JASA News 
June 2000

Susannah Fullerton
President
JASA

The President's Report

‘I wish we had a large acquaintance here’, mourns Mrs Allen to Catherine Morland, when she takes her to a ball in Bath. ‘I wish we had any’, responds Catherine.

I wonder how many new members of the Jane Austen Society of Australia share Catherine’s feelings when they attend a Society meeting for the first time? It is daunting to walk into a room of 140 people and to make the effort to mingle during afternoon tea with complete strangers who all seem to know each other well. At almost every meeting I ask long-standing members to make new members feel welcome, yet often they don’t know who amongst the many are new members, and also I know that afternoon tea provides a great opportunity to catch up with Society friends.

I would love to hear from those of you who have joined JASA recently. How can we best welcome new members to our meetings? Should new members wear a sticker, should we ask them to stand up early in the meeting so that you all know who is attending for the first or second time, should we hold a special Society event once a year so that those who have just joined can get to know each other? Please send me your comments or suggestions so that Catherine Morland’s problem is not a JASA problem.

My own suggestion to new members who want to truly feel a part of our society is that you book for all the events which are not regular meetings. Conferences, study days and country weekends offer wonderful chances to chat with other members and make friends within the society. I know that our July conference on ‘Jane Austen and Elegance’ will be just such an opportunity. It promises to be a very special weekend and I look forward to welcoming you there.

The committee is keen at all times to hear from all members. Do the talks in the programme provide the sort of balance you want between the novels of Jane Austen and the period in which she lived? Do you want more competitions or quizzes? What sort of talks do you enjoy most? Are there other things you wish to purchase at Regency Fair? Is there some way in which you would like to help? It is your Society - let us hear what you think!

Catherine Morland went home from that first ball disgruntled and tired, but at her next Bath ball she met Henry Tilney. While I can’t promise a Henry Tilney at a meeting (and if he did turn up, I wouldn’t be wanting to share him!), I can promise that JASA meetings do offer a chance to make many good friends amongst those who share a very special interest.

Susannah Fullerton

Current JASA Publications

The June 2000 issues of JASA publications Sensibilities and the JASA Newsletter, have been sent to all JASA members. 

The articles in this latest issue of Sensibilities are: 

• 'The Last Will & Testament of John Austen of Horsmonden'
  Full Transcript, Introduced and Transcribed by Dr Jon Spence
• 'Landscape in Northanger Abbey' (JASA Conference 99) Prof Christine Alexander
• 'Emma: When Imperfection becomes Perfection' Leonora Walker & Pamela Whalan
• 'Prudence & Providence in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Mansfield Park' 53 Susan Brodrick

You can read short extracts of each of these Sensibilities articles online.

You can read online the following Book reviews.

• Jane Austen and the Interplay of Character
  by Ivor Morris
• A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen: The Journals & Letters of Agnes Porter
  by Joanna Martin (ed.)
• A City of Palaces: Bath through the Eyes of Fanny Burney
  by Maggie Lane
• The Politics of Jane Austen
  by Edward Neill
• Jane Austen in Hollywood
  by Linda Troost & Sayre Greenfield (eds)

Items from the Newsletter (and from Practicalities, JASA's news update sheet published in March and September) are reproduced on this website. 

Most past issues of Sensibilities can be purchased for A$6.00 each. See the Sensibilities list of articles.

For another taste of what members enjoy in Sensibilities, the JASA refereed journal praised for its consistently high literary standards, read a longer extract from a talk by Penny Gay to a JASA meeting in 1994, as reported in a previous Sensibilities: 'Emma and the Battle of Waterloo'.

News, Views & Titbits

– Study Day
Our Mansfield Park study day on 20 May this year was fully booked, and was voted to be superb by attendees. There was a range of activities, readings, talks, puzzles - and most particularly, in small study groups, an opportunity to meet and talk with other Janeites. A full report will be published in the next Newsletter, so that members who were not able to attend can get a ‘taste’ of the delight of the day.

– Sandy Lerner
Sandy Lerner, whose cheque book and drive are the motivators of the resurrection of Chawton House as the Early Women Writers study centre, is also lending her vitality to her 5-year-old cosmetics company, Urban Decay, with cosmetics for the distinctly different - colours like ‘Gangrene’ and ‘Roach’, and slogans like ‘Does pink make you puke?’(!) have, according to a recent report, ‘wowed’ Britain, America and Asia, and have contributed to her making another fortune - £12m turnover in 1999 - in addition to that from her now-sold Internet company, Cisco Systems. Jane Austen fans are fortunate that her interests and philanthropy turn to Austen and her contemporaries, preserving and discover-ing much, in architecture and literature, that is of so much value to us all.

– The Female Spectator
Issues of this journal on the progress of development of the Chawton House Library and the Early Women’s Writing Centre are coming thick and fast now. We have just received the newest copy, dated Spring 2000, and attach it to those who have put their names on the mailing list. Should you wish to have your name added to that list, or remove yourself from it, please contact JASA.

– JA in Bath
The Jane Austen Centre in Bath, now a year old, is proving a major attraction, particularly to American and Australian visitors, but also to an increasing number of British people, as we are assured from cuttings from the Bath press kindly sent to us by member Beth Cremer. The Centre houses a permanent exhibition on Jane’s life and family, her characters and the settings for the Bath novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

– New biography
Carol Shields, popular and prize-winning Canadian novelist, has recently completed a biography of Jane Austen. It is to be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, and we hope to have a review in the next Sensibilities. See her piece in ‘Writer of the Millennium’ below.

– A JA/navy connection
Members David and Shirley Byrne were lucky enough to win a Cunard cruise to Cairns from the National Maritime Museum recently. Shirley Byrne is an ex-treasurer of our Society, and David has demonstrated his considerable knowledge of matters naval both now and in Jane Austen’s time in an address to JASA - as he has obviously done also for Cunard, as the caption shows. The Byrnes are also the kind people who collect the readied Sensibilities and Newsletter for us, and mail it to all our members - a continuing service for which we thank them. Congratulations to you both!

– Hatches - to use a ‘popular press’ term
Emma Thompson (a marvellous Elinor in the most recent Sense & Sensibility) and Greg Wise (a dashing Willoughby) have recently had a baby daughter, for whom the couple are still discussing names. May we suggest Marianne as being a most appropriate choice?

– Writer of the Millennium?
In the Times Literary Supplement of 3 December 1999, the editors presented the views of a coterie of eminent critics on the subject of ‘International Books of the Year and the Millennium’. Writers were asked to nominate the book which, in their opinion, was the best or most significant piece of writing to have appeared in the last 1000 years. Dante’s Divine Comedy and the King James Bible were clear winners. Jane Austen scored one vote, for Emma. The following rather quirky review, presented by Carol Shields, whose new JA biography is mentioned above, will no doubt puzzle some and please others. Would you give your vote to either the novel or the critic? Is Emma really about the novelist learning how to depict life? Carol Shields’ review, whether you like it or not, is a provocative one.

Rodney Pine

Emma, by Jane Austen.

A millenial book has to be a novel, because the novel is the new, new, new form of the last thousand years. And its author has to be a woman, because the new inclusiveness is also something to celebrate.

Emma was written when Jane Austen was at the height of her powers. We can feel the rich buzz of her voice behind every scene. Whenever I’m caught in a discussions in which someone declares Emma Woodhouse to be a rich, rather nasty, spoiled brat and Mr Woodhouse a bit over the top, and Mr Knightley a cold potato (!), and the whole Jane Fairfax plot a clumsy appendage that never gets brought to life, I say yes, that’s true, but ...

Readers will remember that Emma was not gifted musically. Her drawing, her ability to produce a likeness, was poor - she admitted as much. She was not a serious and disciplined reader, even though Mr Knightley provided her with lists of books he expected her to consume. Well, what was she good at? She was good at observing the people around her, though she made great, gulping mistakes, as we know, and she was good at devising other, alternative arrangements for people. Exuberant, ever inventive, she ran a number of plot lines simultaneously and allowed them to cross and re-cross and get out of control. She was, in short, a novelist, for these interfering and manipulative acts are what novelists busy themselves with.

The Book of the Millennium is a novel about novel-making. I don’t expect everyone to agree. After all, we Emma readers like to remind those other readers that it is in Emma that we have that remarkable line ‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.’

Carol Shields

Mansfield Park: film reviews

Enjoyable?

In the early 1960s, after downing his first cup of Nescafé for the day, my then employer would swing back in his chair and remark:

‘Enjoyable. But it bears little relationship to freshly brewed coffee’.

For me, this comment is analogous to Patricia Rozema’s production of Mansfield Park. I expected the film to be controversial, and indeed, the morning after JASA’s ‘preview screening’, Sandra Hall in the Sydney Morning Herald found much to enjoy in the movie, praised Rozema’s right to reshape the novel, and, ‘because of the fun makeover of Fanny, was ready to forgive the picture anything’; Vicky Roach in the Daily Telegraph slammed the feverish, slave-trading subplot, the latent lesbianism and, the transmogrification of Fanny and concluded by stating that ‘if the movie is anything to go by, the Jane Austen revival is officially over’.

The publicity blurb that the movie is ‘for everyone who loved Emma and Sense & Sensibility’, is misleading, as Rozema’s film is a radical departure from the fairly faithful treatments of the Austen novels adopted in these other cinematic productions. The same flyer heralds the film as ‘a gorgeous, enchanting experience’ and ‘an uncommonly intelligent film’, but is it ‘the best adaptation of a Jane Austen novel’? See it and decide for yourself.

Suffering as she does from a personality by-pass, it would be difficult to depict Austen’s Fanny as a modern movie heroine; however the major surgery performed for this production necessitated a complete reinterpretation of the other characters and indeed the plot and focus of the entire novel. While purists will question whether it was worth it, four friends who had not read the book (yes, there are some about!) praised the film, the sets, the dialogue and the acting, and considered it a great production!

There is some fine acting and the sets and scenery do make the movie visually pleasing.

I found the insertion into the dialogue of material from Jane Austen’s letters and other writings somewhat jarring and out of context, and to me - apart from a suddenly energised Lady Bertram in the final scene - there is no real depth or development in the characters. Do we really care what happens to anyone? Fanny is far too ‘clever’, and her attraction to cousin Edmund thoroughly unconvincing. Surely this Fanny would find the spontaneous Henry Crawford, releasing doves at the door of the Portsmouth hovel, a more interesting and challenging companion. The proposed theatrical production, so important in the novel, is superfluous in this revamped plot and the delightful stupidity of Mr Rushworth’s costume, beautifully handled by Jane Austen, is without purpose in this version.

To ascertain on which side of a distinct divide they fall - those who appreciate the production as late 20th century movie entertainment, or those who consider as sacrilege the radical changes to Jane Austen’s dialogue and characters - all Janeites should see this production of Mansfield Park.

For my part, I found the film

‘Enjoyable. But it bears little relationship to Jane Austen’s masterpiece’.

Marlene Arditto

A very different perspective …

I am going to write on a serious subject - adaptation - which the Macquarie Dictionary defines as ‘a literary work rewritten for presentation in a different medium’.

Austenites generally welcome the opportunity of seeing Jane’s work presented on the stage or screen and watching the embodiment of their favourite characters speak the lines they know so well - it’s the ‘rewritten’ part that so often drives them to thin-lipped fury.

There are Austenites who are not going to like the sensational new Mansfield Park movie, billed as ‘Jane Austen’s favourite comedy’!!!

But not since Clueless has there been such a clever movie adaptation of an Austen novel. Like Clueless, the new Mansfield Park retains the bare bones of the book’s plot while altering the characterisation of the some of the main players to make it more understandable to modern viewers. (I have to say I never understood the appeal of that self-centred, meddling snob, Emma, until I saw Cher in action in Beverley Hills.)

The timid, virtuous and somewhat frail Fanny Price is the Austen character that polarises readers. You either admire or hate her. (Web discussion-list members may still be traumatised by the ‘The Fanny Wars’ of ’97, arising from their group read of Mansfield Park.)

Through the inspired use of material from Austen’s letters and juvenilia, director Patricia Rozema presents Fanny as a budding writer - a young Jane Austen, in effect. Australian actor Frances O’Connor is Fanny - and what a Fanny! Here is a girl who could cut roses all the live-long day with no ill effects! She’s a hoyden, a humorist and a hell-for-leather rider. Oh, and an abolitionist.

The issue of slavery is central to this movie. It is used to explain Sir Thomas’s tyranny, motivate Tom’s dissoluteness, and illustrate Edmund’s moral equivocation. It also underlies Fanny’s courageous resistance to coercion.

Also, modern viewers, who may not be as discomfited as the occupants and readers of Mansfield Park by the insouciant sexuality of the London chic Mary Crawford, are here presented with the suggestion of bisexuality (lesbian chic?) for a, perhaps, similar frisson - nothing to startle the horses, though.

Other players deserve mention.

Who knew Harold Pinter (Sir Thomas) could act?

And the Mrs Norris of my imagination has always looked a bit like the Wicked Witch of the West minus the pointy black hat - all sharp and shrewish - but here Sheila Gish plays her sleekly and silkily deadly.

Viewers will recognise that great Austenian actor (well, why not - if you can have a Shakespearean actor...?) Victoria Hamilton, recently seen as Henrietta Musgrove in Persuasion and Mrs Foster in Pride & Prejudice and here playing the rather two-dimensional role of Maria Bertram with just the right amount of petulance and pathos, giving her character a depth not evident in the book.

Edmund as played by Johnny Lee Miller is a darling. It’s the development of his relationship with O’Connor’s Fanny that makes this a truly, satisfyingly, and unexpectedly, romantic movie.

My recommendation? See this film, but do...not...faint.

Deb Williams

A literary coup

Member Dr Jon Spence has made what could very safely be called a ‘literary coup’. He has unearthed a series of wills of the Austen and related families in London, and has been most generous in offering transcriptions to JASA for publication in series in our journal Sensibilities.

The first appears in the current Sensibilities issue (June 2000), and is of the propertied John Austen, Jane’s great great grandfather in Kent, whose Will impoverished his widowed daughter-in-law Elizabeth (Weller) and her children to benefit only her oldest child, also John Austen. Jane and her father George Austen descend from the ‘poor’ line of the family thus created. To read the original text is fascinating, and disposes of some long-term speculation on the nature and extent of the bequests. These are intended both for the general interest of Janeites everywhere, and as a primary resource for JA biographers and researchers. Later issues of Sensibilities will contain the text of further Austen family wills. Our warmest thanks to Jon for allowing us to publish these.

Read an extract from Dr Spences' presentation to JASA.

Letter from Chawton

Dear Friends

There’s never a dull moment at Jane Austen’s House, and 1999 was no exception to the rule.

As Tom Carpenter mentioned in the last newsletter, it was the museum’s 50th anniversary year, having been opened by the Duke of Wellington in July 1949, just four years after the end of the Second World War. In those days, there were more weighty things on people’s minds than letters written by an eighteenth-century authoress, and so Mr T Edward Carpenter, Tom’s grandfather, was able to buy several of Jane Austen’s letters quite cheaply. They formed the basis of the collection of Austen memorabilia, to be displayed in the House which he himself had bought to turn into a museum in Jane’s honour - and as a memorial to his son Philip John who had been killed in the war. The third Saturday in July, the day of the Jane Austen Society’s annual meeting, seemed the ideal day for the Jane Austen Memorial Trust to celebrate its anniversary, as there would be so many enthusiasts thronging the village. As a very special treat, some of Jane’s original letters were on display for members to see. Being so vulnerable to fading, the letters are always kept safely in the dark, and rarely see the light of day. Although copies of the letters are displayed around the House, there is nothing like the thrill of seeing the actual paper on which Jane’s hand had rested!

We also had Jane’s recently-conserved Donkey Carriage out in the garden that day, pulled by Derby George, our favourite donkey, beautifully groomed - even his little hooves were polished - and on his very best behaviour. Twice that day he pulled the carriage along the lane up to the Great House and back, in his predecessor’s footsteps but sadly without Jane Austen in the driving seat. It really didn’t take much imagination to see her in that very carriage, trotting past the old thatched cottages as she must have done many a time.

Our celebrations culminated in a Royal Visit by HRH Princess Alexandra in October. It was a cold, windy, rainy day, but before coming into the House she walked across the road to speak to all the children from Chawton School who had been patiently waiting to see a real live princess and waving their little Union Jacks - not a sight, maybe, to warm Australian hearts (only teasing!) - but her kind gesture melted ours. In the Drawing Room a few people of great importance in the county of Hampshire were presented to Princess Alexandra, and then I was (I did a rather unconvincing ‘bob’). I showed her a first edition of Pride and Prejudice and the topaz crosses - we both agreed that Charles must have been a lovely brother. Then the entourage, led by Tom, moved on around the House, and in each room there were people well-known in the Jane Austen world waiting to be presented and to talk to her, including Richard Knight and his daughter Cassie, Helen Lefroy, Deirdre Le Faye and Susan McCartan representing the Jane Austen Society, and Professor Michael Wheeler from the Chawton House Library. Like most of our visitors, the Princess also discovered our Bookshop!

We then all proceeded to the Granary where George, harnessed to the Donkey Carriage, was waiting by special request. In the Granary, Ann, our Assistant Administrator, and all our Stewards were presented, and then The Windsor Box and Fir Company (musicians) and the Bespoke Dancers played and danced to some of the music from Jane Austen’s music books.

As a permanent memento of our 50th anniversary, we published a booklet with about 65 of the illustrations drawn by Hugh Thomson for the 1894 edition of Pride and Prejudice. It also has a short biography of this very talented and likeable man, which I had great fun putting together. I am pleased to say that it is selling very well in our Bookshop. We gave a specially inscribed copy to Princess Alexandra as a memento of her visit.

An event quite unrelated to our anniversary also took place in 1999 - the unveiling of a Green Plaque to Jane Austen at 10 Henrietta Street, near Covent Garden in London. Jane used to visit her brother Henry when he lived there in 1813-1814, after the death of his wife Eliza. This was a combined event organised by the Jane Austen Memorial Trust and the Jane Austen Society (Tom excels in organising events like these down to the last second). Once again, Derby George and Jane’s Donkey Carriage were on parade - they were brought up to London in George’s horsebox. The actress Judith French played the part of Jane Austen, sitting in the carriage looking very pretty with a little parasol. Once again George was perfectly behaved - I was taking photographs and George was the only one who stood still. After the unveiling ceremony, performed by Amanda Root, the actress who played Anne Elliot in the film of Persuasion, we all congregated in the grand reception room of the Theatre Museum of Covent Garden for refreshments, after which Amanda read us some extracts from the letters which Jane wrote whilst she was staying with Henry at 10 Henrietta Street.

We had 35,000 visitors to Jane Austen’s House in 1999 - a much more reasonable and easier number to handle than the 53,000 or so who came in 1996, after Andrew Davies’ never-to-be-forgotten production of Jane’s Pride and Prejudice.

A busy year, I think you’ll all agree!

With best wishes to you all,

Jean Bowden
Former curator and present archivist of the Jane Austen House Museum.

Mrs. Goddard's School

A new group for younger Jane Austen enthusiasts.

What was it like to live in the world of Jane Austen?? What did they wear, what games did they play? If you know children who are 6–14 and would enjoy activities bringing Jane Austen’s period to life in a very practical way, as well as finding out more about Regency Games that Jane played with her nephews and nieces, read about Mrs. Goddard’s School.

Miscellany from New Zealand

In Trivial Pursuit of Jane, or, Jane is Everywhere from the active and exploring minds of NZ members Ruth Williamson and Christene Evans.

A: Culled from the Times’ Book Supplement Questionnaire

Q: With what character do you most identify?

A: (Joanna Trollope, novelist) A sort of cocktail of all Jane Austen’s heroines, with the exception of dismal little Fanny Price.

A: (Joanna Lumley, actress) Elizabeth Bennet, of course.

Q: With which character would you like to have an affair?

A: (Joanna Lumley) Darcy, obviously.

Q: Which book changed your life?

A: (Craig Raine, poet) Ulysses showed me everything was interesting. Actually, Jane Austen tells you the same thing, in a different way.

Q: Who is your favourite novelist?

A: (David Lodge, novelist) Hard to choose between Jane Austen and Dickens.

Q: Do you have any comfort books you read?

A: (Maureen Lipman, actress and writer, who once revealed that she longed to play Mrs Bennet) The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing; all Jane Austen.

Q: Who is your favourite hero?

A: (P.D. James, writer) Captain Frederick Wentworth.

Q: What is the worst screen adaptation?

A: (Joanna Trollope again) I thought the last version of Emma was pretty dire.

Christene Evans

B: How Are The Mighty Fallen

Alas! ‘Miss Bingley’ (from the BBC’s most recent production of Pride and Prejudice) has obviously come down in the world. She is now to be seen in scanty underwear extolling the ‘reliability’ of a brand of deodorant on New Zealand TV screens. Ruth Williamson somewhat unkindly speculates that she has returned to her family’s origins in Trade!

Christene Evans

C: Jane and the Internet

As all JASA members will know, Mansfield Park is the fifth of Jane Austen’s six novels to undergo a new cinematic adaptation. The final novel to be the subject of a new film version is Northanger Abbey, for which a movie length version appeared some years ago. The new production is already the subject of its own web site, although filming is not yet under way. JASA members may enjoy both the information and excellent links provided by the site at  http://tackytree.tripod.com/northanger/abbey.html

While only one role, that of Catherine Morland, has been cast to date, the site enthusiastically promotes candidates for the part of Henry Tilney. Visitors will also find a link to a page devoted to fan worship of this particular Austen hero.

Those JASA members with access to cyberspace may also enjoy a pictorial feast of Bath as Jane Austen would have known it at www.openworld.co.uk/austen/

The number of sites devoted to JA and her work continues to show exponential growth!

Ruth Williamson

Other Places, Other Societies

For contact details of other Jane Austen societies and links to other Jane Austen web sites see LINKS.

Jane Austen in Adelaide

This particularly active group meets monthly in the WEA in Angus St, City, on the third Saturday, and welcomes visitors. They have another action packed program:

We are looking forward to fine speakers on the finer points of Travelling in the time of Austen, as well as the Libraries at this time, and the Laws concerning women in the 18th century. We will talk long and hard on Something about Emma(!), and listen to why people still read Jane Austen, then hear a new version of Mr Collins: The Adumbrative Advertiser. We will listen to performances on the harp and we will round-table ‘Defence of the Indefensible’, looking at Bad and Badder Men.

In between meetings this year the Adelaide Club will be running a teaching and lecture program taking Jane to High Schools and into Continuing Education courses - just to prove there is more to Jane Austen (in print) than Mansfield Park on screen.

We are looking forward to a busy and joyful year with great friends.

Lynnaire Hawker

JA in Perth

In our busy half year, we have learnt so much! For our end-of-year excursion we travelled not to Box Hill but to Tranby House, just as Elizabeth and the Gardiners visited Chatsworth and Pemberley. Although it was very hot we came along with all our Regency Regalia, dresses, scarves and pins. Much of the contents of this house were of Austen’s time, and we were all most impressed with the work and effort of these early settlers. Not to mention the very sad news that the Father, a minister, would not let his daughters marry anyone but a minister. Hence only one of the daughters married...What would Mrs Bennet have done?

We had Doctor Jim Leavesley give us a most informative talk on the diseases and illnesses of Austen time. He spoke too on the theory behind the work he co-authored, What Killed Jane Austen. He also spoke of the Brontë sisters and of Keats. We learnt so much and were most appreciative of his sharing his knowledge.

We also visited the Eileen Joyce Music Room at the University of Western Australia, and heard and viewed many piano instruments - the piano forte, harpsichord, spinet, clavichord and many more, and were quite swept away by the beautiful sounds, not to mention the beauty of the instruments. Emma and Elizabeth would have been in musical heaven!!! Not to forget Mrs Hurst and Mary. Two students of the music school played most wonderfully for us all. I must say some of us were ashamed of our own accomplishments.

To extend our musical knowledge one of our members gave us a most comprehensive and interesting talk on the music of Austen’s time. Clare Kilroy informed us of the types of music, the composers and relevance of music to Austen’s time and writings. So you can see that our musical knowledge of Austen’s time is further widening.

Our last excursion for this half year was to the Round House in Fremantle. I was especially chosen from a large crowd of people to fire the cannons, which was exciting, and they gave me a certificate (below) to prove it. The Round House was built just after Austen’s time, but it provided much information on what life was like for prisoners then. I believe Mr Wickham would have needed to stay at the Round House for a while. Maybe in one of the first padded cells (at the Round House), no I suppose that would be too cruel...

So as you can all see we in Western Australia have been very busy. We have much more planned for the rest of the year - from lace makers to flower arrangers to a representative from the Daffodil Society. We are immersing ourselves in Austen life and loving it.

Katarina Bavcevic

JA in the Blue Mountains

It was great that so many Blue Mountains residents were able to join us at our Country Weekend in their area at the end of March, and some of them were expressing ‘withdrawal symptoms’ for lack of other local Janeites to talk to during the rest of the year (though this year at least with the JASA Conference being also in Leura they are well served!). It has been suggested that those Blue Mountains members who wish to, may like to make contact with each other with a view to perhaps setting up a local meeting. We cannot publish members’ numbers or addresses, but one member, Rodney Pyne, has agreed that his phone number can be used for contact, so do ring him at Faulconbridge on 4751 4774 to decide whether you would like to take the matter further. Our President has kindly offered to give whatever input you wish, in content or in organisation assistance. Think of the pleasure this would give you all!

News From Christchurch, NZ

Over these early months of the year 2000 we have been bombarded by the opinions of critics, moviegoers and Janeites about the new film of Mansfield Park. It is yet to arrive here but those of us with access to the Internet have viewed images and heard music from the movie (by visiting www.mansfieldpark.com). We have also followed the cut and thrust of debate about the film’s merits (or lack of them) in print media as well as in cyberspace. We hope to be able to report our local impressions by the time the next Newsletter appears at the end of this year.

The controversy surrounding this new film recalls the furore that arose when the BBC announced in 1994 that they were about to make another version of Pride and Prejudice in six parts and that it would break new ground by introducing erotic scenes, including full frontal nudity for Darcy. The English press reacted to the news with shock and horror: one headline screamed ‘Jane Austen’s Steamy Sex Romps’! Those fears provided ample material for caricature, as illustrated here even though ‘sex romps’ as such were absent from the completed production. Perhaps this is a timely reminder to us to wait and see before we pronounce judgment on this new film of Mansfield Park.

We have continued to find material with a flavour of Jane Austen in the most unexpected places. Those readers with school-aged children will doubtless know of the Harry Potter phenomenon but they may not be aware that his creator, J K Rowling, is an Austen admirer. As early as the second page of her first Potter novel we find light, bright and sparkling eyes: later a cat, full of evil designs, is introduced and bears the name of Mrs Norris.

Christene Evans’ research uncovered a recent survey of 40,000 British readers to mark World Book Day. This produced a list of favourite writers on which J K Rowling was placed second. Roald Dahl headed the list and the only literary great to figure in the top ten was, of course, Jane Austen at number seven. Shakespeare could only manage number fifty!

It will hardly surprise JASA members that characters from the Austen canon find their way into worlds far removed from their own. While reading a hefty tome entitled The Raj, the Making and Unmaking of British India by Lawrence James, Christene learned about ‘Baraset Military College, sixteen miles from Calcutta, where cadets ... regularly drank themselves silly’ and generally behaved in a disgraceful manner. Their ‘ungentlemanlike’ conduct was explained by the presence among them of ‘former militia officers from Britain who were often men of humble background - the sort of fellows whom Mrs Bennet wished to keep out of her younger daughters’ way.’ As Christene has observed, Wickham would certainly have been a leading light in such company!

We have also attempted to choose our favourite phrases, lines, paragraphs or situations from Jane Austen’s novels. Because more riches reveal themselves each time we return to the texts, this task has proved difficult. Choices tend to reflect whichever novel is open at the present time, since so many selections are possible from all six! While we have been revisiting Jane Austen’s texts we have seen what pitfalls await the film maker or screenwriter who interferes, even in a small way, with events as they unfold in the novels. For instance Christene has identified a number of flaws in Andrew Davies’ screenplay of Pride and Prejudice as the sequence of events is presented on screen. Adapters tinker at their peril with the original scheme as devised by the genius of Jane Austen. After all…

she wrote of the human comedy with profound art to produce novels unequalled in English literature for technical brilliance, ironic poise, and awareness of the differing claims of personality and society.

David Daiches, A Critical History of English Literature, Vol 2, Ch4, Secker & Warburg, 1960.

Ruth Williamson and Christene Evans

Ruth and Christene have also contributed some fascinating miscellany, which appears on page 34.

JASNA

Are you going overseas this October? The JASNA Annual conference for 2000 is in Boston, Massachusetts, and will explore the topic Pride & Prejudice: past, present & future.

These huge events are getting more so, and this year includes an Australian (again), this time as a major speaker - John Wiltshire of La Trobe University in Melbourne whose paper on Reading Pride & Prejudice we so much enjoyed at our February meeting. (His article is published in the current Sensibilities.) He is listed as speaking on Mr Darcy and male responses to the novel.

Details of the conference are available from the Editor if you are interested.

The Jane Austen Society in London

This centrally located group has reported the quite delightful fact that Britain’s biggest private house went on sale last year. Its name? Wentworth Woodhouse, formerly owned by the Rockingham-Fitzwilliam dynasty. Three novels in one large house!

That central location can of course make Australian Janeites envious. The group also reports on a day trip to Godmersham, and a walk in the beautiful Godmersham Park, where Jane must so often have taken her exercise during her visits to her brother Edward and his family.

This group hosted the JASNA tour last year, which included our Anne Harbers, at which their patron JA biographer Park Honan spoke on the influence of Shakespeare on Jane Austen. Honan cited also the parallels between Fanny and John Dashwood’s ‘bidding down’ of support to his mother and sisters, and that of Goneril and Regan on the number of soldiers their father King Lear could keep. Both actions, he says, are ‘tragic and comic’.

A ‘gentleman’ or only a ‘beau’? George "Beau" Brummell, watercolor by Richard Dighton (1805)

What makes a Gentleman?

This question was considered at the study day on Emma last year, which stimulated some further research by member Bertha McKenzie.

Mr Knightley, being naturally the first to come to mind in a discussion on this topic, is recognised as a true gentleman, while Frank Churchill’s status is more ambiguous. He is accepted by everyone else in the novel, apart from Mr Knightley, as a gentleman because he has all the surface attributes of one. He is well educated and accomplished, his manners are polished, he dresses well and he lives the life of a leisured gentleman with a good income. But he does not manifest those attributes that entitle a man like Mr Knightley to be so automatically called a gentleman.

This concept of ‘gentleman’ is a very 18th century one. It survived into the 19th century, but Jane Austen clearly saw that the ‘code of honour’ entitling a man to call himself a gentleman no longer seemed active in a society which was changing rapidly. In his trilogy on the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Arthur Bryant goes into some detail on this subject. The following notes draw freely on his writings, and direct quotes are from his The Age of Elegance. A contemporary critic wrote of being often disgusted

even in the best works of fiction… [by] offences against all generous principles, as the reading of letters by those for whom they were not intended, taking advantage of accidents to overhear private conversation, revealing what in honour should have remained secret, plotting against men as enemies and at the same time making use of their services, dishonest practices on the sensibilities of women by their admirers, falsehoods, not always indirect, and by an endless variety of low artifices which appear to be thought quite legitimate if carried on through subordinate agents. (290)

Here are encapsulated the moral imperatives, elevated into a code of honour, that entitled a man to call himself a gentleman. Duels were so common because men were quick to take offence if they thought their honour had been questioned.

Wellington said ‘The British army is what it is because it is officered by gentlemen; men who would scorn to do a dishonourable thing.’ He defined a gentleman as one who ‘spoke the truth, honoured his bond and kept faith’. Wellington regarded a lie as an act of cowardice and a breach of promise as a vulgar betrayal. One of his officers, Charles Napier, saw the treatment of women as the measure of civilisation: tenderness towards the helpless and adherence to one’s word constituted the tests of a gentleman, and a man who broke his parole was beneath contempt. His brother, George, held up to his children as unforgivable offences the breaking of one’s parole and cowardice. One rode straight, spoke the truth and never showed fear.

The English despised a liar, or one afraid to avow his beliefs. Attempts to introduce a secret ballot into the electoral system were resisted as un-English on the ground that the franchise was a trust which an elector was bound to exercise publicly. Bryant quotes Bewick, speaking about a neighbour: ‘Whatever he did was done in open day, for, as he feared no man, he scorned to sulk or to do anything by stealth’.

By the time of the peace after Waterloo, farm rents had skyrocketed, farmers could become rich, and landed gentlemen were receiving huge incomes in comparison with the pre-war period. In 1813 Jane Austen writes from Godmersham ‘Let me shake off vulgar cares and conform to the happy indifference of East Kent wealth.’ (Letters, 229).

Respect for landed wealth became paramount, and a generation of indulged, idle young men and women grew up with too much money to spend. The dominant desire of all classes became to ‘cut a dash’, to show ‘style’, to be ‘elegant’. With this access of wealth came improvements to estates, rich, expensive foods and clothing, lavish entertaining and new furniture. Anything old-fashioned was scorned. Stendhal, visiting London in 1812, left his observations of the social scene. He found English society:

divided like the rings of a bamboo, every class aping the manners and habits of the class above. The universal desire to get into a higher circle and keep out intruders vitiated it; people did not enter it with the desire of being agreeable but of being on the defensive against those less modish…Fashionable life at all levels was becoming a fearful hierarchy. (321)

The supreme aim became to seem ‘genteely connected’, or to boast a pedigree and titled relations. Lords who kept open house for their country neighbours cut them in London. The older ideal of a gentleman was being obscured.

One disastrous effect of this snobbery was to destroy the grammar school system. Establishments such as Eton and Winchester were now taking boarders for high fees, mixing the older aristocracy with the new commercial and professional classes, but segregating both from the children of the poor. At some schools only the rich and titled were welcome, and the universities were turned into finishing schools for the upper and middle classes.

In this way the worst of all heresies, ‘the worship of Lucifer and Mammon’ was overtaking Christian England, so that a man was nothing without birth or money. Herein lay the nemesis of the contemporary passion for elegance, dangerous because it became an obsession,

driving men of all classes to a heartless, competitive extravagance… It was increasingly attended by vanity, greed and covetousness, and by the uncharitableness to which these gave rise. It reduced even good men from Christians to cads. It ceased to occur to gentlemen that there was anything ignoble in speaking of those socially beneath them with contempt. (325).

This was the social scene in the last twenty years of Jane Austen’s life, a very different world from that of her youth. This new society produced and tolerated the cad and the dandy, whose manners and way of dressing were aped by many young bloods. With too much money to spend, too much food and drink, too much leisure and too little responsibility, a snobbish self-indulgent generation grew up with a heartless disregard for the feelings of others. Mr Knightley, a product of the 18th century, embodies all that was best in that century’s ideal gentleman. Frank Churchill represents the new generation of gentlemen which, though based on elegance, high vitality and courage, was both competitive and calculating, with a lack of concern for others.

Bertha McKenzie

Sources
The Years of Endurance 1793-1802, Arthur Bryant, 1943
The Years of Victory 1802-1812, Arthur Bryant, 1945
The Age of Elegance 1812-1822, Arthur Bryant, 1950
Letters of Jane Austen, Deirdre Le Faye, 1995

Emma: The Case for the Defence

Member Marjorie Jones takes up the call to arms for Emma and Mr Knightley (and herself) against Tom Hoberg’s Emma: The Case for the Prosecution, reprinted in the December 1999 issue of the JASA Newsletter.

When I read the extract from Tom Hoberg’s paper, Emma: The Case for the Prosecution, delivered at the AGM of the Chicago Branch of JASNA (see JASA Dec Newsletter, p.4) I wondered if he had escaped unscathed from that meeting or whether he was still lying low in a Safe House, besieged by angry Emma fans! I would happily join a posse if one were formed to avenge the slur on my beloved Mr Knightley, whom he 1abelled as ‘stuffily implausible.’ How dare he! I might just, with great difficulty, bring myself to see the justice of his description of Mr. Woodhouse as ‘an exasperating old fool’ or Miss Bates as ‘an irritating bore’ but I cannot let his denigration of Mr. Knightley go unchallenged.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines implausible as ‘not seeming reasonable or probable’. Jane Austen would have been astonished to hear that she had created such a character in Mr. Knightley. Not only is he a thoroughly reasonable man (except perhaps when he speaks of Frank Churchill) but we don’t for a moment doubt his ‘probability’. This is a character who lives for us, whether he is humouring Mr. Woodhouse, putting Mrs. Elton in her place firmly but courteously, coming to the aid of a snubbed Harriet, or parting with the last of his apples as a favour to the Bates. As to his alleged ‘stuffiness’ I would ask Mr Hoberg to read again the exchange between Miss Bates (at her window) and Mr. Knightley (on horseback). You will remember that Miss Bates has been waxing lyrical about the party of the evening before and praising the dancing of Mr. Churchill and Miss Woodhouse. Is it a stuffy man who agrees with Miss Bates that the dancing has indeed been ‘delightful’. He continues:

I can say nothing less, for I suppose Miss Woodhouse & Mr Frank Churchill are hearing everything that passes. And (raising his voice still more) I do not see why Miss Fairfax should not be mentioned too. I think Miss Fairfax dances very well; and Mrs Weston is the very best country-dance player, without exception, in England. Now, if your friends have any gratitude, they will say something pretty loud about you and me in return, but I cannot stay to hear it.

On second thoughts I can find it in my heart to forgive Mr. Hoberg. In taking the difficult position of Devil’s Advocate he is perhaps somewhat half-hearted, and I suspect that in reality he finds Mr. Woodhouse as amusing, Miss Bates as entertaining and Emma as ‘faultless in spite of her faults’ as the rest of us do. If he is not quite fair to Mr. Knightley it may be that as a male he might not be able to appreciate the qualities which make Mr Knightley so attractive to this particular woman and to so many others like me.

Marjorie Jones

Professor John Sutherland’s Puzzle Books

Some of you may recall that in the December Newsletter I reviewed a book by Professor John Sutherland of University College, London, entitled Who Betrays Elizabeth Bennet? This was the third in a series of what Prof. Sutherland describes as his ‘puzzle books,’ I had already read Is Heathcliff a Murderer? and Can Jane Eyre be Happy? (mentioned on page 5 of this Newsletter).

While reading the latter I came to a chapter headed ‘Did Mrs. Dalloway take a taxi?’ Those who have read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, describing a day in the life of a society hostess, will recall that Clarissa Dalloway is preparing for a party she is giving that evening. We follow her on her walk to the West End to order flowers and her route is described in some detail. Prof. Sutherland set out to walk that same route and calculated that, by the time she reached the florist, she would have been walking for about 35 minutes. Later in the story she reaches home to find that she has an unexpected visitor and thinks that ‘It is outrageous to be interrupted at eleven o’clock on the morning of the day when she was giving a party.’ The puzzle is to work out how she managed to get home so quickly. Working from clues given in the text, Prof. Sutherland concludes that she leaves the florist around 10.45 to 10.50, giving her roughly 10 to 15 minutes to get home. Assuming that she might have walked, he followed the route she would most likely have taken and found that it was about a mile and a half, commenting ‘It takes me a brisk ten minutes to walk it.’ Ergo, she must have taken a taxi.

I decided to write to Prof. Sutherland, saying how much I had enjoyed his books and adding that I was to review his latest for the Newsletter of the Jane Austen Society of Australia. I went on to wonder whether he had been setting yet another puzzle for his readers or whether he was a very brisk walker. I reminded him that Roger Bannister had astonished the world with his 4 minute mile, and asked how he managed to cover a mile and a half in ‘a brisk ten minutes’.

I was surprised and delighted to receive a handwritten reply, which read:- ‘Dear Mrs. Jones, Ooops! You may see me in Sydney in 2000, running for my country.’ He said that he was very pleased to receive letters from his readers and asked whether he could have a copy of my review if it was not too much trouble. Our Editor kindly provided me with an extra copy of the Newsletter which I sent on to him, together with a warm invitation to visit us if he ever came this way, whether as an Olympic hopeful or as an ordinary tourist.

Marjorie Jones

A woodcut by Thomas Bewick, 1753-1828.

Childbirth in Jane Austen’s time

We are delighted to be able to publish these thoughts from country member Helen Sims. We are conscious of - and would prefer to avoid - a natural tendency for the Society to centralise on urban or academic writings, and would welcome other contributions partic-ularly from those members who are out of range of our usual meetings.

How many women of today would be able to understand the fear in the hearts of the women of Jane Austen’s day? Marriage was of first importance in their lives, but statistics showing the prevalence of death in childbirth must have cast a cloud over the wedding celebrations. We today forget how far medical advances have removed us from the agonies of the past.

In 1798/9 when Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey, she was able to comment flippantly about Catherine Morland’s mother ...

Her mother was a woman of plain sense, with a good temper, and what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Catherine was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on - lived to have six children more - to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself.
(NA, p9)

Jane’s own family was not exempt - three of her brothers lost their first wives in childbirth (two after having their 11th child); Jane’s great grandmother Mary Leigh died in childbirth at 37, after producing 12 children. Yet the constitution of the mother was often blamed for her own death. Neighbourhood murmurings of ‘She was never strong...’ often followed the funeral coffin.

By 1814, when Jane was writing Emma, she regarded this problem in a much more serious light. Writing of Mrs Weston, she had Emma ‘resolved to defer the disclosure till Mrs Weston were safe and well’ (E, p398), and later ‘Mrs Weston’s friends were all made happy by her safety ... knowing her to be the mother of a little girl.’ (E, p411).

Jane was intrinsically fond of children, but I would suggest she still betrays evidence in her letters of her views on uncontrolled birthings in families of their generation, and the stark fact that women had no power to steer their own lives. Whether or not this concept was any part of her decision not to proceed with marriage to Harris Bigg-Wither, we can only be grateful that she chose a path not ‘busy with babies’, or subject to an even earlier death in childbirth, so that generations are able to enjoy the treasured output of her pen.

Helen Sims

The press and JASA

The Society is fortunate in having an articulate, knowledgeable and pleasant president in Susannah Fullerton who raises the profile and prestige of the Society by a full programme of literary talks to a wide variety of groups, and ‘fields’ continuing interviews from the press on the Jane Austen phenomenon.

The Herald’s ‘Summer People’ article on 4 January this year gave a good picture of the enthusiasm that enables Susannah to carry a very heavy load of literary lectures as well as the presidency of our Society. They are simply put, and deserve some (abridged) quoting - if only to provide gentle ammunition for those of us who have difficulty rebutting negative comments from our friends and acquaintances!

When Susannah Fullerton wants to get away from the helter skelter of everyday life, she escapes into another century... slipping back into Georgian England. ‘Sometimes it’s the humour, sometimes the romance, sometimes just the sheer reading pleasure. It’s very relaxing to enjoy the sheer elegance of every sentence that Austen writes. People don’t speak as elegantly these days, we’re much more relaxed and casual. But the great charm of Jane Austen’s writing is that the characters are so articulate and express themselves so beautifully.’...

Fullerton also researches the history of the period, re-reads Austen’s letters, plays the music, eats the food and even learns the dances.

She is interested in the whole Georgian period in England ... ‘It was a lovely period, particularly elegant and gracious - if you had money, of course... It was one of the most attractive periods of English design, beautiful Georgian houses are not as cluttered as the Victorian times, but have tremendous simplicity and elegance.’ She is fascinated by every aspect of the period - the houses, the architecture, the art, the china, cooking, fashion and music.

She has a bookshelf crammed with Austen novels and biographies, which she reads and re-reads as often as possible. Emma is her favourite, followed closely by Pride & Prejudice. Her mother read her Pride & Prejudice when she was 10, she immediately fell in love with Darcy, and hasn’t been out of love since.

Her love of Austen, she says, controls her life, not only with the presidency of JASA, but in the fact that it was this which gave her her current career as a ‘lecturer at large’.

Pamela Whalan’s input to the Society is also formidable. In this issue of Newsletter we have her report on the Country Weekend, as well as the paper on Northanger Abbey she delivered on that occasion, and in Sensibilities we produce the paper on Emma’s Perfection or Imperfection which she co-presented with Nora Walker at our April meeting. As a member of the Study Day committee she also ‘MCd’ and spoke at that excellent event in May, which is to be reported in the December Newsletter, and as a director of the Genesian Theatre she was responsible for the production of Emma there earlier this year. The Manly Times photographed her recently in relation to that Genesian production.

Regency Fair

The newly instituted Regency Fair carries items specifically for Janeites, from all around the world: they are listed here for the convenience of those who can’t actually attend JASA meetings. Indulge yourself!

To order, contact:

Susannah Fullerton
26 Macdonald Street
Paddington NSW 2021
Phone: (02) 9380 5894
Email: info@jasa.net.au

Postage will be charged for items sent by mail.

• Jane Austen – the Pitkin Guide, illustrated - $8.00
• Jane Austen’s Christmas, by Maria Hubert - $25.50
• Almost another Sister, the Story of Fanny Knight, Jane Austen’s Favourite Niece (Reviewed in Sensibilities July ‘98) - $24.50
• Jane Austen note paper – pads of 25. All My Important Nothings - $3.50
• JA correspondence cards, with Hugh Thompson illustrations (6 cards & envelopes) - $8.00
• Postcards of Brock illustrations from the 6 novels - $10.00
• Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery pens- $2.50
• Jane Austen in Bath postcard - $2.00
• Jane Austen in Hampshire postcard - $2.00
• JASA bookmarks - $1.50
• Jane Austen carry bags - $15.00
• I read Jane Austen pencils - $0.80
• When the Gooseberries are ripe I shall sit upon my Bench, eat them & think of you blue notepads  - $2.50 
• NEW! Jane Auesten's Quiz Book - $15.00

Juvenilia 

• Jack & Alice $8.00 
• History of England $10.50 
• Henry & Eliza $10.50 
• Catharine, or The Bower $10.50 
• A Collection of Letters $10.50 
• NEW! Lesley Castle $10.50
• NEW! The Beautiful Cassandra $10.50

FEEDBACK: info@jasa.net.au

21 August 2000

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