To Everybody,

I must  admit that I feel rather awkward trying to elbow my way into what seems to me to be a rather closed community and also a bit scared of being clobbered to a lifeless pulp as soon as I open my mouth. Anyway, I too am a great admirer of Jane Austen, but I've had great difficulty in finding other people who share my passion outside of my own family.  And so it was with great joy that I discovered this site which, unlike other Jane Austen notice boards, does not consist exclusively out of messages by morons cursing their luck for getting stuck with P&P as their prescribed senior novel or bushwhackers trying to bum a free essay off some unsuspecting innocent. On the contrary I was very impressed (and a bit daunted I must admit) by the obvious knowledge and insight displayed by most, in fact all, of the contributors to this notice board.

I have to admit right away that I am not as well read as most of you, even in regards to the writing of Jane Austen. I've read all the novels and her History of England (I feel a slightly guilty about that one, reading it felt a bit like going behind the scenes at a play and catching the leading lady in between costumes) but none of her other works and so I find myself somewhat in the dark when reading your discussions on Lady Julia, Richardson etc. but since I am already convinced of your good taste I would welcome your guidance in the expansion of my literary horizons.

Thanks also Ash for checking the spelling, since that is an Achilles heel of mine. A rather feeble excuse for this that I feel obliged to offer is that English is not my first language. The structuring of my sentences aren't always what they should be either and no spell-check will fix that so have mercy on me if I slip up now and then.

Dear Ash,
I noticed a message on 5/1/99 in which you discuss the use of the word "romance". I'm sorry to rake up the past but... ah well, here I go anyway. You were of the opinion that Charlotte Lucas used "romantic" in its modern sense. You sneered a bit at the OED and I suppose you will have even less trust in the Concise Oxford Dictionary which is the most reliable one I have at my disposal, but bear with me.

One definition that the said dictionary supplies for romance is: Sentimental or idealized love. This definition I think is a valid one but leans more towards the original than the modern meaning. But when it is applied to Charlotte's sentence it fits too. She is not sentimental nor does she harbour high ideals about love. "...I ask only for a comfortable home..." she says. So, it is my belief that here too Jane is making use of the older meaning attached to romance, and that explains her statement about never writing a romantic novel.

Another subject about which I know you feel strongly but upon which I wish to touch anyway is the matter of defining J.A.'s books as comedies. Although comedy is not the first word that springs to mind when I think of her books, I do not think the word should be so completely shunned. True, when the popular modern meaning of the word is attached to Jane Austen it leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but again, there is more than one meaning to the word. There are two definitions of the word I would like to bring to your attention. Again I use the Concise Oxford Dictionary as source: 1) A play, film, etc., of an amusing or satirical character, usually with a happy ending.  2) Humour, esp. in a work of art etc. When explained thus I find the word "comedy" not entirely so offensive, for her books are amusing, humorous and they all have happy endings. I must admit that the use of "satirical" in the first definition is not entirely to my liking and indeed satire is a word often affixed to the works of Jane Austen. It is I think a word more to be feared than comedy. The COD defines satire as: "The use of ridicule, irony, sarcasm to expose folly or vice or to lampoon an individual."

Ridicule? maybe. Irony? definitely. Sarcasm? Her characters maybe, but our Jane would never stoop to use sarcasm, the lowest form of wit! Some of you are bound to disagree with some of the things I've said, so feel free to contradict me.

I do hope I'm not simply resurrecting a point of argument that has already been delt with several times.

Anyway, see you around.

Dear Folks,

Well, I did get some satisfaction today. This morning was the end of the classroom part of the seminar and I managed to get in the last word. I was in my trash Darcy, praise Mr. Bennet mode and had just said, "I could sit down with Mr. Bennet and carry on a conversation. Darcy would not have given me the time of day."  The teacher said, "That will be the last word."

This afternoon the class is off to Sidmouth. As for me, I am still in a state of travel fatigue from our all day trip yesterday to Bath. We trod every inch of every step that our Lady either walked or wrote about. Huge crowds milled around everywhere. Lots of undershirts and beer bellies. I can not think of a single character in all of Jane Austen who would have been pleased with the quality of the gathered folk. (Well, maybe James, Mr Woodhouse's coach driver would have fit in.) It does seem that I can agree with Sir Walter on the women of Bath.

Speaking of our teacher, her first name is Hazel. I have been afraid to ask what her last name is, fearing that it might be Motes. Whatever her last name is, she is a delight and has done a good job.  Every time she hesitates for as much as a millionth of second over the name of a character, twenty-eight people sing out the name. These people know and love Jane Austen.

There is a new book out now by the title of England, England and the gist of the book is that some Rupert Murdock type character buys up the Isle of Wight and recreates all the tourist places in England there. He has the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London, Big Ben. Stratford on Avon, etc. Also he has Robin Hood and his band of merry men, recreation of the battle of Britian complete with air combat. Samuel Johnson is at the corner pub and will chat with you. In short it is a complete English experience without all the parking problems and crowds. The story is quite clever and if they ever actually do it, we need to make sure that Jane Austen and all of her sites get recreated there.

What had happened is that the modern world has swallowed up Jane Austen. I have remarked before on my disappointment with Chawton. Frankly, I have to admit that they probably did the best they could, but they missed the mark as far as having anything that would appeal to a Jane Austen lover. The mark it hits is the passing tourist.

The famous "creaking door" is marked with a sign, but the location of the door makes no sense as it is a door, which would be opened by a person coming down from upstairs. Every step that anyone takes can be heard throughout the house and the creaking door story looks to be another of those stories that get started and cannot be stopped.

Ever since that fateful day some months ago when Julie so firmly set Elizabeth Bennet on a chamber pot, I have been trying to forget the image. Alas, at Chawton they have on display a chamber pot in a closet in the very bedroom in with Jane Austen slept. They do not claim that it is THE chamber pot, only that it is pot of that period. Now I have two images to get rid of.

As to the women in the seminar, they neither pampered me or attacked me as a MAN. They have been pleasant and civil-no more and no less. I return with my virtue intact.

This will be my last from the road - More upon my return.

Dear Folks,

I want to rebut a number of things that have been posted recently. I have no special target, although I perhaps should say that everything is my target. I will address several specific things that I think are not strictly correct, especially things said about Darcy, Elizabeth, Jennifer Ehle, and filmed versions in general. Also, I wonder whether this community thinks about Jane Austen's time in the correct manner. It is my sincere opinion that this community gets more things right than any other on the web, so we will probably resolve these differences.

This is a highly literate community, so let me broach the basic question in literary terms. Jane Austen's life lies, roughly, halfway between those of Fielding and James. Was her time transitional between the others? Or was her cultural experience more like one or the other? My answer is that her time is nearly identical to that of Fielding and was nothing like the Victorian times of Henry James. I have always thought that and Julie, unwittingly, has placed a great deal of evidence in my hands.

From a technological point-of-view, my hypothesis is indisputable. In Jane Austen's time, Darcy rode into Pemberley for his meeting with Elizabeth on horseback. It was the middle of summer and he would have been hot and - well - fragrant. Remember that Elizabeth encountered him just outside his stable. In Henry Jame's time, Darcy would have taken the train, been wined and served, and would have arrived as a Victorian gentleman should - neat, tight-assed, and less of a man. For this reason, I believe that Cheryl was mistaken, on 7/21/99, to suggest that "Having Mr. Darcy appear in dishabille is a positive perversion of the novel." My wife had to explain to me that Colin Firth is a hunk, so before that I could watch his interpretation - It is perfect. In the swimming scene and in the fencing scene, Firth shows Darcy in the greatest pain; he is doing his damnedest to get over Elizabeth and he is not having much luck. That is a perfect setup for the chance meeting and is in perfect accord with Jane Austen's intent. Jane Austen wrote love stories.

Jane Austen's time was the time of Mozart, Beethoven, Goya, and Byron. It was the time of the American and French revolutions and the Irish Rebellion. Great Battles were fought before Moscow, at Waterloo, and at Trafalgar. When a contemporary bought a Jane Austen novel, she could also purchase books by Casanova or De Sade. We know for a fact that Jane Austen was very familiar with Tom Jones. You are going to have to provide a lot of evidence to me before I will believe it impossible that Wentworth could have kissed Anne on a public street in Bath.

Julie complains about Jennifer Ehle's interpretation of Elizabeth, calling it "prissy". "Prissy" might mean something different in the Commonwealth. I suspect that what Julie objects to is that Ms. Ehle interprets Elizabeth as wrong-headed. Elizabeth is wrong-headed - that is the point of the novel. Remember, she will eventually come to her senses and tell her father that Darcy is truly the best man she ever knew. One thing that Jane Austen does so well is to use family traits to amplify a person's character. Elizabeth is a little bit like Lydia and a whole lot like her father. Remember that passage where she is joking with her father and then realizes that they have trampled on Sister Jane's feelings. I loathe that man and I am disappointed with that part of Elizabeth. Our Lady helps us understand Darcy better by telling us a great deal about his sister, Georgianna.

Surely we all want to learn Jane Austen's novels better, and we do that by reading the views of others at this bulletin board or elsewhere. We read and then we accept or challenge - some few times we challenge and then accept. I don't see why film makers can't make their views known; they are just persons like us. I don't understand why we should, categorically, reject their attempt to film a particular interpretation of Jane Austen's intent. Perhaps we object to their professionalism or their ability to dominate our attention.

Dear Sir,

When I described what I have seen of Ms Ehle's performance as 'prissy', I was referring to just that - her performance, and not in any way her interpretation of Elizabeth Bennet's character.  I found it irritating that, in trying to recreate what the director imagined to be the behaviour of the period, he limits the actress to expressing most of her feelings with a smirk and a sideways look under the bonnet - and the occasional cross-country canter.  I haven't watched enough of the series to know how Elizabeth's character and motivation is developed, but I wish they had given her more of the life and liveliness that is present in the novel.

Things were certainly very un-Victorian in Jane Austen's time.  My Village Shopkeeper, who finished writing ten years before Jane's birth, apparently lives in a village where they were at it like bunnies from dawn to dark - bastards all over the place.  He lists most of them, because in his capacity of parish warden, it was part of his duty to 'swear the father' of illegitimate children, so that said father could be forced to pay for the child's maintenance, and not the parish.  There is a twenty-year old servant pregnant to her seventy-year old master (who 'refused to dismiss the girl'), there are babies all over the place.  The author himself has a nephew, bastard son of his half-sister; nobody seems to think any the worse of her, and her brothers care for the boy and start him in a trade, after the mother's death.  There is also a heavily-pregnant wife of the author's friend, rolling drunk, playing cricket in the street with the street urchins (that caused a little more disquiet).  Much of this ordinary rural life must have passed under Jane Austen's very nose, as her father, as incumbent of Steventon, would have been similarly involved in the naming of fathers, and extraction of maintenance.  The same sort of thing is evident in Woodforde.

Now, the Victorians hid these matters much more successfully, by turning the woman out of house and home (they didn't seem to do that much in Woodforde's and Turner's time), so that she could form one of that vast army of women, the prostitutes of London and other urban areas.  Was it Mr Gladstone who used to collect them up and take them home for a decent meal?

Jane Austen does, however, employ selective blindness in her novels, as the Victorians did in their lives.  Drunkenness, unwanted pregnancies, illegitimate children and who was to pay for them - these situations must have been as common in Highbury, Mansfield, Northanger and Meryton as they were everywhere else, and several of the characters in the novels must have been directly responsible for managing these affairs - Mr Knightley as magistrate, Mr Elton as vicar, Sir Thomas Bertram, Edward Bertram, General Tilney and Henry Tilney - they must all have known only too well what a pregnant maid looked like, but the species appears not to exist.  Nor does a drunken servant - although those, as well, must have been plentiful enough.

Just quickly - Ray, Mr Thorpe would probably have been right at home in today's Bath - beer gut notwithstanding!
Julie

Dear Julie,

I am grateful to you for leading me to the Parson Woodforde diaries and I certainly will acquire a copy of the "shopkeeper diaries" you so often mention. These contemporary accounts help us better understand the England of Jane Austen.

Your posting is excellent, but I especially like your judgment that "Jane Austen does, however, employ selective blindness in her novels". You gave a number of good examples to which I would add that the men in our Lady's novels didn't even smoke. Ray has complained that he couldn't find Jane Austen in the England of today, but he may have had some trouble finding her in the Regency period as well. On the other hand, the human nature portrayed in her novels is always about us, from the Mississippi to the fair halls of Tasmania, and "all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem".

A great source for this discussion is Jane Austen's nephew, born James Edward Austen - later Austen-Leigh. Our Lady loved this nephew and encouraged and honored him. He was eighteen when he attended her funeral in 1817. He would become auntie's first biographer more than fifty years later (Memoir of Jane Austen, 1871). Apparently, the family noticed that people were starting to read Jane Austen again and interest in her life and circumstances was on the rise. James Edward was not a trained writer, certainly not a biographer, and he did not have access to the materials available to later scholars. He lacked objectivity. However, beside a first-hand, intimate acquaintance with Jane Austen, James Edward had one other advantage that sweeps away all these considerations - he had a keen mind - he had an Austen mind. No other biography written since is as well conceived, even though all others may contain more trivia and other detail. I hope you own a copy; I can think of no other person on earth who is more deserving of a copy.

A large section of James Edward's first two chapters is devoted to "Changes of Habits and Customs in the last Century". I will excerpt some of those for you. Remember, he was writing for a Victorian audience in 1871, nearly one hundred years after the birth of his beloved and increasingly famous Aunt Jane.

As my subject carries me back about a hundred years, it will afford occasions for observing many changes gradually effected in the manners and habits of society, which I may think it worth while to mention. ... Some of this generation may be little aware how many conveniences, now considered to be necessaries and matters of course, were unknown to their grandfathers and grandmothers. ... Ignorance and coarseness of language also were still lingering even upon higher levels of society than might have been expected to retain such mists. ... [A neigboring squire] narrating some conversation which he had heard between [Jane Austen's father and mother], represented the later as beginning her reply to her husband with a round oath; and when his daughter called him to task, reminding him that Mrs. Austen never swore, he replied, 'Now, Betty, why do you pull me up for nothing? that's neither here nor there; you know very well that's only my way of telling the story.'

... The smaller landed proprietors, who seldom went farther from home than their country town, from the squire with his thousand acres to the yeoman who cultivated his hereditary property of one or two hundred; then formed a numerous class--each the aristocrat of his own parish; and there was probably a greater difference in manners and refinement between this class and that immediately above them than now can be found between any two persons who rank as gentlemen. ... I believe that a century ago the improvement in most country parishes began with the clergy; and that in those days a rector who chanced to be a gentleman and a scholar found himself superior to his chief parishioners in information and manners, and became a sort of centre of refinements and politeness.

... Every hundred years, and especially a century like the last, marked by an extraordinary advance in wealth, luxury, and refinement of taste, as well as in the mechanical arts which embellish our houses, must produce a great change in [the household's] aspect.

Between the time of the Aunt's death and the Nephew's biography was the time of the invention of devices run on gas and electricity, and the invention of steam locomotion both on land and on the sea. Jane's last thoughts of her baby brother would have been of his captain's command of large sailing ships of the British Navy. Decades later, the now-Admiral's last thoughts of his sister would have been during his illness aboard a Naval steamship and just after his latest extension of the British Empire. There is so much more, but I conclude with this:

But I doubt whether the rising generation are equally aware how much gentlemen did for themselves in those times, and whether some things that I mention will not be a surprise to them. Two homely proverbs were held in higher estimation in my days than they are now--'The master's eye makes the horse fat;' and, 'if you would be well served, serve yourself.' ...

Dear Sir,

'It is more than fifty years since I, the youngest of all the mourners, accompanied my aunt's coffin....'  that's from memory, so it may be a little inexact, but it's fairly close to the opening sentence of Austen-Leigh's Memoir.  I also quite like a comment from the introduction of one of my copies, 'A generation far enough removed from the Victorians not to feel the dislike they engendered in their immediate successors will be able to read this memoir and do it justice.'

I think the writer there was referring to Austen-Leigh's complacent comparisons on carriages, springs and such.  I agree, though, that the memoir, for what it is, has not been bettered, and I feel Austen-Leigh portrayed his aunt as she would have wished (if the thing was inevitable - I'm sure she would have much rather not have been portrayed at all).

All this talk (mostly my own) about bastardry in the parish makes me think of a quote from The French Lieutenant's Woman, where it is implied that premarital sex was neither uncommon, nor particularly frowned upon, amongst some sections of the English peasantry - indeed, a woman of proven fertility was preferable.  That's all very fine of course, if one is having sex on a 'try before you buy' principle, but failed to take care of the casual encounters on the servants' staircase!  Would Hetty Sorrel have been in such deep water, for instance, if she had gotten in foal to Adam Bede instead of the young master?  I think not.  She would have 'sworn the father' and been married, and that would have been that.  She was probably in a position of some power, as a matter of fact:  remember the passage in Woodforde where he talks of his dislike of the law whereby a man could be virtually incarcerated if he did not marry a woman who swore him as father of her child?
Julie

Dear Folks,

Cheryl:  I was talking about the BC branch of the Okanagan Valley which contains a very long lake that I note from my map does not extend quite so far as the border.  There is a river that reaches down your way, though, so I am imagining that we were possibly in the same area, but on different sides of the fence.  Halloooo!  By black raspberries, are you referring to what we call blackberries, I wonder?  They do look like black raspberries.  I'm referring to the ubiquitous and scratchy plant that covers anything not constantly in motion all down the west coast.

Julie:  I was thinking of that very sketch you mention as I wrote my last missive.  And then I read Ray's message about ladies diving into his arms from the cobb at Lyme and I began to imagine what the scene might have looked like if he hadn't shown up and there was just the "modified" very old man to catch them - or none at all.  A dozen or so ladies in their Laura Ashley prints piled up on the shoreline like so many lemmings.  Very Monty Pythonesque, really.

Then, along comes the Jabberwocky....

Yes, I will stay away from the Bandersnatch, now that I know Ashton is up in the wee hours of the morning sniffing it.  I fear for us all.

Dear Cheryl,

Point taken and granted, entirely.  I generally try not to contribute to discussions on adaptations, screen versions, imagined sequels, etc, of Jane Austen's works, because I am quite unreasonable on the subject.  I bored my dear Sir into submission once, and I will try not to repeat myself, but probably will, anyway.  My difficulty is that I have been on this earth for forty-five years, and have been reading Jane Austen's novels for thirty-two of those years.  The texts are alive in my head (just as well something is!) and adaptations are to me irrelevant. Now, suppose someone were to produce a screen biography - a physical one - of Jane Austen's England, I would be delighted.  Assuming the director could eschew dramatic effect, and render on screen an equivalent of some of the delightful books I have on Jane Austen and her time, that is.  Nigel Nicolson's lovely book is begging to be put on film, for instance - it is essentially a photographic essay of Jane Austen's world. I'm thinking here something of the quality of the 'American Civil War' series that I saw some years ago, that married so well with the book.

The thing is, I'm so pedantic as to feel that any interpretation of Jane Austen's work is inevitably an impertinence - just as I feel too much probing into her life is  I'm sure this is my English blood coming out!  I would never presume to enquire about her private life, nor to assume about it.

Basically, you see, I'm what would be called in England an 'amiable eccentric' (not too much of the amiable), and in Australia, a couple of kangaroos short in the top paddock.
Julie

By the way, what is this cherry place?  We had a competition at work once on night shift (it was VERY late) to name all the states of the U.S., and nobody came up with a name like that.  We managed to name 30 something states, amongst about a dozen people.
Julie

From the Meister: Excellent use of your time!
Ummm - which twenty states can't you name?

That's a lot of horses and coaches!  If the smell didn't kill you, the tetanus would, hunh? I never really thought about the British system, I just figured that each inn owned its own and they went one leg of the journey and then did the return trip.  I also thought (wrongly it seems) that most people who could afford to travel did so in private vehicles.  Mark Twain paid 150 gold dollars ($7500) to travel from St. Jo Missouri to Virginia City in the Nevada Territory and paid his brother's fare as well. The things some men do to avoid the draft!

Speaking of Monty Python, we recently bought "Pleasure At Her Majesty's"  which includes Rowan Atkinson at his prissy best and Peter Cook reminding us what a loss his death was.  We've got "More Ripping Yarns" on order to complete our collection. I can't sing "The Philosophers' Song" but I can do the all seven and one half minutes of "What's Opera Doc?" complete with sound effects.
Cheryl

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