I agree with you Felix. The movie was just plain bad. For example: what Regency-era mother would allow her daughter to wander, UNESCORTED, into the private rooms of unrelated adult bachelors, especially when their door was closed, and there to lounge around whilst they worked! You just have to read Jane Austen to know this would've been the kiss of death for the reputation and marriage prospects of a proper young 'lady.' The gossip alone would've destroyed her. I'm not making this up. These were the social norms of the times and they were unforgiving.
Indeed, within the context of the movie, we were shown that EVEN the young scullery maid (herself from the lowest servile class from whom such moral lassitude was to be expected--how else to explain why 'these common sorts' always found themselves as street urchins, workhouse dregs, common drudges, trollops, stableboys and servants??), who had compromised her virtue, was quickly wed to Mr. Brown in order to redeem her, redeem the child from the scandal of bastardy, and to KILL THE GOSSIP. He didn't care about her, he wouldn't even acknowledge fathering the child, and he certainly couldn't afford the expense of his new family. He had to ditch his support of Keats thereafter. You can see it in Brown's face: he knew he'd ruined his life, especially since the girl brought no status and NO WEALTH with her. But, propriety was maintained--that's how important it was. Yet, his situation was the only one given an honest treatment by the filmmakers.
It's a violation of logic to suggest that Fanny Brawne, a supposedly proper and well-raised gentry 'lady,' would somehow be exempt from the moral strictures that obviously bound the lowly maid and Charles Brown. But this is exactly what the movie's suggesting! That Keats, a man of absolutely no income (which meant that he'd either have to sponge off his friends or else go get a real job which itself was stigmatizing since it virtually screamed that he wasn't of the 'leisure class') and with no right even to consider recommending himself to anyone, can actually proceed to carry on a dalliance with Fanny. He takes her into the woods unchaperoned, he kisses her, and he even lays on the bed with her! And he's enough of an unprincipled cad that he even presents her with a ring of sorts and allows Fanny to think of herself as engaged to him! He has NO MONEY!!! She has NO BRAINS!! HER MOTHER HAS NO CHARACTER!!!
And that's another aspect to this--her mother would've been roundly ostracised from civil society for her scandalous weakness in permitting this flirtation! So, it's not just an "aww, how sweet! a couple o' kids just falling in love and wanting to be together..." ~*sigh*~ Mrs. Brawne would've been censured as an unfit parent. Her entire social standing would've collapsed for having permitted the degradation of her daughter and there'd be nowhere for her to escape the gossip of it. People weren't atomised as we are now; we'd think just move somewhere else--who cares?? There were REAL social consequences to bad choices. No one would've spoken to her again. Again, who cares? Well, she had two other children. If she wanted them 'well placed' for a secure and respectable future, she would have to considered the consequences of her disgraceful mismanagement of her silly, wayward daughter.
This movie is ridiculous because it lacks a sense of historicity. It dares to believe that the asinine romantic reasons one gets married for today must've been the same ones that guided previous generations. In Keats' era, one's marriage was, first and foremost, an economic contract between coequal families. Coequal status. Coequal wealth. Coequal prospects. As Tina Turner would sing "what's love got to do with it?" Nothing! Every decision undertaken in the lengthy marriage negotiations was for the purpose of safeguarding and perpetuating the families' wealth and status. Keats had none of these things. No wealth. No status. No prospects. Which meant, no future. No mother would entertain a charlatan like Keats making such ruinous advances toward her daughter.
Dumb movie. Illogical drivel. Same preposterous romantic bunkum that undergirds trash like Twilight.
"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit...it's the only way to be sure..."
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