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Published: Nov. 9, 2021, 6 a.m.

Welcome back for another installment in our series covering Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. Angelina, Cindy and Thomas share their commonplace quotes which leads them into discussing Fanny\u2019s character in contrast to the heroine of a gothic novel. They talk about what makes a good marriage in the Regency period and Jane Austen\u2019s own personal life, as well as the contrast between the household of Sir Thomas compared to Fanny\u2019s own family home.

Get in on the Western Films and Fiction webinar on November 22nd with Thomas and James Banks! Register here to join in! Also, check out the House of Humane Letters newsletter to stay in the know about our upcoming read-a-long of Shakespeare\u2019s The Tempest.

To view the schedule for the episodes in this series, see our Upcoming Events page. Also, if you want to join our members-only forum off Facebook, check out our Patreon page to learn more!

Commonplace Quotes:

Fear the man who says he knows how things should be. He doesn\u2019t

Alexander Galich

Things were easier for us. We were brought up on stories with happy endings and on the Prayer Book.

C. S. Lewis

One of the most dangerous of literary ventures is the little, shy, unimportant heroine whom none of the other characters value. The danger is that your readers may agree with the other characters. Something must be put into the heroine to make us feel that the other characters are wrong, that she contains the depths they never dreamed of. That is why Charlotte Bront\xeb would have succeeded better with Fanny Price. To be sure, she would have ruined everything else in the book; Sir Thomas and Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris would have been distorted from credible types of pompous dullness, lazy vapidity and vulgar egoism into fiends complete with horns, tails and rhetoric. But through Fanny there would have blown a storm of passion which made sure that we at least would never think her insignificant.

C. S. Lewis

Something Nasty in the Bookshop

by Kingsley Amis

Between the Gardening and the Cookery
Comes the brief Poetry shelf;
By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology
Offers itself.

Critical, and with nothing else to do,
I scan the Contents page,
Relieved to find the names are mostly new;
No one my age.

Like all strangers, they divide by sex:
Landscape Near Parma
Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex,
So does Rilke and Buddha.

\u201cI travel, you see\u201d, \u201cI think\u201d and \u201cI can read\u201d
These titles seem to say;
But I Remember You, Love is my Creed,
Poem for J.,

The ladies\u2019 choice, discountenance my patter
For several seconds;
From somewhere in this (as in any) matter
A moral beckons.

Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart
Or squash it flat?
Man\u2019s love is of man\u2019s life a thing apart;
Girls aren\u2019t like that.

We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff
Can get by without it.
Women don\u2019t seem to think that\u2019s good enough;
They write about it.

And the awful way their poems lay them open
Just doesn\u2019t strike them.
Women are really much nicer than men:
No wonder we like them.

Deciding this, we can forget those times
We stayed up half the night
Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes,
And couldn\u2019t write.

Book List:

Hallelujah: Cultivating Advent Traditions with Handel\u2019s Messiah by Cindy Rollins

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis

Pamela by Samuel Richardson

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Jane Austen by Peter Leithart

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