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CMP#116 Misunderstanding Netflix's Persuasion

7/19/2022

CMP#116 "Misconstructions of the most mischievous kind."

A plausible rival

No, we don't need another review of the Netflix Persuasion but I want to make three observations. First and most important, the key way the movie is different from the novel--the film-makers embraced an approach which Austen herself rejected.
In the book, after the concert where Wentworth gets jealous as he watches Mr. Elliot with Anne, she has the "delightful conviction" that Wentworth still cares for her, but she can see he is labouring under a misunderstanding. Ann worries about it. Due to social conventions, she cannot just walk up to him and let him know she still loves him. "How was such jealousy to be quieted? How was the truth to reach him? How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn of her real sentiments?"
Yes, how? The only impediment to Anne's Happy Ever After is the social convention that women did not declare their affection to men. That's it. Well, better she run the risk of losing Wentworth again, than go against the social convention! Ann thinks it over...

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CMP#79 My Article in Persuasions On-line

12/16/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is my ongoing blog series about my take on Jane Austen’s beliefs and ideas, as based on her novels. I’ve also been blogging about now-obscure authors of the long 18th century. For more, click "Authoresses" on the menu at right. Click here for the first in the series.

CMP#79 Jane Austen and Elizabeth Helme

Anne sees the Admiral on the streets of Bath

The Jane Austen Society of North America has published my article "Admiral Croft and the Rich Uncle" in their December online edition of Persuasions. The article is about some striking similarities that I've come across between a 1799 novel by Elizabeth Helme and two of Austen's novels.
I previously wrote about Elizabeth Helme in this blog post. She was a hard-working author who enjoyed considerable popular success although she died in illness and poverty.
I would not say that Helme was an "influence" on Austen in the sense that Austen emulated her. I would not compare Helme to Samuel Johnson, Cowper, or Fanny Burney--all writers whom Austen particularly admired. However, I think the evidence is clear that Austen read Helme's novels and made use of some of her dialogue, characters, and plot contrivances.
In this case, the novel I'm speaking of is called Albert, or, The Wilds of Strathnavern. It contains a character named Colonel O'Bryen, who I argue is the prototype of Admiral Croft.
Albert also makes use of private theatricals for plot purposes. Some Austen scholars have pointed to other contemporary novels which mention private theatricals as the possible source for Austen's use of Lover's Vows in Mansfield Park, but in Albert, the private theatricals are--as with Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford--used for the purposes of seduction....

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CMP#53 Father's Day Edition

6/16/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. The opinions are mine, but I don't claim originality. Much has been written about Austen. Click here for the first in the series.

Implicit Values in Austen: Duty to Parents: Father's Day Edition

"My Father (he continued) is a mean and mercenary wretch -- it is only to such particular freinds as this Dear Party that I would thus betray his failings... My Father, seduced by the false glare of Fortune and the Deluding Pomp of Title, insisted on my giving my hand to Lady Dorothea. 'No, never,'' exclaimed I. 'Lady Dorothea is lovely and Engaging; I prefer no woman to her; but know, Sir, that I scorn to marry her in compliance with your Wishes. No! Never shall it be said that I obliged my Father.'" We all admired the noble Manliness of his reply. -- Love and Freindship, Jane Austen juvenilia

MP Brock Illustration of Fanny learning from her father about Maria's elopement.

The fathers of Jane Austen’s heroines are not that admirable on the whole. Fanny Price’s father is foul-mouthed and useless. Sir Walter Elliot would never win the Father of the Year award.
     Elizabeth Bennet is too intelligent to be “blind to the impropriety of her father’s behaviour as a husband. She had always seen it with pain; but respecting his abilities, and grateful for his affectionate treatment of herself, she endeavoured to forget what she could not overlook, and to banish [his shortcomings] from her thoughts.”
  However Austen's heroines might feel about their imperfect fathers, they keep their thoughts to themselves.
Anne Elliot’s “sense of personal respect to her father prevented her” from reminding him that he had taken Mrs. Clay, a poor widow of undistinguished birth, into his household, so he hardly had grounds for complaining about her friendship with the widow Mrs. Smith.
  Maria and Julia Bertram are outwardly dutiful but inwardly rebellious where their stern father is concerned. Austen makes a point of telling us so early in the book. Because the "flow of their spirits" is repressed in his presence, "their real disposition[s]" were unknown to Sir Thomas. Fanny Price feels guilty because she doesn't feel sad when he leaves for Antigua: "Fanny's relief, and her consciousness of it, were quite equal to her cousins'; but a more tender nature suggested that her feelings were ungrateful, and she really grieved because she could not grieve. Sir Thomas, who had done so much for her and her brothers, and who was gone perhaps never to return! that she should see him go without a tear! it was a shameful insensibility.” I have written elsewhere about how Austen shows sympathy for Sir Thomas.

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CMP#44 Stock Characters: Fops and Fools

5/2/2021

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Clutching My Pearls is about Jane Austen and the times she lived in. Click here for the first in the series.

Stock Characters of the 18th Century: There to be laughed at

Jane Austen paints Persuasion's Sir Walter Elliot as a dim-witted snob. Throughout the novel, he is obsessed with rank and his own handsome appearance. The Royal Navy is Britain's most potent symbol, but Sir Walter doesn’t care about national identity or the defense of his country when he tells his attorney Mr. Shepherd: “I have two strong grounds of objection to [the Navy]. First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly... A man is in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of one whose father, his father might have disdained to speak to, and of becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other line.”
If we were to view Austen’s depiction of Sir Walter in isolation, if we were to look at this caricature independently of the other characters in the book -- and independently of other novels of the period -- we might conclude that Austen is making a larger point about class distinctions in her time. Is she a secret radical?
However, what have we here? What about Mr. Shepherd? Is he portrayed as an educated, self-made man heroically counterpoised against the decadent aristocrat? Not really. The attorney is drawn in subtler terms, but Austen still skewers him. Mr. Shepherd is a flattering, obsequious subordinate: I venture to hint… what I would take leave to suggest is… And I love the quiet touch of: “Mr. Shepherd laughed, as he knew he must, at this wit, and then added—"I presume to observe…”
Sir Walter and Mr. Shepherd are balanced against each other – the former is a snob and the latter is a toady. And what of Mr. Shepherd’s daughter, Mrs. Clay? If Austen has egalitarian impulses, then why does she portray Mrs. Clay as an upstart, a social-climbing gold-digger? And have we forgotten that she throws some serious shade on social climbing ladies who betray themselves through their lack of breeding?

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CMP#116 Misunderstanding Netflix's Persuasion

CMP#79 My Article in Persuasions On-line

CMP#53 Father's Day Edition

CMP#44 Stock Characters: Fops and Fools

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