Doran Godwin

As long as we are on the delightful subject of Emma Woodhouse, I would recomend, to any who haven't seen it, the BBC version of Emma from 1972, starring Doran Godwin. It may take a little getting used to, as it lacks the jazzy editing and dynamic musical score we're used to in movies today. The actress really conveys more of Emma than any other screen incarnation I've seen. The rest of the cast is also superb---the guy playing Knightly is a sound-alike for James Mason, and Mr. Woodhouse is the funniest of the bunch. Best of all, the plot doesn't veer far from Austen's original.The filmmakers weren't out to break new cinematic ground here, they were more interested in simply telling Emma's story. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but for the true Emma devotee, it is definitely worth a shot.

Once again...my hightest praise for the wonderful actress Doran Godwin.

Some Emma Thoughts

It is interesting that Jane Austen herself thought Emma a character whom readers 'wouldn't much like". Given the relatively low ranking the novel has received recently from my online Austen group, it appears she may have been right. This has got me to wondering. As many people are won't to do with their favorite characters, I have always liked to suspend disbelief and imagine that someone like Emma might actually exist in the world. Or, more accurately, that the character represents something that may have once existed, and now is gone. Exactly what, I am not certain. While many see Emma as a snob, I think there is more to it than that. For me, she represents a kind of order and propriety tha thas gone out of the world. Not so much that people 'knew their place', but that they knew how to behave (most of them anyway). Something like that.But I have been wondering lately, what might it be that turns so many readers against the Divine Miss W?

One reason for Emma's irking readers may be her self-sufficiency. She is the least 'needy' I think of all Austen's characters. She neither invites, nor receives, reader sympathy. She is, as Austen describes her, 'handsome, clever andRICH..."She doesn't need a husband, and apparently isn't looking for one either. With no wolf at her door, some readers may find little reason to care about Emma.

Another aspect of Emma's personality is her rather dispassionate (if I'm using that word correctly) nature, and her general lack of emotionalism (Emma is perhaps the least emotional fictional character I've ever encountered...except of course when she's being proposed to by the cretinous Mr. Elton...:-) . Again, I would question whether this is an actual character fault. I actually find Emma's reserve kind of refreshing in our let-it-all-hang-out world. I think Emma possesses agreat deal of affection, for her father, and for Mr. Knightley, Mrs. Weston, her sister and her nieces and nephews. Perhaps it is possible for feelings to be quiet, and yet still be strong and genuine?

Along similar lines, Indeed, Emma seems to lack any sexual passion, which is something I don't fully understand.. Likewise, The attention of Frank is a boost to her self-esteem and her self-image, and yet she is never carried away into romantic flights of fantasy, of marriage and a lifetime of undying love. Emma seems impervious to it all.It is interesting to note as well that Emma's marriage to Mr. Knightly is a coming together of minds and personalities, shared values, etc., in some ways a continuation of their previous relationship of wise-older-brother to sometimes-errant-younger-sister, with no trace of Lady Chatterley-like passions bursting their dam.

Of course, there is the question of Emma's 'blindness', or her'cluelessness', but I think this has been over exaggerated. Yes, she completely misreads the bounder Mr. Elton, but she is young and relatively inexperienced, and perhaps too trusting of the good intentions of others. She is also fooled by FrankChurchill and Jane Fairfax...but so is everyone else, including Mr. Knightley. Besides, "Emma" is a largely a novel of a young girl's awakening and moral education. If she knew all there was to know at the start, there'd be no place for the story to go.

What Emma learns, in my opinion, is how decietful and self-serving even the most charasmatic (Frank) and innocent-appearing (Jane Fairfax) can be, and this I believe is what propels her into the arms of Mr. Knightley. He may not be the most exciting dude who ever rode through town, but he is an honest man, a thoughtful and trustworthy man, and one person Emma can completely trust in a world where it is often impossible to distinguish what is real from what is invented.

Finally...I also think Emma is the character who---in some ways, at least---most closely resembles Jane Austen herself. I mean by this that they both seem to live at one-remove from life. Austen seems to have experienced life and love mainly through her imagination and her fiction, Emma through her 'meddling'and matchmaking for others. Neither one seems willing to allow herself to beo verwhelmed by passion or emotion. Both were, in their own ways, supreme artists.

More On Films

One thing I find interesting is that all the film versions of Jane Austen's novels place a very great emphasis on period clothing, the gowns women wore at balls and parties, and even their everyday dress, so on and so on...And yet, Austen the writer never bothers to describe what anyone is wearing.

Not only clothing, but also the interiors of the great country houses, furnishings, etc., are lovingly dwelt on by the camera in these films...but given short shrift in Austen's novels.

I'm not saying the producers *shouldn't* place an emphasis these visual aspect of Austen's novels---after all, these films make millions and millions of $$$, so I doubt they need my advice on this point. But it is an example to me of how the experience of reading Jane Austen differs so significantly from the experience of watching the movies.

For myself, this may explain why, with the exception of the 1972 BBC Emma, and to a lesser extent the 1994 S&S, I have never much cared for any of the films made from Ausen's books.

Academics Know Best?

Came across the following, from an article in BBC Magazine:

"I think she betrays her time and I'm always gob smacked by what she ignored," says Celia Brayfield, author and lecturer at Brunel University. "She focused on such a narrow strain of human reality. Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't the Napoleonic War going on at the time when she was writing? She doesn't mention it"

I find these comments extremely amusing. If people are still reading Austen's novels some 200 years after they were written, then I'd say she obviously made some pretty good choices as a writer.

I wonder how many people will be pursuing Celia Brayfield's lectures 200 years from now?

At the Movies Again

Anne Hatahaway is a fresh-faced and reliably lightweight actress, but she is all wrong to play Jane Austen, as she apparently does in "Becoming Jane Austen". My own ideal first choice to play Austen would be Kate Winslet. My second (and admittedly offbeat) choice would be Cate Blanchett. Granted, this is a movie about the teenaged Jane Austen, and neither Winslet nor Blanchett are teenagers. But that's what the magic of movies is all about.

As for Anne Hathaway, she is an extremely likable and attractive star, but she just doesn't seem capable of conveying the personality of the woman who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Emma and Mansfield Park. Nor does it seem like the screenplay will be giving her any help.

According to the invaluable Internet Movie Database, the film treats of young Jane's 'romance' with the 'handsome Irishman' Tom Lefroy. No doubt the few known facts will be juiced up and sexed up and served cold to today's dumbed down multiplex audience. No harm in it I guess. Those who truly know and love Jane Austen can take it or leave it alone (the movie, I mean). As for the others, who cares what they believe or don't believe about the great author?

And, as a reviewer points out on the IMDB. the same semi-fictional, light-romantic approach was used for Shakespeare In Love, and no one objected very strenuously to that film. Most viewers know better than to trust a big budget Hollywood biopic to deliver the true facts of anyone's life. Still...I think JA inspires a more protective love in her serious readership than Shakespeare does in his. So, I suspect Janneites will be up-in-arms over this flick.

In any event, it seems the one fact that Hollywood has never understood (or cannot accept) about writers is that they live mostly in their own heads. The worlds that they create are created out of their imaginations. Experience may be the smallest part of the mix. For a writer, or any other creative individual, a little experience can be made to go a long way. As Flannery O'Connor once observed, by the time a person reaches the age of six they have experience enough to fuel a lifetime of writing. As far as Jane Austen goes, we can never know for certain how serious and passionate her 'fling' with Tom Lefroy was, anymore than we can know the degree of her sexual experience, or even the extent of her sexual knowledge. All of these remain matters of hopeless speculation, for those so inclined to speculate. In the end, all that matters is the imagined worlds she left behind, worlds that have been capturing readers for some two hundred years now.

"Becoming Jane Austen" will do nothing to harm those worlds. It will come and go like most movies, leaving no footprints in the snow, destined to be quickly forgotten. Enjoy it if you like, or leave it alone

Rex Loves Jane

I think this is a great story and quote.I actually first read this back in the 80s. I was a big Rex Stout fan, but at the time was barely aware of who Jane Austen was.(Stout, for those not familiar, was the creator of the "Nero Wolfe" detective novels).

* * *
During the last years of Rex Stout's life, as his authorized biographer, I received numerous letters from well-wishers and, on occasion, not-such-well-wishers, offering me advice.

"Is it true," one of the latter asked, "that Stout has a secretary who writes all his stuff for him?" I showed the letter to Rex, then in his eighty-ninth year. He scanned it and said,

"Tell him the name is Jane Austen, but I haven't the address." ... Not long before that he had told me---" I used to think that men did everything better than women, but that was before I read Jane Austen. I don't think any man ever wrote better than Jane Austen."

It was no coincidence that, when I asked after Wolfe a few days before Rex died, Rex confided, "he's rereading *Emma*." Rex ranked *Emma* as Jane Austen's masterpiece. In the last weeks of his life he also reread it. That a book could be reread was to him solid proof of its worth. Thus it pleased him when P.G. Wodehouse, whom Rex admired, declared, at ninety-four, in a letter that he wrote to me, " he [Stout] passes the supreme test of being rereadable. I don't know how many times I have reread the Wolfe stories, but plenty. I know exactly what is coming and how it is all going to end, but it doesn't matter. That's *writing*."

As John K. commented, it's nice to see one's favourite authors getting along so well! But Wolfe's views were more ambivalent, as Paige E. pointed out to me: in The Mother Hunt, in chapter 12, Archie says, "Dol and Sally had been responsible, six years back, for my revision of my basic attitude toward female ops, and I held it against them, just as Wolfe held it against Jane Austen for forcing him to concede that a woman could write a good novel."

* * *

Mr. Collins

As long as we're on the subject of Pride and Prejudice (see below), it might be fun to consider one of that novel's most interesting characters, the grandiloquently silly Mr. Collins. My take is that Austen intended him as a satire of the kind of person who would choose the clergy as a career move, but in reality has little or no true religious inclination.

As others have noted, Mr. Collins is a pompous ass, a toady, and a hypocrite. His proposal to Lizzie is a calculated move, and when he is rejected it is only his pride that suffers---and even that not for long. But by far the worst thing that Collins does is to advise Mr. Bennet to turn his back on the errant Lydia (following her elopement with Wickham) and never allow her in the family's presence again. This demonstrates what a cold, unfeeling, and thoroughly despicable individual he is; a clergyman without an ounce of Christian forgiveness. (Mr. Bennet knew what he was talking about when he half-jokingly warned Lizzie that he'd disown her if she accepted Collins' marriage proposal).

I suppose Charlotte figured it wasn't going to get much better for her, and so decides to make the best of the situation. I also think that Charlotte was probably less intellectual and bookish than Lizzie, and all in all probably happy with her domestic duties and her place in the community.

Regarding Mr. Collins ‘advice’ on dealing with Lydia, Here is the passage as it appears in the novel: Mr. Bennett is reading from Collins' letter:

-Mr. Collins, moreover, adds, 'I am truly rejoiced that my cousin Lydia's sad business has been so well hushed up, and am only concerned that their living together before the marriage took place should be so generally known. I must not, however, neglect the duties of my station, or refrain from declaring my amazement, at hearing that you received the young couple into your house as soon as they were married. It was an encouragement of vice; and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should very strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them, as a Christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing." -- *That* is his notion of Christian forgiveness!---

Mr. Bennett's exclamation---"*That* is his notion of Christian forgiveness!"---indicates that he is astonished by Collins' advice, and that it is far from being (as some have suggested) the received wisdom of the time.

Of course, Mr. Bennett is able to have his revenge at the end, when he is able to write to Collins informing him of Elizabeth’s impending marriage to Darcy:

"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, etc."

Talk about a sweetly ironic twist-of-the-knife!