their happy ending :-)

[skygiants]

Northanger Abbey is the Austen of my heart, and all the others are sort of jostling for position in the middle, but I think if I had to rank it'd be:

Northanger --> P&P --> the gorgeous and satisfying end of Persuasion --> Emma --> Sense & Sensibility --> the slow beginning of Persuasion --> --> --> --> Mansfield Park (sorry Mansfield Park).

[regshoe]

Oh, The Ghosts of Glencoe sounds great :D *adds to website list, and to TBR* How much slash potential is there, do you think?

My Austen ranking is pretty similar to yours! I would put Mansfield Park first, and maybe Persuasion above Pride & Prejudice depending on what mood I'm in? I have not read Emma for a long time, probably because I didn't like it much the first time, but I think my feelings about it were similar too.

I'm enjoying the discussion in the comments here about femslash possibilities for Emma :D