Come one, come all, to the Jane Austen Fight Club, where the very best from Jane’s world and the very best from everywhere else match wits and fists for all to see! The prizes: pride, honor, and the adoration of Jane fans everywhere, or a “The first rule of fight club is, we don’t talk about Mr. Darcy” t-shirt and possibly some Regency medical care for all your combat-induced wound-care needs!
Today’s contestants: Miss Catherine “Overactive Imagination” Morland, reader, tomboy, and false-accuser of future fathers-in-law, and Fox “Did You Say Overactive Imagination?” Mulder, crusader for truth, justice, and trench coats everywhere! Both perpetually think something’s shady going on, but who will get the ultimate fake-out?
In their corners:
Catherine has spunk! Catherine has soul! Catherine can be taught, which may ultimately overtake her tendency to fictionalize the world in rather dramatic and unhelpful ways!
Mulder is smart! Mulder is educated! Mulder is relentless! Mulder has a partner who will track you down and haunt you forever if anything happens to her true love!
Handicaps:
Catherine is…well, she’s wrong a lot.
Mulder is…um, also wrong a lot? Also, Mulder would never hit a girl. Unless he thought she was an alien. Or a ghost. Or that Jersey Devil thing. Or about to chew the hair off the head of his true love, Agent Dr. Dana Scully. Let’s be real, here.
Decision:
Is it bad to pit a teenage girl against an occasionally reality-challenged adult man? What if they share a certain sense of Things Going On? After all, nobody would have seen Lily Tomlin and Ed Asner’s ghosts better than Catherine.
Ultimately, I think Mulder beats Catherine on a variety of levels—having nine (okay, seven) years of character development, he’s just got more going on, like as a character, than a teenage girl new to the customs of the Season in Bath. Catherine may have heart, and there’s no telling who wins the common-sense battle here, but Mulder’s smarter, obviously stronger, and knows how to use a gun. Whether we’re talking physical or metaphysical battle, here, I think Mulder must come out on top.
(That is, unless they get to talking, in which case they’ll just be stuck somewhere, confirming and expanding one another’s freak-out tendencies. Mulder and Catherine Morland: BFFs in gullibility!)
austenacious 