We have spoken before about Jane Austen’s individualistic punctuation. Many of us feel that Austen’s incessant dashes, and other weird habits were ebullient—that we’d like to be as free as she was, even if our ever-copyediting hearts might tidy things up a little bit for other people.
Now there is a fracas afoot regarding Austen’s punctuation! Word on the street is that two chapters of the original manuscript for Persuasion will be on view at the British Library from November 12 to April 3 as part of the Evolving English exhibit. (Hey everyone, field trip!) Well, there has been back and forth about Miss Austen and her punctuation. Here’s Roger Walshe, curator of the exhibit:
Austen hardly punctuates at all, so what you get is a much more urgent form of language which becomes more restrained when it is edited. There tends to be an awful lot of clauses and sub-clauses. There is the odd comma, but they aren’t always in the most rational places. There are no paragraphs. It’s like she’s telling a story rather than writing one. The amazing thing is that there are so few corrections. You can imagine her thinking through a scene and then rushing to write it down. That’s possibly why the dialogue works so well, and why [film adaptations] are so successful.There is a real sense of urgency – more so than the slightly more restrained form you get from the novels.
This has led to snide comments about people’s comma usage and spirited rebuttals about artistic license (which take a comment of Walshe’s quite out of context). I’m kind of expecting that we’ll next see something about Jane Austen being the foremother of lolspeak and generally informal writing habits online, like abbreviations and the elongation of words to suggest tones of voice. (I feel impossibly elderly writing that, but wtf, i can roflol all night looooonnngggg. Righhhhtttt.)
All I’m saying is, I love to see a good comma fracas, and especially one where Our Girl Jane takes center stage! People getting passionate about language, that’s what we need! I hardly even care what they say—it just does my heart good—. With extra dashes!—
Fangirls, prepare yourselves: there’s a new and potentially fascinating interdisciplinary star on the horizon. I was browsing the finance papers today, as one does, and came across this interview in Capital—you know, where we get all our Austen news—with playwright/finance reporter Felipe Ossa regarding his new play Monetizing Emma, recently premiered at the New York Fringe Festival. And now I’m feeling a yen for the stage.
The titular Emma here isn’t, incidentally, our Miss Woodhouse—rather, she’s a high-school student, an investment for a bank hoping to cash in on her future success in this rhythmically Austenian speculative econ drama. Which, just so you know, is totally our new favorite genre. It’s Austen meets Wall Street…FROM THE FUTURE! We approve.
In a refreshing turn of events, Ossa’s take on Austen isn’t about plot or character—this is no monsters-optional, chronologically challenged Pride and Prejudice reboot. Like many playwrights, he’s a words guy, and he’s taking Jane’s prose and holding it up to a whole new light. As noted in the article:
“I had no idea how to mimic Austen until I drove to Montreal in ’06, a seven-hour drive, and I listened to Persuasion on tape, and I think it was Diana Rigg who was narrating. And I completely understood how beautiful Austen’s rhythms are. And I started to hear the monologue in my head. Not the words but the rhythm, the syntax. That was a pivotal point: This stuff is exciting! I was thinking about Janeites who would recite Austen or reenact Austen.”
So clearly, what we have our hands here is a man of discerning tastes. Persuasion and Diana Rigg? Presumably, Anne Eliott fighting crime in go-go boots, with the kind of verbal specificity that’s so satisfying on the stage? I think Ossa is our kind of man. (Perhaps we should ask him about his mutton chops.)
So, readers, check him out—and let the Austenacious Drama Club meetup plans begin.
This week, world-wandering elder brother Mr. Ball has hung up his top hat and arrived at the family country house for a much-deserved furlough from the competitive world of international diplomacy. The whole clan is sequestered away, in fact, for a period of long carriage rides, late-night Whist (aka Scrabble), and the kind of family togetherness that only a trip to the country can bring, for better or for worse.
As any young lady returned to her family after a season away will find, there’s something about suddenly having parents and an elder brother very present that makes one’s role in life perfectly clear: come hell or high water or long periods of living independently, little sisterhood is forever.
As far as Jane goes, I think I’m doing all right. So far, I’m pleased to report that I have not yet run off to Scotland or to the seashore with any older men, only to need rescuing/marrying at gunpoint, nor have I injured myself and fallen head-over-heels for any dreamy scoundrels on horseback. I haven’t played the pianoforte in an inappropriate manner. I haven’t become “often a little unwell,” nor have I become (more so than usual) “always thinking a great deal of my own complaints”. There may have been a little bit of running wild—of which the Morlands surely approve—but have we mentioned we’re at the country house? Who do you think I am, Mary Bennet?
On the other hand, my brother hasn’t bought me any pianofortes, nor has he leapt up to defend my honor. To be fair, though, he hasn’t forced me out of my ancestral home and into a pauper’s cottage, either.
I say we’re even…as long as he lets me call shotgun on the way home.
No, really. Are you?
Because you’re gonna want to see this—probably behind closed doors.
Couple of Extraordinary Taste Mr. and Mrs. Porter have brought to our attention lengthy videos of Joseph Fiennes reading from Sense and Sensibility, Dominic West reading from Pride and Prejudice, and Greg Wise reading from Persuasion—and now we can’t go back to the innocent ladies we were previously. We can’t unsee those impeccably set-dressed interiors and those perfectly crisp white shirts! We can’t unhear the seductively manly voices or the passion in Darcy/West’s proposal! We can’t unimagine…well, we wouldn’t tell you even if our mothers weren’t reading this site.
It’s just like we always say: the way to a woman’s heart is through the hilarious yet spot-on sexy reading of classic literature by hot and famous men. It’s a thing we say. Really.
(The only way this could be more perfect, naturally, is via an Old Spice Guy cameo. He is, after all, on a horse. Are you listening to me, advertisers?)
Today’s post over at Jane Austen’s World reminds me that, even before Anne and Wentworth come around, Persuasion already has a ridiculously happy couple, and that I love them dearly. And not even in a moony, melancholy, hopeful way! With Admiral Croft and his cheerfully hardcore wife Sophy, it’s all fun and games (and a good dose of common sense)—and a literary mirror for our star semi-naval couple.
I love the Crofts—good-hearted and capable folks with a zest for life and a healthy sense of humor. More than anybody else in Persuasion, Anne’s future in-laws are people I’d like to meet at a party, run into at the Farmer’s Market, and/or join on vacation (ostensibly sponsored by Lonely Planet…or, um, the U.S. Navy). Luckily—inspiringly!—I see modern-day Crofts all around—middle-aged (-plus) couples embracing life together as an adventure, either figuratively or literally. Need some Crofts in your life? Try REI. Or your local wilderness experience—not among the young and the stylishly decked out, but among the people who know what they’re doing. Look for people with ruddy cheeks and vintage gear, and you’ll know you’ve hit Croft jackpot.
To be fair, though—Jane would want us to be fair—the Crofts aren’t just there to offer a bracing breath of fresh air. They serve a very specific purpose in the novel: they’re the alterna-Wentworths. They’re what Anne and the Captain might have been if Anne hadn’t turned him down the first time, if instead of pining and fading away, she’d followed him off across the seas and become (basically) a pirate’s wife. They’ve lived their adventure; their relationship is full of the intimacy and humor that come with being together through thick and thin, and not just in the milieu of the Regency middle class. It’s strange to think of calm, forbearing Anne flying by the seat of her pants, but her younger self might just have ended up living True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle-style (minus the murder, obv.) if she’d taken Wentworth up on his offer—and how different things would have been! Imagine: Anne Wentworth, adventurer and pirate-novel heroine!
On the other hand, if the Wentworths had lived out their Croft-life the first time, we wouldn’t have our melancholy masterpiece. And who wants that?
We Austenites can be a boy-crazy bunch.
We make much of Mr. Darcy diving into a pond in a puffy shirt (which isn’t even in the book!). We divide into camps over, say, Knightley and Wentworth, and then further into sub-camps over Jonny Lee Miller and Jeremy Northam (or Colin Firth and Matthew McFadyen, or Ciaran Hinds and Rupert Penry-Jones). We admire the mutton chops and the fancy dance moves of Austen heroes from Sense and Sensibility all the way up to Persuasion. We objectify the pants off those fictional characters—see what I did there?—and have a fantastic time doing it.
And we’re missing half the story.
In Friday’s Telegraph, “novelist and ladies’ man” (heh) Jay McInerney gave us the other side of the coin: the male perspective on the ladies of Austen. Spoiler alert: It seems the menfolk can’t get enough of the fine eyes and dirty hems of Elizabeth Bennet any more than Darcy could; McInerney also reveals things for Emma Woodhouse and, with a charming note of self-consciousness, Fanny Price.
We don’t get a lot of this perspective around these parts; being primarily female and straight, the Austen community in general tends to spend way more time on what’s underneath Darcy’s breeches than what might be going on with those boobalicious Regency gowns.
McInerney goes on to claim some degree of depth in his Austen attachments—he really does love them for their minds, he says, both as characters and as representations of Jane herself. But what if he didn’t? What if this guy fixated—with an unusual sense of publicity and and odd sort of camaraderie—on the rain-drenched Marianne Dashwood, or on Jane Bennet’s mid-storm arrival at Netherfield? What if he sat around writing fan fiction about Lydia and either Wickham or, because it’s fanfic and he can, Mr. Collins or Charlotte Lucas or (crossover alert!) Hermione Granger or Sirius Black? Or all of the above? Would we react to him differently, and to his way of experiencing the Austen universe? How would we approach him as a man and as an admirer and/or objectifier of the women of Austen?
Readers, what do you think? (And while we’re at it, who’s your biggest Austen crush—of either gender?)
So, how can I put this? Let’s see. Okay, so. Sometimes, it seems to me that Austen adaptations are…shall we say, remiss in failing to offer a satisfying ending? Failing to seal the deal, if you know what I mean? Sure, Lizzy and Darcy end up in the Carriage of Loooove at the end of the 1995 adaptation, but what’s with the little peck as they’re driving off (frozen for effect, even—what, BBC, do you think we didn’t see what you did there, you dirty cheaters)? And, really, nothing for Jane and Bingley? They’re going to get a complex, people. Even Emma Thompson’s Elinor promptly explodes with emotion when Edward turns out not to be married—but does she sweep him off his feet and carry him away, complete with soaring music and distracting crane-shot camera work? Spoiler alert: she does not. And oh, sure, maybe it’s not in the book, exactly, but then neither is a thirty-six-year-old Elinor, a Jane Bennet that looks vaguely like a Greek statue, or that awesome cake on a pedestal (with ribbons!) at the end of Sense and Sensibility. I stand by what I say: more kissing, please! Jane won’t mind.
Thankfully, there are some recent Austen adaptations that seek to remedy the situation, and I think this sort of thing requires some, uh, research. Or, more specifically, a poll. Here are seven ending scenes from relatively recent Austen adaptations, all of them containing some sort of kissy-kissy true-love moment. Inquiring minds want to know: Austenacious readers, which is your favorite, and why? If there’s one that isn’t listed here, what is it (and why couldn’t we find it)?
Hit it.
Pride and Prejudice 1995
Mansfield Park 1999
Pride and Prejudice 2005
Persuasion 2007
Northanger Abbey 2007
Mansfield Park 2007
Emma 2010
Oh, readers, we do tire of Austen mashups.
That is, we would tire of Austen mashups if we ever read any of them.
It all just seems so unnecessary, all this revamping of the land of Austen in the name of murder and mayhem. But what if the mashup in question were, by definition, un-horrific? What if there were no zombies, no sea monsters, no vampires, and no modern-day single ladies looking for a man? What if it were, in fact, a mashup with adorableness? In that spirit, the fine folks over at Who’s Your Dachsund have graced us all with their fine video The Complete Jane Austen, featuring the usual Jane canon acted out by—you guessed it—baby lemurs!
Kidding. They’re Dachsunds.
(This is not to say that we would not enjoy baby lemurs in our Austen. “Oh, Mr. Wickham! How charming you are!”)
I’m especially fond of Captain Wentwoof, heartfelt letter-writter that he is. Such a charmer, that one. I bet he and his lady love enjoy long walk(ie)s on the beach at the end. How sweet!
…Somebody, please make this stop. I’m going to be thinking of Austenian wiener-dog jokes all day.
To anybody who’s ever said to an English major, “Do you want fries with that?” and then laughed like you made it up on the spot, we at Austenacious have a message for you. Have you not seen the Jane Austen Fight Club? Sure, we may actually be working in fast-food restaurants, but social scientists, in particular, should know: we are lit nerds, and we are coming for you.
You see, professor Michael Chwe of UCLA is presenting his paper “Jane Austen and the Prehistory of Game Theory” this Friday, April 23. Apparently Jane, as the supergenius we all know her to have been, exemplified the ins and outs of Game Theory in her novels—nearly 150 years before Game Theory was even invented.
REPRESENT.
Get this: “Austen’s novels do not simply provide interesting “case material” for the game theorist to analyze, but are themselves very ambitious and wide-ranging theoretically, providing insights not yet superseded by modern social science.” Jane, it seems, acts like a rational choice theorist, prioritizing social strategy and beneficial partnerships while simultaneously acknowledging the volatility of social relations: essentially, the heroines of the Austen canon strive to make wise choices, in the academic, social-scientific sense of the word, all while navigating the changeable social seas of rural Regency England.
Excellent, minions! What discipline shall we invade next? Shall we begin with “Theories of Meteorology in Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility” or with “Precursors to the Martha Graham Dance Company as Seen in Jane Austen’s Emma“? “Athleticism and the Great American Pastime in Persuasion,” or “Jane Austen: General Patton in a Dress”? The opportunities for academic evangelism/imperialism are endless! Regency gowns for all!
Ah, Jane. Changing the world, one free lunchtime lecture at a time.
With the return of Glee to the weekly TV schedule—finally—I think we’ve all been reminded of a new truth universally acknowledged: everything would be better, Austen novels included, if everybody had at least the option of bursting into a well-chosen pop song from time to time. You know, revealing their places in the collective consciousness, choreography optional (but encouraged). Lizzy belts out a girl-power ballad—ill practiced, of course—at the height of her emotional turmoil? Knightley takes the edge off with a few bars of air guitar and a phantom drum solo? I’m telling you: Jane Austen might roll in her grave, but Jane Lynch would make a fine Lady Catherine.
Am I right?
Here are a few Austen characters and their likely anthems:
Captain Wentworth: “I’m on a Boat” – The Lonely Island
Anne Elliot: “I Will Always Love You“* – Dolly Parton
*The original version with the sad monologue in the middle, because that speech is exactly the gracious and heartbroken speech Anne would make to Wentworth—complete with poignant pauses every few words—and nobody can convince me otherwise.
Mr. Bingley: “Mr. Brightside” – The Killers
Mr. Collins: “Hell No” – Sondre Lerche & Regina Spektor
Charlotte Lucas: “The Sound of Settling” – Death Cab for Cutie
Mary Bennet: “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” – Cat Stevens
Catherine Morland: “Miss Teen Wordpower” – The New Pornographers
Isabella Thorpe: “We Used to Be Friends” – The Dandy Warhols
Marianne Dashwood: “I Feel It All” – Feist
John Willoughby: “It’s Raining Men” – The Weather Girls
Readers, who are we missing?
