I have wandered into this message board on a Tuesday evening to say that 1) this is the first time I have posted a message on this board  2) this is the first time I have posted a message on ANY board  3) and finally to ask if anyone can help me on an Austen-related topic.

The question is, "Why didn't Dr.Evil go back in time and just kill Austen?"

That was a joke.

The real question is, "I have seen Emma, S&S, P&P, Persuasions movies and mini-series. Are there more? Are there movies or mini-series on Austen's other works like Mansfield Park? Could someone recommend some works"

Thank you.
Thomas from the co-host country of the next World Cup

Actually, Doctor Death made the attempt but has only a very bad wound of his own to show for his effort. He is grateful that he got off so easy.

Yes, in fact all six novels have been filmed and several have been filmed a number of times. Here is a link to a discussion of P&P. You will find a list there, but more importantly you will find links to other places on the web. Here is a link to a discussion of Emma, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park and another to Sense and Sensibility as well as the oldest version of P&P. Also, movie versions have been much under discussion at the bulletin board this last month or so.

Dear Thomas,

I don't know of any more films or mini-series, but I believe there are some books by Jane Austen that you might find interesting.  Six, to be precise.

Who is going to co-host the next World Cup - whatever that is?
Julie

Re wonkiness:  I have had the same problem.  A couple of days ago, I couldn't access the board at all for about twenty-four hours, as it just seemed to take forever to download.  It is better now, but the links are much slower, as is scrolling down.

Dear Ashton,

Thank you for your advice. So far, I have managed to locate a non-Gwynneth Emma (it's referred to as "Emma-A&E" I believe, starring Kate Beckinsomething), and have watched it, and found it absolutely terrible :)

I like Austen novels because I like the characters in it. I think the joy of Emma Woodhouse is the joy of watching a child play grown-up, and the joy of Mr.Knightley is the joy of watching a grown-up play even more grown-up. The main problem with Emma A&E, I thought, was that Emma, instead of being a child, was a brat, and Mr. Knightley, well, he was just boorish. In the book, Mr.Knightley was referred to as a kind of a "general advisor," to whom people would go to discuss their problems. One would have to be masochistic to go to A&E Knightley for comfort and advice. I think the director lost sight of the fact that the viewers were meant to LIKE these characters. Hmmmm...also Mr.Elton is on the cover of the video...I didn't think Elton was so central a figure in the novel. One last gripe...I want a full head of hair on Knightley. I think Knightley is supposed to be the ideal Englishman--strong, quiet, business-minded, kind, and landed. But to these qualities I would add one more: full hair. Emma falls in love with a bold man, not a bald man.

I am going to track down some of the other movies you have suggested, and I am going to complain mightily about them, and I hope some of you on this board can disagree with me very often.

Dear Meister,

I discovered your "Male Voices in Praise of Jane Austen" site and immediately printed out your various postings to read at leisure.  I have enjoyed all immensely.  Thank You!

Last night I retired to my room, flipped in the AE P&P video and went searching for the scene in which Elizabeth, Darcy and the Gardniers are walking to the lake at Pemberley.  You had mentioned that Elizabeth (Jennifer Ehle) made a subtle movement prior to Darcy turning and escorting her for their walk.  I give up.  To what are you referring?

Now tell me if I am hallucinating.  In the S&S-95 movie where Elinor (Emma Thompson) is talking to her mother, Mrs. Dashwood, about the impending arrival of John and Fanny, (Mrs. Dashwood is rushing around the room packing) does Mrs. Dashwood call Elinor "Emma"?

And if you will permit me one more question, do you know when the Mansfield Park film is to be released?  I shall read the book first. Yes, it is the only Jane Austen novel I have failed to read. I have often a copy of S&S, Emma, Persuasion, or P&P in hand as I follow along with the dialogue in the movie....

Forgive me if your first impression is that I am more a movie fanatic than one of literature, "I certainly have not the talent which some people possess of conversing easily with those I have not seen before..." therefore, I will post seldom, but read often...
Mary Silgals

Dear Mary,

You are most welcome here, except I hope you will change your resolve to post only "seldom".

I believe that the release date for the new Mansfield Park is early November, but I am not certain.

I hadn't noticed the "Emma" clich in S&S, but I shall certainly look for it. Like yourself I own copies of all the videos and play them frequently. The thing with Jennifer Ehle is a bit silly and so I may be making only a public demonstration of my fascination with that actress, but here goes. As Aunt Gardiner releases Elizabeth's arm and walks toward her husband, Elizabeth (Ms. Ehle) spins on her heel and faces the opposite direction. I laughed because I saw that as the actress's interpretation that Elizabeth is fully aware of the implication of her aunt's move and is slightly embarrassed. Now I am embarrassed because I may be making too much of this.

To Everyone,

This my first posting here. I just want to say, I enjoyed all the information and insight into the world of Jane Austen. I have read five of the completed novels  and just finishing up Mansfield Park. It's good to know I'm not the only man who appreciates the genius that is Jane Austen.

Dear R. W.,

You are very welcome here and I hope you will feel free to post often.

Dear Folks,

I have been doing penance for the past weeks, trying to make up for my announcement to the effect that the reason I did not find Jane Austen on my trip was that her writings had never touched my soul. While I have been doing the penance I have been thinking about my belief, and the more I think about it, the more I think I am right. While reading Jane Austen I find myself to be a delighted and sometime bemused spectator, but I never find myself lost in the characters or so deep into the plot that it takes me hours to get back to reality.

On the other hand, Our Lady was in the A&E list of the 100 most important people of the millennium, and my name seems to be missing from the list, so what does she care what I think.

Because I do love Jane Austen so, I decided on a very serious penance and for the past three weeks I have been in the trenches with Thomas Hardy. If Jane Austen is the master of the happy (or at least satisfying) ending, then Hardy is the master of the "Life is a bitch and then you die" ending. I generally am not in favor of censorship, but I am not sure but there should not be a law to the effect that no one can read more than one Thomas Hardy book a year.

There was one bright spot in all this. After reading Jude the Obscure, I decided to watch the movie version to see how they had toned it down. Sure enough they changed the ending so that Jude was still alive.(But very depressed) The bright spot was that if one was the least bit curious how Marianne Dashwood (in the person of Kate Winslet) would look without a stitch of clothes on, then one could find out by watching Jude during which the aforementioned Ms Winslet (as Sue Brideshead) appears starkers--frontal, backal and sideal. I hasten to add that I feel sure that the tone of this august group is so high that its members would snicker at anyone, who could connect Marianne Dashwood and Sue Brideshead, even if they were nude.

One thing that Sue and Marianne have in common is that BOTH of them need to be thrown into Julie’s duck pond. Marianne for being a self centered twit and Sue for ruining Jude’s life by wallowing in all that guilt.

Oh, and another thing  Hardy’s works are chock full of people who would be glad to invite me to their houses. Indeed, they would probably be honored to have me. On the other hand, I’m not sure I would be too thrilled to accept an invitation to Arrabella’s pig farm and abattoir.

Dear Ray,

Nobody deserves to suffer that much.  I think you would have been better served (and less likely to be admitted to your local psychiatric unit) had you chosen George Eliot instead of Thomas Hardy.

Unless, of course, you know her works already.
Julie

Dear Ray,

Having read the Meister's Piece on Barnaby Rudge I was reminded of my Hardy experience. At the age of 15 a competition was announced for an essay on Hardy. I decided that if I was to enter, the first prerequisite would be at least to have read his books. So with youthfull enthusiasm and membership of the Ruddington Village Public Library I set forth. Whilst all the tales from Mayors to Blue Eyes to Trumpet Majors romped by me, instead of being propelled forward with renewed enthusiasm I felt some sort of mental brake being applied. I ground to a halt with Jude The Obscure.

My 15-year old literary critiscism was simple. It just wasn't very likely. Any of it. Hardy had absolutely zilch understanding of the motivation of women and even less of children. My sister (a philosophy grad) assures me that the child in Jude who terminates his own little life and that of the two other children by, (I think - remember it's 20+ years since I read this) hanging themselves on the back of a door with some patheric note saying "because we are a trouble" is in fact an allegorical reference to Old Father Time. Maybe I should go back but I never wrote the essay because even at 15 I knew would be wasting my time writing an essay along the lines of "I could write better than this rubbish!"

Our Lady, however has masterful, deep characters. You don't catch Fanny Price resorting to life-ending strategies. Mrs. Elton lives and breathes and lives round the corner from all of us right now. I know Miss Bateses and Frank Churchills and I even know one Darcy.

DH Lawrence? Much the same as Hardy I'm afraid. As this is Male Voices and I am a lady, perhaps someone would care to point out to me what I'm missing.

Dear Folks,

Ray: You have gone through some self-examination and have been candid and honest about what you have found. Why does that call for penance? In any case, read a Jane Austen novel after every Hardy novel and you will be able to read more than one of Hardy's in a year.

I am always deeply affected by a Hardy novel, but--you may think this peculiar--I am always exhilarated as well. Hardy is number two with me, but I am not exactly sure why. His view is so cosmic and he is also an ecologist. I mean he always uses the environment (woodlands, heath, dairy lands, etc.) to impact and frame the society. And he is the great sociologist because he shows how clearly technical changes impact on the people. That chapter in Tess where he describes the steam-powered threshing machine and its social impact is dead right-on. Unlike Jane Austen, Hardy writes about my people and that is important to me. I mean, I was raised by the Derbyfields. He always uses animal cruelty as a warning and as a symbol of man's inhumanity to man and that is my own view. Hardy was wonderful.

Anielka: I will sooner defend a Bronte sister than DH Lawrence and that is not very likely. You will have to turn to someone else for that defense. (It's odd, I somehow find Lawrence to be - well - prudish, go figure!) The little boy committing those murders makes perfect sense to me. He had been shuttled from pillar to post and his parents were self-involved in their own problems and were not careful to shield him from the family difficulties (that is a terrible but common error). He then commited that crime that we most often see done by a parent - he murders the children, and then himself, in order to end what he sees as their misery and to ease the burden of those left behind. It is an act of insanity. This is an unflinching examination of the extreme pressure that society sometime places on individuals who have made unfortunate choices. It is a terrible, terrible thing and we hate Hardy for showing it to us. We are the more deeply affected because Hardy makes the characters and situation all too real. For that reason we would not have been so affected if Dickens had written that novel. Be thankful that Jane Austen didn't write Jude; if she had she would have expired at her last punctuation mark and the English-speaking nations would have burned their libraries. Hardy also scared himself with that novel and he would never write another even though he lived another thirty years.

Dear John,

I am unable to comment on the directions taken by the path to wisdom, as I have never been there. However, I disagree with your statement that Jane Austen forgave Henry Crawford.  Not a bit of it.

I have already quoted part of her last reference to Mr Crawford, but I will repeat it here, and take it further:  'Henry Crawford, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long.'  Now, John, you may think of this as 'forgiveness', but personally, I would not care to have such things said of me.

What Jane Austen does do (and I do believe she is relenting a little here), is qualify the above statement, by the following remarks:  '.....we may fairly consider a man of sense like Henry Crawford, to be providing for himself no small portion of vexation and regret - vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness - in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally, as well as passionately loved.'

I believe that Jane Austen is a little inconsistent in her final summing-up of Mr Crawford. On one page, she comments that 'Once, .... by  an opening undesigned and unmerited, (he had been) led into the way of happiness.  Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman's affections......'  but of course, he could not.  Jane Austen then proceeds to catalogue the history of Mr Crawford's seduction and elopement of Mrs Rushworth. I am afraid that, after reading that history, I cannot believe in the 'passionate and rational' love he is supposed to have felt for Miss Price:  a rational passion that was unable to withstand the passage of twelve weeks.

When considering Julia's eventual feelings towards Mr Crawford - 'when the acquaintance was renewed in town, and Mr Rushworth's house became Crawford's object, she had had the merit of withdrawing herself from it, and of chusing that time to pay a visit to her other friends, in order to secure herself from being again too much attached.'  This passage, to me, carries echoes of Elizabeth Bennet's eventual summation of Mr Wickham, when she began to notice a repetitiveness in his attentions, that 'disgusted and wearied' their recipient.

Had Mr Crawford been born on this farm, John, he would have been castrated at four weeks of age, and kept behind electric fencing thereafter.
Julie

Dear Julie,

Jane Austen inconsistent? Nevah.

Put the knife away. Far away. And listen. Please.

I have never found an inconsistency in Jane Austen's writings. When she seems inconsistent, the path of wisdom leads to the understanding that she has somewhere been misunderstood and to thinking back along the path to the fork which has led to this misunderstanding. I can never persuade you that Julia's elder sister has been at least as guilty as Crawford--as I absolutely think that she was, but I hope that you can retrace your steps to restore your harmony with Jane Austen. She has said that her goal was always a happy ending to a novel. I can think of no novel (Of the Big Five) in which Jane has placed all the blame for an illicit coupling upon only one partner. Colonel Brandon's first love was so helpless that I cannot assign any blame to her: I cannot expect everyone to become a Christian martyr, nor can I expect everyone to successfully resist a powerful temptation. In this respect, I do not think I vary from Jane's expressed and implicit thinking.

Dear John,

We appear to be considering different issues altogether. My discussions of Henry Crawfod's character and behaviour have dealt with him in relation to Fanny Price,and the chances of him making her a good husband - or indeed, of him marrying her at all.  My other comments have dealt with Jane Austen's view of Mr Crawford.  I have never said or implied that I feel that Mr Crawford's guilt is greater than that of Mrs Rushworth - as two consenting adults, however misguided, I do not personally feel that the issue of 'guilt' is relevant to their actions. The only point I would raise in this regard is that, given the social mores of the time, a man who actually loved a woman in Mrs Rushworth's positon would not be much of a man if he allowed her, or himself, to become party to a public elopement.  Mrs Rushworth becomes a social outcast at the age of twenty-three - cut off forever from the only society she had ever known.  I am quite willing to grant, however, that she cut her own throat, even if Henry did hand her the knife.

All of my remarks regarding Henry Crawford's character have been directed at his relationship with Fanny Price, and the little fantasy world he indulges in, 'when there is nobody else to be had.' I will repeat that I see nothing in his behaviour, throughout the whole of his relationship with Fanny, that indicates any real consideration for her feelings; indeed, he seems unable to recognise her distress at all.  He really, truly seems to believe that 'no' is 'yes' poorly expressed.
Julie

Dear John,

Very well, then, let us consider the relationship between Mr Crawford and Miss Bertram.  Or rather, the behaviour of Mr Crawford towards the two Miss Bertrams.  I am not meaning to suggest that the sisters are not to take responsibility for their actions, but let us just look at Mr Crawford during the time of his first acquaintance with the Mansfield family.  There is very little attractive about it, to my mind, and a great deal that reinforces my feeling that Mr Crawford doesn't give a dead rat for anybody on the planet but himself.  His behaviour to Mr Rushworth is in fact almost cruelty to a dumb animal, and cruelty gleefully pursued.  Granted, the fact that Miss Bertram neither loves nor likes Mr Rushworth is not Mr Crawford's problem, but could you imagine, say Mr Knightley, Mr Darcy - even Mr Collins! - behaving in such a way? Fanny herself acknowledges that seeing him behave 'so improperly by poor Mr Rushworth, not seeming to care how he exposed or hurt him, and paying attentions to my cousin Maria, which - in short.......I received an impression that will never be got over.'  Mr Crawford knew very well that he had made three people miserable by the time he left Mansfield - Maria, Julia and Mr Rushworth - and he didn't give a damn.  The breakfast scene, where he announces his departure, is one of calculated cruelty towards Maria.  If Mary Crawford knew that both sisters were in love with Henry, then Henry knew, too.  She was unsurprised and uncaring, having seen him in action before; he never cares for anybody.  There is a calculated cruelty in the remark he makes to Mary regarding Maria later: 'Now she will see what sort of woman will attract a man of sense......' and then he has the hide to censure them for their neglect of Fanny, whom he had never even noticed, until there was 'no-one else to be had.'

This is the heart of Henry Crawford:  he has no heart.  He has not the capacity to feel, and therefore cannot understand the fact that others do feel, and do suffer.  Every time he approaches a woman in the novel, he does so by calculation:  he sets about 'making them in love' with him.  This is not normal behaviour, John.
Julie

Dear Julie,

Let us as true minds not meet at dawn to cross purposes or fire mis-aimed thoughts to settle the score of honour in the matter of Bertram-Crawford-Price, not forgetting Rushworth.

You posit Crawford's love for Bertram-Rushworth. I do not see it. You have suggested  that Crawford has come off free. I do not see it. You suggest that he is wrong to refuse a no for a not yet. I do not see it. You see no cause for guilt in the hanky-panky. I do see cause. You do not see that at any time there is cause to believe that a good marriage might occur between Crawford and Fanny Price. I do not agree. You seem to think that Crawford is depraved. I do not see.

It may be that we have two main difficulties to overcome: the fact that we wear different brands of genes and that although it is Tuesday night as I stumble at the keyboard, it is at the same time Wednesday morning in Tasmania. We may be in alternate universes.

But I hope that we can see common light in all this.
John

Dear John,

Eh?
Julie

Dear Anielka,

Well, at least this explains why you didn't rise to my parochial bait regarding Western Australia. You didn't know what I was talking about!

Why on earth would anybody keep a national anthem (and a poor one, at that) on a fridge. Before I return to the subject of the board, tell me: are you voting in our referendum?

You might like to turn your lively talents to a proposition that I made over a year ago now, regarding Pride and Prejudice:  that the sexual tension between Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet positively vibrates in every encounter between the two; furthermore, that this is an effect that Jane Austen either never aimed for, or never attained, in any of her other works.  I can only repeat a comparison that I have made before that the sexual tension evident between those two reminds me irresistably of that seen on screen in the earlier films of Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.  In both cases, it is the more powerful for being subtle in Pride and Prejudice it is overwhelming - whenever Elizabeth and Darcy are in a room together, right from day one, they are aware of almost nothing else.

I suppose it is too much to hope that you have an interest in the Mitford family?
Julie

From the Meiser: I am going to vote in your referendum.

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