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poetry tREnD
from “Pride and Prejudice”
Charlotte Lucas Considers
Elizabeth tries to hide her disappointment,
she thinks I’m throwing myself away
by marrying this foolish, self-opinionated man.
But looked at rationally
what choice do I have?
I am not pretty like her
and without her wit.
We have no money, I am twenty seven.
Am I to stay at home, the daughter
of a vain semi-gentleman, my Gossip Mother,
and all my sisters gradually starting
to wear their skirts long, their hair up?
I have no feelings for him,
find his company irksome but
one can get used to anything.
I’ll keep him busy in the garden
and working at his sermons.
A bit of flattery will soon satisfy
his vanity, sense of his own importance
and I shall be quite comfortable.
Practical, that’s what I have to be
by choice if not by inclination.
As “parson’s wife” I’ll have respectability,
my own house, servants.
And as to Lady Catherine de Bourgh:
apparently deferring to her wishes
won’t be so hard, neither will conversation
as she herself does all the talking.
I’m sure I do the right thing
in the circumstances.
Alice Beer
from “Pride and Prejudice”, a sequence of poems
in collection Talking of Pots, People & Points of View,
2005, poetry p f, ISBN 978-0-9552040-0-5
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