Month: May 2020

We read this for the Great Books group – moved up a few months because public domain books are easiest while Forbes is closed. Unlike many, I didn’t get into Austen until I was at least in my 30s, and this may only be the third or so time I’ve read it. Immediately after finishing it I had to go re-watch the Emma Thompson movie, which is one of the few screenplays I think really improves on the original book (the other one that leaps to mind is To Kill a Mockingbird).

I keep forgetting this was her first novel – no wonder it’s not the best! It’s amusing, but the pacing is a little choppy. I think early Austen is more prone to the tendency, showcased here, for the protagonists to be essentially perfect (with some room for improvement, but basically born good, full of virtue and refined taste) and everyone else to be on a spectrum between foolish and bad. We’re told of Elinor at the very beginning that “her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn.” Mrs. Dashwood and Marianne are both silly, and though Elinor’s sense will learn to share her feelings a little more, Marianne’s sensibility (sensitiveness verging on romantic sentimentality) will need to change dramatically.

Mrs. Dashwood and Marianne enjoy being miserable: “The agony of grief which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought for, was created again and again.” Marianne “was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.” They are foolishly optimistic: “with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect.” Mrs. Dashwood plans improvements to the cottage “from the savings of an income of five hundred a year by a woman who never saved in her life.” When she rewrites history about Colonel Brandon, “Elinor perceived … the natural embellishments of her mother’s active fancy, which fashioned every thing delightful to her as it chose;” and then

“There was always a something,—if you remember,—in Willoughby’s eyes at times, which I did not like.”

Elinor could not remember it

Marianne, with excellent abilities and an excellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid. She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself.

Of course we get delightful observations of the silliest people:

Sir John was loud in his admiration at the end of every song, and as loud in his conversation with the others while every song lasted. Lady Middleton frequently called him to order, wondered how any one’s attention could be diverted from music for a moment, and asked Marianne to sing a particular song which Marianne had just finished.

Having to spend so much time with such annoying people – and because Marianne won’t bother to be polite, Elinor bears the brunt of the social niceties – makes the socializing feel vividly oppressive. Marianne quips: “The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, or with us.”

Marriage usually seems fairly tedious if not unhappy; no wonder that in Austen’s narratives we get to the altar and stop there! But marriage is the be-all and end-all. The women walk a knife-edge between “virtue” and complete disaster (Moll Flanders was such a bracing alternative!) – Willoughby can say flatly that even though his aunt would have forgiven him if he married Eliza, “That could not be.”

A few more delightfully snarky yet realistic passages:

The whole of Lucy’s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

But that [Willoughby] was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be depended on—for he did neither. He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.

We talked about Austen’s eternal appeal for adaptation: partly the human love of gossip; partly how cuttingly funny she is; partly how tidy and neat the narrative is, with a small cast of characters, a few locations, and happy endings tied up in bows; partly the conflict between a particularly repressed/restrained milieu and the full range of human nature (since it’s the Regency, Austen’s characters don’t yet pretend to ignore sex and death, unlike typical Victorians).

Somewhere I have the Emma Thompson book of the screenplay and her shooting diaries, which I’ll re-read when I find it. The screenplay’s pacing, the character development (especially little sister Margaret, who’s a cipher here but in the movie gives both Edward and Brandon opportunities to show their caring and goodness), the brilliant mix of textual dialogue and new lines, the wise character pruning (I don’t miss Lady Middleton, but Anne Steele has some good bits) – it’s an amazing adaptation. And then the movie piles on top-notch casting (the big names of course, but also Hugh Laurie as Mr. Palmer! Harriet Walter as Fanny!), superb acting, and Ang Lee as director. I’m finishing this post about two weeks after the discussion, and I’m ready to watch it again.

Shorter quotes:

• “a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing”
• Willoughby “hardly ever falls in love with anybody”
• “Mrs. Jennings’s endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire”
• Mrs. Ferrars “was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas.”
• “no poverty of any kind, except of conversation”
• Poor Elinor has “to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs”
• John Dashwood “never wished to offend anybody, especially anybody of good fortune”
• “Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate … to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen.”

In this book I learned:

• mohr (mohur): gold coin
• hartshorn is basically ammonia
• Constantia wine: South African dessert wine
• huswife: sewing kit