Pride and Prejudice: Adaptations of Austen

Post by **Alatar** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:10 pm

I still haven't got round to the last few chapters. Soon, I promise!

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:12 pm

I will be back this evening! Buried in work and writing.

Essentially, I love the ending, but sometimes wish it were told less indirectly. I don't mean hugs and kisses—we would never properly be told about that—but at least direct dialogue when she accepts him.

And I would so love to read Darcy's letter to his aunt announcing the engagement, and her reply.

Post by **Alatar** » Mon May 08, 2006 11:20 pm

Oh man! You've completely ruined it for me now! They get together?

Post by **Cerin** » Tue May 09, 2006 5:31 am

Oh, no! We should have put large spoiler warnings for Alatar!

So Prim, as a writer yourself, do you have any notions about why Austen might have chosen the indirect route for two of the most important scenes in the book?

Post by **vison** » Tue May 09, 2006 5:37 am

Propriety.

Post by **Cerin** » Tue May 09, 2006 5:51 am

It would have been considered too personal and revealing?

Post by **Ethel** » Tue May 09, 2006 7:09 am

Cerin wrote:So Prim, as a writer yourself, do you have any notions about why Austen might have chosen the indirect route for two of the most important scenes in the book?

Austen always averts her gaze when it comes to certain kinds of emotion. I think she would have believed it improper to eavesdrop on the most significant moment in the lives of her best beloved characters. However much we long to hear the exact words that Darcy and Lizzie said to each other - Austen won't allow that. Surely no one who has read the book could doubt that she would be capable of writing that scene, and writing it beautifully.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Tue May 09, 2006 7:18 am

The Austen of P&P certainly did avert her gaze, and I think it was for the sake of propriety. And that, of course, would be why I would do it as a writer, if only there were anything proper about my novel at all, as anyone who cares to risk it will find out next year.

However . . . not to give spoilers, but the climactic scene of Sense and Sensibility has a kind of raw emotional realism that almost seems modern in some aspects, and it is certainly directly reported—the vital revelation anyway, though not the . . . planning phase that grew out of it.

Austen was younger when she wrote it, I believe.

Post by **Cerin** » Tue May 09, 2006 4:14 pm

Just happy to see Ethel back in the thread!

Post by **Cerin** » Tue May 09, 2006 11:25 pm

The first disc of the movie just arrived in the mail. I suppose I should keep myself from watching it until we're ready to begin?

*wonders about the feasibility of this*

Post by **Ethel** » Sat May 13, 2006 4:22 pm

Cerin wrote:The first disc of the movie just arrived in the mail. I suppose I should keep myself from watching it until we're ready to begin?

How will we know when we're ready to begin? I'm ready right now! (I own copies of every film version of P&P except the one with Greer Garson - even the recent near-abomination. What can I say? I love this story.

)

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat May 13, 2006 5:03 pm

You don't have the Greer Garson version, Ethel?

And you say you like P&P!

(It's her eyelashes. I hate her eyelashes. And that sentimental smile. Gah!)

Post by **Ethel** » Sat May 13, 2006 5:06 pm

Primula_Baggins wrote:You don't have the Greer Garson version, Ethel?

And you say you like P&P!

(It's her eyelashes. I hate her eyelashes. And that sentimental smile. Gah!)

For me it's the hoop skirts. Also, Lady Catherine as matchmaker. Also... well, it's everything really. Kind of a hoot, but it's not P&P.

Post by **Cerin** » Sat May 13, 2006 5:09 pm

Well, I don't know why this discussion petered out in the end, but I'm ready, also!

However, I think Alatar hasn't finished the book.

Alatar, can you give us an estimate of when you'll be ready to start discussing the movies?

Post by **Alatar** » Sun May 14, 2006 9:10 pm

Finished!

Not much to say that hasn't been said really. I must say that I felt the final chapters seemed to sort of peter out a bit. The disconnection from their final get-together was part of the problem and also the three chapters taken to fill everyone else in. There were certainly nice moments, but overall I felt the book finished about three chapters too late.

But the Lady Catherine stuff was brilliant.

So, which version are we watching first? I have the BBC and Keira Knightly versions.

This will be a little odd for me as I have visualised the whole book with Jim Broadbent as Mr. Bennet, Keira Knightly as Lizzie and Colin Firth as Darcy. Funny how the mind wokrs!

Post by **truehobbit** » Sun May 14, 2006 11:31 pm

I agree with people here in thinking the end was rather disappointingly told - my first response was "that must be tough to translate to a movie!"
I don't think it's that writing a marriage proposal would have been indecent, I think it's that Austen thought it wouldn't be possible to convey the real thing - like in a movie when you get the kind of romantic scene (often used for marriage proposals, I think), where just see people speak and hear music but don't hear any words. Words can seem rather trite in these cases.
I liked the wrap-up, telling the reader what happened later.

Btw, the Colin Firth version arrived on Friday.

Prim, so you have the Laurence Oliver movie, too?
I suggested some time ago we could watch that one, too.

And of course the most recent one.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sun May 14, 2006 11:55 pm

Aiii, hobby, no, I don't have the Greer Garson version; it's just something you don't forget once you've seen it.

(Olivier is fine as Darcy, except the Lady Catherine rewrite destroys his fine, fiery, independent resolve to ask Elizabeth a second time, risking his own pride—instead nice old Auntie, who isn't a Gorgon after all, hands him her heart on a platter. Meaning that he doesn't really deserve her—at least not the Elizabeth in the book. Maybe he deserves Greer Garson in her hoop skirts and coy smirk.)

Post by **truehobbit** » Mon May 15, 2006 12:07 am

LOL - would be so much more fun discussing it, then!

(I only have a German version taped from TV years ago, but I think I'll watch it again as soon as I get round to it.)

Post by **Ethel** » Mon May 15, 2006 2:41 am

I like the way the book ends. It's quite a narrative dash all the way through, but then Austen slows down a bit and lets you gracefully take leave of the characters. I was happy to hear about the Wickhams sponging on the Bingleys, and Mr Bennet turning up unexpectedly at Pemberley, and Caroline sucking up to Elizabeth, and Kitty becoming less insipid, and all of it.

Just for fun I grabbed some comments on Austen and Pride and Prejudice from Pemberley (link).

Sir Walter Scott wrote:Also read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen's very finely written novel of Pride and Prejudice. That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!

Anthony Trollope wrote:Miss Austen was surely a great novelist. What she did, she did perfectly. Her work, as far as it goes, is faultless. She wrote of the times in which she lived, of the class of people with which she associated, and in the language which was usual to her as an educated lady. Of romance, -- what we generally mean when we speak of romance -- she had no tinge. Heroes and heroines with wonderful adventures there are none in her novels. Of great criminals and hidden crimes she tells us nothing. But she places us in a circle of gentlemen and ladies, and charms us while she tells us with an unconscious accuracy how men should act to women, and women act to men. It is not that her people are all good; -- and, certainly, they are not all wise. The faults of some are the anvils on which the virtues of others are hammered till they are bright as steel. In the comedy of folly I know no novelist who has beaten her. The letters of Mr. Collins, a clergyman in Pride and Prejudice, would move laughter in a low-church archbishop.

Charlotte Bronte (in a letter to George Lewes) wrote:Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written Pride and Prejudice or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley novels?

I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I had read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you. but I shall run the risk.

Now I can understand admiration of George Sand ...she has a grasp of mind which, if I cannot fully comprehend, I can very deeply respect: she is sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen's novels at so high a rate, which seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. ... All that interests in any character: has he (or she) the money to marry with? ... Suicide is more respectable.

Post by **Meneltarma** » Mon May 15, 2006 3:05 am

No Mark Twain quotes?