Welcome to Litsy!

Gather round, folks: Sir Thomas is throwing a ball and everyone's mad excited. Fanny has a dilemma, though: William brought her a cross which she's been wearing on some ribbon, but that imitation bling isn't gonna cut it on the big night. She goes to Mary Crawford for advice and Mary offers her an old chain of her own. But what seems a nice gesture is inappropriate as hell because the chain came from Henry and now Fanny is in a moral gray area!

"She could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Crawford, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and a friend."

Mary Crawford is definitely not your friend!

I'm loving the illustrations in my 1996 Book of the Month edition.

#Pemberlittens
#MusingsOnMansfieldPark
#JaneAustenThenAndNow

Let me tell you now of my deep hatred and dripping disdain for Henry Crawford, a vile, manipulative, misogynistic manwhore who is out specifically to sow trouble for his own amusement. In today's chapter, he delightedly announces his plan to win Fanny's affection and then break her heart just because she didn't fawn over him at dinner and he feels entitled to every woman's flattery and attention. I would eat this fucker's heart in the marketplace!

I'll just say it: I despise Mary Crawford. She's entitled, superficial, materialistic, and insincere, and when I read online discourse from her fangirls, I want to claw out my own eyeballs. She's just Caroline Bingley with better jokes, and in today's chapter she continues to be flatly dismissive of Edmund, the man she's supposedly falling for, and says outright that she won't respect him if he's poor. Screw you, Mary, and the harp you rode in on.

"Nor must you be fancying, that the invitation is meant as any particular compliment to you; the compliment is intended to your uncle and aunt, and me. Mrs. Grant thinks it a civility due to us to take a little notice of you, or else it would never have come into her head, and you may be very certain, that if your cousin Julia had been at home, you would not have been asked at all.”

#Pemberlittens Mrs Norris is the worst! ?

#BookReport

I‘ve read The Wedding People and Et jentebarn (A Baby Girl)

I continued with my yearlong reads on the right

I continued the buddy reads: Little Dorrit #WhatTheDickens, Mansfield Park #PemberLittens #JaneAustenThenAndNow and Tombland #ShardlakeBR

I continued The Flower Farm on audio

I‘ve started The Strawberry Patch Pancake House

Finally get to repost my favorite Austen meme of all time! 😂Sir Thomas is home and he is NOT pleased to discover that the kids have built a whole-ass theatre inside the house. Yates and Henry blow town, the latter making Maria livid beyond belief because isn't this man supposed to be in love with her?! Side note that I love the final moment of the whole affair when Mrs. Norris absconds with the green baize curtain like the scheming magpie she is.

Rehearsals are in full swing and stirring up jealousies like nobody's business! Henry is all over Maria, pissing off both Julia and Mr. Rushworth, and Edmund is falling for Mary more each day, which has Fanny straight-up vexed. She's also in her feelings about Mrs. Grant who took on Cottager's Wife is now loved by everyone while Fanny is increasingly ignored and isolated. But soon none of this will matter because uh-oh...Sir Thomas has returned!

Edmund remains totally disapproving of the whole home am-dram concept, but when Tom suggests bringing in some rando to join the fun, he's absolutely aghast. The impropriety! Tom also tries to get Fanny to join in, but our girl's morals are iron-clad and she refuses. The same cannot be said for Edmund who decides that joining in himself would be the lesser of two evils and in a total weaksauce move, he tries to get Fanny to absolve him. Boy, bye.

"A few steps farther brought them out at the bottom of the very walk they had been talking of; and standing back, well shaded and sheltered, and looking over a ha-ha into the park, was a comfortable-sized bench, on which they all sat down"

As a gardener I love a good ha-ha mention. In June I hosted a Garden Club tour of my garden. My topic was In The Garden with Jane Austen and how it inspired me. Oh course I dressed the part. ?