Dear Cheryl,

When you suggest that we shouldn’t have to put up with seeing the titles of our favourite books used as titles of movies, I don’t think you give movie-going book-readers the credit we deserve. When I see the title Mansfield Park on a marquee, I don’t expect to see the same Mansfield Park that I found between book covers.  That’s impossible! Each character in my mind has a face, figure and gesture that is understandably different than those of everyone else’s imagination, and that is certainly evident in our postings here if nowhere else.

I return to novels I have already read to seek something familiar and known, but I also want something new.  When I re-read a novel, my perspective or my interest in certain subjects has changed.  Thus, I can read Pride and Prejudice the first time for the love story, the second time for the insight into 18c fashion and manners, the third time to explore an intriguing means of writing, and so on, and there’s something new there every time, whether I expect it or not.  Filmmakers show me the same novel with emphasis on their interests and perspectives. I think that’s why I go to movie adaptations -  to see familiar things in a new light.  That is, incidentally, why I like to read the postings here.  The key to enjoying a film adaptation is in remembering that it is an adaptation.

Here’s a puzzle:  You have seen Shakespeare in Love three times. Unless you had other reasons for viewing it, that suggests that you liked the film. But these were (some) real people who have been arbitrarily placed into a fictional situation.  Even though there is no evidence anywhere to prove, for example, that John Webster ever tortured rodents or exposed "forward" women, it is still an interesting depiction of him merely because of the possibility of its accuracy, knowing what we know about him. It is a humorous representation we likely never would have considered if Stoppard hadn’t introduced it to us. I would thank him for that (among other things), and if my suspicions are correct, so would you. So I'm curious. Why are artists to be applauded for imagining alternative situations for historical figures, and yet be prevented the same freedom of expression as regards the figments of someone’s imagination?

Dear Heather,

You write that you also want something new.

A woman, on being asked whether she read novels, replied, "Yes. All six of them. Every year."

How can anyone be wiser than such a woman?
John

My name is Christine Anson, I am 16 and I live in the UK. I visited this site beacause I am currently doing English Literature A-level, and we are covering Jane Austen at the moment. I read your critical analysis of S&S, and I thoroughly agreed on some points, but I disagreed with others. About the amount of times a soggy Marianne Dashwood is carried in from the rain, SURELY Emma Thompson must have noticed this? I thought it was ridiculous. However, I thought the film was funny and entertaining, if not accurate. The lady who played Fanny was hilarious. I have seen her in theatre before, and she is much younger and prettier than how she appears in S&S.

Dear Christine,

You are most welcome here and I hope you will continue to post your thoughts.

I think that it is remarkably easy to be funny. I think that I have always been the funniest person in any of my own family or social groupings and so I have less respect for the art than others might. Jane Austen is funny and I do appreciate that, but that is not at all the reason for my infatuation with your countrywoman. At the core, S&S is about the mutual maturing of two sisters who care for each other and support one another through some hard times that are not at all funny. There is absolutely nothing funny about the Palmer marriage. I know that you may laugh as so many others do, but try to get past that to the basic tragedy of that relationship. The marriage may seem funny because Mrs. Palmer and her mother both try to laugh it off. Don't believe it, they are both masking suffering and you will suffer too when you get past the superficiality. I can almost promise you that you will encounter people wearing that kind of mask in your own life. THESE are among the things that Emma Thompson ignored. Emma Thompson is no Jane Austen.

Incidentally, the first draft of S&S was written in the same year that Jane Austen's own sister received word that her fiancé had died suddenly. I suspect that this tragic event influenced the writing of a young Jane Austen. We will never know for sure because there would be many more drafts before publication. There is a faint echo of all this in P&P but, basically, Jane Austen would never again return to the theme of an important, useful relationship between two women. What do you think?

Dear Sir,

Mrs Weston and Emma Woodhouse; Fanny and Susan Price (none the less important and useful for being short within the action of the novel); Anne Elliot and Mrs Smith, before and during the time frame of Persuasion; Elizabeth Bennet and Mrs Gardiner - indeed, Elizabeth Bennet and Charlotte Lucas, if only for a short time in Pride and Prejudice itself; all of these relationships were important and useful to the women involved.
Julie

Dear Julie,

I think you and I are about to renew our debate on Sense and Sensibility. Surely it will be a debate if you are to insist that any of those relationships you mention are on the same scale of importance as that between the Dashwood sisters. The only woman to woman relationship that approaches is that of Elizabeth to Jane Bennet (one you failed to even mention). If it is judged that you are right, then I can help you: Elizabeth Bennet and Mrs. Phillips - a far more useful aunt; Georgianna Darcy and her governess; Emma and Harriet Smith; Mrs. Bennet and Hill; and, Mary and Anne Elliot.

I suppose it is a matter of degree and, perhaps, my statement is so little qualified that your list is at least logical, but is it fair? Clearly, the relationship of the Dashwood sisters is the central theme of S&S. It is sweet and enduring and it is the chief reason that Marianne is able to regain an equilibrium. (Since you are one of Marianne's detractors, it may be that you don't care.) ALL of the other novels center upon the growing relationship between a woman and a man - that is why I like them so well and had to learn to love S&S. Fanny Price is, in fact, estranged from most women and for good reason - I am thinking of Mrs. Price, Aunt Norris, Lady Bertram, and the Bertram cousins. Fanny's anchors are her brother, Edmund, and - yes - Sir Thomas. (Sir Thomas is not sensitive to her feelings and often wounds her, but he is her unrelenting benefactor and champion.)

So, there!

Dear Sir,

Well, you didn't say that you meant a theme of a whole novel!  Personally, had I been Elinor, I would have drowned Marianne at the end of Chapter One.  Do you really consider the relationship 'mutually beneficial'?  I suppose you are right, though, as Marianne must have fulfilled some need of Elinor's to nurture - but why on earth not just go and buy a puppy?  They grow up sooner and tend to have much better sense.

On another note:  I was scanning Sense and Sensibility, in search of ammunition, and came across what I consider to be one of the clumsier episodes of that novel:  the scene where Elinor and Colonel Brandon talk at cross-purposes, after the latter, thinking Edward engaged to Elinor, offers the young man a living.  Jane Austen only repeated that plot device once:  on her death-bed, virtually, when writing Persuasion.  It occurs in the cancelled chapter, and, ill as she was, she was sufficiently dissatisfied with it to rewrite it - in pencil, as she was too weak to use a pen.

Sense and Sensibility shows us the promise of Jane Austen's genius, I believe, rather than its actuality, which is realised, for me, in Emma and Mansfield Park.

From the Meister: The really odd thing is that I was
wondering if I could send you some California artichoke
and avocado. Do you get those things in Tasmania? Did
you say cl.. cl.. cl.. - excuse me - did you say cl.. cl.. cl..?

Dear Sir,

I'm afraid your kind offer would be impossible - such imports would be banned, in case the artichokes and avocadoes carried rabies or something.

When I call Sense and Sensibility clumsy, I mean in comparison with Jane Austen's later works.  To me that clumsiness, or niavety, of plot development and characterisation, is very marked.  Had this been Jane Austen's only work, one might think differently, but Jane Austen demonstrated a genius in her later novels that is simply not there in Sense and Sensibility. Too many of the characters have a kind of Dickensian burlesque about them - they just don't work well enough to sustain themselves in a whole novel - they lack sufficient depth.  I am thinking here especially of Mrs Jennings and the Palmers, but I think the same could be said to a degree of Elinor and Marianne: their character development does not approach that of heroines in the later novels, either. Marianne is overdrawn, and Elinor tends to be a little wooden.

Willoughby, on the other hand, and unfortunately, is entirely believable!
Julie

Dear Julie, Ashton, John, Christine,

First things first: John, believe me that was no hint to you about coherence  -- a quick look at the posting of a certain Cheryl will show you who I meant.

I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you Julie, except the part about drowning Marianne at the first opportunity.    But then I'd probably end up drowning Elinor as well.  She's an awful lot like Fanny, don't you think?  Except Fanny generally keeps her moralizing about others' behavior to herself.  Elinor goes around telling her mother and her sister exactly what's wrong with their behavior, opinions, and thoughts about everything.    She'll be Lady Catherine without the money by time she's 30.

I confess I find Mrs. Jennings assumption that Elinor and Colonel Brandon were to be married--based on the fact that they enjoy talking to each other -- terribly funny. Yet another thing that hasn't changed in 200 years.

P.S. What's a telephone tree?

P.P.S. What do you think about "Teen Angst Girl" and "The Moralizing Kid" for our superheroes?  They sound like classic  "Howard The Duck" villains, don't your think?
Cheryl

Dear Cheryl,

There are similarities, certainly, but Elinor's position is one of great power, from page one: she is the head of the family from the day of her father's death.  She organises the finances, chooses the cottage, in fact, runs the lot of them.  Fanny will probably achieve the same position following her marriage to Edmund, especially as Sir Thomas appears to virtually fall in love with her himself at the end of the novel: 'after settling her at Thornton Lacey with every kind attention to her comfort, his chief object was to either get her away from it, or see her there each day.'  I comfort myself with thinking that Fanny will almost certainly not survive the birth of her first child - otherwise I fear, indeed, for the next Lady Bertram, after Sir Thomas' death, having to deal, as did her mother-in-law, with a tarantula in the vicarage!
Julie

Dear Ashton,

If a vote is permitted, then I agree with Julie.  If a vote is not permitted, then, of course, I remain adamant in my agreement with Julie's list.

What I cannot affirm is your (Sorry about making this personal, but I take seriously Cheryl's hint that coherence has importance in communication) notion that the relationship between the elder Dashwood sisters is the central theme in S&S.

The principal theme, the one that everything else helps illuminate, is the examination of the contrasting philosophical tenets of sense and sensibility. JA uses the elder Dashwood sisters to make concrete her analysis of these polar life guides. More extreme examples are seen in Fanny Price and Maria Bertram in Mansfield Park.
John

From the Meister: votes are always allowed. This website is devoted to the free exchange of ideas and the only requirement is a respect shown to all persons regardless of race, creed, color, or opinions of Marianne Dashwood. Well - except - OK, so none of this applies to the inventor of telephone trees who should be dissolved in acid without benefit of trial or sedative.

Dear Ashton,

Thank you for the recommendation to watch Metropolitan. I see many parallels to Mansfield Park.  Here is one:

Henry Crawford has a sympathic moment when he admires William's useful life as a sailor.  Tom Townsend and another young man cannot rent a car because they don't have driver's licenses. As they struggle to commence their rescue mission, the other man observes that this is how it begins - The upper class is unable to accomplish the basic tasks of acquiring an independant mature life.

I have a recommendation for you, which I have no doubt you've already seen: Ridicule. It's a French movie without a direct or implied connection to Jane Austen.  The setting is in France in a time period just prior to the beginning of her life.  The obsession of the French Court with wit gives meaning to the importance of wit that is found Jane Austen's novels.  I see the Jane and Elizabeth's visit to Netherfield with a better understanding.

From the Meister: Your observation on Metropolitan is
excellent and no, I had not thought of that. You said "upper
class" where you surely intended to say "ubs" did you not?

Dear Voices,

It may reduce confusion if Janeites restrict the meanings of the words romance and romantic to their meanings in literary criticism.

When "romance" is used to mean a relationship between a man and a woman, then the context ought to reflect this special relationship.

In what  is technically called romantic fiction a romantic character is one that lives in a world of marvels (such as Catherine Morland until Henry explains the harm that credulity concerning the gothic novel can cause. After this explanation, Catherine becomes as much of a realist as is her mother.) or in which the world is elegiac or idyllic (Mansfield Park is a satire, as are all of the Austen novels, or we should call it an idyll.).

It is this meaning of the word that Miss Lucas intends that Elizabeth understand, but Elizabeth does not catch the significance of her friend's explanation. Charlotte knows that she cannot foretell the future. She knows that the most honorable life for a gentleman's daughter is marriage and she chooses what even Elizabeth later considers to be a prudent match although not one that she could consider for herself. (Charlotte's father is a knight and therefore by definition she is a gentleman's daughter.)

If we can use such meanings then it might be said that we are singing from the same page.
John

Dear Cheryl,

Before you say that "Literature isn't science", it might be useful to go back to Aristotle's "Poetics". There, I think, that we will see the science of literature laid out elegantly. If physics and chemistry are governed by ostensibly rock-hard rules, so are tragedy, comedy, poetry, and that new thing, formed in great part by Jane Austen, the novel.

Some of the greatest ideas in physics are really only assumptions. In one case in basic physics, the physicist will cheerfully admit that the proof is out-and-out circular reasoning. I have forgotten which proof that is, partly because I am troubled by the ease with which modern physics has adopted so many other asumptions as though they were actually the consequences of rigorous proof. What is one logical fallacy among so many?

"Post hoc" reasoning is not an error so long as one does not stop there. In Newton's scientific method, this sort of reasoning can and must lead to experimentation to test the validity of the thought.

Analysis in literature must meet the same stringency. However, when taste only is considered then science is not part of the conversation. But the ground rules of any discussion must be understood.

For example, Ashton has named Crawford's adultery as a kind of proof against my suggestion that Jane Austen intended us to understand that marriage to Fanny should have ended his (not Ashton's) frivolous behaviour toward  other gorgeous young women.  But Crawford was not married to Fanny. He was at loose ends because he did not wish to continue "crowding" Fanny. He meant to give her time. His intention with regard to Maria was an improper time-filler, but this time the moth got too close to the flame and he was destroyed (so far as his hopes with regard to Fanny were considered).  If he had been married to Fanny, it is unlikely that he would have pursued so determinedly his wish to make Maria again infatuated with him. Willoughby, while admitting his guilt in a similar matter, protested that Colonel Brandon's ward had an equal share in the guilt. Crawford is in a similar state. Maria is at least as guilty as Crawford.

More than this, I cannot say until I've pored over Jane Austen's words.

My modem has been a treacherous dog and finally quit obeying me last week--so it has been a pleasant discovery of so many well- written postings now that a new and willing modem is in the kennel.
John

Dear John,

Let's stuff Mansfield Park into the bunsen burner one more time, and see what happens. Once more with feeling: 'Henry Crawford indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long.' In other words, once too often.  Neither his sister, nor his creator, for one minute thought that Henry Crawford would be converted into an Edmund Bertram upon marriage to Fanny Price.  Mary, who is surely competent to judge, comments, about the marriage: 'and even when you ceased to love, (your wife) would yet find in you the liberality and good-breeding of a gentleman.' After Henry's elopement with Maria, Mary comments yet again, regarding Fanny: 'Foolish girl! Had she accepted him, this could not have happened.  Had she accepted him as she ought, .......he would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs Rushworth again.  It would al have ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings at Sotherton and Everingham.'  Nice.

Mr Crawford's undying passion lasted a little longer than sixteen weeks, maximum.  Time, my foot.  Having no handy chambermaid available, and, (and this is a critical point, when examining Henry Crawford's character) having been rebuffed first by Fanny, and then, initially, by Mrs Rushworth, he became bored with charades, and reverted to form:  'He would make Mrs Rushworth Maria Bertram again in her treatment of him.'  The problem for Mr Henry was, unfortunately, that Mrs Rushworth wasn't satisfied with a quick feel under the staircase   she, God help her, loved the man - as he well knew - and look where that got her!  Not exactly the 'liberality of a gentleman' in his treatment of Mrs Rushworth, once he had 'ceased to love.'

Colonel Brandon's ward was exactly sixteen years old when she was seduced by Mr Willoughby. 'Equal guilt' is not in the hunt - in fact, there are laws against that sort of thing these days. She was a child, for crying out loud!  She may have been a silly child, but that does not excuse the conduct of an adult.

Jane Austen is clear-sighted and uncompromising in her judgement of these two men:  it's all there, in the text.  Light up your burner, John, and have a read.
Julie

Dear John,

I would go back and look at Aristotle, but I'm too lazy. And frankly, I aspire only to coherence, and often don't achieve even that small goal.

Actually, physics and chemistry are guided by nearly infinite probabilities.  No physicist would ever tell anyone it's impossible to jump off the Sears tower and fly to the moon, just that the universe would have to exist a long, long, long time before an anomaly of such magnitude would happen.  And anyone relying on such luck should get his affairs in order ahead of time.

Our reliance on probabilities is to some extent true of literature.  Jane Austen is no longer here to tell us what was going through her mind when she wrote, but we look at the facts: the words she put on paper and try to create a theory to explain the mechanism.  (Mechanism isn't a good metaphor, but it'll have to do for now.)  The best theories cover all the facts and have a certain consistency, both internal and external.  But unlike science, we can't dismiss a theory because another research team can't verify the results or because it's inconsistent with other theories.

Actually, I agree with you that within the universe of Mansfield Park Fanny Price could have redeemed Henry Crawford.  Jane Austen tells us so when she says "Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness."   The author places the blame for Henry's failure squarely on his shoulders, but lets us know how near a thing it had been.  I have advanced the idea that Fanny herself, in her refusal to advise Crawford during his visit to Portsmouth, set in motion the downfall of Henry and Maria  and that it was a deliberate action. Not that she said to herself "well, if Henry goes to see Maria they're sure to commit fornication and adultery respectively  Miss Crawford will be lost to Edmund forever and I can have him for myself."  Merely that Fanny was being as spiteful and malicious as she could with her limited experience and imagination.   Please don't think I'm trying to defend Henry or Maria -- you play you play -- I'm just saying that Fanny is quite the little manipulator and that no one escapes her pettiness.
Cheryl

Dear Leah,

Most of the "Male Voices" are serious students of Jane Austen. You will find little pop culture on this site.

Answers:

• 1. Yes, yes.
• 2. Aften irritated, often delighted. No, everyone should have the joy of Jane Austen's works, if only through some deplorable dramatic treatments. Better than nothing.
• 3. What do I find appealing about good health? By "society" do you mean only the top social layers of humanity or do you include everyone who can read?  But my short answer is this: Why is society enamoured of clean water? (In truth, JA is very witty about real people in a real world.)
• 4. Yes. The"yes" answers everything. All regulars whom I have seen on "Male Voices" are Janeites, however much they may decline "to go public" or to say right out loud, "Let everyone hear from Plymouth to Newcastle:  I love Jane Austen." Even the Boardmeister is a Janeite. No one must belong to any organization in order to be a Janeite.

John

Dear Leah,

• 1. No. Yes. Are they mutually exclusive?
• 2. I enjoy the adaptations as entertainment, albeit a different entertainment than the novels. I think the idea that art is devalued by the size of its audience is absolutely bizarre, so I guess the answer is no.  Nor do I as a reader feel a loss of exclusiveness because others are exposed to JA.  I don't believe the films lead too many to the novels themselves and to support that statement, I suggest you check out the boards at Pemberley.com.
• 3. I particularly enjoy the sly self-knowledge displayed throughout the novels.  And even Jane Austen's nastiest observations, "It is a truth universally acknowledged... ." for instance, are full of good humor and a fondness for the human race. I think that society today is enamored of the image of Jane Austen the film industry has created, not Jane Austen or her works themselves.  If you'd like boring examples of how the characters in "S&S", "Emma" and "P&P" have been softened and made more likeable, (and more 20th century) let me know.
• 4. Never read the story, don't know.

Cheryl

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