Category: Jane Austen

Trivialities and Austen stuff

Updated on March 20, 2014 by Janet Mullany

I went off to brainyhistory.com today to see what happened today a couple hundred of years ago, and the answer is, not much, or at least not much that interested me. A lot of obscure composers were born on this day. There are always a lot of obscure composers having birthdays.

Turning to the letters of Jane Austen–yes, good idea, let’s talk about Jane Austen–March was not a big letter writing month for her. Her letter of March 9, 1814 to Cassandra contains this sisterly gem:

If Cassandra has filled my Bed with fleas, I am sure they must bite herself.–

Cassandra got busy with the scissors on a letter of March 21 2014 to (maybe) Francis Austen but allowed this to remain:

Perhaps before the end of April, Mansfield Park by the author of S&S–P&P may be in the World.–Keep the name to yourself. I shd. not like to have it known beforehand.

Ah, those were the days. You could be all secretive about your impending release and even about your own identity. No facebook. No twitter. No wall to wall squeeing promo. Heaven.

I’ve been having a Jane Austen-ish time recently, doing what I swore I’d never do because there are too many polluting the world, experimenting with a P&P-based book. More about this darling child, maybe, later. I also went out to Minneapolis for a very short trip–Minneapolis in March, not so good–to talk to their JASNA chapter about Austen and servants. Fun, fast, furious, the weather cooperated, whew.

I also read S&S again. I’ve always thought that one of the wonderful things about Austen is that the books change for you every time, and sure enough, it was like reading a whole new book. I last read it in 2011 and this time I was very much aware of it being “about girls filling in their time waiting by the phone for unsatisfactory men who don’t respond in the right way.” (That was from a post I wrote in 2011 on the JASNA-AGM which was about S&S and hearing Andrew Davies talk about his Austen screenplays.) Because, sorry to say, other than being by Austen, it’s not a very good book. There are so many things in it that don’t work, principally Marianne, Elinor, and Edward.

But Mrs. Jennings. Oh gosh, I love Mrs. Jennings. This time around she was the heroine of the book for me. She’s fun. She’s lively. She isn’t afraid to tease Marianne about Willoughby while everyone else tiptoes around her, not daring to ask whether she’s engaged to him or not. And above all despite the meddling, grasping the wrong end of the stick (considerable), and gossip, she’s kind and loyal and sensible. She knows Marianne will get over Willoughby, and ultimately, get over herself.

Let’s hear it for Mrs. Jennings. Here’s a bit of video for you to enjoy–I love the pained expressions of everyone else while she and Sir John Middleton guffaw away idiotically.

Have you been surprised by a minor character when rereading a book? Do share!

Posted in Jane Austen, TV and Film | Tagged Sense and Sensibility | 5 Replies

A Story You Should Write

Updated on March 13, 2014 by Myretta

Carlton House

In 1815, Jane Austen was invited by James Stanier Clarke, librarian to the Prince Regent (apparently a fan), to visit Carlton House. One doesn’t say no to the Prince Regent, not to a visit to Carlton House and not to an invitation to dedicate one of her books to him. Jane Austen was not an admirer of Prinny, but she dedicated Emma to him because, what else was she to do?

Dedication of Emma

Following her visit to Carlton House, Jane Austen wrote to Mr. Clarke, verifying that the Prince Regent did, indeed want her to dedicate a book to him. What followed was a correspondence between Jane Austen and James Stanier Clarke that I can only imagine she grew to regret.

In answering her letter regarding the dedication, he felt obliged to include the following paragraphs

Accept my best thanks for the pleasure your volumes have given me. In the perusal of them I felt a great inclination to write and say so. And I also, dear Madam, wished to be allowed to ask you to delineate in some future work the habits of life, and character, and enthusiasm of a clergyman, who should pass his time between the metropolis and the country, who should be something like Beattie’s Minstrel —

Silent when glad, affectionate tho’ shy,
And in his looks was most demurely sad;
And now he laughed aloud, yet none knew why.

Neither Goldsmith, nor La Fontaine in his “Tableau de Famille,” have in my mind quite delineated an English clergyman, at least of the present day, fond of and entirely engaged in literature, no man’s enemy but his own. Pray, dear Madam, think of these things.

Apparently, Mr. Clarke could not resist suggesting the theme of her next book, one incidentally based on himself.

Jane Austen excused herself from the task by writing,

I am quite honoured by your thinking me capable of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of Nov. 16th. But I assure you I am not. The comic part of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary. Such a man’s conversation must at times be on subjects of science and philosophy, of which I know nothing; or at least be occasionally abundant in quotations and allusions which a woman who, like me, knows only her own mother-tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally without the power of giving. A classical education, or at any rate a very extensive acquaintance with English literature, ancient and modern, appears to me quite indispensable for the person who would do any justice to your clergyman; and I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.

Mr. Clarke was not to be deterred and, having recently been appointed chaplain and private English secretary to Prince Leopold, who was then about to be united to the Princess Charlotte, wrote to suggest, an historical romance illustrative of the august House of Cobourg would just now be very interesting,’ and might very properly be dedicated to Prince Leopold.

Jane Austen once again declined with great civility.

You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.

We can only imagine how taxing this barrage of story ideas from a highly placed source must have been for Jane and applaud how kindly she turned them aside. I am particularly amused that she let’s him know that she could “no more write a romance than an epic poet.” I, for one, think she could do probably do whatever she put her mind to.

Some of us have experienced this offering of “ideas for stories.” Should this happen to me, while I never hope to be as clever and articulate as Jane Austen, I do hope to be as polite.

Has this happened to you? How did you respond?

Posted in Jane Austen, Regency, Writing | 5 Replies

Who’s in charge?

Updated on March 5, 2014 by Janet Mullany

Have you read Jo Baker’s brilliant Longbourn? It’s the book that switches upstairs/downstairs in Pride & Prejudice so we get the story from the servants’ point of view. Because the servants are always there, and reading that book for me has now changed the way I read Austen.

I’m giving a version of my talk on servants for JASNA in Minneapolis this weekend and so I’ve been sprucing up my material and wondering whether or not to include the strange, wonderful, (slightly icky) story of Hannah Cullwick (1833-1909) and her master, Arthur Munby (1828-1910). Hannah wrote a diary, published in 1984 by Virago Press, UK (now out of print) that gives an extraordinarily detailed account of the everyday life of a Victorian servant.

But it’s more than that.

Hannah wrote the diary at the instigation of her lover-employer-husband Arthur Mumby, who had a fetish for working class women and dirt, specifically women getting dirty. So a passage like this would get Arthur all hot and bothered:

Lighted the fire. Brush’d the grates. Clean’d the hall & steps & flags on my knees. Swept & dusted the rooms. Got breakfast up. Made the beds & emptied the slops. Cleaned & wash’d up…Cleaned the stairs & the pantry on my knees. Clean’d the knives & got dinner. Clean’d 3 pairs of boots. Clean’d away after dinner & began the preserving about ½ past 3 & kept on till 11, leaving off only to get the supper & have my tea…Went to bed very tired & dirty.

Boots, by the way, figure rather largely in their relationship.

Hannah took great pride in her strength and endurance, choosing always to remain at the bottom of the Victorian servant food chain, as a maid of all work. A lawyer and amateur artist, poet, and anthropologist, Munby had a huge collection of photographs and other records of working women that he bequeathed to Trinity College Cambridge.

Hannah met Munby in 1854 and he followed her around from one position to another, watching her beat carpets and so on, and she was fired from at least one household because of his interest in her–this was a period, of course, when women servants were not allowed to have gentleman followers. Working at boarding houses rather than private houses gave her greater freedom. Eventually he hired her in 1872 and they married secretly the following year. But to all intents and purposes she was still his servant, and Munby’s friends–who included Ruskin, Rosetti, and Browning–had no idea of the true relationship, one that seems to have been classic BDSM.

For freedom & true lowliness, there’s nothing like being a maid of all work (1872)

She wore a locking chain around her neck, for which Munby had the key, and a leather strap on one wrist as a sign of his ownership. Munby posed her in various disguises–as a man, a chimney sweep, in blackface, as a fashionable lady.

But she had an extraordinarily strong sense of independence outside their fantasy life. She insisted, even after marriage, on receiving wages and keeping her own name, and she left him in 1877, although he continued to visit her, but presumably on her terms. You have to wonder who did wear the trousers in this relationship.

And that’s the question that seems to have plagued households, particularly during the Victorian period, when master-servant relationships seem to have escalated to an extraordinarily virulent level: who really is in charge here?

So at the moment, yes to Longbourn, and yes to Cullwick-Munby, and let’s see if anyone picks up on the subtext. And I expect they will, because smart readers of Austen always find the subtext.

Posted in Jane Austen, Research | Tagged servants | 2 Replies

Adapting Fanny Price

Updated on February 22, 2014 by Myretta

Andrew Davies, who has successfully adapted Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Emma, and Northanger Abbey, has stated that he will never adapt Mansfield Park. And who can blame him? There have been three adaptations of Mansfield Park and none of them really succeed.

In 1983, the BBC produced a miniseries adaptation.

This Fanny Price, in my opinion, is a pretty fair adaptation of the one in the novel. And I do like Nicholas Farrell as Edmund. Unfortunately, the whole thing tends to be a tad soporific. Watch this one if you are suffering from insomnia.

In 1999, Patricia Rozema tried her hand at Mansfield Park

This is an interesting movie, but so not Mansfield Park. The director admitted to creating a new Fanny, one whom she insists includes elements of Jane Austen. Rozema’s Fanny is a writer if that’s what she means. Most of the rest seems to be solely a construct of Ms. Rozema’s imagination. What this adaptation has going for it (in my opinion, anyway) is Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund. I’ll pretty much watch anything with JLM in it.

Most recently, ITV produced an adaptation, televised in 2007.

I’m a huge Jane Austen fan but I must admit to not watching this adaptation in its entirety. I have no idea who this Fanny Price is, giggling and running around Mansfield Park with her hair down. This not my Fanny Price and I’m pretty sure it’s not Jane Austen’s either.

What’s so hard about adapting Fanny? Here’s what I think. Fanny Price is the strong, moral center of this book, but she doesn’t have much of a character arc. The Fanny Price who finally wins and marries the man she loves is pretty much the Fanny Price who came to Mansfield Park as a child. The other characters change around her or not (*ahem* Mrs. Norris), but Fanny remains stalwart and true.

What do you think? Is there a way to adapt Fanny without changing her? Do you have a favorite adaptation? Want to take a stab at one?

Posted in Jane Austen, TV and Film | 7 Replies

The Pride & Prejudice Ball

Updated on February 6, 2014 by Janet Mullany

I have to rush off to do various strange things today so here’s a fabulous documentary that I believe has aired on some PBS stations (but not on mine yet). It’s a recreation of the Netherfield Ball at Chawton House and explains what Austen’s readers would have understood about birth, wealth and social standing at such an event. A team of experts, led by Amanda Vickery, reproduce the clothes, food and setting.

Pour yourself a nice cup of … something or other and enjoy. What surprised you about the conclusions the historians reached?