"The Other Bennet Sister" is Closer to Jane Eyre than Jane Austen:

Once upon a time there was a girl born without the gift of beauty, grace, pleasing manners,  or the prospect of a fortune. Aways criticized and compared unfavorably to her counterparts -- when she got any notice at all -- she grew up lonely with little hope for finding happiness. Once she was grown up, she determined to leave what she had known and comes to find a true home, self-acceptance, and the love she deserved,  despite never blossoming into a beauty. After turning down a proposal from a handsome suitor, she finally got to marry the man she had been in love with who was unattainable for a time.

 Coaster in" The Other Bennet Sister" collection 

That's a summary of Janice Hadlow's 2020 novel, The Other Bennet Sister. Add in a bit about taking on the role of governess, and you have the 2026 adaption's version of the story. Of course, it's also the summary of Jane Eyre's story. Without the inspiration and model set by Charlotte Brontë to apply Romanticism to the novel form and give voice to the type of women never before cast as heroines, this kind of coming-of-age story would not have been possible.  

Romantic aspirations meet everyday reality

While Jane Austen lived during the Romantic movement, she is not generally counted among the Romantics. She may have heard of Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, and Shelley, but she definitely does not quote them. Her references to the picturesque or sensibility should not be mistaken for Romanticism, as she draws on artistic movement from the 18th century.  

In The Other Bennet Sister, Wordsworth's poetry is central to Tom Hayward's character. He shares it with Mary who comes to appreciate experiencing landscapes as a poet does, not just reciting lines, but feeling them. Like him, she internalizes that Romantic quality, and it becomes part of her self-discovery that make it possible for her to feel the happiness she has not experienced when she turned to books for direction and identity at Longbourn.  

It is a very compelling story that resonates well with readers and audiences in the 2020s.  But it deviates from Jane Austen's heroines' stories in a number of ways.

1.All of  Austen's heroines are -- if not beautiful -- handsome enough to be tempting. That holds true even of Anne Elliot who had felt herself aged and faded at 27 but blooms back into good looks, as well as of Fanny Price who becomes decidedly attractive when she grows up. 

2.  Austen's heroines do tend to take some kind of journey and sometimes enjoy being outside to admire the view or for a picnic, but their form of nature is typically very much contained.

3. Austen maintains that men always make the first move as far as declarations of feeling.

4. None of Austen's heroines ever have to earn a living. 

A different take on what's interesting

“[Charlotte Brontë] once told her sisters that they were wrong - even morally wrong - in making their heroines beautiful as a matter of course. They replied that it was impossible to make a heroine interesting on any other terms. Her answer was, 'I will prove to you that you are wrong; I will show you a heroine as plain and as small as myself, who shall be as interesting as any of yours.”

― Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë

It wasn't just Charlotte's sister, Emily and Anne, who believed in the general rule of beautiful heroines. It had been a tradition reinforced by the author that George Lewes (the man that George Eliot lived with because he already had a wife)  told  Charlotte to take as her model, Jane Austen. Brontë began here response with an indication she would try to take his advice to heart and be "more subdued," but she quickly proves she has no intention of doing so as preserved Gaskell's biography:

"Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would have rather written Pride and Prejudice, or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley Novels?

"I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find ? An accurate, daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face a carefully-fenced, highly-cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.

If you think about it, you realize that Austen's landscapes are very much as Brontë  describes them. They are tamed and circumscribed and utterly devoid of the sublime quality that the Romantics attempted to capture through their art. But that's not the case in The Other Bennet Sister in which Mary Bennet travels to the Lake District and ventures on a climb to experience the sublime for herself. She even refuses to listen to reason when the guide warns of a storm brewing, going along with Ryder's suggestion that they experience it instead of escape it. (In the book the consequences are just a miserably wet descent, though the adaption has Mary fall deathly ill as a result to allow for some elements from  Sense and Sensibility.)  

Can a heroine speak freely? 

In Austen's universe, the answer is no. The heroines have to hold back to maintain decorum and their dignity. That is central to the story of Elinor Dashwood, Fanny Price, and Anne Elliot. But what of Mary Bennet? In the novel devoted to her, this is the crux of the matter. Her path was already paved by Jane Austen who expresses herself passionately and freely to Rochester:

"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton?--a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;--it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,--as we are!"
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (chapter 23)

Jane knows she doesn't look like a heroine, being "poor, obscure, plain, and little," though that doesn't mean she doesn't have the soul and heart of one.  Romantic that she is, she insist on not confining herself to "the medium of custom, conventionalities" that are the very fabric of the Austenian universe to be able to address Rochester (who was her employer and social superior) as her equal.

from "The Other Bennet Sister" collection 

All or bust

As all readers of Pride and Prejudice know, Charlotte Lucas  she determines to win the attention of Mr. Collins and marry him to assure herself of a secure future -- if not a very happy one.. She appears to be an older version of Mary -- plain and penniless --just without spectacles. At 27, she realizes she may never get another opportunity for matrimony. Someone like her would never attract someone like Mr. Darcy and so she takes what she can get. 

Mary Bennet finds herself with the unexpected opportunity to make a far more brilliant match than Charlotte does  when the handsome, charming, and rich Mr. Ryder  proposes to her. Of course, he doesn't propose at first. He just suggests she accompany him to Italy. Before it has quite dawned on her what that would mean without marriage, Mary already tells him she cannot accept because she doesn't love him.   

In the very next chapter he does propose.  and then even offers to tell Mary what his motivation is on p. 425: 

"There are all the usual reasons of course. I enjoy your company. I find you kind, unaffected, modest, and charming... But I must tell you, there is a more selfish dimension to my preference. I think you would improve me. You are serious where I am flighty. You work hard where I am lazy. You think deeply where I am shallow. Thing what a good deed you would do in marrying me. Imagine how your influence would change me for the betters. Perhaps, for those reasons, if for no other, you are obliged to accept me?"

Though he is not as insistent as St. John Reed is in pressing Jane Eyre to marry him because it is her duty to support him in his mission to India, he still is making the argument that a woman is obligated to marry a man she does not love out of duty.

Thinking about why she had no choice other than to reject Ryder's proposal in chapter 91 on p. 434, Mary muses: "If she had known nothing else -- if she had never had a hint of what real love looked like, she might have been content with the pale facsimile of happiness a pragmatic marriage offered. but now that she had known Mr. Hayward, it would not do. Now that she had met a man she truly loved, she could not marry another." 

That is very similar to what Jane put in more defiant terms in resisting St. John. In chapter 34, when she tells him: "I scorn your idea of love," and continues, "I scorn the counterfeit sentiment you offer."  

Even as her own will starts to weaken, she knows this is not the love she has experienced, as she says in chapter 35: "He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, almost as if he loved me (I say almost — I knew the difference — for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty)." Jane nearly succumbs to St. John and only gains the strength to break away when she hears a voice call her name.

Mary doesn't have any such supernatural inspiration but her own resolve to continue to wait for Tom Hayward rather than settle for anything else because, as she tells him when he finally does return in chapter 92 p. 452: "I have loved you for a very long time and know I will never love anyone as much as I love you. You are the only man who could ever make me happy, and I have missed you -- oh, I have missed you so very, very much." 

Even before this confession, Mary repeatedly thinks about her happiness depending completely on a future with Tom Hayward and chafes at being banned from seeking him out to tell him so by the conventionalities of society. There is a lot of pent-up frustration behind this moment in which she rebels against  social norms that in confessing her love to him before he makes his own declaration. Austen would not endorse that, but Brontë.

A nod to Villette

The adaption takes on a somewhat different direction about how Mary defines her life direction that I'm not even certain audiences who get carried away by seeing their "ships" come together would notice. While Tom was absent, she pursued her plan to be what she calls a governess but is really a tutor, something she intends to continue after her marriage. 

This runs completely counter to the book in which Lady Catherine's suggestion that Mary become a governess fills her with horror and prompts her to escape that fate by staying with the Gardiners indefinitely.  The way Mary regards the prospect of being a governess in the book is much more consistent with Austen's view, which she gives voice to in Emma the character of Jane Fairfax. 

But to a modern audience, it makes sense that a woman who has devoted much of her love to acquiring learning may wish to share that with other in order to feel fulfilled. The Sanditon adaption also showed its heroine working as a governess and even continuing to teach after marriage when she didn't need to make a living. In reality, that would not have been socially accepted. Only spinsters could have continued working.

The adaption is really upholding 21st century views that women are entitled to a career that makes them feel fulfilled. But there was some precedent to this in another Brontë heroine: Lucy Snowe. Like Jane Eyre, Lucy has no fortune or looks to recommend her and must make her own way in the world. She does this by teaching and even works her way up to establishing her own school. The narrator suggests that the school was not going to be abandoned upon marriage, which was a pretty bold take for that time. 

"I write..." mousepad

To read more about the Romantic movement's deep influence on  Brontë's writing, read my dissertation: "Engendering Romanticism: A Study of Charlotte Brontë's Novels"

Related:
Mary and Marylin: the Girl in the Glasses Finds Love

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen: Love and Money
Jane Austen at the Morgan
Love and Limerence in Jane Austen
Observations on Jane Austen's Emma
Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels
Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement
The Big Bow-wow & Bit of Ivory
Jane Austen's Heroines
Jane Austen and Capability Brown
Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications

Mary and Marylin: the girl in the glasses finds love

Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire

Mary flanked by Mr. and Mrs. Bennet in The Other Bennet Sister

Having finished reading The Other Bennet Sister after having seen the adaption,* I have a number of observations that I intend to write up. But for today, I'll keep it lighter with something that just struck me, a surprising parallel that the director may have alluded to. 

 In both the book and the adaption, Mary's glasses are made into a big deal. Her mother declares she'll never attract a man if she wears them. It's not just Mrs. Bennet's silliness. The assumption that women in glasses were less attractive persisted well over century later and is very central to the character that Marylin Monroe plays in How to Marry a Millionaire who wanders around unable to recognize people and bumping into things because she has internalized that a woman in glasses would never attract a man.

As depicted in the clip above, Marilyn's character describes herself as "blind as a bat" without glasses, which is why she holds her books upside down while pretending to read. 

I wonder if the director of The Other Bennet Sister adaption had that in mind in setting up a scene in
which Ryder holds a book upside down while pretending to read. This is not in the book, so I can't help thinking the director thought of some other films in which the upside down book proves the character is not reading. 

tom_handing_mary_out_of_a_carriage_keychain

Much more on the adaption to follow. Watch for my argument that Mary Bennet is closer to a Charlotte Bronte heroine -- with striking parallels to Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe -- than a Jane Austen one, especially in the adaption. If you are a fan of the adaption, check out The Other Bennet Sister: Celebrating Mary Bennet  collection from Totally Jane Austen. 

*That's the order I'd recommend for others to follow to enjoy both experiences and appreciate the differences without getting bothered about deviations from the book while watching. 

Related

Many Happy Returns, Jane Austen                       

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen: Love and Money
Jane Austen at the Morgan
Love and Limerence in Jane Austen
Observations on Jane Austen's Emma
Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels
Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement   


The Big Bow-wow & Bit of Ivory
Jane Austen's Heroines
Jane Austen and Capability Brown
Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications

The King, the Wizard, and the Palace

 

Iolani Palace  photographed January 2026 by Charles Brown

Portrait of King David by William F. Cogswell
 Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The last king and penultimate monarch of Hawaii was King David Kalākaua AKA the Merrie Monarch, During his reign (1874–1891) he endeavored to place Hawaii on the map as a modern, independent state.

To that end, the king ordered the construction of a royal residence majestic enough to receive visitors from around the globe and to entertain them in regal fashion with formal, multi-course dinners and elegant balls. That was the vision of the Iolani Palace.

The cornerstone for the palace was laid in December 1789, and it was was completed in 1882. The cost of construction exceeded $340,000 that would be over $11.5 million in 2026.

But that amount was exceeded what it cost to replace its gas lighting with electricity as per the king's orders. That amounted to over $400,000, according the docent who gave the tour of the place we had (I can't locate published sources for this).

The king ordered the system of gas lighting ripped out and replaced with electricity that lit up the palace ground for the celebration of his 50th birthday in November 1886, which was 5 years earlier than the electrification of the White House.

How did that happen?

A king of firsts 

The king set out in 1881 on a world tour that earned him the distinction of being the first reigning monarch to circumnavigate the globe. Travelling by both ship and train over 281 days, he visited key countries and state leaders in the Middle East, the Far East, Europe, and America.

In addition to introducing Hawaiian culture to the world, he sought to establish diplomatic partnerships and agreements to import people for labor, particularly from Japan. He also came to learn about the technological advances of the day. This wasn't just academic; he fully intended to implement what he saw into his new palace. For example, he had a phone installed in the palace in 1883 and he spared no expense in achieving an even more ambitious vision.

Throne Room in Iolani Palace (photo by Charles Brown) The feathered-top standards on both sides of  the thrones are the signs of royalty that accompanied the kings and queens of Hawaii called Kāhilie 

King David Kalākaua arrived in Paris in time to see the the first International Exposition of Electricity that ran August 15 through November 15, 1881 at the Palais de l'Industrie on the Champs-Élysées. He was so taken by this source of power that he made a point of meeting Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, during his stop in New York.


The two met at the Edison Electric Lighting Company headquarters in New York City on September 25, 1881, and the king became convinced that his dreams of a truly modern palace with electric power was possible. By 1887, the main rooms of the palace were also electrified, and he could boast of having the very latest in technology in Hawaii.

The beginning of the end? 

It certainly made a statement, though it also came at what critics of the king and monarchy in general considered too great. There were those who sought to undermine the monarchy altogether. They forced the king to agree to a constitution that greatly diminished his power. Her was succeeded by his sister, Queen Liliʻuokalan, in 1891, and she only got to rule for two years before the government was overthrown by American forces. 

A short but fascinating history

Statue of King Kamehameha I (photo by Charles Brown)

The golden age of Hawaii as associated with its monarchy only endured for 98 years, It began in 1795 when King Kamehameha I AKA King Kamehameha the Great unified the islands into a single state through conquest and surrender, thanks to not just his own strategy but the superior firepower of guns and canons he obtained from Europeans who came to the area. The kingdom often veered from the traditional father-to-son succession due to the fact that so few of the monarch had children who survived them to take over.


While you can look up information online and check out books, the best way to learn more about the history of Hawaii and its kings and queens by scheduling a tour at the Iolani Palace.*(Should you drive, be aware that the parking lot is woefully inadequate, and you will probably need to find metered parking on a nearby street.)

You also can learn about the see some of the history and see the largest collection of preserved Kāhilies in the world at the Bishop Museum.** Be sure to take the guided tour. It was worth the price of admission just for that because we gained a lot of insight that was not included in the signs. Also be sure to take a look at the wonderfully preserved feathered cloak and helmet that were presented to Captain Cook, which the guide also spoke about. (Free street parking is plentiful just outside the paid parking lot of the museum.)

* Note that the Palace, like most public attractions in Hawaii, convey a highly filtered view of the monarchs of the islands. The story you see  of a unifying king, which glosses over his personal ambition and ruthlessness in achieving power and domination over all the islands. They certainly don't talk about the needless killing after winning and that he maintained the practice of human sacrifices, his parentage. They also omit the practice of incest from the royal families. King Kamehameha II married his half-sister and King Kamehameha III expected he'd be able to marry his whole sister with whom he fathered a child, though the missionary influence prevented the marriage. They also gloss over the fact that many preferred that Queen Emma, the widow of King Kamehameha IV was a serious contender for the throne and that it was not all sweetness and peace when Kalākaua took it.

 
**The Bishop Museum contains a relic of another connection to Edison. On January 16, 1891 --just days before he died -- while he was at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, the king recorded a message on wax cylinder made by of the Edison Phonograph Company. He said: "Aloha kaua — aloha kaua. Ke ho'i nei no paha makou ma keia hope aku i Hawai'i, i Honolulu. A ilaila oe e ha'i aku ai 'oe i ka lehulehu i kau mea e lohe ai ianei," which translates as "We greet each other — we greet each other. We will very likely hereafter go to Hawaii, to Honolulu. There you will tell my people what you have heard me say here." 

The wax cylinder did make it back to Honolulu, as did the king's body. It was given to James Pratt, owner of the only recording device in the kingdom at that time. He donated it to the Bishop Museum in 1918. Unfortunately, the cylinder is not durable enough to play back his voice clearly. Restoration was attempted in 1989, but it was not successful.

Related: 
How many times did Edison fail in attempting to invent the lightbulb?

Many Happy Returns, Jane Austen

Jane Austen candles

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775 -- just over half a year before the country of my own birth - -the United States was born. And it would appear that the celebration of her 250th birthday has drawn even more attention than that of a nation.

How Jane Austen's Bit of Ivory Holds Up

"Jane Austen is a constant that is ever changing, a prism in the sun."

Thus wrote Tad Mosel in "Jane Austen's Two Inches of Ivory," a talk he delivered in 1980 and wrote up four years later for the first volume of the Persuasions Occasional Papers, a publication of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). 

The title, of course, comes from Austen's own description of her way of writing in a letter: a "little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush." Austen evoked a similar idea in depicting the thoughts of the heroine of Emma (II:9): "A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer."

Now that it's December 2025, we are marking the novelist's 250th birthday. In 1975, there was far less fanfare surrounding her earlier milestone birthday when Mosel taught a course called Jane Austen at 200, at the New School for Social Research in New York City. 

The world is a very different place 50 years later. Back in 1975, certainly, people read Jane Austen whose works were regularly included in college literature courses and adapted into frothy, romantic films many times over by that time. It is one of those that Mosel references in his article in leading up to his central insight: 

Two or three times a year I even stay up until four o’clock in the morning to see Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier in the old movie version of the same story.  But what usually emerges on the screen is similar to what is emerging for you now: it is not Jane Austen, but somebody’s idea of Jane Austen. And that can vary markedly from person to person and from time to time.

No question about it: Olivier and Garson version is very much a product of its own time. The costumes weren't anywhere near historically accurate, and even the dialog took on some tones of the 1940s. It was to be cheerful, escapist fun that even redeemed the character of Lady Catherine. 

That was pretty much all that Mosel could access in terms of Jane Austen on a screen in the days before streaming or DVDs or even video recordings of one's favorite adaption. While there were a few television adaption in the 80s, the real shift in the "idea of Jane Austen" appears to be rooted in 1995 when Colin Firth's Fitzwilliam Darcy made women (many who never read Austen before) swoon. 

 

                         Jane Austen Duffle Bag

In fact, the adaption's director's decision to have Mr. Darcy take a dip in the water became so iconic that the Jane Austen Museum featured the shirt he wore in an exhibit and some people who clearly never read the book have made themselves ridiculous in seriously accusing new adaptions that don't include that scene of "censoring" Jane Austen. 

The 1995 adaption sparked obsession with Mr. Darcy as the ultimate romantic her. An explosion of fanfiction  unconstrained by the standards Austen had to maintain when publishing as "a lady" followed. The internet made it all instantly accessible to the public even if it wasn't published as a book, though hundreds of variations have been. Absurd as some of the titles are, they still got adapted for the screen. 

Now we have what was popular fiction in its day turned highbrow by its inclusion in the canon of great literary works studies in universities popularized for the public that are not necessarily great readers but who will watch a romantic film, obsess over it, and may even order a Regency gown and bonnet and call it cosplay. That cosplay has scaled up in ways no one would have dreamed of in 1975 as obsessions of Jane Austen adaptions have led to wild deviations off of the thin Austen bass in Sanditon or even vaguely Regency fantasy adaptions like Bridgerton that allow for the fashions and the balls with a much more diverse cast of characters.

I gave this blog the title "Many Happy Return, Jane Austen" not just to allude to her 250th birthday on December 16, 2025 but to the many forms of return her writing has sparked. The prism Tad Mosel referred to has revealed new colors over the years in both big budget productions and in hundreds of fanfiction scribblers or Regency style fashion designers. There is no doubt in my mind that millions more people are aware of the author's birthday this year than in 1975. I also have no doubt that in 1975, there was very little on offer to mark a tribute to her other than the books themselves. This is far from the case today.

Full watch collection here

Related:                                                               

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen: Love and Money
Jane Austen at the Morgan
Love and Limerence in Jane Austen

Observations on Jane Austen's Emma
Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels
Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement
The Big Bow-wow & Bit of Ivory
Jane Austen's Heroines
Jane Austen and Capability Brown
Pride and Prejudice in Job Applications

The Familiar Suitor Problem in Jane Austen's Novels

Pride and Prejudice & Sense and Sensibility Desk Organizer

"You will meet a tall, handsome stranger." That fortuneteller style promise is what many consider the epitome of romance. You meet a stranger, your eyes lock, and you take a fatal hit from Cupid's bow. Popular films and paperback novels have made that standard.

Stranger danger and fascination

In Jane Austen's novels, things work a little differently, though she does also play with the fascination people, especially romantically inclined young women, have with the attractive outsider.  If familiarity breeds contempt, than its opposite breeds fascination. As the person is not a fully known quantity like the members of the "four and twenty" families one may dine with regularly in the country, there is the introduction of a spark of intrigue in getting to learn more about them and what their lives consist of elsewhere. 

The mystery of their lives may also include a scandal or even a crime, which Catherine Moreland considers in her flights of fancy. But that hint of danger can add an extra frisson that a heroine may find attractive as we see in Marianne's response to Willoughby. Emma, on the other hand, decides to have a kind of controlled crush when Frank Churchill enters the  picture and engages in a flirtation with her to conceal the fact that he has entered into a secret engagement.

Breaking out of the friend zone

Of course, Emma ends up not marrying a stranger at all but her brother-in-law, who has been a regular in her house for years. In fact, making that transition from from the brotherly relationship one has in the friend zone to romantic interest is a challenge for both the hero and heroine of Emma, as it is for Mansfield Park. 

In the first chapter of Mansfield Park, the general rule that boys and girls who grow up in proximity to each other like brother and sister are much less likely to be attracted to each other than they would be if they meet as grownup strangers is explained by Mrs. Norris when prevailing on Sir Thomas to give a home to Fanny price: 

You are thinking of your sons—but do not you know that, of all things upon earth, that is the least likely to happen, brought up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible. I never knew an instance of it. It is, in fact, the only sure way of providing against the connexion. Suppose her a pretty girl, and seen by Tom or Edmund for the first time seven years hence, and I dare say there would be mischief. The very idea of her having been suffered to grow up at a distance from us all in poverty and neglect, would be enough to make either of the dear, sweet-tempered boys in love with her. But breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her even to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister.

Mrs. Norris is mostly correct. Edmund does seem to regard Fanny as another sister but not as anything more than that. It takes some revelations about the moral failings of the strangers who bring down his actual sister to make him realize that the steadfast Fanny will serve him better than the attractive and sparkling Mary Crawford.

In Emma, Mr. Knightley never makes the mistake of falling for anyone other than Emma (at least as far as we see in the novel). However, it takes Emma's fear that it might happen -- when Harriet admits to being in love with him --  to jolt her into acknowledging how she really feels about Mr. Knightley (chapter 47). 

A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress; she touched, she admitted, she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet’s having some hope of a return? It darted through her with the speed of an arrow that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!

Emma tote bag

Here Cupid's arrow finally marks Emma but only many years after she first met Mr. Knightley. This is a love born of a spark maintained over time rather than a burst of flame that strikes all at once. And there's the rub because the pattern of their relationship has been set as brother and sister for so long. In fact, the dialog brings that up when they dance 10 chapters earlier in the book:

'Whom are you going to dance with?' asked Mr. Knightley.
She hesitated a moment, and then replied, 'With you, if you will ask me.'

'Will you?' said he, offering his hand.

'Indeed I will. You have shown that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.'

'Brother and sister! no, indeed.'

 

So they established that there is no fear of regarding their relationship as incestuous. But there is still the obstacle of breaking out of the friend zone, which Mr. Knightley grapples with just before he declares himself in chapter 49. Emma had just stopped Mr. Knightley from speaking because she really fears he will confess his love for Harriet. Then she realizes that he was pained by her response and lets him know she will listen:

'I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Knightley, and, I am afraid, gave you pain. But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation -- as a friend, indeed, you may command me. I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think.'

'As a friend!' repeated Mr. Knightley. 'Emma, that I fear is a word -- No, I have no wish -- Stay, yes, why should I hesitate? I have gone too far already for concealment. Emma, I accept your offer, extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend. Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?'

Watch on Totally Jane Austen

He then communicates even without words, and Emma finds herself speechless, and that leads to the most romantic line in this book, "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more."

Yet they dream of Darcy

Yet women still tend to swoon far more over Darcy -- the outsider hero -- than they do over Mr. Knightley -- the familiar suitor.  There are also far more film and television adaptions of Pride and Prejudice than there are of Emma. That would indicate that  while Jane Austen was able to center a romantic novel around the more modern type of relationship that bring together two equals who marry their best friends, people still fall for the fairytale plot of the outsider coming in and rescuing the heroine to earn her love.

First line of Jane Austen's Novels Mug

Related

Jane Austen at 250

Observations on Jane Austen's Emma

Valuing Kindness Over Cleverness                                Jane Austen: Love and Money                              

Love and Limerence in Jane Austen
Jane Austen at the Morgan

Jane Austen and Autism

Jane Austen's Heroines

Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness 

Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement

   

The Frick Collection after its 5 year, $220 million renovation

Mistress and Maid by Johannes Vermeer c. 1667 in the Frick Collection. 

Has it really been five years since I was last at the Frick prior to my visit on June 22? I guess it must have been. We didn't return as soon as it reopened this spring but waited until the Vermeer "Love Letters" exhibit opened. I'll start with that as I catalogue the renovated museum's hits and misses.

Top Highlight: Vermeer

The special Vermeer exhibit is ranks at the top of my list for the hits of the Frick's reopening. It  brought in two Vermeer paintings to complement the Mistress and Maid shown above. One is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, ca. 1670–72, from the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.

The other is The Love Letter, ca. 1669–70 from the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

I urge you to get over to the Frick before the exhibit closes on August 31 because it's quite an experience seeing these three paintings together in-person. The Love Letter one reminds me of Vermeer's The Guitar Player  c 1672 and a variation of it on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. My favorite of these three is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid.*  

Access to the Second Floor

Thanks to the renovation, visitors now have access to the second floor, which showcases some art in what had been bedrooms and also houses the museum's gift shop and cafe. This is generally a hit, though I would have liked the bedrooms to retain their original furnishings or their reproductions to reflect what the rooms were like when a family lived in the mansion. There are only a few dressers with no information about them. Speaking of that ...

Information on the Exhibits

The information on the art on view -- both on the placards on the walls and through the app that replicates information to be found on the Frick's site -- is extremely uneven. You'll get more than you want to know about Jean-Honoré Fragonard's "The Progress of Love," but find out absolutely nothing about some of the clocks and scores of other pieces. It is rather frustrating for those of us who would like more information. It's a serious missed opportunity for the museum not to have improved that aspect of its exhibit while investing so much money and time in the renovation. 

Ticketing and Timing: Hits and Misses

Tickets for adults cost $30. Years ago, the Frick generously offered "pay what you wish" times on Sundays. Unfortunately, it shifted that offer to the far less convenient time of  Wednesday afternoons 1:30-5:30 PM. 

If that doesn't work for you, check your local library for membership passes that will allow entry for 2, saving you $60. If you have a card at a New York City library, inquire about  Culture Pass availability. You won't only save money but time because those membership passes allow you to enter any time of day and  skip the line of people waiting to get their timed tickets.  

Allow me my rant on timed tickets, which were  popularized during the reopening of museums after the pandemic lockdowns. The more enlightened museums like the Met** dropped that major inconvenience aa couple of years ago. It only requires timed entry -- though not additional ticket purchases -- to the special exhibits. That the Frick is still stuck in 2021 even after the 2025 reopening is a major miss, but it pales beside another one. 

Really Rare Restrooms

Who designs a renovation for a building with a legal capacity of 1350 with  just three sets of bathrooms? The architect of the Frick renovation does. 

Yes, only half a dozen people would be able to use the restrooms with just two (one for each gender, though heaven knows why when they are all single-occupancy)  on the second floor and in two basement levels. I cannot comment on what these looked like inside because I never got beyond a locked door or a extended line leading up to it. 

I'm shocked that no architect consulted on this project pointed out a standard ratio based on the projected number of visitors, especially in light of the addition of the cafe. Seriously, who does that, especially on a $220 million budget?

Filling in the Sketch

To end on a positive note about what the Frick does well, I want to comment on the Cabinet Gallery. It's one of the smallest rooms on the first floor that is filled with sketches. The highlight of that for me was seeing a sketch for one of the Frick's celebrated paintings: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' portrait of Louise, Princesse de Broglie, Later the Comtesse d'Haussonville. 

*Notice that the love letters theme assumes literate women. I didn't think that much about that aspect until I saw the The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt special exhibit at The Jewish Museum. (You can catch it through August 10, 2025. Check your library for passes, or plan your visit for the Museums on Us Day to save the $15 per person admission.) A number of the paintings show Esther involved in writing, reflecting the unusually  high  literacy rate of the Dutch at the time. You may also notice that the tables featured in most of these paintings are covered by rugs just like the table  in Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid. 

**Speaking of the Met, it also has a temporary exhibit worth catching this summer: Sargent and Paris. Catch that one before it closes on August 3rd. It definitely worth the trip. The Met never imposes an extra charge for its special exhibits. Residents of NY and the metro area always get to pay what they wish, and for other visitors, it's possible to get in free on the first weekend of the month through the Museums on Us program from Bank of America.  Also the Met is home to five Vermeer paintings, so it will make a complement to the three you can see in the Frick now. One of them, Young Woman with a Lute,  features the same yellow jacket. 

Related: 

Vermeer in Philadelphia

Jane Austen at 250

Jane Austen at the Morgan

Valuing kindness above cleverness: Emma's lesson

 

This blanket is one of the hundreds of themed  products available at Totally_Jane_Austen 

Facebook brought this New Yorker cartoon into my feed. I immediately thought of Jane Austen's Emma. She thought the same way the father in this cartoon does that saying something clever but devastating is an irresistible temptation, but she comes to regret the hurt she has caused. 

While the group is seated for their picnic, Frank Churchill stirs things up by declaring a demand from Miss Woodhouse: 

" 'she only demands from each of you either one thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated--or two things moderately clever--or three things very dull indeed, and she engages to laugh heartily at them all."

"Oh! very well," exclaimed Miss Bates, "then I need not be uneasy. 'Three things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan't I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body's assent)--Do not you all think I shall?"

Emma could not resist.

"Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me--but you will be limited as to number--only three at once."

Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not immediately catch her meaning; but, when it burst on her, it could not anger, though a slight blush shewed that it could pain her.

"Ah!--well--to be sure. Yes, I see what she means, (turning to Mr. Knightley,) and I will try to hold my tongue. I must make myself very disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend."

Silver Emma quote pendant  

There is some additional dialog and a bit of narrative until Mr. Knightley is able to confront Emma alone and take her to task:

While waiting for the carriage, she found Mr. Knightley by her side. He looked around, as if to see that no one were near, and then said,

"Emma, I must once more speak to you as I have been used to do: a privilege rather endured than allowed, perhaps, but I must still use it. I cannot see you acting wrong, without a remonstrance. How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Bates? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?--Emma, I had not thought it possible."

Emma recollected, blushed, was sorry, but tried to laugh it off.

"Nay, how could I help saying what I did?--Nobody could have helped it. It was not so very bad. I dare say she did not understand me."

"I assure you she did. She felt your full meaning. She has talked of it since. I wish you could have heard how she talked of it--with what candour and generosity. I wish you could have heard her honouring your forbearance, in being able to pay her such attentions, as she was for ever receiving from yourself and your father, when her society must be so irksome."

"Oh!" cried Emma, "I know there is not a better creature in the world: but you must allow, that what is good and what is ridiculous are most unfortunately blended in her."

"They are blended," said he, "I acknowledge; and, were she prosperous, I could allow much for the occasional prevalence of the ridiculous over the good. Were she a woman of fortune, I would leave every harmless absurdity to take its chance, I would not quarrel with you for any liberties of manner. Were she your equal in situation--but, Emma, consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her--and before her niece, too--and before others, many of whom (certainly some,) would be entirely guided by your treatment of her.--This is not pleasant to you, Emma--and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now."

You can judge for yourself which adaption of the picnic at Box Hill, showed this lesson best, thanks to the compilation here:

 

With great status comes great responsibility 

The first line of Emma is not nearly as famous as the opening line of Pride and Prejudice, though it also archly conveys the essence of the story: "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."

Emma seems to have all that is necessary for happiness. Out of those three attributes, she takes the most pride in her cleverness, taking her wealth for granted and lacking vanity for her appearance, as Mr. Knightley reveals in conversation with Mrs. Weston. 

Like a tragic hero, Emma's great strengths are also what lead to her undoing -- or rather some misjudgments and hurt feelings that the good-hearted Emma never intended. Austen's novels follow the conventions of Shakespeare's comedies rather than the tragedies, so everything works out fine in the end with the main characters properly paired off. 

Jane Austen Mugs
by Totally_Jane_Austen

However, along the way, our heroine has to admit her faults and mistakes and learn to be better, which she does. Now that I think about it, Emma's lesson is similar to Darcy's who responded to Bingley's suggestion that he ask Elizabeth to dance with "She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men." Darcy came to regret that quip as much as Emma regretted what she said to Miss Bates. Like Darcy, Emma learns that kindness and consideration for the feelings of others is a greater measure of worth than attempt to manipulate others -- for their own good -- and clever remarks.  

Related:

Observations on Jane Austen's Emma                    
Jane Austen: Love and Money
Love and Limerence in Jane Austen

Jane Austen at the Morgan
Jane Austen and Autism
Jane Austen's Heroines
Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion: Obstacles to Happiness in Jane Austen's Novels
Three Janes, Two Governesses, and the Abolitionist Movement