Ranking Jane Austen heroines/women on how good of a mother they’d be?
As with the men, I think they would all be good mothers, though in different ways.
Elizabeth Bennet: Soccer mom, she wasn't given the opportunity to have a structured education herself, it will be different for her kids. She's hiring the best governess she can find (after Darcy does a full background check), she's encouraging her kids to do extracurriculars, they will speak six languages that she doesn't understand or else! Has a minor panic attack if she says anything that sounds even remotely like something either of her parents would say.
Jane Bennet: Gentle mom, she cannot imagine punishing her children, she just has a killer disappointed face (she is unaware of this). Encourages her children to always try to understand both sides of the story. Will eventually fall for a lie one of her children tells and be devastated when she figures out the truth.
Anne Elliot: Perfect mother, there is indeed no one so proper, so capable as Anne. She has also watched her sister do everything wrong and she knows exactly how to do it right.
Emma Woodhouse: Scatterbrained mom, makes a resolution to teach her daughter fancy work but then gets distracted and the sampler is left half finished. Promised to read with her son but they only make it halfway through the novel. Good thing she hired an excellent "Miss Taylor" to pick up the slack! And despite her occasional screw-ups, her kids love her to pieces. They just better be on guard when they hit 18 and she starts trying to marry them off.
Marianne Dashwood: Crunchy mom, or whatever the Regency period equivalent would be. She wants her kids to feel the dead leaves between their toes, she encourages them to write poetry and play moving ballads. Otherwise, a lot like her own mother (they have very similar personalities)
Elinor Dashwood: I-Say-I-Love-You-With-Food Mom, she may not be exactly emotionally available, but she orders her daughter's favourite meal when she's sad and there are tiny hearts in the stiches of her son's clothes. She makes sure her kids are provided for, educated, and healthy. When she asks if they are hungry, they know she's saying, "I love you."
Fanny Price: Nurturing mom, she will be everything for those children that Edmund and William were to her, but nothing like Sir Thomas, Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris or her own parents. She has a good deal of experience from nursing her own siblings so it's a pretty smooth beginning.
Catherine Morland: Overconfident mom, Catherine has been there and done that, she has six younger brothers and sisters after all, she's READY! This will be easy! All you have to do is make sure the baby is fed, washed, changed, and napped... oh... it's a lot harder to do this when you have only slept for 2.5 hours last night... (I know she would have servants, but still, being a new mother is tough!)
Bonus: Jane Fairfax tries to keep Frank from spoiling the kids, but it is literally impossible. He keeps buying them huge presents and then she would be the bad guy for saying no. Also, she knows that Frank lost their child in Kensington Gardens (twice), that's why she always insists he take a footman now.
Bonus bonus: Harriet Smith has a special box where she keeps all the 'treasures' her kids collect. It is her most precious possession.
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Pride & Prejudice AUs
You Look Like A Movie, You Sound Like A Song 2k @jonsastan
She had met Jon Targaryen there. It was a complete accident and at first, Sansa thought, a complete misfortune. He was drenched from an impromptu swim in his pond, and she was flustered, not wanting him to think she was vying for his attention. But as she had attempted to make her hurried escape, he had found her and invited her parents to stroll with him around the gardens. He had offered her kindness, and thoughtfulness, he had talked with her parents, discussed the present state of politics with her father and chatted knowledgeably about gardens with her mother.
A Certain Step Toward Falling in Love 2k by @comma-splice
Jon Snow returns North after departing abruptly one year ago.
The Bennet Sisters - a P&P AU comic by @melinaillustrations
P&P Gifset by @sardoniyx, P&P Gifset by @dcbicki, P&P Gifset by deactivated
Persuasion AUs
Who Loves Longest, Who loves Best 1k by @ladysaruka
After refusing him years ago, Sansa sees her cousin once again.
Persuasion edits one, two , three by @glueck
Mansfield Park AUs
Half Agony, Half Hope 10k, incomplete by @noqueenbutthequeeninthenorth
After the death of his disgraced mother, Jon Snow is taken in by his uncle's family, the Starks of Winterfell. He grows up alongside his cousins, including the beautiful and kind-hearted Sansa, but knowing he can never truly be their equal, he fears he has little choice but to leave the place he's come to call home.
corresponding moodboard
Catch Me If You Can 34k (P&P and Emma inspired too) by @ben-barnes-is-my-husband
Set in the countryside of Regency England, Jon Snow has been in love with Sansa Stark for as long as he can remember. He wants her as his wife, but Sansa is not sure she wants to be a wife at all, and she knows she doesn’t want to marry the pragmatic and boring Jon. She’d rather help Theon Greyjoy come out of his shell and play matchmaker. But then Jaime Lannister comes to town and Jon finds he has some serious competition for Sansa…
Moments Like This (So Few and Far Between) 3k by @lydiamartenism
Mama and Papa left the house to go pick up Jon, the son of her father’s oldest friend. Three weeks ago, the phone rang and their parent’s announced that Jon would be coming to live with them since his mother passed away and had no one else to take care of him.
Northanger Abbey AUs
The Lady in White 7k by @kissed-by-circe
Dragonstone Manor had looked like it had woken only a few days earlier, after a slumber of several years, if not decades, and Sansa had felt like the heroine of a gothic novel, a mysterious, naive girl with a dark past or a dark secret, arriving at the opening scene of the most dramatic story of all times.
Or Sansa as Katherine Morland in a Jane Eyre Setting.
Sense & Sensibility AUs
In Such Jocund Company 2k @maybetwice
It would be no matter at all for Captain Snow to return to the north after seven months’ absence, had Sansa’s heart not changed entirely in that time.
A remix of Colonel Brandon and Marianne Dashwood from Sense and Sensibility.
Emma & Clueless AUs
if i loved you less 2k by @ladystarks
Her father has, often and fondly, told Sansa that she and Mr. Snow bite at each other like wolves, but he hardly understood that their verbal sparring was as exhilarating as a sport well done, or a match coming together under Sansa’s skilled hands.
corresponding artwork
Sansa: A NOVEL in Five Parts 15k by @imagineagreatadventure
Sansa Stark, handsome, clever, rich, hopes to establish herself as her town's foremost matchmaker. After seeing her governess Miss Shae married to the rich and clever Mr. Tyrion Lannister, she feels as though she deserves that title. Her dear friend and cousin, Jon Targaryen, heartily disagrees and is quite proven right when Sansa sets her sights on marrying off her newest and dearest friend Jeyne Poole to the vicar Mr. Baelish.
A Baldwin and a Betty 2k
Jon drives to the Valley to give Sansa a ride home.
Emma AU art by @dcvahkiin and Clueless art by wolvesofspring
Emma Gifset by @dcbicki
General Regency AUs
No Notion of Loving by Halves 2k @darkmagyk
The Stark cousin, Jon, goes home to discuss matters concerning the entail on Winterfell.
In which Jon is a really good guy, and I flagrantly disregard how entails actually work.
Manners and Misunderstandings 114k, WIP by @x-winging-it
The Stark sisters have travelled all the way to London to begin their first season, leaving behind the familiar world of Winterfell Hall and a disappointed Jon Stark- with whom the eldest Miss Stark has been convinced to break off a connection. In London they join family friends the Baratheons and the fashionable young Tyrells in a world of romance and balls.
Meanwhile Gendry Waters has been plucked out of the life he knew to become his ailing father's heir, Robb, Theon and later Rickon embark on military careers in the Napoleonic wars, and their aunt Lysa makes a foolish marriage.
When tragedy hits the family, they must come together, learning how manners may hide monsters and the best people are often those misunderstood by society.
You Could Draw Me to the Gallows 2k by @azulaahai
After having eloped from home with and subsequently been abandoned by wealthy heir Joffrey Baratheon, Sansa Stark refuses to come home. Having caused a scandal that is sure to prevent her from ever marrying, she is adamant not to bring further shame to the family name by returning to Winterfell. Until, that is, a visitor comes to her - Jon Snow, an old family friend, determined to bring Sansa with him back north. He has a solution to offer her - a proposal with the potential to change both of their lives.
A Perilous Dance Indeed & fiercely, tenderly and eternally 27k by @amymel86
He should either look away or interrupt this improper little meeting, he knows. For some unfathomable reason, he does neither. The two look far too intimate for Jon’s liking, although he feels he should have come to expect it to be so. A romantic like Sansa – however proper she is – would simply adore overt flirtations and a secret tête-à-tête. Even from where he stands, Jon can see the way in which she has stars set in her eyes like precious cut stones. He only hopes the man for whom they shine is deserving of it.
***
Cousin Jon is to inherit Winterfell Manor and its estate after the untimely death of his uncle leaves a widow and two daughters. Sansa is expectant of an imminent proposal from her dear beau, Harrold Hardyng and everything will be absolutely, stunningly, utterly fine.
Waiting for Your Slippered Feet 49k by @wintry-ritu
Lady Sansa Stark has always looked forward to her come-out season in London, the balls, the rides in Hyde Park, evenings at Vauxhall, the romance and wonder of it all. Never had she imagined that it would happen like this, with her parents gone and her younger siblings underfoot. Now, all Sansa wants is for it all to be over quickly so she can get back to Winterfell. She needs a kind, amiable man who will be brave enough to take on his wife's siblings. That should not be so hard to find in London, should it? And while she is most grateful for Jon Targaryen's help, why must her cousin be so distracting?
To Make You Love Me 16k incomplete and orphaned
When Ned Stark dies, he leaves behind his wife, two daughters, and his family’s estate at Winterfell. What follows is a series of unwanted marriage proposals, houseguests who far outstay their welcome, and Arya parading around in a comically large hat and an oil-paint mustache as she declares herself the new ‘Lord of Winterfell,’ in an attempt to dissuade her sister’s suitors.
However, when Mr. Jon Snow — their distant cousin and Ned’s appointed heir to the estate — comes to call, an oil-paint mustache is hardly enough to deter him from courting Miss Sansa Stark. And she thinks, perhaps, that a man could marry her for love more than her claim, after all.
Mine for a Season 101k by @vivilove-jonsa
Colonel Jon Targaryen is a single man in possession of a good fortune who claims no interest in finding himself a wife. With his war wounds, he thinks no young lady would want him anyway for anything beyond the allure of his pocketbook.
Fortunately and unbeknownst to him, Fate has chosen to find a wife for him and will even deliver her right to his doorstep.
Taking on the responsibility of shepherding a young lady about for a Season in London is not at all what Jon had wished to do but he had accepted out of a sense of familial duty. However, once he meets Sansa again after only having met her years ago as a child, he may not consider it a duty so much as a torment.
a lady of winterfell 185k, WIP by @wandering-scavenger
She bit her lip and exhaled shakily, “If you are so sickened by the prospect of marrying me, we should be able to obtain an annulment easily enough with your father’s connections.”
“I will do no such thing.” he snapped, refusing to look at her.
Sansa had never felt more rejected than she did at that moment. Her past experiences of being humiliated at the hand of Joffrey did not feel as painful as this. Even so, she could not allow him to see the weakness in her, not now.
“I will not be left out, Jon.” she said, tilting her chin up to look down at him.
He grimaced. They were silent for longer than she cared to count, but each second that he did not speak chipped away at her resolve and her ability to withhold her tears. Jon did not want her, and she could not blame him. Who could ever want her? It should not have distressed her as much as it did. She was never his favourite sister, she who treated him as a stranger since she was old enough to understand what a bastard was. A tear slipped down to her face until she tasted the salt of it on her lips.
“If we marry, we will remain so.”
corresponding gifset
moth's wings 47k by @cellsshapedlikestars
Sansa was determined to convince her aunt to let Arya debut, which is how she finds herself in her current predicament.
“Who is this secret gentleman who has asked for your hand?” Aunt Lysa asks, and Sansa knows from her tone that she does not believe. (She has every right not to believe, for it is not true.)
And then Sansa does something very, very foolish.
She says a name.
“The Duke of Dragonstone!”
Or, Sansa fakes an engagement so that Arya can debut and marry the man she loves. The only problem? Her fake fiance just so happens to be in the city when he was not supposed to be.
An Understanding 2k, WIP by @thewolvescalledmehome
At the start of Sansa Stark's third London Season, she decides it will be her last. She will secure a husband by the end of the final ball.
Jon Snow is new to the London Season and high society. He never expected to inherit money or property from an unknown uncle.
When they meet at a ball, Sansa gets an idea.
you're in my blood like holy wine 72k
Sansa finds it difficult to look at Jon’s face, with its weathered lines and cragginess. It is the face of the North and a face that northerners trust; the face of Sansa’s brothers and her father, who had been loved and respected by their tenants as their forefathers had been when they were kings. How can Sansa feel anything but resentment, looking into that face and knowing that all of her years of hard work will never earn her the respect that that profile engenders within seconds?
But she does. It is a small, burning coal of something that must be smothered.
PRE CANON - WESTERN - FAIRYTALES - LITTLE WOMEN - HOLIDAY - SEASON 6 ANNE OF GREEN GABLES - THE GIRL IN GREY - FREE CITIES - FAIRYTALE PART II - POLITICAL MARRIAGE - SALTY TEENS - POST CANON
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