Back to Highbury

With the Prudecutor not mangling the letters too badly this week, we shall make a quick jaunt.

L1: This letter appears to be a plant. The LW must secretly be working for an adoption agency that is going to have to close due to eliminated funding. This letter is clearly an attempt to convince pregnant young women to prefer abortion to adoption. Who wouldn't, faced with the possibility of such a terrorist attack two or three decades down the road?

The Prudecutor even picks up on part of this, as she imagines LW1 cackling gleefully to herself as she plans her next assault on BM1's peace of mind. One might ask LW1 why the apparent likelihood of smashing BM1's life counts so little. As far as that goes, it doesn't say much for AF1, or LW1's attitude towards them.

I should advise LW1 to take a page from Harriet Martin's book. This is where we see Emma at very nearly her worst. Harriet is, of course, the natural daughter of somebody. She is informed that she cannot be acquainted with her father, and is content to take Mrs Goddard's account without further investigation. It is left to Emma to decide on no particular evidence that Harriet is a gentleman's daughter, and therefore worthy at least to become Mrs Elton (or at any rate to aspire to a higher lot in life than that of becoming Mrs Robert Martin).

L2: I am going to ascribe the fast-moving nature of BF2's courtship to LW2's having taken Miss Woodhouse herself for a role model. Emma did, after all, half expect Frank Churchill to confess an attachment to herself at the end of a two weeks' visit at Randalls. And the LW seems to base all her feelings both for BF2 and XBF2 on concerns similar to those of the heroine in being rather superficial.

There is also the Jewish factor. LW2 leads heavily with it, and L2 seems to justify her having done so. She leads what might well be considered quite a Jewish-toned life. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, although her using it to try to reshape all the people and relationships in her life to that effect does seem rather to be getting in the way of her future happiness. Perhapsm however, she will continue to follow Emma's example and end up with the right partner at last, although at 31 she seems to have taken more than a little from Anne Elliot as well.

But I am going here to emulate Mrs Weston. I shall make a match here and now between the Prudecutor herself and Mr Plotz. They ought both to be released from their current marriages within the next few years, and they are so ideally suited - the High Priest and High Priestess of Mediocrity Incarnate. It is a match made in, as Giulia Farnese might say, wherever such matches are made.

L3: LW3 has managed to expand the Bridezilla complex all the way to Birthzilla. Her nine-year-old child in the delivery room may well go beyond any of the wildest ideas of brides I've seen for a considerable period of time. Clearly LW3 has forgotten the very purpose to which her upcoming tenancy of the room in question will be undergone.

The only thing to which I can compare this idea is the practice of dancing with open windows. Recall well how that scandalized poor Mr Woodhouse. He could not conceive of anyone ever doing such a thing, despite Mr Churchill's avowal of having seen it done quite often. Even if the only purpose of the relation of the story was to secure Mr Woodhouse's blessing for the Westons' ball to be held at the Crown Inn, it was the sort of idea that ought to terrify someone in LW3's circle. Let us hope it is someone with a little more sense than the dear old dodderer.

L4: Let us warn off LW4 from her natural officiousness with two words: Mrs Elton. That should say it all.

Moral: "Emma was obliged to fancy what she liked; but she could never believe that in the same situation she should not have discovered the truth."