Provocation
April 29, 2023 2:06 PM Subscribe
"'What might she have written next?' asked Margaret Atwood in her tribute to Hilary Mantel, after the Booker prize-winning novelist’s sudden death in September last year....We now know the answer to Atwood’s question: Mantel was working on a rewriting of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the overlooked middle sister Mary Bennet, to be titled Provocation. Even more intriguingly, it was planned as a mischievous Austen mashup, with characters from all her novels making an appearance in unfamiliar guises." The article in The Guardian includes an excerpt from Mantel's notebooks.
From the excerpt: "And this led me to question, in due course, whether Darcy himself were in command of any significant intellectual power. How often, I believe, we women must suppress the question? A solemn countenance, a grave manner, a pre-occupied frown; these suggest to us a mastering of life’s perplexities born of a habit of deep reflection, and vigorous examination of every fact and circumstance. Yet, but what if the frown means nothing but ill humour?"
From the excerpt: "And this led me to question, in due course, whether Darcy himself were in command of any significant intellectual power. How often, I believe, we women must suppress the question? A solemn countenance, a grave manner, a pre-occupied frown; these suggest to us a mastering of life’s perplexities born of a habit of deep reflection, and vigorous examination of every fact and circumstance. Yet, but what if the frown means nothing but ill humour?"
We. Were. Robbed.
I mean, we were anyway, Hilary Mantel, such a loss.
But I really would have loved to read this book. I had finally managed to get my little brother into Jane Austen, only for him to compare me to me Mary Bennet, bloody ingrate. But then again, fair enough. He identifies most strongly with Emma's hypochrondriac dad, which is also very accurate; he's just being real. We can't all be Lizzies, can we? And I certainly do like to channel my resentment of my surroundings into atrocious piano-playing, which I absolutely will foist upon innocent bystanders at any opportunity.
posted by sohalt at 2:22 PM on April 29, 2023 [16 favorites]
I mean, we were anyway, Hilary Mantel, such a loss.
But I really would have loved to read this book. I had finally managed to get my little brother into Jane Austen, only for him to compare me to me Mary Bennet, bloody ingrate. But then again, fair enough. He identifies most strongly with Emma's hypochrondriac dad, which is also very accurate; he's just being real. We can't all be Lizzies, can we? And I certainly do like to channel my resentment of my surroundings into atrocious piano-playing, which I absolutely will foist upon innocent bystanders at any opportunity.
posted by sohalt at 2:22 PM on April 29, 2023 [16 favorites]
I was literally just thinking about her last night, and what she would be working on if she was still alive.
posted by praemunire at 2:55 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by praemunire at 2:55 PM on April 29, 2023 [1 favorite]
There are quite a few MB books already. I read The Other Bennet Girl last year and thought it was interesting, though a bit long and I wanted a specific plot dead-end to have been the actual plot. There are some more listed in this Atlantic article, including links to discussions of the character and to fan fiction.
I've always identified with Mary more than Elizabeth and know others who do too (and with other minor characters like Charlotte Lucas, or Mary Musgrove in Persuasion). Most of us don't have main character energy.
posted by paduasoy at 3:24 PM on April 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've always identified with Mary more than Elizabeth and know others who do too (and with other minor characters like Charlotte Lucas, or Mary Musgrove in Persuasion). Most of us don't have main character energy.
posted by paduasoy at 3:24 PM on April 29, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've never read Pride and Prejudice, so this may be a derail. But after all of the exhaustive reading I had done on the Tudor and Henry VIII eras, it wasn't until I read (and watched, in one instance) Mantel's trilogy, written from the perspective of Cromwell, that I started looking at that whole situation with different eyes. I love how her writing helped me to do that. She was a treasure and I am better for it having read her work(s).
posted by sundrop at 3:29 PM on April 29, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by sundrop at 3:29 PM on April 29, 2023 [10 favorites]
Mary is more sinned against than sinning, I think (if she's pedantic, narrow-minded, and ignorant of real life, what is there in her upbringing to have given her a chance to be otherwise?), but she's tactless and stunningly oblivious to the feelings of people around her, which she should have had a chance to learn.
posted by praemunire at 3:30 PM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 3:30 PM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
I certainly do like to channel my resentment of my surroundings into atrocious piano-playing, which I absolutely will foist upon innocent bystanders at any opportunity
I appreciate your thought and approach and would like to subscribe to your audio stream.
posted by riverlife at 3:31 PM on April 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
I appreciate your thought and approach and would like to subscribe to your audio stream.
posted by riverlife at 3:31 PM on April 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
I was just thinking of Mantel lately after my wife took our youngest daughter to see "Six" -- and wondering what Mantel would have made if it.
posted by wenestvedt at 3:52 PM on April 29, 2023
posted by wenestvedt at 3:52 PM on April 29, 2023
Man, absolutely robbed. I'm in the middle of the Wolf Hall books right now and like you said, sundrop, it's illuminating. I've been avoiding learning about history just so I don't get Cromwell spoilers. I like history!
This would have been a corker. She really has a knack for getting inside a character's head.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:28 PM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
This would have been a corker. She really has a knack for getting inside a character's head.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:28 PM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
Mary is more sinned against than sinning, I think (if she's pedantic, narrow-minded, and ignorant of real life, what is there in her upbringing to have given her a chance to be otherwise?), but she's tactless and stunningly oblivious to the feelings of people around her, which she should have had a chance to learn.
She's undersocialized, lacking practice, used to engaging more with books rather than people. This can happen even in a house full of sisters, when all those sisters are so much prettier, and already kinda paired up with each other. Lydia has Kitty, Lizzie has Jane. Mary has no one.
Her most unattractive quality is her "I'm not like other girls"-stick, but I'm not throwing the first stone here. It think it's a fairly relatable impulse to reject the standards of femininity of your time, if you're born too plain too meet them and it's tempting to justify that to yourself with an overgeneralized distaste. She's also quite young. I like to think she would have grown out of it, just as I did.
posted by sohalt at 10:22 PM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
She's undersocialized, lacking practice, used to engaging more with books rather than people. This can happen even in a house full of sisters, when all those sisters are so much prettier, and already kinda paired up with each other. Lydia has Kitty, Lizzie has Jane. Mary has no one.
Her most unattractive quality is her "I'm not like other girls"-stick, but I'm not throwing the first stone here. It think it's a fairly relatable impulse to reject the standards of femininity of your time, if you're born too plain too meet them and it's tempting to justify that to yourself with an overgeneralized distaste. She's also quite young. I like to think she would have grown out of it, just as I did.
posted by sohalt at 10:22 PM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
This can happen even in a house full of sisters, when all those sisters are so much prettier, and already kinda paired up with each other. Lydia has Kitty, Lizzie has Jane. Mary has no one.
It doesn't help that the parents obviously play favorites, either. And you're right that she is still quite young.
It seems like she chose books more to have An Accomplishment and an alternative source of authority to be able to draw on than out of any real interest in...well...anything, though. That makes her hard to like.
posted by praemunire at 11:02 PM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
It doesn't help that the parents obviously play favorites, either. And you're right that she is still quite young.
It seems like she chose books more to have An Accomplishment and an alternative source of authority to be able to draw on than out of any real interest in...well...anything, though. That makes her hard to like.
posted by praemunire at 11:02 PM on April 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yeah, she's definitely an overachiever, desperately trying to compensate for her lack of feminine charms by accumulating other accomplishments (see also the try-hard piano playing). The best case scenario is that she'll have the leisure to discover her actual interests once she gets over that preoccupation (maybe once the prettier sisters are safely out of the house, and she no longer constantly suffers from the comparision), but she might also lowkey take that inferiority complex to the grave, which of course would continue to make her difficult to be around.
I also felt a certain compulsion to get As even in subjects that didn't interest me at that age. Of course you're going to forget most of it pretty quickly if you just study for the grade (and never really learn to apply that knowledge beyond the exam), so you don't necessarily acquire much in terms of actual expertise. But in my experience, if you study that much for that long, something's gotta stick. Sure, I might have been pathologically obsessed with grades, wasting much of a my misspent youth chasing after a teacher's approval. But I was genuinely interested in some stuff too! The nuance may be hard to observe for the outside observer, but pure motivations can co-exist with ulterior motives.
Frankly, I think this idea that Mary isn't actually interested in any of the books she reads, might be a bit of a cope on Lizzie's part, whose judgments colours a fair amount of the novel's passages, and who probably has to acknowledge that Mary does read more than her.
posted by sohalt at 12:05 AM on April 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I also felt a certain compulsion to get As even in subjects that didn't interest me at that age. Of course you're going to forget most of it pretty quickly if you just study for the grade (and never really learn to apply that knowledge beyond the exam), so you don't necessarily acquire much in terms of actual expertise. But in my experience, if you study that much for that long, something's gotta stick. Sure, I might have been pathologically obsessed with grades, wasting much of a my misspent youth chasing after a teacher's approval. But I was genuinely interested in some stuff too! The nuance may be hard to observe for the outside observer, but pure motivations can co-exist with ulterior motives.
Frankly, I think this idea that Mary isn't actually interested in any of the books she reads, might be a bit of a cope on Lizzie's part, whose judgments colours a fair amount of the novel's passages, and who probably has to acknowledge that Mary does read more than her.
posted by sohalt at 12:05 AM on April 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Frankly, I think this idea that Mary isn't actually interested in any of the books she reads, might be a bit of a cope on Lizzie's part, whose judgments colours a fair amount of the novel's passages, and who probably has to acknowledge that Mary does read more than her.
That's fair.
posted by praemunire at 11:53 AM on April 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's fair.
posted by praemunire at 11:53 AM on April 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Pride and Prometheus is another Mary Bennet story. (I wasn't completely convinced by its versions of Austen's characters, but it was still a good read.)
posted by bfields at 1:09 PM on April 30, 2023
posted by bfields at 1:09 PM on April 30, 2023
Count me in as another disappointed would-be reader of Mantel’s Austen mashup. Related to Mary Bennet, I recently read Mary B, which had one of the weirdest endings I’ve read in the Austen-verse.
One of the last pre-pandemic events I went to was a delightful Christmas at Pemberley play from her perspective, “Miss Bennet.” I wish I had been able to see parts 1 and 3, which focused on the other sisters.
posted by Maarika at 12:19 PM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
One of the last pre-pandemic events I went to was a delightful Christmas at Pemberley play from her perspective, “Miss Bennet.” I wish I had been able to see parts 1 and 3, which focused on the other sisters.
posted by Maarika at 12:19 PM on May 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I can highly recommend the servants-version sequel of that play (The Wickhams), which takes "downstairs" at the same time. I haven't seen #3 yet.
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:14 PM on May 1, 2023
posted by jenfullmoon at 3:14 PM on May 1, 2023
Dammit. I, too, have read (and sometimes collected) alternative timelines where Mary Bennet gets her own moment in the spotlight. Such a shame that Hilary Mantel didn't have time to create this version of events.
Not every reimagining of Austen is successful. Death Comes to Pemberly by P. D. James starts well but by the end it just loses steam. Still, anything written by Mantel would have been worth sampling.
Meanwhile, here are some thoughts on Mary's role in Pride and Prejudice.
In Defense of Mary Bennet, Spinster's Library. Bonus points for Minerva the cat's insatiable desire for greens during the taping of this discussion.
Why Mary Bennet is essential in Pride and Prejudice, foil characters, Ellie Dashwood. The reviewer draws a picture of a Bennet household that has a pair of conservative elder sisters in sharp contrast to their more flighty and thoughtless siblings. Without Mary's rigid moral posturing from the sidelines, Jane and Lizzie come off as dull and spiritless.
And if the question of "What will eventually happen to Mary?" still bothers you, here is an excerpt about Miss Bennet in The Jane Austen Wiki --
According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Jane Austen later told her nephews and nieces that "Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Phillips's clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meryton."
posted by TrishaU at 12:54 AM on May 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not every reimagining of Austen is successful. Death Comes to Pemberly by P. D. James starts well but by the end it just loses steam. Still, anything written by Mantel would have been worth sampling.
Meanwhile, here are some thoughts on Mary's role in Pride and Prejudice.
In Defense of Mary Bennet, Spinster's Library. Bonus points for Minerva the cat's insatiable desire for greens during the taping of this discussion.
Why Mary Bennet is essential in Pride and Prejudice, foil characters, Ellie Dashwood. The reviewer draws a picture of a Bennet household that has a pair of conservative elder sisters in sharp contrast to their more flighty and thoughtless siblings. Without Mary's rigid moral posturing from the sidelines, Jane and Lizzie come off as dull and spiritless.
And if the question of "What will eventually happen to Mary?" still bothers you, here is an excerpt about Miss Bennet in The Jane Austen Wiki --
According to James Edward Austen-Leigh's A Memoir of Jane Austen, Jane Austen later told her nephews and nieces that "Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her uncle Phillips's clerks, and was content to be considered a star in the society of Meryton."
posted by TrishaU at 12:54 AM on May 3, 2023 [2 favorites]
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Brings to mind 2013's Longbourn, told from the perspective of the servants.
posted by fairmettle at 2:21 PM on April 29, 2023 [6 favorites]