Cbr16bingo fanfic
As I have mentioned in previous reviews, I love Pride and Prejudice. It’s one of my favorite novels of all time. I have read and enjoyed several re-tellings of the novel, such as Jo Baker’s Longbourn, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible, and Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I guess those are “fanfics,” but when I think of fanfic, I think of stories like All the Young Dudes, which use a famous novel as a jump off point to imagine life beyond the original story or to go into detail about the lives of minor characters. Mary B is what I think of as a more traditional kind of fanfic. Katherine J. Chen is not re-telling the entire story of P&P; rather she turns a secondary character into the main character, and then she creates a story for that character beyond the boundaries of the novel. Obviously the main character of Mary B is Mary Bennet, the middle daughter of the five Bennet girls and the one known to be less beautiful and less interesting than her sisters. In Mary B, Chen imagines Mary’s childhood and gives Mary’s point of view of several key events of P&P, then imagines what happens to Mary and her family after the weddings of Jane and Elizabeth. Overall I did like Mary B (the character and novel) even though Chen’s development of the beloved main characters of P&P takes a surprising turn.
Chen divides her novel into three parts. Part 1 covers Mary’s recollection of her childhood at Longbourn through the events of P&P. Part 2 takes place in the year following the marriages of Jane and Elizabeth, with Mary spending considerable time at Pemberley. Part 3 involves a return to Longbourn after some rather dramatic changes in the Bennet family. Mary narrates the entire story and her point of view on events and herself is most interesting. The members of the Bennet family don’t come off looking too good (not even Lizzy and Jane). From childhood Mary found herself bullied by her two younger sisters, ignored by her father (whose attention she craved) and mother. Jane and Elizabeth sometimes took her side or tried to protect her, but their special friendship mostly excluded Mary. Overheard conversations and outright rude remarks made by family members and “friends” made it clear to Mary that she was ugly and undesirable. And so Mary from a young age made a decision to lean into this image. She didn’t bother trying to look pretty, she ignored fashion, and she made a point of spending her time on reading and music. Mary wishes she had had access to a better education. She also knows she isn’t good at piano but she sings and plays a lot just to annoy Kitty and Lydia.
Mary does have feelings of course, and she would like to fall in love with someone who could love and appreciate her. Naturally, Mr. Collins seems like a good fit for Mary, and Chen imagines Mary’s thoughts on Mr. Collins as well as conversations between the characters that reveal more of Collins’ background. Chen’s Mary and Mr. Collins seem to have a budding relationship, but if you know the novel (or movies) you know that these two do not end up together. I did very much like the way Chen imagined the Mary/Mr. Collins relationship, and I especially liked the way she portrayed Mary’s infamous performance at the Netherfield ball. Definitely a highlight of the novel!
In parts 2 and 3, Chen moves beyond the bounds of the original P&P although we will encounter many of the characters: Lizzy and Darcy, Col. Fitzwilliam, Miss Bingley and the Hursts, the Collinses, and the rest of the Bennets. It is here that I think some fans of the original might take exception to the portrayals of some of the more beloved characters, who can come off as selfish, cold and kind of mean. While at Pemberley, Mary will have an illicit romance and also develop talent as a writer, with support from a most unexpected ally. Meanwhile, Lizzy and Darcy’s marriage is under strain, related to a difficult pregnancy. While Mary is writing her dramatic soap-opera type novel, she and her own family are experiencing drama of their own: illness, death, betrayal, estrangement, jealousy.
Mary B is sort of a mixed bag for me. There are scenes where Chen mimics scenes out of the original P&P (in one scene a character warns Mary off of falling in love with another character, sort of like Lady Catherine de Bourgh), which I didn’t particularly like; it felt like she was trying to turn Mary into Lizzy. I think some P&P fans will not at all care for what happens to the Lizzy/Darcy dynamic here, but I could sort of understand Chen’s reasons for writing as she did. And after all this is Mary’s story. Overall I did like Mary’s character development and story but I think it’s a little darker than some of the other P&P fanfic out there.