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Jane Austen

219 replies

BaconAndAvocado · 13/10/2023 11:34

Currently listening to a Radio 4 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility and loving it.
I’ve read and enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Emma.

What are the others like?

OP posts:
MrsDanversGlidesAgain · 17/10/2023 18:48

A lot of MP is Fanny's interior monologue rather than saying it out loud, which would never happen. She's a dependent and a charity child - looks what happens when she does refuse to budge - she gets sent back to Portsmouth to teach her a lesson.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 17/10/2023 19:46

Oh god, the Piper thing was diabolical. I've never seen a good Mansfield Park.

Although, for me, I think the Paltrow thing was even worse. The Kate Beckinsale is the best Emma imo.

Insommmmnia · 17/10/2023 20:04

I quite like the Paltrow version of Emma. But mostly because I find both Emma and Paltrow irritating so it oddly works.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 17/10/2023 20:44

😂

Supersimkin2 · 18/10/2023 10:29

😂 they’re very similar ‘a heroine that no one except myself would like’ as JA said.

JA would have loads of fun with Goop.

I should like Fanny but I can’t. Much prefer Elinor and Marianne.

ageingdisgracefully · 18/10/2023 11:29

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 17/10/2023 19:46

Oh god, the Piper thing was diabolical. I've never seen a good Mansfield Park.

Although, for me, I think the Paltrow thing was even worse. The Kate Beckinsale is the best Emma imo.

Agree with you that the Beckinsale version was the best Emma (and seems, oddly, to be the least well-known). It was brilliantly cast too; although many find Mark Strong a too - stern Knightley. His "badly done!" was by far the most believable for me.

It's an Andrew Davies, and jumps the shark a bit at the end. 1995 was a great year for Austen adaptations.

Mirabai · 18/10/2023 14:02

Kate Beckinsale was v good as Emma, but Mark Strong totally wrong as Mr Knightley - both looks and personality.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 18/10/2023 19:40

I don't remember having any objections to Mark Strong. Just googled him to jog my memory and looks-wise, he seems fine to me. There's nothing to suggest Knightley is devastatingly attractive, as far as I remember.

Mirabai · 18/10/2023 19:45

Nothing to suggest he’s balding though. It’s just a question of taste isn’t it, Jeremy Northam was fine, Mark Strong didn’t do anything for me at all.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 18/10/2023 19:49

Mirabai · 18/10/2023 19:45

Nothing to suggest he’s balding though. It’s just a question of taste isn’t it, Jeremy Northam was fine, Mark Strong didn’t do anything for me at all.

Knightley in the novel doesn't 'do' anything for me either though. I definitely don't see him as sexy or swoon-worthy.

JohnThorntonsOverbearingMother · 18/10/2023 19:50

There was a glut of Emma adaptations. I remember one with Romola Garai too.

JohnThorntonsOverbearingMother · 18/10/2023 19:53

Jonny Lee Miller played Mr Knightley in that one. Had to google that. And I seem to remember him playing Edmund in a Mansfield Park adaptation too.

Mirabai · 18/10/2023 20:02

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 18/10/2023 19:49

Knightley in the novel doesn't 'do' anything for me either though. I definitely don't see him as sexy or swoon-worthy.

I’ve never said he was though - I just said that I thought Mark Strong was wrong 🤷🏻‍♀️

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 18/10/2023 20:50

JohnThorntonsOverbearingMother · 18/10/2023 19:50

There was a glut of Emma adaptations. I remember one with Romola Garai too.

I think I liked this one, although it’s been a long time since I saw it.

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 18/10/2023 20:51

Mirabai · 18/10/2023 20:02

I’ve never said he was though - I just said that I thought Mark Strong was wrong 🤷🏻‍♀️

I didn’t realise this was an argument. I thought we were just expressing different opinions.

Shrug.

Mirabai · 18/10/2023 21:00

I thought we were just expressing different opinions.

So did I. Why would this be an argument? 🤔

RemusLupinsBiggestGroupie · 18/10/2023 22:04

Let’s just talk about Jane. I read the shrug as a bit combative. It seems that’s not how it was intended.

maltravers · 19/10/2023 08:59

I love Persuasion, but does anyone else roll their eyes when Captain Wentworth, just back from the wars and much promoted on merit, doesn’t know what to do when Louisa bashes her head at Lyme?

ageingdisgracefully · 19/10/2023 09:40

maltravers · 19/10/2023 08:59

I love Persuasion, but does anyone else roll their eyes when Captain Wentworth, just back from the wars and much promoted on merit, doesn’t know what to do when Louisa bashes her head at Lyme?

Yes! Although as I recall pretty much everyone falls apart except for Anne. Not being horrible or anything but I find that scene really funny, in the book and the adaptations. It's so ludicrous. I often think that Jane meant it to be so (the aftermath being more important; Louisa's change of personality, Mrs Harville's kindness, Mary's selfishness etc).

SylvieLaufeydottir · 19/10/2023 10:34

maltravers · 19/10/2023 08:59

I love Persuasion, but does anyone else roll their eyes when Captain Wentworth, just back from the wars and much promoted on merit, doesn’t know what to do when Louisa bashes her head at Lyme?

Yes. Let's hope he's a bit less shit if someone gets injured aboard the ships he captains.

MrsDanversChickenSandwich · 19/10/2023 10:48

Maybe he just found Louisa and her 'catch me, catch me' caper insufferable was willing for nature to take its course...

maltravers · 19/10/2023 11:25

Yes, I’m thinking of Russell Crowe in Master & Commander. I can’t imagine HIM having a fit of the vapours at a bashed head. Probably summon the ship’s surgeon to chop off a limb in case it helped! Anyway, as you were. I love Captain W really.

Mirabai · 19/10/2023 11:52

I thought he just panicked because she was a woman and he was responsible. I’m sure he’d be have been fine if it had been his bosun.

Fink · 19/10/2023 12:01

It's not only Wentworth, Captain Benwick is also there: a naval captain and a father of young children. You'd think he would have seen the odd head injury in his time.

It is supposed to showcase Anne's comptence and reliability when everyone else falls apart, and it's the turning point of the novel when Wentworth realises that the ideal is a midpoint between being too easily persuaded and being too headstrong, rather than what he'd previously been idealising which is doing what you want no matter what anyone else thinks.

I wonder whether the men falling apart also shows that they really don't have a clue about women. You see the men across JA's books express many variations on the theme of considering women as irrational, over-emotional, unable to make decisions for themselves. Quite a lot of the women have to explicitly make the point that they are actually fully functioning human beings and not some lesser race. Even Wentworth's own sister says to him 'I hate to hear you talking so [...] as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures.'

Partly it's true that women were expected to eat less, wear restrictive clothing (although not as restrictive as earlier or later styles), and generally be delicate, which does then have genuine health impacts. Witness the fact that Fanny Price is made ill by not being able to ride a horse every day and having to walk in the heat of the day instead. Jane Bennet needs an apothecary and several days' bed rest after a walk in the rain. Marianne Dashwood nearly dies from walking in damp grass and hanging around in wet socks afterwards. None of them have infectious illnesses, which are a whole other category of health risk. All of them, IMO, could have been avoided by building up a stronger constitution through a good diet, comfortable clothing etc. Long and short of it is, you treat women as delicate flowers and that will actually have an effect on their health, and then you don't know how to react because women are such delicate flowers. It's circular. It's notable that, with the exception of Fanny (and possibly Catherine in NA), the main heroine of each book doesn't go in for fainting fits and catching cold because it's a bit damp out, they're usually the more sturdy and sensible ones. I think JA is trying to balance showing that women are stronger than people give them credit for with the reality of living a restrictive lifestyle, which does make people ill (and without germ theory and a lot of other modern science, so the idea that you could get fatally ill from walking in wet shoes was perhaps less ridiculous).

Mirabai · 19/10/2023 14:17

The other aspect is that if Louisa hadn’t recovered and even if she he may have to marry her. He realised too late that everyone had the impression he was “courting” her. That’s why he’s so discombobulated.