Add me to the fan club. I too think that P&P with Colin Firth was the best.
Anybody here a Jane Austen fan?
by Bonnie_Clyde 29 Replies latest jw friends
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StAnn
Loved it so much that, when I was pregnant and was told it would be a girl, I planned on naming her Jane Elizabeth after the Bennett sisters. Was thrown when I gave birth to a boy, whom I named Ashley (Gone With the Wind). I wanted to name him Darcy but hubby said "no."
In a subsequent pregnancy with twin boys, I was going to name one Fitzwilliam and the other one Darcy but, alas, I miscarried.
Love, love, love, love P & P.
StAnn
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Bonnie_Clyde
Wow Cathyk - you are really into the novels. So far the only books I've read are P&P and Persuasion.
I think the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle version followed it the best. The last one was good. I liked some of the characters better, especially the three younger sisters, but I didn't like the father (Donald Sutherland) nearly as well. I think Matthew (can't remember last name) played Darcy quite well, but Colin Firth was a hard act to follow.
What did you think of Colonel Brandon in S&S? I liked him OK in the 1st and 3rd versions, but couldn't stand him in the one with Kate Winslow and Emma Thompson. Also noticed that they never mentioned the 3rd sister, Margaret, in the 1st film. She was so cute in the other two.
Do we have a fan club now?
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HAL9000
Jane Austen is an author that should never be given to a male under the age of 40 or so. I could not appreciate the humour (particularly the cutting wit) of her writings until I was somewhat older.
P&P is outstanding, but Mansfield Park is often overlooked; the "success" of Fanny over the excesses of her cousins and the interactions of the characters are outstanding.
The films (generally) do not come close to matching her prose.
h9k
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juni
I like Austen's Pride and Prejudice the best. Also, I like to read Charles Dickens. I feel the books are far better than the movies.
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parakeet
If I ever put a bumper sticker on my car, it would read "WWJD?" "What would Jane do?"
My focus of study in grad school was on Victorian lit, but if I could do it over again, Jane would be my choice. -
JimmyPage
I haven't read her books but I've enjoyed the movie adaptations.
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Hortensia
I have always liked her novels, especially Pride and Prejudice. I agree the Colin Firth version was the best, not just because of Colin Firth. All the actors seemed excellently suited to their parts. Everyone in the Bennet family was perfect, and what's his name the cousin, my goodness that actor was really good. What a smarmy brown nose.
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cathyk
What did you think of Colonel Brandon in S&S? I liked him OK in the 1st and 3rd versions, but couldn't stand him in the one with Kate Winslow and Emma Thompson. Also noticed that they never mentioned the 3rd sister, Margaret, in the 1st film. She was so cute in the other two.
I'm not very impartial here. I love Alan Rickman, so I was willing to overlook what the screenwriters did with his character. He is SO sexy ...
Yes, I am very steeped in the novels, having read them all over (plus the unfinished works, juvenilia, and parts of J. A.'s letters) at least 10 times each by now. As a result I LOATHE the Keira Knightley version of P & P with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I could not even finish watching it (thankfully on DVD and not in a theatre) because it was so squirm-inducing.
In one of the issues of Persuasions, the annual journal of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), there was a discussion of the movies that had been made up till that point. The consensus was that modern filmmakers just don't get her. She was reacting against the rising tide of Romanticism, using a bemused tone when talking about people who couldn't think clearly because they couldn't keep a rein on their emotions. Marianne is the best example of this. The heroine of Sense and Sensibility is Elinor, whose love is sacrificial and whose thought is clear despite her pain, but who loves just as deeply as her sister, if not more.
The virtue of self-restraint enhances the romance when it occurs: " "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more," says Mr. Knightley toward the end of Emma. But you're cheering when he does, just because he didn't wear his heart on his sleeve, and it means so much more when he declares his love. (The version with Mark Strong and Kate Beckinsale, BTW, is one of my absolute favorite adaptations. Didn't like the Gwyneth Paltrow version at all.)
In Love and Freindship [sic], an early story which she reworked into Sense and Sensibility, Jane plays the situation between the sisters for more laughs. She'd have had a lot of fun satirizing modern romance novels. Some things don't change.
But the best example the article gave on the problem of modern directors handling Austen's work is Willoughby in S & S. The movie has him on a hill, astride his horse, watching Marianne's marriage from a distance, very much the Romantic antihero. You have a sense that he has thrown away his last chance at happiness by marrying for money instead of love. But Jane, the ever-practical and astute observer of real human beings, wrote of him:
Willoughby could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing, that had be behaved with honour towards Marianne, he might at once have been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought it own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted; nor that he long thought of Colonel Brandon with envy, and of Marianne with regret. But that he 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.
That's the main problem directors have in trying to bring Mansfield Park to the screen. They would have to give up trying to make a commercial success and accept Fanny for who she is, not what they think she ought to be.
Cathy
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cathyk
I like all your comments. How do you join a Jane Austen book club?
The Jane Austen Society of North America has local chapters all across the United States, who get together for discussions, sponsor seminars, celebrate Jane Austen's Birthday in December (the 16th) with food and fun, and more. They have an Annual General Meeting in a different part of the U. S. or Canada, where they have panel discussions, a ball (lots of dancing in Jane's books!), and workshops. If you contact them they may be able to direct you to local activities.
Oh, and here's one more reason I love Jane: I read somewhere that she'd be sitting by the fire and doing needlework with the other women in her family, and would begin to laugh to herself. She'd jump up, run to the writing desk, and jot down a page or two, then go back to her sewing. I love that very human picture of an active imagination at work.
Cathy