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fictionadventurer · 2 years

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It's the time of year to get really upset that Jane Austen never finished The Watsons.

It would have put the Jane Fairfax/Fanny Price Changeling Child plotline front-and-center, with a heroine who'd been adopted into high society only to be sent back to live with a lower-class family she no longer knows.

But she'd have had an Anne Elliot sister whose good-natured practicality keeps the family together even while she deals with the heartbreak of being separated from the man she once loved.

And a harpy of a sister whose machinations make everyone's lives miserable.

And a brother who's a surgeon (!) who has his own hopeless unrequited love story happening in the background.

And when their father died, the girls would have had to live with a higher-class brother and his disagreeable wife who would have found them a burden.

Meanwhile, our heroine is being pursued by a socially-awkward, proud lord who doesn't know how to discuss anything but hunting.

But she's really in love with a humble, kind curate who is devoted to caring for his widowed sister and her children.

But the curate is being romantically pursued by the lord's predatory mother.

And mixed up in all this is a charming, lively young man who uses his skills to grovel for position with his betters.

In short, we could have had Jane Fairfax and Anne Elliot as devoted sisters forced to live with John and Fanny Dashwood while their sister Lucy Steele causes problems, a Charles Musgrove version of Mr. Darcy pursues Jane, Anne gets a chance to be reunited with her Wentworth, and Jane falls in love with a Henry Tilney version of Edward Ferrars who's being pursued by Lady Susan, while Wickham is doing his best to be Mr. Collins. Plus a romance plot for a brother! We could have had a book with the family complexities and darker issues of Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park and the light, bright and sparkling humor of Pride and Prejudice.

But we don't, because she never finished it, and I'm so upset.

#the watsons #jane austen #it's a very october story so it comes to mind a lot #i've read one version that did decent things with it #(i was shocked to remember that penelope doesn't show up in austen's fragment because she's so vivid in the continuation)#but it still feels very different and much less layered than austen would have made it #i don't think it used all of her planned plot #and it skipped over almost everything but the central romance #and there's another one that i stopped reading halfway through because the author wrenched it off the austen rails #to have the curate give a long speech about how the lord's mother is actually a victim and we should pity her #and it felt so unlike what austen would have done that i've never brought myself to read further #this is prob the one austen story i'd be tempted to try my hand at if i had any skill whatsoever in that area #i would really want to try to imaginary book rec this thing into something that follows austen's style of storytelling #but i'm aware my view of austen is warped by my own preferences and i doubt i'd get any closer to the real thing than any other authors #so i just have to yearn for the imaginary version that never was

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