I am reading scholarly works about Jane Austen and having hearteyes about obscure details in the Pemberley chapters of P&P that indicate Mr. Darcy’s sustainable land management praxis.
Okay, let’s talk about Pemberley!
Austen, as a rule, doesn’t spend many paragraphs describing locations. There’s often information to be gleaned from their names (Sense and Sensibility is full of lurking references to sexual scandals and Mansfield Park to slavery), but Longbourn just means “long stream” or “long boundary,” Netherfield means “lower field,” and Rosings’ original owner was a redhead. Meryton, a pun on “merry town,” is kind of fascinating, given the installment of the militia and the threat to stability and serenity they represent. Partying and shenanigans. Possibly a Shakespeare ref.
Longbourn barely gets any description at all. From the get-go, everyone who lives there is obsessed with other places, with getting out (except Mr. Bennet, who never wants to leave his library, never mind the house). Lady Catherine deems it small and mildly uncomfortable, which is in keeping with the theme of confinement, but also it’s Lady Catherine talking. Netherfield can’t tell us much about Bingley, who is only a tenant. Rosings is expensively, ostentatiously modern and gaudily furnished, though it has a handsome park that Lady Catherine and her stifled daughter never set foot in but Elizabeth and Darcy both frequently escape to during their stays.
So it’s notable and wonderful that Austen goes out of her way to describe Pemberley as an old-fashioned, highly successful, working estate. Its practical old Anglo-Saxon name means “Pember’s clearing.” A pember is a man who grows barley. Darcy most likely still does. As Elizabeth and the Gardiners approach and tour the house, they notice and admire its beautiful surrounding woods, and then when they wander outside, the specific word Austen uses is coppice woods. A coppice is a woodland filled with tree species that grow new shoots from their stumps when you chop them down. Darcy probably has oaks on a fifty-year cycle as well as faster-growing species such as hawthorn and hornbeam for firewood, timber and cattle fodder. Coppice forestry is functional and sustainable, and provides habitat for beasts and birds.
Darcy is the anti-John Dashwood (Dashwood, srsly), the brother in Sense and Sensibility who inherits Elinor and Marianne’s childhood estate of Norland, whose wife immediately starts making plans to hack down trees (not even coppice trees, but big, gorgeous, venerable hardwoods) to make way for a folly. Jane Austen hated follies. Also, it ought to be noted that timber was so valuable in Britain at the time that estates often had inheritance clauses that detailed who was and wasn’t allowed to chop down what.
Darcy’s a food producer and land conservator, prefers nature over fussy, ornamental landscape design, his servants and tenants like him, he gives money to the poor… and… he’s a trout fisherman! He shoots, too, as do Bingley and Hurst and Mr. Bennet, but it’s a particular mark in his favour that Austen singles him and Mr. Gardiner out as anglers. It’s a pastime that signifies a taste for contemplation and quietness and appreciation of nature, as blissfully described in The Compleat Angler; or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation, a hugely popular travel book first published in the 1600s and reprinted often for 18th C libraries. The plot of The Compleat Angler is about the conversion of a hunter (pastime of the ultra-rich) to a fisherman who learns to love the peaceful sport. We receive ample evidence elsewhere that Darcy is a man capable of swift, decisive action and formidable effectiveness. But at Pemberley, Austen takes care to show us how he’s balanced.
Most of the information in this post comes from Margaret Doody’s Jane Austen’s Names.
#follow for more soft darcy facts
“Darcy’s a food producer and land conservator, prefers nature over fussy, ornamental landscape design“
He cultivates a huge (”ten miles round!”) pleasure-grounds for the primary use of two people who don’t even seem to be close to full-time residents. It sounds like a delightful property, in excellent taste even to the modern visitor, which I’m sure I’d enjoy visiting, to say nothing of owning! But let’s not get carried away here. The description of Pemberley, grounds, house, and furniture, is on a consistent principle: money and power used well to cultivate real beauty and comfort rather than vain ostentation–yet nonetheless used. The proportions of the very river at Pemberley have been altered (skillfully) to make it more impressive. The grounds are a triumph of landscape design, but design it is. Nature not counteracted by an awkward taste.
Maybe I’ve forgotten something, but I was poking around in the text, and I do not recall any references to non-ornamental agriculture (unless some of the timber is grown for the market) at Pemberley itself. Unquestionably at least some, probably most, of his tenants, on his further properties, would be farmers; but it’s a bit rich to be giving a landlord credit for the hard labor of his tenants. Even if he is a well-liked one. I doubt Darcy himself grew anything (for sale) at all.
Ehhh, I don’t want to belabor the terminology, but the ten miles encompass pleasure-grounds (flower gardens, shrubberies, croquet and archery lawns, whatever…) plus an enormous deer park that would have entertained large parties of aristocratic guests for weeks at a time. Rich families rotated hosting duties during the summer, and doing it in style was crucial to one’s social standing and clout. Darcy’s taking his turn when Elizabeth shows up. He might have eased up after the death of his father, while he figured out how to run the damned show, with a young, shy, grieving sister, but he’s about to ramp up again, now that he’s got a wife to help, and Georgiana reaching marriageable age. Pemberley’s gonna be hopping! (Poor Darcy. Thank god he’s got Elizabeth to play the extrovert.)
As for the agriculture… Jane Austen’s characters driving through a
£10,000 estate and not mentioning the farmland is a bit like me describing my house and not mentioning the plumbing. “Pemberley” includes the tenant farms and villages. He’s not out there with a pitchfork himself, but, in addition to managing the home farm (whose products he does very likely sell), he’s heavily involved in the business decisions, education and innovation, field and building upkeep and modernization, and general well-being of his tenants. I’m not giving him credit for hard labour. I am saying he’s in his study with a stack of agricultural journals and market reports, and going to Norfolk to meet Thomas Coke, getting up in the faces of his war-mongering Whig family members, and out there advising his farmers on what to plant, how not to drown it, where to sell it and at what price, and generally dragging his entire micro-economy through years of war, taxation, and population explosion, and still coming out with most of the locals agreeing he’s a tolerably righteous dude. Here’s a pretty good summary of Regency estate ownership, with a nice collection of citations.
Now, if anyone out there is an expert on Georgian-era enclosure, hit me up, because that aspect of all this is confusing and I’d love to learn more. Would Darcy and Mr. “Enclose all the Things!” Knightley be pals?
i’m always so happy about seeing mlm feeling comfortable about publicly crushing on tom holland, bc he and the rest of the mcu spidey cast/crew have made sure they feel safe in the fanbase. like seeing tom at photo ops doing cute romantic poses with guys the same way he would with the girls, that’s so refreshing. seeing guys show up to the spidey set wearing “mentally dating tom holland” shirts and the cast takes pics of his shirt and give him thumbs up for it?? good ass shit there. it might not seem like a big deal to everyone, but it really is.
i’m getting some messages asking for “proof” of this so, here’s some con pics of tom with some male/masc fans doing romantic poses, and one of him holding up the trans pride flag:
here’s the male/masc fan wearing a “mentally dating tom holland shirt” happily posing for the cast/crew when they asked for pics of him in it, this is from remy hii’s instagram:
and here’s a question that jacob batalon and laura harrier got during the “homecoming” press tour, when doing an answertime on tumblr’s stardom blog:
and then when later asked about it in an interview jacob added this:
on top of that, “far from home” will have two trans male actors playing some of peter parker’s classmates. the mcu spider-man franchise is a safe space for lgbt+ fans.
controversial: dumbledore would’ve made the right decision taking the 1991-1992 house cup away from slytherin even if harry and co. hadn’t saved the school and stopped voldemort from returning to power
Can I ask why? Genuinely curious here
Slytherin students didn’t have better academic performance and they certainly didn’t have better behavior than the other houses. What they did have was a head of house who would award his own students points for almost no reason while handing out penalties to other houses like candy. If Draco Malfoy answered a question correctly in potions, he’d be awarded ten points, while Hermione giving the same answer would lose ten points for being a know-it-all.
That’s the thing, the game was rigged in Slytherin’s favor. Snape set his own house up to win, through absolutely no merit of their own, seven years in a row with no penalty. Meanwhile Dumbledore is made out to be the one who “just hands victory to his own house” after four members of his house put their lives on the line to save the school from a genocidal mass-murderer.
Gryffindor deserved the house cup because their students saved the school, but even if they didn’t, Slytherin should have had it taken away from them because they didn’t earn it.
I can’t even condemn Dumbledore for letting Slytherin believe they’d won, sit in a green-and-silver dining hall, and then changing it when he announced they’d actually lost, because after seven years of cheating, it’s not enough for them to just lose. If they’d just lost, they’d think they were cheated out of something that’s rightfully theirs. Allowing them to believe they’d just once again been handed an award they didn’t deserve, and then giving it directly to the house that actually did something to deserve it, teaches a valuable lesson.
Anyway, if we’re going to criticize Dumbledore’s abilities as a school administrator for anything, it’s how unchecked he left Snape’s treatment of his students. Even putting aside the emotional and physical abuse he inflicted on his students, there should have been some provision in place to prevent his abuse of the points system before he had a chance to hand it to his own students for ONE year, let alone seven.
There should have been a provision that the current holder of the house cup is ineligible for participation in the next year’s competition. There should be an upper limit on how many points you can take away from another house’s students, and how many points you can give to your own students. Students should be able to appeal unfair penalties to the headmaster.
Point is, Slytherin shouldn’t get an award just because their head-of-house refuses to play fair
I never thought of it like this before. Thank you so much, OP
So the essence of grimdark is that everyone’s inherently sort of a bad person and does bad things, and that’s awful and disheartening and cynical. It’s looking at human nature and going, “The glass is half empty.”
Hopepunk says, “No, I don’t accept that. Go fuck yourself: The glass is half-full.” YEAH, we’re all a messy mix of good and bad, flaws and virtues. We’ve all been mean and petty and cruel, but (and here’s the important part) we’ve also been soft and forgiving and KIND. Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.
Hopepunk says that genuinely and sincerely caring about something, anything, requires bravery and strength. Hopepunk isn’t ever about submission or acceptance: It’s about standing up and fighting for what you believe in. It’s about standing up for other people. It’s about DEMANDING a better, kinder world, and truly believing that we can get there if we care about each other as hard as we possibly can, with every drop of power in our little hearts.
Going to political protests is hopepunk. Calling your senators is hopepunk. But crying is also hopepunk, because crying means you still have feelings, and feelings are how you know you’re alive. The 1% doesn’t want you to have feelings, they just want you to feel resigned. Feeling resigned is not hopepunk.
Examples! THE HANDMAID’S TALE is arguably hopepunk. It’s scary and dark, and at first glance it looks like grimdark because it’s a dystopia… but goddammit she keeps fighting. That’s the key, right there. She fights every single day, because she won’t let them take away meaning from her life. She survives stubbornly in the hope that one day she can live again. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down,” is one of the core tenets of hopepunk, along with, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Jesus and Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Robin Hood and John Lennon were hopepunk. (Remember: Hopepunk isn’t about moral perfection. It’s not about being as pure and innocent as the new-fallen snow. You get grubby when you fight. You make mistakes. You’re sometimes a little bit of an asshole. Maybe you’re as much as 50% an asshole. But the glass is half full, not half empty. You get up, and you keep fighting, and caring, and trying to make the world a little better for the people around you. You get to make mistakes. It’s a process. You get to ask for and earn forgiveness. And you love, and love, and love.)
And THIS, this is hopepunk:
Here I am with more addendums to this post: Seems like a lot of people are saying the word “noblebright” at me, and I just want to be really clear about this: Noblebright is not hopepunk. Noblebright does not espouse the same ideals that hopepunk does. They are two distinct, separate, coexisting things.
Noblebright is Arthurian legends. The world is a good place, people are essentially good. The codes of chivalry are in full effect. People in positions of authority are there because they are wise, prudent, caring leaders. They rule because they deserve to rule. They protect the weak, they uphold their ideals, there’s people practicing chaste courtly love in every bower and garden. Things are fine, and people have adventures in which they triumph because (see: all of the above).
Hopepunk is (as many wonderful people in the comments have pointed out) Discworld: The world is the world. It’s really good sometimes and it’s really bad sometimes, and it’s sort of humdrum a lot of the time. People are petty and mean and, y’know, PEOPLE. There are things that need to be fixed, and battles to be fought, and people to be protected, and we’ve gotta do all those things ourselves because we can’t sit around waiting for some knight in shining armor to ride past and deal with it for us. We’re just ordinary people trying to do our best because we give a shit about the world. Why? Because we’re some of the assholes that live there.
The Dutch resistance was widely believed to be a man’s effort in a man’s war. If women were involved, the thinking went, they were likely doing little more than handing out anti-German pamphlets or newspapers.
Yet Freddie Oversteegen and her sister Truus, two years her senior, were rare exceptions — a pair of teenage women who took up arms against Nazi occupiers and Dutch “traitors” on the outskirts of Amsterdam. With Hannie Schaft, a onetime law student with fiery red hair, they sabotaged bridges and rail lines with dynamite, shot Nazis while riding their bikes, and donned disguises to smuggle Jewish children across the country and sometimes out of concentration camps.
In perhaps their most daring act, they seduced their targets in taverns or bars, asked if they wanted to “go for a stroll” in the forest — and “liquidated” them, as Ms. Oversteegen put it, with a pull of the trigger.
“We had to do it,” she told one interviewer. “It was a necessary evil, killing those who betrayed the good people.” When asked how many people she had killed or helped kill, she demurred: “One should not ask a soldier any of that.” […]
Does necromancy only work on animals? What do you do if you accidentally necromancy a fence and then it starts growing branches?
WHAT DO YOU DO IF YOU NECROMANCY A BOTTLE OF SHAMPOO AND IT TURNS INTO AN ENTIRE PILE OF LIMES?
What if I accidentally necromancy a vaccine and then someone gets an armful of very live pathogen?
WHAT’S THE LIMIT ON DEADNESS? HOW RECENTLY DOES SOMETHING HAVE TO BE DEAD? COULD I NECROMANCY A DINOSAUR FOSSIL? WHAT IF I NECROMANCIED THE GROUND AND THEN DINOSAURS STARTED APPEARING?
WHAT IF I NECROMANCIED A LIMESTONE WALL AND IT JUST TURNED INTO A PILE OF MOLLUSCS? WHAT IF I MOLLUSCED A BUILDING? A MOUNTAIN?
Hey OP are you okay
no
NECROMANCY DOES WORK ON ANIMALS BUT AS RULE OF THUMB BIGGER ONES TAKE MORE ENERGY WHILE SMALLER ONES TAKE MORE PRESCISION THE HAPPY MEDIUM ENDS UP WITH LARGE DOGS BEING EASIEST
PLANT CELLS GENERALLY DO NOT RESPOND TO NECROMANCY AND REQUIRE A DIFFERENT FORM OF MAGIC TO MANIPULATE BUT THERE ARE A FEW WEIRDOS THAT PRACTICE NECROFORLOMANCY
SHAMPOO HAS LIKELY UNDERGONE TOO MANY INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES TO BE MAGIC REACTIVE ANYMORE
NECROMANCING INDIVIDUAL BACTERIA WOULD TAKE AN INHUMAN AMOUNT OF CONTROL
SAME CONCEPT WITH DINOSAUR SKELETONS THEY HAVE BEEN DEAD SO LONG REANIMATING THEM WOULD TAKE SO MUCH ENERGY YOURE HONESTLY BETTER OFF TRYING TO JUST RIP A HOLE IN SPACETIME AND HOPING A T REX FALLS THROUGH
SIMILARLY WITH LIMESTONE YOU WOULD HAVE TO REANIMATE EACH MOLLUSK INDIVIDUALLY
I love her but also bc Greenland sharks are so long lived their population is still suffering from overfishing before WWII. a lot of the population isn’t yet at sexual maturity (150 yrs) so they struggle to repopulate
SlythKris (tumblr backup babey) 