WARNING: IF YOU SCROLL DOWN THROUGH THIS BLOG
YOU WILL SEE EXPLICIT PICTURES**.
One is l'Origine du Monde, by Gustave Courbet, 1866; the
other is Le Sommeil, also Courbet, 1866. They’re worth
seeing. Unless intimate female nudity and/or mildly homosexual activity offend
you; in which case, Go Away. Go away now: you’re reading the wrong blog.
There’s another blog just over there about kittens, or prejudice, or something.
You’ll like that one better.
Meanwhile,
for the rest of us…
A
Collection of Musings on the Entirely Imaginary Rude Bits in the Novels of Jane
Austen
Chapter
One: Mansfield Park
My
name, if needs I must become a Lady of the Night
Would
be not Belle du Jour, mais non, but rather, Fanny Price
©
Muriel Lavender, Summer 2013
Jane Austen invented Minge Topiary.
 |
| Regency Ladies. Genteel. |
The clues are everywhere in her work.
From Mr Bingley’s home in Pride & Prejudice – Netherfield –
to Marianne Dashwood’s exclamation in Sense & Sensibility, ‘I can barely keep my hands warm even in my muff!’ I could go on; but Mansfield Park is
the champion. It’s stuffed with minge jokes. No? Well, here you are – these are
quotes:
"My Fanny, indeed, at this very time,
I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in spite of
everything"
"William… more than once tried
to make his father think of Fanny"
And my personal favourite,
"Come, mother, you have hardly
looked at your own dear Fanny yet"
The novel was itself named after a
particular 18th-Century fashion in minge topiary. Capability Brown
may have started out as a landscape gardener, but after he collaborated with
Austen, he found considerable success amongst the fashionable ladies of society
as a LadyGardener. For evidence, there’s the letter Austen
famously wrote to her sister Cassandra from Bath, in 1802:
“I have an appointment on Thursday
next, to have my grounds laid out by an improver [see?]. Miss Perkins favours the Brazilian, but
I do not care for these Colonial fashions. I shall get a Mansfield Park,
as I always do.”
She wrote thus, while staying in Queen Square
– which is, incidentally, another style she could have gone for. Or a Trim Street.
Or a South Parade. Or a – [that’s enough, Mu]
Austen scholars debate the potential
rude bits endlessly – did she mean this, was she talking about that; from the
'well-hung curtains' of Persuasion, to the 'Rears and Vices' again of Mansfield
Park. They have all overlooked the filthiest joke of them all, which also
occurs in Mansfield Park. Considering how desperate some factions seem to be to
prove that Jane Austen was engaged in an incestuous Lesbian affair with
Cassandra*– considering how much they like to say it, I’m surprised no-one
seems to have noticed this particular little pleasure but me. I don’t agree
with them; but I wrote this anyway. I call it ‘Love and Freindship’,
because I consider that to be an appropriately provocative title.
A delicious fact, to me
From Gray’s Anatomy:
The soft cup in front
Of which sits
The clitoris
Is quaintly named;
Jane Austen writes
Of the delightful
“Sight of Miss Fanny Price
Dripping with wet
In the vestibule…”
Scholars long to imbue
Miss Austen’s works with a Sapphic
hue
Perhaps a very gentle blue
Forgive me
But it’s true
©
Muriel Lavender
July
2012 - November 2013
 |
| Le Sommeil, Gustave Courbet, 1866 |
 |
| l'Origine du Monde, Gustave Courbet, 1866 |
*Seriously? Because she
never married? Oh, of course that makes her a Lesbian. I believe there is a
certain variety of internet meme wherein such a statement would be followed up
with the phrase, ‘Bitch Please’
**Incidentally, do you know how hard
it is to find pictures of Regency ladies getting it on? You know, without
having to search for a particular kind of niche porn? I am grateful to Mr L who
spent some time searching for suitable artwork with with to illustrate this
blog entry; I’m delighted with those he found. I love Courbet. And footnotes.
My grandmother has recently died. She was 98, and her brain outlived the body from which it sparkled. She was an amazing woman. Today, being Mother's Day, and so close to the passing of another Great Mind, finds me experiencing a heavy mix of joy and grief. I'm not here to write about my family, though...
