JASA Book Reviews: Volume 6

Jane Austen and Leisure

by David Selwyn

The Hambledon Press, London, 1999.

Reviewed by Yvette Field

David Selwyn is the current editor of the Jane Austen Society’s annual Report and also edited in 1996 a collection of Austen family verse, under the title Jane Austen: Collected Poems and Verse of the Austen Family. The Hambledon Press is known to many readers through the excellent Jane Austen and the Clergy by Irene Collins and through her second book, Jane Austen: the Parson’s Daughter. This current publication is timely, as the theme for the JASNA conference to be held in Seattle in 2001 is ‘Pleasure, Pursuits and Passions: Entertainment in Jane Austen’ and Jane Austen and Leisure could serve as an initial survey of the possibilities of the theme. The book is part social history, linked where possible to Austen’s life and family, and part analysis of Jane Austen’s fiction from some aspect of leisure. It is divided into ten chapters covering the following themes: Society, Pleasure Resorts, Needlework and Art, Outdoor Pursuits, Music, Dancing, Books, Theatricals, Toys and Games and finally, Verses, Riddles and Puzzles.

The introduction states the purpose of the book to be:

…to investigate exactly which activities were pursued inside and outside the house, how they were organised, what kinds of demands they made and, more importantly, what use Jane Austen makes of them in the novels. (pp xi-xii)

Eight pages later after some discussion of what leisure is and the people who had it, a further purpose statement adds that ‘it will be necessary to consider each leisure activity in some depth and to assign it to its cultural, social and historical contexts’ (p.xx) to understand the subtle points Jane Austen is making. From these statements it is obvious that David Selwyn aims to cover every aspect in his discussions and to leave very few stones unturned.

In this method lies some of the book’s weaknesses as well as its strengths. There is a wealth of material in its pages but at times so much detail and the reader can be weighed down by so many words. As the two purpose statements mentioned above illustrate, there is some repetition, and this could have been avoided with further revision or editing. Especially in the opening sections, the book would have benefited from some deft pruning of content and a more rigorous structure.

The introduction was disappointing, since there was little that was not generally known and no unique authorial viewpoint or comment was discernible. More than three pages in the middle were devoted to a potted biography, which raised the question of who the readers were that David Selwyn had in mind. There seemed to be an assumption that readers would be familiar with characters in the novels but not with basic details of Jane Austen’s life. The first chapter, ‘Society’, suffered similar problems and the statement that Jane Austen ‘wrote for pleasure: she was not a professional’ (p.4) is contentious in modern criticism. (See the article by Jan Fergus in the Cambridge Companion on Jane Austen). It was also the only chapter not titled with a leisure activity, and its content was diffuse: more biography, visits, letters, a little bit on food which seems to add nothing to Maggie Lane’s book on the subject, and then reference to various novels in a way that invited recognition from, rather than illumination for, the reader. After two sections the most illuminating point, for me, was the fact that the minimum bet at racecourses in England at that time was 50 pounds sterling. Typically, this information was repeated on page 111 in discussion of outdoor pursuits.

Chapters were very uneven in length. ‘Pleasure Resorts’ ran to 43 pages, the next chapter on ‘Needlework and Art’ to just 20, while that on ‘Books’ was 48 not including illustrations, and ‘Toys and Games’ a modest 15. A more equitable division of content and selection of detail rather than an attempt to provide comprehensive coverage would have made the book more generally accessible for reference to specific activities. For example, ‘Pleasure Resorts’ was crammed with descriptive detail, such as every defunct pleasure garden in existence in the 18th century and a history of Bath as a spa. Pruning would have brought out its treasures, which were some of the Bath detail, including the meretricious quality of Camden Place which was never finished because of landslips (one of those subtle points Jane Austen was making) and an interesting analysis of Sanditon as a pleasure resort which the author sees as ‘…a bland, all purpose blueprint for a resort, straight from the pages of a guidebook’ (p 62).

There were other treasures, and no doubt readers will find their own, depending on interest or need at the time. The chapter on ‘Verses, Riddles and Puzzles’ was especially good, the author being an expert on Austen collections, and he inadvertently came up with a great quiz question and answer: of 29 short verses written by Jane Austen, only one was published in her lifetime… (which one, I can safely leave to someone or other of the bright sparks in our membership). ‘Needlework and Art’ was interesting, to one who knew little about it, on ‘huswives’ although the analysis tended to give a darker picture of Jane’s gifts to her grandmother and aunt than usual. On drawing and decisiveness (p 85) he was forceful, but I cannot agree with the assumption that Edward Ferrars is weak, indecisive and full of self-doubt. He, who was braver by far than any other Austen hero in keeping a promise to Lucy which threatened his happiness and prosperity for ever, surely knew exactly who he was and what he wanted. Edward was just incapable of dishonourable manipulation, and not a weakling.

If anyone in our society is interested in hunting and shooting, there are over nine pages on hunting, seven on shooting and four on pointer dogs. Probably we have more card players, and this is a rewarding theme in Jane Austen and Leisure which has an excellent analysis of the dinner party in Mansfield Park where the characters play Speculation. ‘Music’ has a discussion of glees and glee clubs, which some of us may like to follow up from the Study Day 2000 activities, although generally this chapter was marred by poor structure, with repetitions connected with the fetching appearance young ladies could achieve with harps, and the musical abilities of Fanny Knight. ‘Dancing’ was a little dull, which dancing should not be.

There is much that is worthwhile in this book but it might be better for the reader to select an area of interest, or use the index for references rather than to read Jane Austen and Leisure from cover to cover. It has been researched thoroughly and has discussions of many activities, and there are some sections which would have stood on their own as excellent talks. With a different format – for example, shorter sections and less discursiveness – it would have been more useful. As it is, the book provides a general but not concise introduction to activities in the novels with occasional illumination when drawing out the fictional links and it sometimes produces something special.

A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen: The Journals and Letters of Agnes Porter

Edited by Joanna Martin

The Hambledon Press, 1998

Reviewed by Freda Mullaly

The journals and letters of Agnes Porter – the governess in question – give us a valuable insight into the life of a professional woman in the late Georgian period. The collection is edited by Joanna Martin, a descendant of the second Earl of Ilchester, who employed Agnes Porter. It was found in the attic of Penrice Castle, in South Wales, among bundles of old letters and diaries hardly disturbed over two hundred years of continuous occupation by the one family.

The first quarter of this scholarly volume details Agnes Porter’s life. She was born in Edinburgh around 1752, and died in 1814, a year after the publication of Pride and Prejudice. We do not know if she had read the novel, though she may have actually met Jane Austen as they had acquaintances in common. In fact, Agnes Porter lived, as a governess, in the sort of society that Jane Austen depicts - two or three families in the country, with card parties, balls, dinners, and visits to the theatre in London and Bath. The book, to my mind, strikingly confirms the authenticity of Jane Austen’s world.

Like Jane Austen and the Brontës, Agnes was brought up in a clerical household. She was probably taught reading, writing and geography at home with extra lessons from music, drawing and dance masters. She learned French (and later taught it), but not Latin. Her father was not well off, and she was the eldest of three daughters and a son who died young. From comments in her letters and diaries we know that she had hoped to marry, but she was not pretty and had no dowry. Her assets – intelligence, initiative and wide reading – were not always appreciated by men in the 18th century. In one poignant note in her journal, 8th January 1791, we read ‘Had a letter from Dr McQueen which I have long wished to receive. It on the whole vexed and disappointed me: an emblem of all earthly expectations. Resolved to divest my mind of too tender an interest in the concerns of any male friend ...’.

After her father’s death in 1782, she needed to earn more money to support herself and her mother (she had previously acted as the companion to the wife of a friend), and went to the Goddard family as a governess for two years. In January 1784, in her early thirties, she became governess to the daughters of Henry Fox Strangeways and his wife Mary who lived at Redlynch in Somerset. She thus attached herself to one of the great Whig families of the day. Lady Ilchester was a charming and intelligent Irishwoman, a few years younger than Agnes, with three daughters already aged eleven, eight and five. Agnes was devoted to Lady Ilchester, who preferred family life to high society. Unfortunately her health was not good and after having four more children, including one son, she died six weeks after the birth of her sixth daughter, in June 1790.

It was just two months after this that Agnes began to keep a detailed journal, and that her series of letters starts. There are three volumes of journals written in bursts of about two years encompassing 1790 to 1805, and two volumes of letters, the first containing 56, from 1789 to 1810, and the second 38, from 1810 to 1814, the year she died. Most of the letters were to Lady Mary Talbot, Lord Ilchester’s second eldest daughter, of whom she was very fond, and to whose children Agnes in turn became governess.

For four years, 1790 to 1794, until Lord Ilchester remarried, Agnes had complete charge of her pupils and seemed to enjoy her independence. In 1794, Mary, the second daughter, married Thomas Mansfield Talbot of Penrice in Glamorgan, Wales. She was 17, and he 46, and her father’s contemporary. That year Lord Ilchester himself remarried; his second wife was a cousin 24 years younger than himself. This lessened Agnes’ importance with the family. The second lady Ilchester perhaps resented the presence of Agnes, an older woman who could compare her to her predecessor. Agnes only hints of her feelings in her diaries and letters but in one we are told that she was no longer given a parlour of her own in London, in which to entertain her own friends. When her friend, Elizabeth Upcher, invited Agnes to live with her in Norfolk after her husband’s death, Agnes agreed and left in September 1797, after six months’ notice. Her salary from the Earl of Ilchester had been a hundred guineas a year; Mrs Upcher offered her a hundred pounds. Unfortunately Mrs Upcher herself died suddenly in 1799, leaving Agnes a hundred pounds in her will. It was then that Lady Mary Talbot invited her to live at Penrice Castle, as Mary’s companion and as governess to her children.

Penrice Castle was Agnes’ home for the next six years. It was on the Gower Peninsular in South Wales. In 1799, there were three small children, though they were not really old enough to be taught. A letter from Lady Mary’s older sister Elizabeth describes activity at Penrice - ‘Miss Porter reads to us every morning while we paint and work; the rest we drive or sail about in the bay, and sometimes dine and sometimes drink tea out.’ A cousin, William Henry Fox Talbot, later invented modern photography and became the most famous member of the family; as a child he may have visited whilst Agnes was there. Agnes by the end of 1806 was finding the family too much, and, though she frequently returned to Penrice to stay with the children whilst their parents were away, she retired from teaching and went to live with her married sister Fanny on a pension of thirty pounds a year. She was in lodgings in Bruton, Somerset in 1813 when she took ill, and she died in January 1814.

Agnes’ will had been written in June 1813. She asked for an inexpensive funeral, left two guineas each to her nurse and the servant who had waited on her and one guinea each to five poor families in the parish. She bequeathed her personal possessions to her sister Fanny and a sum of approximately two thousand pounds invested in Navy Stock, to be divided among Fanny and two cousins.

Apart from the biographical details, the long (77 page) introduction has chapters on such topics as ‘The Single Woman in Georgian Britain’ in which we learn, for instance, that 25% of upper class girls in the 18th century never married. Another, ‘Agnes Porter and her Pupils’ details the educational theory that Agnes Porter read and incorporated into her teaching, and what she actually taught. The chapter on ‘Free Time’ is very Jane Austen, and the last chapter is on ‘The French Revolution’.

The next 300 pages of the book consist of the journal and letters, so that you revisit the biography of the first part. The letter of 11th September 1794 details how the Earl of Ilchester announced the news of his second marriage to his children, and captures well the stresses and strains of that occasion. A typical day meant rising at six, reading for an hour, prayers with the children before their breakfast at eight, her own breakfast at nine, then study with pupils, music with them and perhaps a walk before dining at 3pm, possibly speaking French at table; then more study with pupils, reading to them and playing with them until their supper at 7pm. At 8pm she would hear their prayers and see them in bed and retreat to her own room to read or write until bed at 11pm. Many journal entries merely read ‘As usual’. The impression you gain is of a well-loved member of the household, fond of her pupils and totally devoted to the family.

Entries that stand out give accounts of Agnes’ own journeys, say, from London to Edinburgh, and of her sometimes odd fellow passengers. We also hear of her going to the theatre and dinnertime conversations with her own friends. She read widely, mainly books of moral tone, and recommended reading to her correspondents. Lists of theatrical performances she attended and books she owned or mentioned are included. On the back cover is a delightful watercolour of a domestic scene, painted by one of the Talbot daughters in 1815. The lady on the left could well have been Agnes Porter.

If you are interested in social history, and in the very early days of women entering the teaching profession, this is an excellent book for you to read. We have come a long way in 200 years!

Jane Austen and the Interplay of Character

By Ivor Morris

London: The Athlone Press, 1999.

Reviewed by Kerry-Ann O’Sullivan

‘Can he be a sensible man?’

Elizabeth’s response to her father’s reading of Reverend Collins’ peace-making letter also echoes the thoughts of the reader and brings one of Pride and Prejudice’s most memorable characters into the action. William Collins is one of Jane Austen’s great literary achievements in characterisation. A wonderful mixture of absurdity, obsequious pride and self-effacing humility, he contributes comic entertainment but also provides a sharper ironic undertone.

Ivor Morris first published this work in 1987 under the title Mr Collins Considered: Approaches to Jane Austen. It is a fascinating exploration of the interplay of characters that lies beneath the ‘light and bright and sparkling surface’. Morris stimulates the reader with his interesting comparisons of characters within and between Austen’s novels, built around a central detailed study of Mr Collins.

Whilst he examines with a critical eye, Morris engages us with his obvious relish of the absurd and the idiosyncratic. The analysis is conveyed with precision and considerable attention to detail but also with a sense of humour. Morris writes with authority and enthusiasm. He has a warm appreciation of the folly and vanity that exists at the core of human nature. Mr Collins is, of course, a perfectly delightful exemplar of both these traits.

Morris takes as his central premise that a person has an existence as a part of a society and in relationship to others. There is a strong realisation of the social world and the complex interrelationships that exist within any life. The text is a wide-ranging consideration of connections and the character links in operation in Mr Collins’ society beyond his usually discussed relationship with Lady Catherine. Examples are cited from the six novels to highlight key behaviours and provide substantial support for Morris’ examinations. Some quite thought-provoking comparisons are drawn, especially those between Mr Collins and Darcy.

In his Preface, Morris identifies his intention in the text:

Each of its chapters is an essay in the appreciation of situations and behaviour according to particular social themes, from that of general attitudes to rank and station, or the necessity and prerogatives of wealth, to the accepted requirements of elegant femininity, and then-accredited ideas of good sense and good taste.

Mr Collins is chosen as the focus because Morris perceives he is the most convention-bound, and the character least able to break out of the social bonds that constrain him.

The distinguishing characteristic of Mr Collins is his foolishness. Morris’ fascination with this human foible is presented in a wonderful quotation from Francis Bacon’s Essays, xii. Of Boldness:

There is in human nature generally more of the fool than the wise.

Morris identifies Mr Collins’ fault in ‘taking the ways of his world rather too seriously: founding his own thinking so thoroughly upon them, or using them so largely as a substitute for thought, as to leave little scope for real awareness or individuality.’ (p.142)

Mr Collins makes a study of social behaviour and applies it with strict adherence. He fails to appreciate the need for some flexibility and personal interpretation in his application and so, much of our amusement derives from the entanglements he creates in his earnest desire to act with social appropriateness. Morris believes ‘he conducts himself according to the letter rather than in the spirit of his times.’ (p.142)

Although there can be no debate about the foolishness of Mr Collins, Morris claims that the character is not without feeling. He maintains his civility and urbanity – if somewhat effusively – even when rebuffed. He is certainly consistent in his overstated, studied manners and behaviour. That ‘the fellow has style’ (p.152), however, may not necessarily be the summation of all readers!

Morris believes that Mr Collins is incapable of guile or deception. He acts without any disguise of his motives. Within the social and historical context that Mr Collins exists – and which Morris analyses – there is an authenticity of intention and action. Whilst as readers we may not applaud his behaviour and indeed, like many of the characters, we would find his company tiresome, Mr Collins still fulfils a particular role in the novel’s overall world. Morris states that ‘whatever he is engaged in...he is bringing into prominence the manners and practices of which he forms part. The maladroitness of the man always exposes the usages – and shortcomings – of a system.’ (p.141) Such an assessment, explored in fascinating detail in a chapter on Romance, is a valuable contribution to expanding our view and appreciation of Mr Collins as more than merely comic and absurd.

This is an incisive study. It probes well beyond a reading of Mr Collins that presents him at a surface appearance of mere caricature. It provokes a rich reconsideration of him within a lively social context. For this reader, this seems to be very much in the spirit of Jane Austen’s intention.

A City of Palaces: Bath through the Eyes of Fanny Burney

By Maggie Lane

Millstream Books, 1999

Reviewed by Jim Priddice

This slim, well-illustrated volume was written by Maggie Lane, who is well known for her writings on Jane Austen. It contains in compact form a good deal of information about the eventful life of the novelist, playwright and diarist Fanny Burney (Madame d’Arblay), her family and many of her contemporaries, as well as describing late 18th and early 19th century Bath, making particular use of Fanny’s writings.

The first four chapters deal with the family background and fame of Fanny Burney, her visits to Bath with the Thrales in 1780 and with Mrs Ord in 1791, and her final retirement residence in Bath with her sick husband, Alexandre d’Arblay, from 1815 to 1818. The fifth and final chapter deals with the burial at St Swithin’s Church, Walcot, Bath, of Fanny, her husband and son, and the unfortunate story of their graves and memorials. There is also an introduction and bibliography, the latter including a publication history of Fanny’s diaries and letters, blending these with absorbing narrative.

To those of us interested in the life, letters and novels of Jane Austen, Bath is of particular interest, as she visited it and somewhat reluctantly lived there when her clergyman father retired. She was a close observer of life in Bath and used her impressions to good effect, particularly in her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

As the author points out, Fanny Burney’s long life (87 years) more than spanned that of Jane Austen – Fanny lived for 23 years before Jane and 23 years after. Since they were both novelists, it is intriguing to learn that while Jane had read and admired Fanny’s novels (she was listed as a subscriber to the first edition of Camilla, Fanny’s third novel), there is no evidence that Fanny had read any of Jane’s work – Fanny Burney kept a record of the books she had read.

Yet they had mutual friends. The Austen cousins, the Cookes of Great Bookham, were well known to Fanny – it seems likely that Jane’s name and the fact that she was a writer would have been mentioned. Apart from references to Fanny’s novels in her letters, Jane shows some awareness of Fanny’s family situation when, in one of her letters to Cassandra in November, 1813, she jokingly refers to the possibility of her (Jane) marrying ‘young Mr d’Arblay’ (who would have been 18 years old at the time).

Lane mentions Fanny’s brother, James, and the fact that she was given away by a brother at her marriage in 1793 in the absence of her father. Australian readers may also be interested to know that this James Burney sailed with Captain Cook on his last two voyages and later rose to the rank of Rear-Admiral.

By the beginning of the 18th century Bath, as a resort and watering place, had entered into what some have described as its Golden Age. By the beginning of the 19th century it was changing – losing something of its glamour but adapting as a place of retirement residence. Its mineral springs had brought many visitors over hundreds of years. Known for its waters prior to the arrival of the Romans who turned it into a resort, Bath had a history of royal patronage and physical neglect until in the later 16th and 17th centuries some improvements occurred. In the 18th century many of the fine stone buildings, which still exist today, were erected and enjoyed by visitors who also appreciated the natural beauties of the hills and countryside.

Many literary figures visited and stayed in Bath and it is not surprising that Fanny Burney, who loved Bath, is numbered amongst them, visiting the city on several occasions and eventually selecting it as a pleasing and economical place of residence for her retirement with her husband. The author takes us through Fanny’s visits, the first being in 1767 with her father, Dr Charles Burney, the eminent musician and historian of music. As Fanny did not commence her private diary until the following year, little is known of this visit. She does mention a day visit in1778, but in 1780 she visited Bath with the Thrales (friends of Dr Samuel Johnson) for some three months until the visit was brought to an end by the Gordon Riots. During the three months, Fanny participated in the busy round of customary Bath activities including socialising, theatre visits, walking and admiring scenery, visiting gardens, dinners and, often after dinner, drinking tea.

After a gap of eleven years she visited Bath again in August 1791, for some weeks, in the company of Mrs Ord as part of a convalescence tour: Fanny had just resigned from her Court appointment which she had accepted under pressure from her father in 1786. Bath had grown a lot since her previous visit and a building boom was in progress. Although many of the buildings were unfinished, she was favourably impressed and in a letter to her sister Susan summed up the appearance of the city using the words contained in the title of the book: ‘It looks like a city of palaces’.

In 1815, Fanny returned to Bath with her sick husband, prompted by considerations of health, the possibility of economical living and, especially on her part, a general liking for the place. After the death of her husband in 1818 she and her son Alex, who had now graduated from Cambridge, left Bath for London. During this period of residence (1815 – 1818), however, she had led a very different life from that enjoyed on her earlier visits, the poor health of her husband and the need for economy forcing constraints upon them.

Between 1791 and 1815 Fanny’s life had indeed been eventful, a fact well brought out by the author as she tells us of this period which included her marriage to the poverty-stricken French émigré officer Alexandre d’Arblay, the birth of her son, her life in France and eventual return to England. For ten years the d’Arblay family had been trapped in Paris and it was during this time, the author points out, ‘Fanny underwent a mastectomy without anaesthetic, on her own bed at home. Her detailed account of this ordeal is the most harrowing episode in her Journals. But she survived to live another 30 years.’

In the concluding chapter of this book the author tells of the final resting place of Fanny, her husband and son at the Church of St Swithin’s in Walcot, Bath. Details of various memorials are given and concern is expressed regarding certain modern removals of tombstones and the like, including the coincidence that the stone that was Fanny’s tombstone, but is now separated from her grave, stands in an area where the only other stone ‘is the slab which once covered the body of Jane Austen’s father, the Reverend George Austen, who was buried in the crypt of St Swithin’s in January 1805’.

This book deserves a place in the library of anyone interested in Fanny Burney, Jane Austen or the city of Bath.

Jane Austen in Hollywood

Edited by Linda Troost & Sayre Greenfield

Published by the University Press of

Kentucky, 1999.

Reviewed by Robyn Williams

Jane Austen In Hollywood has much to offer the general enthusiast and lover of Jane Austen’s work, as well as providing fascinating insights into the complex process of adapting the novels for a contemporary screen audience.

The fourteen essays present a number of stimulating, provocative and sometimes conflicting points of view about these adaptations – ranging from the 1940’s Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and an overly mature Greer Garson – to the 1995 hits launched in no small manner by Colin Firth’s plunge into the pool at Pemberley. While the TV. Pride and Prejudice and Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility dominate analysis and discussion, Clueless receives significant attention and there is an interesting side-trip to the art-house Metropolitan, based loosely on Mansfield Park. The recent phenomenon of Austenmania still engages the literary critic, the film theorist, the Austen reader and the general (albeit mostly female) film-going public.

For those who enjoy a literary chase each essay includes relevant notes and a bibliography. Some black and white photographs are provided but, alas, the wet-shirted Darcy is not among them. A comprehensive introduction gives an effective overview of what the reader can expect – a balance of opinions, not too light or heavy but just right, from well qualified academics, ensuring that we will return to both written and film texts with renewed analytical fervour. Essays entitled Mr Darcy’s Body and Emma Becomes Clueless will not fail to grab attention.

Clearly the very act of adapting a novel to the screen transforms the written text into something visually richer and more sensuously seductive, but inevitably reductive of it. The viewer is manipulated by the power of collaborative effort – from screen writer, director, editor, to makeup artist and food stylist – and by the need to make a healthy profit in a mass-market that is in turn manipulated by the ever-encroaching global, Americanised culture. Marketing practices – or ‘hyper reality’ as one essayist puts it, in publicising movies, even the romantic chocolate box video packaging of Persuasion to help it sell better – have replaced reality for those viewers who yearn nostalgically for a simpler, less confronting world – a bucolic, serene, green-clad English countryside that exists only by virtue of modern technology and expert cinematography.

Some questions raised in these essays include: Was Jane a racist? An elitist? A feminist? An aesthete? A class snob? Socially progressive or conservative? And these questions are considered in the light of the film maker (and the host of others concerned in the project) whose choices of shot, camera angle, framing devices, music, dialogue, additions and subtractions and variations to the original text hopefully increase the viewer’s enjoyment. Many of the essays dissect certain alterations from the original novels, pointing to some seemingly radical departures. For example, it appears that Austen’s men must be re-interpreted for a 20th century which insists on masculine power and physical attraction as a given. Hence, Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility gives us ‘extra-Edward’ and ‘extra-Brandon’, more appealing, more Byronic, more accessible to modern notions of female desire. In the 1995 Pride and Prejudice we also have vast amounts of ‘extra-Darcy’ – Darcy fencing, playing billiards, having a bath, taking a cathartic dive into a pond – in short, a sublimely physical ‘hero’ for our time. Men, in 20th century film, must be foregrounded. And for the feminists (of the second wave) there is even ‘extra-Margaret’, the tomboy in the tree house, growing up in a world in which women will hopefully suffer fewer social and economic restraints. The actors also bring their ‘extra-selves’ to the roles they play on screen. Hugh Grant’s Edward is sexy – we know that because of his off screen hi-jinks. Gwyneth Paltrow’s Emma is dressed, lit, and framed as the Hollywood Goddess that she is. If she could get Brad Pitt, she will naturally get Mr Knightley. We can see that as they are often seen in two-shot. For the viewers, unlike the readers, the suspense is neither terrible nor lasting. It is interesting to note the comparisons made between the two recent screen versions of Emma. Hollywood stars certainly pull in larger audiences and revenue.

Screen adaptations can help the passive audience (or school or college student), by condensing the plot line to two and a half hours and in such devices as shot type and framing. Colin Firth’s Darcy is often framed or entrapped by windows, adding extra layers to his social and sexual frustration, as when he watches Elizabeth, on the other side of the glass, frolicking with a dog.

But it is Jane Austen as ironist and subtle observer of her milieu that raises the greatest challenge for the film-maker. Amy Heckerling’s Emma, Clueless, gets accolades from her essayist for her use of the voice-over technique to show the incongruity between speech and action. As social comment, Persuasion generally succeeds in giving a more realistic interpretation of the novel, although, it is noted that Amanda Root’s sensitive portrayal of Anne Elliot is undercut by the coarseness of the actress playing Elizabeth.

But film is predominantly a visual medium and overall it is our delight in looking that gives audiences the greatest pleasure. Laura Mulvey, to whom several essayists refer, wrote twenty years ago of the power and pleasure of looking, particularly the power of the male gaze and of women on film as objects of male desire. Perhaps it is feminism or more likely Colin Firth, but the pleasure of looking is as strong for women as well as men. Certainly the sensual pleasures of looking and fulfilling desire, however vicariously, remains one of the joys of going to the movies. And in the intellectual pleasure of realising these and other desires within and through our own imagination remains the joy of reading Jane Austen. Jane Austen in Hollywood will help us to do just that.

Jane Austen Society of Australia

Back to Book Reviews: Contents

Book Reviews: Volume 6

Jane Austen and Leisure

A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen: The Journals and Letters of Agnes Porter

The Politics of Jane Austen

Jane Austen and the Interplay of Character

A City of Palaces: Bath through the Eyes of Fanny Burney

Jane Austen in Hollywood



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