Dear Sir,

Perhaps Jane Austen's account of shipboard life, and indeed, of life in general, is an indicator of the capacity that most people of her class and time must have had - that of being able to remain relatively unmoved in the face of what we would consider social horrors today. That is not to say that people were uncaring, but poverty and misery must have been always close by, especially in towns.  It goes unremarked in Jane Austen's novels, perhaps, in the same way that lunchtime did - everyone knew it happened - it was a given.  This is not to say that people were uncaring, of course.

Reading Woodforde or Byng (Rides Around Britain), it becomes obvious that daily life, especially when travelling, could be grubby and dirty indeed.  Woodforde complains of being kept awake all night at a quite respectable inn by bedbugs (yech!), and both authors tell of meals of 'off' meat, etc.   When Mrs Grant spoke of having to dress the turkey before Sunday due to warm weather, she probably meant that the maggots were beginning to outnumber the turkey feathers (I have a book detailing servants' experiences in Victorian England, in which a cook's helper speaks of plucking birds while maggots crawled up her arms. The Poms liked their meat high.)

Whenever typhus is mentioned in books of the period (it was a typhus epidemic that finally got the remaining Bronte sisters out of Cowan Bridge School before they, too, died), remember that typhus is carried by the body louse.

Life was grubby back then!  We may not like to think of Elizabeth Bennet using a chamber pot, but rest assured that she did!
Julie

I don't believe that poverty was as close by as you suggest. I am not saying I can prove you wrong--I cannot--I am only saying that I am skeptical. I suspect that this is yet another example of confusing Jane Austen's time with the Victorian/Industrial period. In JA's time, "work folks" were not yet "farm labor". Their children were not yet being seduced into migrating to the cities to be exploited and abandoned. Mechanized agriculture had not yet ripped asunder the community supports and cast these people out of their homelands in search of farm work - made them itinerate. The villages were still stable and that was a bulwark against grinding poverty. That is what I suspect. This is a crucial matter because it speaks to the humanity or to the insensitivity of Jane Austen. Do you really believe Jane Austen to be something less than Dickens, Eliot or Hardy? I would rather read of you picking on poor, sweet, defenseless Marianne Dashwood - Although, I see that now your target is to be "dearest, loveliest" Elizabeth Bennet. (Wait until the Bunny Table hears of this!)

Dear Folks,

My first function of the evening is to tell Ash that he is onto something with his "narrator’s voice". Yesterday I was watching some scenes from the Robert Redford Great Gatsby. All in all it was a mess of a movie but the voice over narration wherein Sam Waterson playing the role of Nick Carraway speaks the actual words that Fitzgerald wrote, were the very best parts of the movie. Without that voice-over the movie would have been a total disaster. So I am willing to give up some cleavage if Ash can find a moviemaker that will listen to what he has to say and put some narrator’s voice stuff into the next version of a Jane Austen adaptation for the screen.

Moving right on here I want to say a word about the lack of terrible conditions, horrible workhouses and bloody naval battles in the works of Jane Austen. I do not view this as a indication that Jane Austen is "less" than Dickens, et al but as an indication that she was more. She transcended her times and somehow she seemed to sense what would charm and delight us and at the same time speak to something that is deep inside of us. Dickens?? Bah humbug! I would not go quite so far as to say that I resent every minute I have spent reading Dickens, but I will go so far as to say that I treasure every minute I have spent reading Jane Austen. If she lacked a social conscience, I say thank God. I am inclined to think that she did have a social conscience but that unlike Dickens she chose not to burden us with it. Good for her.

Now as to throwing Marianne into the duck pond, I am still of a mind to accept Julie’s suggestion for a meeting and contest to see who can throw her the furthest. This in spite of Ash’s styling of Marianne as "poor, sweet and defenseless". I speak only for myself here (Julie will of course, speak for herself) but it is exactly the overabundance of those qualities in Marianne which make me want to throw her into the pond. As I was throwing her into the pond I would call out to her, "Get a life and try to remember that you are not the center of the universe." My guess would be that Elinor (if she could be there---do we have any volunteers who would carry Elinor to the meeting?) would secretly like second my motion.

The mention of Mrs. Admiral Croft leads me to state my feeling that of all the characters in Jane Austin, Mrs. Croft is the one I feel like I could be the happiest with. Her qualities are well known so I will not attempt to restate them here.  Just let me pay her the highest possible compliment by saying that I would never throw her into a duck pond and that if I did she would come up in good spirits.

I was going to try to say something about the unspoken mundane things that might have gone unmentioned in the works of Jane Austin, but the juxtaposition of Elizabeth Bennet and a chamber pot in the same sentence has brought my mind to a complete halt. Maybe I will get over it, but I don’t see how.

I have, in a number of places, expressed a view identical to your own. And for that I have been severely scolded. I believe, with you, that we should notice the humanity of Jane Austen's novels and not try to distill some great social commentaries that simply aren't there. (I also cherish every moment I spend with Jane Austen; I even use her novels as an antidote - two re-readings of Pride and Prejudice after every Thomas Hardy novel restores my will to live.) You can read of the other point of view beginning with the post of 10/14/98.

I also share your response to Mrs. Admiral Croft: What is that all about? Some commonality among American men I suppose.

You and I may part company in the following way: I believe that Jane Austen was free to be Jane Austen because she was living at only the beginning of the population explosion and the industrial capitalist revolution. Those processes did not simply dawn on humanity, they hit us like twin fragments of the same meteor. Jane Austen was never to fully sense those impacts. George Eliot's birth date was very near that of the death of Jane Austen; but, in a more real sense, they wrote many centuries apart. Jane Austen wrote in the Marxist before and George Eliot in the Marxist after. I may not be exactly correct about the timing of these things or the point may be unimportant; but, until proven otherwise, I will continue to think these things crucial. I believe that, born fifty years later, Jane Austen would have written much like George Eliot and the world would have been poorer off for it.

And now, what about this business of placing "Elizabeth Bennet" and "chamber pot" in the same sentence? Doesn't that make your blood boil? I mean doesn't that just make you want to spit? Still, you may be partly to blame for that; your unfathomable attitude toward Marianne Dashwood can only encourage this sort of thing.

Dear Ray and Sir,

Never could stand Dickens.

As for poverty and misery before Industrialisation, I am hunting through my Woodforde diaries (you REALLY must lay hands on a copy), for some interesting entries that deal with hardship and poverty in his parish caused by bad harvests and the economic drain of the Napoleonic Wars.  I refer to him again and again, because, as a man occupying precisely the same position as Jane Austen's father, minus the family, he describes lives as they came through his Parsonage door, which must have been similar to those of Steventon.  What is interesting is the incidental hardship - the beggars and the destitute, which he mentions frequently and as a matter of course (he always gave them something, money and/or food).  No one, for instance, could have travelled through or lived in towns, as Jane Austen did, without being confronted with maimed soldiers and sailors begging on the street - Woodforde mentions them frequently.  Jane Austen mentions poverty, in different forms, in several of her novels: the poor family that Emma visits (it was sickness as well as poverty), as well as the more genteel, but no less distressing, poverty of the Bates, the Harvilles and Mrs Smith, and the Price family.  The Price family is virtually indigent when Mrs Price re-establishes communication with Sir Thomas, and Mrs Smith is not far off starving in the street - only saved, indeed, by the fact that 'her landlady had a character to preserve.'

Mrs Croft is a delight - she is, of course, Mrs Gardiner gone to sea.

Poor old Marianne - I sometimes think that, like Emma Woodhouse, I should think of 'what I myself was like at that age', before throwing her in too deep.  If men are from Mars, and women are from Venus (silly notion, that), then adolescent females are from the planet Zog.
Julie

Dear Folks,

At the risk of sounding like Cliff in the TV show Cheers, I would like to give an answer to Cheryl’s question about naval surgeons. Unlike Cliff, I will be brief.

By the early part of the Nineteenth century naval surgeons were required to take training and to pass an exam. For some reason, many naval surgeons came from Scotland. These men were more qualified to do amputations and stop bleeding than they were to actually practice medicine. A physician was looked upon as a much more qualified medical person than was a surgeon. The general rule of thumb for assignment of surgeons was as follows: A three decker (usually 74 or more guns and up to 800 men) got one surgeon and three surgeon’s mates: a two decker got a surgeon and two mates and a frigate (one row of guns and up to 300 men) got a surgeon and one mate. Any smaller ship (brigs and sloops, etc) got by the best they could, usually with a mate or two. The medical treatment tended to be first come first served with officers waiting their turn just like the men, although its hard to imagine that Nelson had to wait long for treatment. Now that I have told you more than you ever wanted to know, I will point you in the direction of a really good book, a book that reveals all about the navy in Nelson’s time, The book is Nelson’s Navy. The name of the author escapes me, The book goes into such stuff as press gangs, discipline, food, pay and enough other info to make you sorry you ever wanted to know anything about the navy in the time of Jane Austen.

In addition to responding to Cheryl’s question I would like to tell her that I loved her joke about dying at fifty three and still having four of his own teeth. I laughed so hard that my wife got out of the tub to see what was going on.

Now as to Ashton and his suggestion that I be tied to Emma Thompson as a punishment for my heresy: In spite of the allegation that she does not have an original bone in her body and that she is guilty of savaging our beloved Jane Austen’s fine book and that furthermore she is a woman of tweed, I say, OK, where’s the rope.

Julie wants me to throw Marianne in the duck pond, which I would gladly do (God knows she needs it), but a careful reading of my post will show that it was not Marianne I wanted to carry but Kate Winslet.

Now allow me one last word on movies and Jane Austen. Those of us who never got to sit at the Bunny Table are perfectly happy if a movie maker takes a title from Jane Austen, throws in few good-looking women, dresses them in period costumes, shows us plenty of cleavage, stages a few dances that nobody ever did, has a whist game or two going on, puts some people in carriages, has the various women weep and wail over the various men, throws in some glorious English countryside and makes the whole thing sound vaguely like a plot from one of Miss Austen’s books. We are, of course, sorry but that's the way it is (particularly the part about the cleavage).

Dear Sir and Ray,

O.K., Ray, you lug Kate Winslett around, and I'll do the same with Robert Carlyle - fair enough?  Then we can meet at the duckpond for a Marianne-chucking session - the one who hurls her farthest wins.

I've been reading up on British maritime stuff - not military, but related to transportation to Australia in the late 1700s and early 1800s.  It is a little off the point, but does indicate the difference a surgeon could make on board, during long voyages - and it took about five months to get from Britain to Botany Bay.

Did you know, for instance, that between 1831-35, 133 vessels brought 26,731 convicts to Australia?.  They were getting quite efficient at it by then, but the earlier voyages were another matter.  I quote Robert Hughes (The Fatal Shore- that's us, by the way):
'The First Fleet had been entirely fitted out and provisioned by the commissioners of the navy it had been a government affair from start to finish ....The results were muddled and potentially disastrous, but they were better than what might have happened with private contract. ...  Once guidelines were laid down, every convict transport that sailed from England or Ireland after 1788 was fitted and victualled by private contract.  .... The only people the arrangement did not suit were the convicts themselves, since the contract system guaranteed their miseries and, often, their deaths.'
In fact, the contractors were often ex-slavers. Charming.

But, to continue: 'The commissioners .... put a naval surgeon aboard each vessel, who was answerable to them .. his job was to supervise convict health, correct abusive conduct of ships' officers and keep an eye on lax or incompetent contractors' surgeons.  No mere medical officer could tell a master what to do on his own ship, but their presence was felt.  The first transport to sail under this arrangement was the Royal Admiral in May 1792, followed in 1793 by three more shiploads of English and Irish prisoners.  All had supervisors on board, and out of 670 prisoners only 14 died.

The moral was clear, but by 1795 the Napoleonic Wars had begun and England had no naval surgeons to spare for Botany Bay.  In the next twenty years only one privately contracted transport sailed with a naval surgeon on board. Between 1792 and 1800, eighteen convict ships sailed to Australia. The first six, from 1792 to 1794, all had supervising agents.  Their death rate was one man in 55, one woman in 45.  Of the next six ships, only two carried naval agents or surgeons, and their death rate was one man in 19 and one woman in 68.  The last group of six had no naval supervision of any kind, and one man in 6 died, and one woman in 34.'

Sorry to be long-winded, but I think these figures are interesting, and seem to indicate that naval medical men must have had at least some idea of managing people's health.  Jane Austen's brothers must have had at least a nodding acquaintance with the hulks in which future transportees were housed - and I'm sure that Park Honan makes a comment somewhere about Francis making comment about slavers.  The thing is, apart from the chains and shackles and the length of voyage, British troops must have endured similar conditions when being transported to theatres of war - Hughes states that the British Navy 'simply assumed that one sailor in thirty would die of disease or accident at sea, apart from casualties in battle   one man in six was always ill.' From Captain Wentworth's sanitised account of life at sea - citing servants to wait at table, etc - I can only assume that Jane Austen's sailor brothers had the humanity not to regale their sisters with the facts.

As recently as 1879, when the future King George V and his brother, Prince Eddie, were packed off to sea, the British Navy was characterised by 'rum, buggery and the lash' (Winston Churchill, I think).  The Austen brothers must have existed in two completely different worlds.

Oh, and I almost forgot to add: you can have your cleavage, I must admit to QUITE liking those breeches!
Julie

Dear Ray,

What is it with you and Scottish fabrics, anyway?  Personally, I much prefer gumboots and trakkie daks - easier for climbing over paddock fences.  As for apologising to Tasmanians, look on it as akin to finding a Tasmanian Tiger spoor, or something like that - highly interesting and exceptionally rare.

I happen to agree with you about the film Sense and Sensibility (blood pressure tablets, Ashton!). It wasn't the book, but then, it couldn't be, could it?  No film versions can be 'the book', mainly for the reason I mentioned when writing to Seema - there is no way to replicate Jane Austen's own voice, which is the heart and soul of her novels. Simply seen as a film, I thought Sense and Sensibility had a grace that the Paltrow version of Emma (which was a horror, in my view) totally lacked.  I felt that the play sword fight simply humanised the characters a little - after all, they must have lived their daily lives, and though not necessary in a novel, in something that is visual, this has to be seen, or the whole thing fails to convince. Actually, the sword fight incident reminds me of a scene in A Man For All Seasons, when Henry VIII visits Thomas More's house, and More puts his hand on his daughter's head and quietly returns her to her curtsey when she rises too soon, in order to speak to the King.  Those little vignettes, to me, serve to humanise characters, and help us to see that they were human then as we are human now, and laughed, had jokes, and lost tempers, despite long skirts and formal manners.

But if you really want to carry Marianne Dashwood anywhere, let it be to the nearest duckpond, and chuck her in while you're about it!
Julie

Dear Julie and Ray,

Jane Austen's novels can be made into films quite easily because her narrator--her "authorial voice"--is so explicit. These are detailed instructions to talented women like Jennifer Ehle and Amanda Root that allow them to make the characters come alive. If you think about it, there is no such authority for producing a Shakespeare play - a paradox! In that case, the actress must rely upon the traditions of the theatre or the opinions of experts. In other words, the Shakespearean actress participates in the game of rumor; and, who is to know when things have gone terribly wrong in that case?

It isn't true that, as Julie says, "there is no way to replicate Jane Austen's own voice, which is the heart and soul of her novels". The voice--literally a voice-over narration--could be used in a film. It is just that current film makers eschew that possibility. I believe it is because it is thought too easy, and counter to the art to use other than visual methods to develop character. These same film makers can spend a great effort to supply the correct music for their films, but not narration - supply one crucial audio feature but not the other - However, that is a mere fashion. It seems obvious to me that the proper thing is to find the best artistic balance of the visual with a narration.

If you want to learn how effective a voice-over narration can be, just watch the recent A&E version of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Of course, there the filmmakers wanted to capture some of Hardy's poetry: "On a thyme-scented, bird-hatching morning in May...". However, they succeed in doing much of the character development as well. Why not, say I? In fact, some novels require that sort of thing and will fail otherwise. My example there is the recent version of Return of the Native, which was a perfect failure. (I felt so sorry for that young actress trying to portray Eustacia without benefit of narration.) Another aspect of that novel, that can only be perfectly clear through narration, is the importance of the heath to everything.

For me, the most curious part of Julie's apology for Sense and Sensibility is that our Tasmanian friend would defend Emma Thompson who ignored or trampled upon Jane Austen's authorial voice - Very curious indeed.

Dear Sir,

What I am trying to convey is the pleasure and the intimacy I gain from Jane Austen's novels, in which one can literally hear Jane Austen speaking.  For many critics, this is her great fault - her 'sticking her nose in', as it were, to her characters, and, as some would have it, her 'telling the reader what to think'.  This is for me her unique charm - her living wit and personality shine through the dramatic action of her novels - and no-one will ever be able to replicate that visually.  The only adaptation I know of that comes close, as far as I know, is Clueless, which for me is a total delight, but you will have to remember, before nailing me for my poor taste, that I come from a different culture, and cannot see the film as you do.

Was I defending Emma Thompson?  Didn't mean to, especially:  I just happened to find the film attractive - not necessarily to be judged as an adaptation.

I do not see how the heart of any Jane Austen novel can be presented on screen.  How does one visually represent such remarks as: 'He had said enough to shake the confidence of eighteen.'? Or (my personal favourite) 'The Musgroves had the misfortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year ...'  there is not one character in Persuasion into whose mouth those words could have been put, yet they are crucial to the understanding of that part of the novel. I could take a dozen such examples from each of the novels, but I hope you get my drift.

Meister: So? Why not the mouth of a narrator?

How's the tiger spoor going?
Julie

Dear Sir,

What I thought Clueless did manage to achieve is to reproduce the spirit of Emma Woodhouse - her blithe, serene, privileged ignorance.  But I'm aware that the film was no paragon of art. I just liked it, for God's sake!  I thought the dialogue was quite funny, and the female lead's voice-overs did, in some measure, supply the 'authorial voice' which, while not quite a narration, at least went part of the way.

The filmed version of The Age of Innocence used the narrator technique quite successfully, I thought, and of course there's no reason why it wouldn't work elsewhere.

I must say, it's quite funny watching you Yanks bicker between yourselves. Many years ago (during World War II, in fact), there was a saying in Australia that there were three problems with Americans: they were over paid, over sexed, and over here! As somebody who would know a Kentucky from a corn cob, may I ask - why on earth do you bother?
Julie

Dear Cheryl,

Methinks you oversimplify somewhat. I have little to say on Willoughby's behalf, because I think that section of the novel was poorly developed, but, still, I rather imagine Willoughby imagined that his reclusive, elderly relative was unlikely to hear of his London bonking exploits - and he did contend that he had not 'abandoned' the girl, and that she could have contacted him, had she the brains (pretty lame, I grant you).

Crawford did not risk everything for a weekend with Maria:  she ran away from her husband to Crawford and, further, put herself in the power of her mother-in-law's servant, by taking her into her (Maria's) confidence.  Crawford was hoping for a country-house grope, not an elopement: his mistake was to underestimate the depth of Maria's passion.  Mary Crawford's letter to Fanny gives an inkling into the frantic efforts to 'hush things up', if possible - 'when he returned from Richmond, he would have been glad to see Mrs Rushworth no more. - All that followed was the result of her imprudence'....

As for Mr Elliot, the estate he stood to inherit was pretty safe: 'There was only a small part of his estate that Sir Walter could dispose of'.... his biggest danger lay in the possibility of the birth of a male heir - but he couldn't just go around collecting Sir Walter's girlfriends for ever.

Perhaps Sir Walter may have done what Mr Elliot had once planned to do himself, and degrade the property by selling off the timber, but, in default of heirs male, the place itself was his.
Julie

Dear Ray Mitchell,

I certainly intended for you to put the blame squarely on those foul vessels of inquity known to the heathen population as "women."  Every enlightened man knows they are responsible for all the world's ills from the fall from grace to the high price of coffee.

Actually my southern experience is of western Kentucky. I get the impression you think that I'm talking about tobacco chewers but I'm not.  I'm talking about what might be termed as "recreational spitting" practiced by males of all ages and many older women.  (Where else will you see a 10 year old boy "practicing" spitting?)  The closest thing to a tin can you get in Hopkins County is people spitting in the sink at the McDonalds instead of the floor. ("Use the sink to wash your hands????  My daddy never washed his hands and he lived to be 53 and still had 4 of his own teeth.") Jeff Foxworthy isn't nearly so funny when you're living it.
Cheryl, yankee-at-large.

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