Epitaphs Inane

71 notes

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.

10 notes

Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind,
child of Zeus, who twists lures, I beg you
do not break with hard pains,
O lady, my heart.

86 notes

In hooking her husband (Charlotte Lucas) becomes the only woman in all Austen’s fiction to marry a man younger than herself. For Mr Collins is introduced to us as a “tall, heavy-looking young man of five-and-twenty”. Many admirers of Pride and Prejudice think of Mr Collins as middle-aged. In the 1940 Hollywood film the role was taken by British character actor Melville Cooper, then aged 44. The trend was set. In Andrew Davies’s 1995 BBC adaptation Mr Collins was played by David Bamber, then in his mid-40s. In the 2005 film, the role was taken by a slightly more youthful Tom Hollander, then aged 38. Adaptors miss the point by getting his age wrong. His solemnity and sententiousness are much better, much funnier, coming from someone so “young”. Middle-aged is what he would like to sound, rather than what he is. His youth emphasises Charlotte’s achievement, with little money and no beauty to assist her.