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4/21/02 Bree - Definitely P&P-95

Dear Ashton,

I received the videos of Pride and Prejudice (1985) for my birthday and have been watching and re-watching. Finally decided there is no comparison with P&P-95, in spite of superb performances by Moray Watson, Priscilla Morgan, Barbara Shelley and others. Elizabeth (Elizabeth Garvie) and Darcy (David Rintoul) were both disappointing.  Garvie spoke in narrations (perhaps under direction) and looked mesmerized all the time, and Rintoul was absolutely wooden.  I don't think I saw his face change expression more than 3 times.  He is undeniably handsome in a chiseled sort of way, but has no charisma or, I have to say, talent. Faye Weldon got misled here.  And since they are the principals, you have to be interested in them or the film falls flat.  Lady Catherine was very attractive, but too young and pretty. Georgiana Darcy, similarly to Jane Fairfax in Emma-96, faded away to almost non-existence.  So I have to watch P&P-95 now to recuperate.

4/21/02 Ashton - (sniff, sniff) I love you man!!

Dear Bree,

Finally! someone who agrees with me about the Garvie filmed-version of P&P! Actually, there is a remarkable degree of agreement - except, I am even less kind to Rintoul or to Weldon. Brace yourself - some - I mean, many disagree with us. Go figure.

4/21/02 The Meister - An intriguing passage in Caleb Williams, its relationship to P&P?

Dear Folks,

Godwin's Caleb Williams was published in 1794 and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in 1813. However, our Lady may have begun her masterpiece much earlier; in fact, the youthful Jane Austen may have first drafted a manuscript only a few years after Caleb appeared. That is what makes the passage from Caleb, that I am about to present, rather fascinating.

The situation in the novel is this: an evil landowner is furious that his ward has fallen in love with his enemy, Mr. Falkland. He imprisons her, arranges a marriage for her to a lowly farmer, and mocks her complaints by pointing out that she is too poor to expect a marriage to a gentleman. The ward does what was expected of an eighteenth century heroine and falls fatally ill from the stress of it all. In her final delirium, she imagines all sorts of things and cries out in all sorts of ways. Among her cries is this one. (In all cases, the emphasis is mine.)

... A moment after, she exclaimed upon [Falkland] in a disconsolate yet reproachful tone, for his unworthy deference to the prejudices of the world. It was cruel of him to show himself so proud, and tell her that he would never consent to marry a beggar. But, if he were proud, she was determined to be proud too. He should see that she would not conduct herself like a slighted maiden, and that, though he could reject her, it was not in his power to break her heart. ...
Volume 1, Chapter X

Scholars tell us that when Jane Austen was forced to replace her original title, First Impressions, she found the expression "pride and prejudice" in a novel by Fanny Burney. The scholars are probably right - still, the passage from Caleb is intriguing is it not?

4/17/02 Dan mailto:dhuth1@neo.rr.com" - Ms. Austen's humor

Dear Ashton,

Thank you for wondering what, exactly, I find funny in Ms. Austen's novels.  One of my favorite funny fragments is in Emma, Chapter 13. Mr. John Knightley has just warned Emma that Mr. Elton very likely is in love with Emma, and not at all partial to Harriet. Emma responds:

" 'I thank you, but I assure you, you are quite mistaken. Mr. Elton and I are very good friends, and nothing more.' And she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgement are forever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant and in want of counsel.  He said no more."

Your question to me concerning Box Hill is somewhat less fascinating than Emma's famous insult—but, still, there is a similarity.  I laugh often at Mr. Bennet's words, although sometimes his attempts at humor I find strained.  I'll be generous and share with you another bit of humor: in Chapter One of Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood has come to visit Heathcliff and is left alone for a few minutes.  He sits by the fire, and proceeds to stick out his tongue and make faces at the dogs keeping him company; he is amazed that they proceed to attack him.

4/17/02 Ashton - Hm-mm, interesting examples

Dear Dan,

I suppose the irony of that passage from Emma might amuse. However, the passage is a bit sad for me for the same reason that the event is sad to Knightley. He might have been amused to find such an instance of pretentiousness, delusion, and obtuseness in Mrs. Elton, but he cannot have been pleased to find those same qualities in a young woman worthy of so much better, and a woman so precious to himself. I cannot laugh with you.

Mr. Bennet is never funny to me; I will never understand why readers laugh where he insults his wife in front of her children and his children in public. What can these readers be thinking? My judgments of Bennet are the ones that Darcy indicates in his letter to Elizabeth and the one that Elizabeth herself decides upon in Chapter 42:

"Elizabeth, however, had never been blind to the impropriety of her father's behavior as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; ... she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish from her thoughts that continual breach of conjugal obligation and decorum which, in exposing his wife to the contempt of her own children, was so highly reprehensible. But she never felt so strongly as now ... the evils arising from so ill judged a direction of talents; talents which, rightly used, might at least have preserved the respectability of his daughters, even if incapable of enlarging the mind of his wife."

There is nothing funny about Mr. Bennet, and yet reader after reader laughs at his jokes. Jane Austen's novels are deadly serious stuff. But, as you point out in your original posting, you and I read those novels in a very different way. So differently that one us must be wrong.

Have you ever known someone to stick his tongue out at a dog? What possibly could be the circumstances for such a thing?

4/18/02 Dan mailto:dhuth1@neo.rr.com" - Humor

Dear Ashton,

You might consider quit yanking on my leg. But I'll play along.

From Pride and Prejudice, Ch. 14 (Mr. Collins boasting of his fawning abilities to Mr. Bennet):

Ms. Austen's portrayal of Mr. Bennet here is obviously sympathetic. In general, his rather bad treatment of his wife and his other faults may be deplorable, may be deplored, may be laughed at, and may be laughed with, all together.

Our sweetheart Elizabeth, herself, finds her father amusing in his shameful treatment of his sensible, intelligent, compassionate wife (Pride and Prejudice, Ch. 20):

Mr. Bennet's letter to Mr. Collins, in which he affirms the fact of his second daughter's imminent marriage, is funny, and obviously intended by Ms. Austen to be funny. I agree with you, that she is deadly serious about never being too serious not to laugh when it's appropriate (Pride and Prejudice, Ch. 60):

"DEAR SIR,
I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Elizabeth will soon be the wife of Mr. Darcy. Console Lady Catherine as well as you can. But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.
Your's sincerely, &c."

An interesting discussion concerning humor in Pride and Prejudice, Ch. 10, is relevant here but omitted for brevity.  I will, instead, recall to us the fact that the virtuous Mrs. Weston, herself, can be so shockingly insensitive as to find humor in bad conduct (Emma, Ch. 26, Emma talking to Mrs. Weston):

4/19/02 Ashton - regrets, impressions, and Darcy on humor

Dear Dan,

You are right, I have been too defensive. I apologize and I will improve the tone of my responses.

It is a great shame that Jane Austen had to resort to the title Pride and Prejudice for the novel she intended to call First Impressions. (By the time she was able to publish, someone else had used her original choice.) Some may think the original was a reference to Darcy's, "she is not handsome enough to tempt me." Actually, Darcy overcame that initial, false impression rather soon and noticed, instead, Miss Bennet's "fine eyes" and pleasing figure. I believe that the original title refers to a veritable cacophony of false, first impressions by a wide range of characters in the novel. It is yet another tribute to Jane Austen's realistic and easy style that readers do not become overwhelmed by so many instances - indeed, do not even take conscious notice. Here is my list and I hope that you and others might contribute other examples.

• Elizabeth's false, first impression of Darcy that she later disavows to Wickham.
• Elizabeth's false, first impression of Wickham, "Who could not but like him ... there is truth in all his looks."
• Elizabeth's false, first impression of Bingley, whom she sees as weak-willed and overly compliant to his friend.
• Darcy's false, first impression of Jane Bennet whom he believes holds no special regard for his friend.
• Collins' false, first impression of Elizabeth's regard for him.
• Darcy's false, first impression of the governess he hires for his sister.
• Jane Bennet's false, first impressions of Bingley's sisters.
• The false, first impressions that the friends of Mrs. Gardiner in Lambton hold for Georgianna Darcy.
• Mr. Bennet's false, first impression of the young Fanny Gardiner.
• Mr Bennet's false impressions of Bingley and of his own daughter, Jane.

That list is incontrovertible. What may lead to debate is my suggestion that Jane Austen intended that the readers experience false impressions of their own. There are at least two examples of what I am trying to say. Start with Mrs. Bennet who is foolish, vain, ignorant, and gauche. Her husband is witty, urbane, educated, and aware. Yet, in a majority of the instances in the novel, Mrs. Bennet understands what is to be done and her husband does not. Basically, she understands that there is not much inheritance, her husband is not getting any younger, she is not getting any younger, and her daughters are not getting any younger. At the beginning of the novel, two unmarried young men of wealth enter the neighborhood and, at the end, they leave married to two of her daughters - just what she had intended and had worked toward. In that same period, Mr. Bennet read some novels.

The second example is Mr. Collins who is limited, foolish, unattractive, obsequious, and awkward. There are any number of ways that Jane Austen could have introduced him into that neighborhood and supported the exact same plot. The way she actually chose is fascinating. Collins comes to Longbourn in order to marry one of the Bennet daughters, none of whom he had ever seen before. And then Jane Austen arranged for one of the girls to be an absolutely perfect match for him - Mary Bennet. Collins did not have to marry in that direction; he had a comfortable living and he was the heir to Longbourn. He could have married a women with a considerable dowry. Instead, he come to Longbourn because he wanted to make amends for the entailment - to make one of the Bennet sisters the next mistress of Longbourn Hall.

Why, do you think that Jane Austen made these choices for Mr. Collins?

I cannot laugh at the Mr. Bennet charades you refer to - the charade with respect to Collins with Elizabeth as audience, and then with respect his own wife with Elizabeth as audience. Both victims are silly but that is not enough to qualify them for ridicule. I would not laugh at a blind person bumping into furniture or at a foolish puppy hurt by his own clumsiness.

Remember what Darcy said about humor - I mean remember what Jane Austen wrote for Darcy to say about humor,

"... The wisest and best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke."
Chapter XI

My sense of things as well.

4/22/02 Dan mailto:dhuth1@neo.rr.com" - Ms. Jane Austen's humor

Dear Ash,

This is in response to your missive from 4/19 in the thread I recently started. I vowed not to continue; you and I argue totally different things; I am, however, weakened by your [censored].

People can, and often do, find things humorous and laughable that are, at the same time, not totally ridiculous or unredeemable. My point in my last post was not whether you or I find such things funny, but WHETHER OR NOT MS. AUSTEN HERSELF FOUND THEM FUNNY (a point you seem to ignore.) The fact is that Mrs. Weston (and, through her, Ms. Austen herself) laughed (or forced herself not to laugh) at Emma's unkind mimicry of poor Miss Bates at the Coles' party; Elizabeth B. (and therefore Ms. Austen) smiled (very likely wanting to do more) at her father's statements in his study after Mr. Collins' proposal; etc.  Just because you, personally, puff yourself up and flatter yourself to be so outrageously high-minded and sententiously saintly that you can never find humor in anything is totally irrelevant to almost every other intelligent reader's perception of Ms. Austen's writing and design; surely, Ms. Austen herself would find your ridiculous pomposity an occasion for delicious merriment.

You quote the wise words of Ms. Austen, which say "...The wisest and best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object is a joke." Mr. Collins and Elizabeth's parents and yourself are, none of them, the "wisest and best of" people.

Your fine work with this website does show that you have some chance of not being a total imbecile, and I embrace that hidden aspect of your character.

NOTE: the thought that Mr. Collins and Mary B. would be a good match is astute, and something I hadn't really considered. Although there are other good reasons why Ms. Austen didn't allow this to happen, probably the most important is that then Elizabeth would have visited Hunsfeld accompanied by either or both of her parents. One cannot imagine things working out (Darcy proposing, his letter to Elizabeth) if Mrs. Bennet had been in daily contact with Mr. Darcy there. But, the encounters that then would have sparkled between Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine would have been delicious, although surely you would have found nothing at all to laugh at.

4/19/02 Linda - First impressions

Dear Ash and Dan,

Ash: I remember our forays into The Mysteries of Udolpho and The History of Sir Charles Grandison where we found references to 'first impressions'.  It seems to have been on their minds a lot back then.  I had only really considered Elizabeth's 'first impression' of Darcy. Now you have a whole list of them - well done.  Looking deeper into P&P with that list in mind, I can now see how very much 'depth' she has placed in her beautiful wrapping paper.

I now understand what Darcy was talking about in your final quote about humor. It all makes sense now. It is like putting the pieces of a puzzle together. She definitely has a message. Now all I have to do is figure out what it is.  But that is the fun part!

Dan: I often do a lot of smiling when I read JA, because I have a lot of her characters in my own family.  I still say that human nature has not changed all that much in the last 200 years.  Thanks for sharing.
Linda

4/18/02 Linda - Catching up and falling behind

Dear Voices,

Ya'll are getting way ahead of me.  I will try to catch up though I doubt it.  I have to hurry because I have to make preparations for a weekend trip to New Orleans, er.. N'awlns, so I will be "out" for a few days.  [Aside to Cheryl: I am meeting a friend from RoP who is researching a book she is going to write.]

Cheryl, thanks for the poem The Sea-Apprentice Boy by somebody (or a group?) called 'Altan' which is almost my new grandson's name 'Alten'.

In your repartee with Ash you have made some comments with which I agree, but I will add something further - my own twist.

Cheryl: "He was writing a book about prison conditions and injustice, and the rest of it was throwaway material."

Nowadays we have lots of expose books, for instance King Leopold's Ghost about the exploitation of the Congo.  I think Godwin would have been better off if he had invented that genre.

Cheryl: "I should just give up reading the newspaper I guess."

I already have!  Except for the comics!  I couldn't agree more with your entire post "Irony, or perhaps synchronicity??"

Ashton:  "(I thought that Justice was supposed to be blind?) You can imagine how pleased I was to read that you feel as I do on this subject."

I will have to apologize for thinking that all Californians, especially the collegiate ones were left wing liberals.  You (and Cheryl) sound quite of like mind to myself.

Let me group some of your comments together and then comment.

Cheryl: "That murder is okay, so long at the person committing it is educated and smart and feels bad later?" and "Perhaps Godwin's point is simpler than I imagined: that the law must be immune to the weaknesses of men?" - "Sadly, the closest thing I see to true blue reformers these days are the constitutionalists, a group I dislike intensely."

Ash quoted directly from Caleb Williams:  "God, we are told, judges of men by what they are at the period of arraignment, and whatever be their crimes, if they have seen and abjured the folly of these crimes, receives them to favor. But the institutions of countries that profess to worship this God admit no such distinctions. They leave no room for amendment, and seem to have a brutal delight in confounding the demerits of offenders."

Godwin is a little off base here in the words he puts in God's mouth.  God forgives and shows mercy for the truly repentant, but there is also the element of 'restitution'.  The sinners do not get off scot-free as Cheryl is afraid of.  The penal system of today hardly knows the meaning of 'restitution' and has no concept of 'correction' IMO.  I hope there are exceptions, but there is too much 'otherwise'.

Ash, thank you for that further discussion on political liberals.  I had been guilty of mixing the 'old' with the 'new'.

Ash: "And believe me, there was a great deal of apologizing for Stalin and the Soviet Union at Berkeley in those days. So, I hope you will refocus your ire in this regard. Also, remember my example was a thug - believe me, by 1968 all the radical leaders were thugs."

Really?!!  Well that certainly lives up to my thoughts on Berkeley in those days.

Ash:  "the first casualty was the truth - so, the second casualties were the liberals. They were wiped away from the face of the intellectual landscape. They were the natural enemies of the new left for two reasons: they were the principal rivals for intellectual influence in the universities; and, they stood for reconciliation and accommodation in society - anathema to the new left who desired to create division, chaos, and strife."

BTW, I love truth.  It wasn't until many years after that period of history that I was aware of what you are speaking.  I do remember in 1964, a friend coming home from a N.O. university course in creative writing spouting off about "free love and nickel beer" and that we should not have dropped those bombs on Japan.  It was the first time I had heard such things. The love and beer struck me as anathema to my religious upbringing.  The bombs, in my view at the time, were necessary to shorten the war thereby saving the lives of thousands of our own soldiers.  The professor was regretting all those lost civilian lives and it is most certainly a shame.  But it was war, though I am now aware that surely there were other options.

And please be aware that just as in the 'new left who desired to create division, chaos, and strife' there is just that same element in the 'religious right' and 'constitutionalists'.  Am I correct in that you believe the constitution is okay, but we have some 'constitutionalists' who go too far?

Next you mentioned a 'crow bar' - that is where I am in the book.  I have made notes of several such phrases such as 'will he, nill he'.  I was wondering if that had any relation to our 'willy nilly'.  As a matter of fact I have marked up lots of pages to highlight things of interest.  For instance, in Chapter 11 Godwin writes for Caleb: "For my own part I had never seen a prison, and like the majority of my brethren had given myself little concern to enquire what was the condition of those who committed offence against."

I remember in my college days once while waiting for my Mother to get off from work at the parish court house, my girl friend and I were wandering the halls and stumbled onto a jailer. We inquired if we could see the jail. In his most condescending "Southern-Ladies-don't-do-such-things" voice he said, "You don't want to go in there."  Being the obedient young Ladies we were, we did not question him any further, but I left with the understanding that it was not a nice sight to see.

I hope to have a few comments in summary when I finish it.
Linda

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