My personal library

1/ As I consider buying a Muriel Spark omnibus, I’m idly thinking about the books I own. We all know reading and book buying are two different hobbies. As I’m not able to buy books often, most of the books I read I do not own—they’re usually copies from the libraries or ebooks from Gutenberg. Most books aren’t read more than once. Great books written in other languages should be read in multiple translations. 

So what books do I own? Shakespeare, of course: all the plays in 7 volumes, plus an Oxford book containing the sonnets and narrative poems (I’m a fanatic, of course, but does any English-speaking household not own any Shakespeare?). Jane Austen: 7 novels in one volume (great for anyone who wants to combine reading with weight-lifting). Moby-Dick, my Bible. The King James Bible. The Oxford Book of English Verse (my attempt to get into poetry beyond Shakespeare and Keats). No Charlotte, no Anne, but I do have Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. No George Eliot, if we talk about the books in my place right now and ignore the ones stored at my mum’s house in Leeds. No Dickens except David Copperfield, a rescue, though I sometimes feel an urge to buy Bleak House (but when am I going to reread it? I’m also unlikely to occasionally pick it up and reread chapters as I do with Moby-Dick). No Henry Fielding. No Edith Wharton. No Henry James. The books I own, I suppose, indicate my obsessions, especially if they’re right here with me. I have three books by Nabokov (Lolita, Pnin, and Speak, Memory) for instance, but they’re stored away in Leeds. No Alice Munro (I gave away my copy), but I have Flannery O’Connor. 

Beyond English? Tolstoy, of course: I read Anna Karenina and War and Peace twice, each time in a different translation, but a Tolstoy fan must have their own copies to revisit chapters (Anna Karenina by Rosamund Bartlett, War and Peace by Aylmer and Louise Maude, revised by Amy Mandelker); sometimes I feel an urge to buy Hadji Murad and the short stories. Chekhov: 2 collections in Constance Garnett’s translation (how many times have I read “The Bishop” or “The Lady with the Little Dog”?). Homer: next time I reread the Iliad or the Odyssey from cover to cover, it’s going to be another translation, but I need my own copies (Robert Fitzgerald) so as to easily revisit Akhilleus or Odysseus.

Clearly a lot of this is about how often I pick up the books. Value for money and all that, which doesn’t sound very romantic. But one needs to be practical and I need to stop buying books. Next time I move house, Don Quixote (Tom Lathrop) and The Brothers Karamazov (Ignat Avsey) might have to go despite my enjoyment, but Metamorphoses (A. D. Melville) might stay despite my indifference, because it’s more useful to keep a collection of myths (especially when it influenced my boy Shakespeare). Practical, practical. 

Then why do I own copies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides? I’m contradicting myself. And I own Truyện Kiều mainly because I’m Vietnamese, the same way English speakers must all own some Shakespeare (I’d also love Nguyễn Du to improve my Vietnamese writings but isn’t it foolish, I don’t really pick it up). 

(I’m leaving non-fiction out of this blog post). 

2/ What do our favourite books say about us? 

Sometimes I try to find some pattern behind the writers who speak the most to me, but can’t find any. I like both sane writers (Jane Austen, Chekhov, Tolstoy…) and mad writers (Emily Bronte, Melville, Akutagawa…); both warm writers (Chekhov, Molière, Dickens…) and cold writers (Jane Austen, Flannery O’Connor, Muriel Spark…). I think I like writers preoccupied with the subject of death, but Jane Austen leaves it offstage. I think I like writers with a sense of humour, but does Tolstoy make anyone laugh? (Maybe twice in War and Peace). I think I like writers who see some goodness and nobility in humanity and don’t just depict us all as base and bestial, but why do I like Flannery O’Connor? 

3/ Russian literature ruined my life. 

In my younger and more vulnerable years, reading Tolstoy made me want to have compassion and seek to understand other human beings. In such foolishness, I put up with lots of things and lots of people I shouldn’t have tolerated. It’s Jane Austen who taught me to have more discernment, to look at things with detachment, to be more judgemental. 

I don’t read literature for self-improvement, but we love a book more than others not only because it’s masterfully crafted, not only because it’s enjoyable, but also because it speaks to us and stays with us over the years. Austen is a good guide because, whereas many 19th century writers tend to focus on compassion and empathy, Austen emphasises the importance of discernment, self-reflection, and balance or moderation (we know what happens when one has excessive empathy). 

Later on, during that difficult period of my life, I found solace in Chekhov and found myself moving away from Austen—she didn’t write about the subjects that were preoccupying me. But now looking back, I can’t help wondering if I was making a mess of things because I absorbed Chekhov’s pessimism and accepted that human relationships were messy and my life was over and there’s no happiness on earth. I was going through volumes and volumes of Chekhov—how many stories did I read?—Chekhov saved me but also ruined me. 

(Of course I exaggerate for dramatic effect: some of it is true, but I’m doing fine and more judgemental than ever). 

Interesting that now both my favourite male and female writers are English. 

Why do I care about Jane Austen’s ordinary people but not Barbara Pym’s?

I quit on Jane and Prudence after about 50 pages. 

Some of you will probably say I’m missing the point, but Barbara Pym writes about the trivial thoughts of trivial people, and I simply don’t care. 

The novel is about Jane, a vicar’s wife who has just moved with her husband to another parish in a village, and Prudence, her younger and single friend (at 29!), who lives in London and is in love with her married boss Arthur Grampian.  

When we see Prudence in the office, Barbara Pym gives us several pages of the women talking about wanting tea, making tea, telling each other they run out of tea, discussing what to do when they don’t have tea for Dr Grampian, deciding Prudence should borrow the tin of coffee from Mr Manifold, and so on and so forth. Later Prudence goes to lunch, Pym painstakingly describes all her thoughts and actions during the lunch, then: 

“She was just walking to the cash desk to pay her bill when she noticed a young man sitting at one of the tables. It was Mr Manifold. He was eating – perhaps ‘tucking into’ would describe it better – the steamed pudding which Prudence had avoided as being too fattening. She had never seen him eating before and now she averted her eyes quickly, for there was something indecent about it, as if a mantle had fallen and revealed more of him than she ought to see. Of course the women in the office had known that he lunched somewhere – indeed, they had even speculated on where he went; perhaps the vastness of the Corner House swallowed him up or the manly security of a public-house lapped him round. Prudence hurried out of the restaurant feeling disturbed and irritated. Had he ever been there before, she wondered? She hoped he wasn’t going to make a habit of frequenting the places she went to. It would be annoying if she had to change her own routine.” (ch.4)

These are such small, trivial thoughts. 

It’s the same when Pym switches to the vicar’s wife. Because Jane has such a small mind, we don’t see her thinking about the new church, or nature, or religion, or anything interesting; she just thinks about small, mundane stuff.   

“At last Mrs Crampton emerged from behind the velvet curtain carrying two plates on a tray. She put in front of Jane a plate containing an egg, a rasher of bacon and some fried potatoes cut in fancy shapes, and in front of Nicholas a plate with two eggs and rather more potatoes.

Nicholas exclaimed with pleasure.

‘Oh, a man needs eggs!’ said Mrs Crampton, also looking pleased.

This insistence on a man’s needs amused. Jane. Men needed meat and eggs – well, yes, that might be allowed; but surely not more than women did? Perhaps Mrs Crampton’s widowhood had something to do with it; possibly she made up for having no man to feed at home by ministering to the needs of those who frequented her cafe.

[…] ‘Poor Mr Oliver,’ said Jane, scenting pathos. He certainly looked very pale reading the Lessons on Sunday evenings, but perhaps that was just a trick of the lighting. She hurried to finish her egg and bacon in case he should come in and see them at it without being able to have it himself.

[…] Mrs Crampton now returned and set down before Mr Oliver a plate laden with roast chicken and all the proper accompaniments. He accepted it with quite as much complacency as Nicholas had accepted his eggs and bacon and began to eat.

Jane turned away, to save his embarrassment. Man needs bird, she thought. Just the very best, that is what man needs.” (ch.5) 

I give you a long excerpt so you can see what I’m talking about. All these characters are boring, banal: 

“Fabian Driver, doing his pre-lunch drinking in the bar of the Golden Lion, looked out and saw Nicholas and Jane walking home. He had a confused feeling of irritation and envy as he watched them. It must have been Jane’s smiling up at her husband and the awful old coat she was wearing, the kind of coat a woman could wear only in her husband’s presence, he thought.” (ibid.)  

That’s what most people are like, you may say, but I really don’t care for all these trivial thoughts of these trivial people. I had a similar complaint about Cecilia: Frances Burney undoubtedly has great talent for capturing the characters’ voices and it could be very funny, but do I want that many pages of frivolous people talking about frivolous stuff? I do not. 

But that raises some interesting questions. Chekhov also writes about ordinary people, Jane Austen also depicts a small world, Flaubert also portrays shallow and banal people—why is it that they make me care about their characters and what happens to them? What separates them from Barbara Pym? Why do I care about what happens to Emma Bovary, for instance, when she is so hollow? 

(I’ve been thinking about this subject for some time. When I first read Jane Austen, I thought her characters didn’t have the depth or complexity of Tolstoy’s characters. And yet to me they’re alive, and many of them have lived with me over the years, like Tolstoy’s characters. I have often said my favourite Austen novel is Mansfield Park, followed by Persuasion, but over the past year or so, I’ve found myself often thinking about Pride and Prejudice, especially Mr and Mrs Bennet). 

Of course, some of you might say you don’t like Jane Austen because it’s such a circumscribed world, or you don’t like Flaubert because Emma Bovary is so shallow compared to Anna Karenina—it’s personal taste and perhaps these questions are more for myself. But Jane Austen, Flaubert, and Chekhov—regardless of personal taste—are all canonical, influential authors, whereas Frances Burney and Barbara Pym don’t quite have the same status. 

And if we broaden the question, realist novelists address the everyday and write about ordinary people—not all of them depict the whole society and not all of them write about big questions (like life and death, God’s existence, or the meaning of life)—how do they do it? How do they get us to care about their characters? 

Let’s discuss.

Visiting Jane Austen’s final resting place

In June, I finally got to visit the Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. 

In September, I visited Jane Austen’s grave at Winchester Cathedral. 

There was a time I moved a bit away from Austen (and closer to Chekhov), but slowly she’s again one of the writers dearest to my heart. 

Also, look at this edition of Austen’s novels that I recently bought! It’s gorgeous. 

On Sense and Sensibility (2026)

I suppose I’m part of the problem.  

“Why do they keep adapting Jane Austen a zillion times instead of Frances Burney?”, I asked. And yet I went to see the new Sense and Sensibility (and might even see the new Pride and Prejudice). It is—I’m going to be frank—an unnecessary and mediocre film.    

But let’s start with the positives. I like Daisy Edgar-Jones as Elinor. Everyone agrees that the 1995 film by Ang Lee is (more or less) perfect, but most people would agree that the 36-year-old Emma Thompson, though wonderful, is a bit too old for the role, yes? Daisy Edgar-Jones is 28 and can get away with playing the 19-year-old Elinor, and I think she conveys well the restraint and reticence and pain of the character. Fiona Shaw is brilliant as Mrs Jennings, often a scene-stealer, and I have no complaints about George MacKay as Edward Ferrars. The young audiences (that the film targets) would probably love that couple. 

The film however has two major problems. One is Esmé Creed-Miles, who is dreadful as Marianne. The new Sense and Sensibility fails to capture the bond between the Dashwood sisters, and fails to convince the audience (I mean me) that in the end Marianne is developing her feelings for Colonel Brandon, both of which I think are because of the actress. 

The other flaw is in the writing (Diana Reid) and directing (Georgia Oakley). When the trailer came out, lots of people commented on the historically inaccurate hair and costumes—where are the bonnets, why do they wear their hair down, why does everything look so drab and miserable in films these days, and so on. But the film is even more erroneous and George Oakley doesn’t seem to understand—or doesn’t care—that Jane Austen’s world is governed by strict rules for social conduct and this is a fundamental part of the novels. Oakley’s characters do many things that would never have been considered acceptable in Regency England. Why does Willoughby lift up Marianne during a dance, and later carry her in front of everyone at the ball? Why does Elinor run through people at the party, drawing people’s attention to herself and her sister? Why does Marianne shout “Willoughby!” and question him and make a scene in front of Miss Grey and in front of everyone at the party? Why do Colonel Brandon and Willoughby have a duel right in front of the house, where they can be—and are—seen by the Dashwoods? Why does Edward Ferrars discuss with Elinor his engagement to Lucy Steele? (The circumstances of the engagement are also changed). Why does Elinor speak of her feelings first, in the end? Some people may not care (like those numerous film reviewers I read who did not mention these changes), but I do. One critic even complained that the new adaptation fell flat as Oakley didn’t drag Austen’s novel into the present (why should filmmakers?), but this is not the Regency: the dialogue may not be modern but the behaviour is—all these things I mentioned are not the way Austen’s characters behave.  

There are other things. I don’t like Colonel Brandon in the film, though it’s mainly because of the writing rather than the actor Herbert Nordrum. Some of you won’t like that Mr Palmer is for some reason played by Eliot Sumner, who is female, which takes one out of the story or is at least distracting (especially if you go see the film with someone who doesn’t know the story). 

(Incidentally there are a few nepo babies in the film: Eliot Sumner is the daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler; Esmé Creed-Miles is the daughter of Charlie Creed-Miles and Samantha Morton, who’s in Nolan’s Odyssey; Frank Dillane, who plays Willoughby, is the son of Stephen Dillane and Naomi Wirthner. Whom did I miss?)  

As for cinematography and production design, you can tell from the trailer: there are some nice shots but the film looks dull and drab. 

Overall, it’s not a disastrous adaptation like the 2022 Persuasion or ridiculous like the 2026 Wuthering Heights, but it’s not good. 

I should watch Ang Lee’s film again. 

Cecilia: “I have ever since felt ashamed of my own discernment”

1/ Look at the defence of novels in Northanger Abbey: 

““I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss——?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language…”” (ch.5) 

All that praise for Cecilia is deserved. Frances Burney’s characters are all distinct and full of life; and compared to the characters in her first novel Evelina, the ones in Cecilia are more complex—they are capable of surprise. My main complaint is that even though Burney doesn’t place a shallow, selfish, and materialistic character at the centre of the story (like Undine Spragg in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country), we still have to spend so much time with airheaded people and listen to their vapid conversations—imagine being constantly in the tedious company of Caroline Bingley or the Bertram girls—I think Austen learnt from Burney’s faults. But at the same time, Burney is more ambitious than Austen: Cecilia and Camilla are both over 900 pages; and her novels depict a larger world, different classes and different environments—these aren’t “two inches of ivory”.  

The highlight of Volume I is the masquerade scene: fascinating, full of mystery and excitement, rich in meaning. In Volume II, one of the highlights is the characterisation of Mr Belfield, one of Cecilia’s suitors—Frances Burney removes some layers and reveals more underneath—she has deep psychological insight and I think the story of Mr Belfield elevates the novel into something more than a comedy of manners. 

2/ As I wrote in the previous blog post, after the death of her uncle, Cecilia moves into the house of Mr Harrel, one of her guardians, and gradually she realises that her childhood friend Priscilla—now Mrs Harrel—has become someone different. 

She says to Mr Monckton: 

“I cannot but own that my esteem for her, even more than my affection, has lessened almost every day since I have been in her house; but this morning, when I ventured to speak to her with earnestness, I found her powers of reasoning so weak, and her infatuation to luxury and expence so strong, that I have ever since felt ashamed of my own discernment in having formerly selected her for my friend.” (B.3, ch.3) 

Cecilia is handsome, clever, and rich, but her power of discernment is dreadful—she is similar to Elizabeth Bennet or Emma Woodhouse—the novel is closer to Pride and Prejudice however, as Frances Burney lets us see Mr Monckton’s calculations and Cecilia’s blindness, instead of using the free indirect discourse to make readers see things through the heroine’s biased perspective, as Jane Austen later does in Emma.  

“He quitted her, therefore, with unusual satisfaction, happy in his power over her mind, and anticipating with secret rapture the felicity he had in reserve from visiting her during the absence of the family.” (B.3, ch.8) 

Cecilia is not only a novel about a beautiful heiress being pursued by seven men (!)—Frances Burney also explores manipulation and the evil of having power over someone else’s mind—in this, she goes further than Jane Austen. 

3/ I have complained about the frivolous characters in the novel. If we compare Cecilia to Anna Karenina, which is also over 900 pages, or War and Peace, which is 1,200 – 1,400 pages, Tolstoy has a few characters who think deeply (even if we disagree with them), and writes many interesting conversations and discussions about various subjects; Frances Burney tells us but doesn’t depict the stimulating conversations between Cecilia and Mortimer Delvile or Mrs Delvile, but she meticulously depicts all the trivial and insipid talks in high society, which can be trying at times (even if one admires her ability to capture their voices and some of the characters are funny, such as Miss Larolles or Mr Meadows). 

I have other complaints. One irritating thing is that there’s a misunderstanding between Cecilia and Mortimer Delvile that gets dragged out—whenever an opportunity to clear it comes up, they get interrupted—you can see Frances Burney deliberately drag it out for nearly 170 pages. 

Another thing is that Cecilia is so naïve and gullible to the point of being stupid. I’m glad she’s not a Mary Sue, but you don’t fully realise how stupid she is and how much of a “thorough scoundrel” Mr Harrel is—to use Mr Monckton’s phrase—till you convert the amount of money she gives him to today’s money. It’s shocking! 

However, Frances Burney is undoubtedly a great writer. She depicts very well the selfishness and recklessness of Mr Harrel—you don’t doubt that people such as Mr and Mrs Harrel exist. One of the things Burney explores in Cecilia is the obsession with appearance, the obsession with appearing rich and high-class and fashionable: we see that in almost everyone in the high society of the novel, but the extremes are Mr Belfield, and Mr and Mrs Harrel—even when they’re near death, or on the verge of destruction, they remain fixated on how they appear to the world. It’s very well-done. 

“… the rest of the house was very differently employed; feasting, revelling, amusements of all sorts were pursued with more eagerness than ever, and the alarm which so lately threatened their destruction, seemed now merely to heighten the avidity with which they were sought. Yet never was the disunion of happiness and diversion more striking and obvious; Mr Harrel, in spite of his natural levity, was seized from time to time with fits of horror that embittered his gayest moments, and cast a cloud upon all his enjoyments. Always an enemy to solitude, he now found it wholly insupportable, and ran into company of any sort, less from a hope of finding entertainment, than from a dread of spending half an hour by himself.” (B.5, ch.3) 

That is especially good. 

Cecilia: “Cecilia was much concerned to find her so unmoved”

1/ Evelina (1778) and Cecilia (1782) have a few things in common: both are about a young country girl’s experience in London; both feature a heroine who is naïve and trusting but otherwise perfect, chased by multiple men. The two novels are however very different, mainly that Evelina is about 500 pages and Cecilia is over 900 pages; Cecilia is more mature; and at this point, Frances Burney has dropped the conceit of letters—Evelina is an epistolary novel—and writes a comedy of manners, which makes it closer to the novels of Jane Austen. 

Look at her prose: 

“But the principal figure in the circle was Mr Belfield, a tall, thin young man, whose face was all animation, and whose eyes sparkled with intelligence. He had been intended by his father for trade, but his spirit, soaring above the occupation for which he was designed, from repining led him to resist, and from resisting, to rebel. […] And now, with little business, and that little neglected, a small fortune, and that fortune daily becoming less, the admiration of the world, but that admiration ending simply in civility, he lived an unsettled and unprofitable life, generally caressed, and universally sought, yet careless of his interest and thoughtless of the future; devoting his time to company, his income to dissipation, and his heart to the Muses.” (B.1, ch.2) 

These sentences are the kind that we could find in Jane Austen. 

“Mortimer Delvile was tall and finely formed, his features, though not handsome, were full of expression, and a noble openness of manners and address spoke the elegance of his education, and the liberality of his mind.” (B.2, ch.6) 

Like Austen, Burney is not particularly interested in physical descriptions. 

Austen’s fans would like Burney as they are in many ways similar: both are not very visual writers; both write comedies of manners; both are funny and witty, with a talent for capturing characters’ voices, and so on. One can see the influence. But Burney depicts a different world—the world of the upper class, the world of fashion, the world of dissipation. Whereas Austen often depicts middle class women on the brink of poverty (except for Emma Woodhouse) and in need of marriage, Burney depicts the opposite in Cecilia: Cecilia Beverley is an heiress, and the central conflict of the novel is that she not only has to ward off bad suitors who are after the money, but, according to the will, she can only marry a man willing to change his last name to Beverley. 

2/ Having lost her uncle, Cecilia comes to stay with her old friend Priscilla—mostly called Mrs Harrel throughout the novel—as Mr Harrel is one of her three guardians. The high society Frances Burney mocks is similar to the one in Vanity Fair, or in the novels of Edith Wharton. It might get tiresome after a while to read pages and pages of partying and dissipation and callousness and gossips and hypocrisy—it’s like watching vapid people on reality TV—but I like Burney’s depiction of Cecilia’s amazement and disappointment upon realising that a friend of her childhood has become a different person. 

“She found her insensible to friendship, indifferent to her husband, and negligent of all social felicity. Dress, company, parties of pleasure, and public places, seemed not merely to occupy all her time; but to gratify all her wishes.” (B.1, ch.4) 

One of the best parts of Volume I is the masquerade chapter, partly because it’s something different, partly because Cecilia and we are to guess who’s behind the masks, partly because Frances Burney references Shakespeare and Cervantes and mythology, and most importantly, because some characters reveal their true selves whilst hiding behind disguises. 

“The author of the former disturbance was now the occasion of the present: the fiend, having vainly traversed the room in search of Cecilia, stumbled accidentally upon Harlequin, before he was freed from the relicks of his own mischief; and unable to resist the temptation of opportunity and the impulse of revenge, he gave vent to the wrath so often excited by the blunders, forwardness, and tricks of Morrice, and inflicted upon him, with his own wooden sword, which he seized for that purpose, a chastisement the most serious and severe.

[…] And then, after artfully playing sundry antics under pretence of still supporting his character, with a motion too sudden for prevention, and too rapid for pursuit, he escaped out of the room…” (B.2, ch.3)   

A character who seems like a good guy and whom Cecilia sees as a good guy dresses up as the Devil, which he—in some sense—is. This is what I mean when I say Cecilia is more mature than Evelina: in Burney’s first novel, the characters are rather straightforward and they are (generally) what they seem; in Cecilia, the characters are not always what they seem. 

I suspect that the masquerade will later turn out to be significant, in the sense of playing a symbolic role like the ha-ha scene in Mansfield Park. 

3/ I should clarify that when I wrote “tiresome” earlier, I meant that some of the characters were frivolous and empty-headed—the novel itself is not boring—Frances Burney knows how to captivate one’s interest and often introduces new characters or new environments. Like Austen, she has a strong ethical sense, but like Austen, she has wit and a light touch and a sense of humour—she’s not moralistic or heavy like George Eliot, nor harsh like Edith Wharton. 

In later blog posts, I’m hoping to have more interesting things to say and not mention Jane Austen. 

Reading Lovers’ Vows as a fan of Mansfield Park

Here I am again reading something nobody reads, but it seemed amiss, did it not, that I never read Lovers’ Vows before when Mansfield Park is my favourite Austen novel?

Let’s see what the fuss is about. 

Lovers’ Vows 

An adaptation of August von Kotzebue’s Das Kind der Liebe, the play was first performed at Covent Garden in 1798, about 2 decades after Sheridan’s most celebrated plays. Jane Austen was 23 (if she saw it onstage, though she might have just read the text).

The first thing I’m going to say is that I’m not surprised the play was a hit: it’s got premarital sex and a son born out of wedlock and star-crossed lovers, etc. The second thing is that I’m not surprised it’s rarely read or staged today and mostly known as the play featured in Jane Austen’s novel. It’s not a great play—sometimes even ridiculous (luckily it’s quite short). 

Lovers’ Vows has two plotlines that aren’t entirely separate. In one plot, a soldier named Frederick returns home to find his mother Agatha ill, penniless, and on the streets, and then he discovers himself to be the result of an affair between her and Baron Wildenhaim, who long ago left the country. 

In the other plot, Baron Wildenhaim, recently back in Germany after his wife’s death, is trying to find out if his daughter Amelia wants to accept the marriage proposal from the affected Count Cassel. She however is in love with her tutor, poor Mr Anhalt. 

At some point, the desperate Frederick, tired of begging, tries to rob two rich men and gets imprisoned, but one of the two men turns out to be the Baron. This is the stuff of romance! The play is full of coincidences and nonsense and melodrama. The idea that things are not as they seem—a favourite theme of Jane Austen and Shakespeare—is not to be found here: the characters are quite straightforward. A greater playwright may have increased the stakes or made things a bit difficult: here the knots are quickly untied. 

However, to be fair, Lovers’ Vows is not without a few things of interest. Amelia is very forward, for a young lady in the 18th century. 

“MR ANHALT […] The subject I came to you upon was marriage.

AMELIA A very proper subject from the man who has taught me love, and I accept the proposal [curtsying].

MR ANHALT Again you misconceive and confound me.

AMELIA Ay, I see how it is—You have no inclination to experience with me “the good part of matrimony:” I am not the female with whom you would like to go “hand in hand up hills, and through labyrinths”—with whom you would like to “root up thorns; and with whom you would delight to plant lilies and roses.” No, you had rather call out, “O liberty, dear liberty.”” 

(Act 3 scene 2)

Amelia alludes to—and confesses—her feelings first. None of Jane Austen’s heroines would speak in such a way. 

The class issues—both the depiction of the lower class as noble and the upper class as base, and the unequal marriages—are interesting. Elizabeth Inchbald (and perhaps von Kotzebue in the original?) had clear messages about marrying for love, treating women properly, and atoning for past mistakes, which Jane Austen must have liked. Dramatically, the confrontation scene between Baron Wildenhaim and Count Cassel is interesting: the Count acknowledges his own villainy and turns it against the Baron, forcing him to examine himself. 

Now you’re going to ask if there are parallels between Lovers’ Vows and Mansfield Park. There are a few. Mr Anhalt is a clergyman, like Edmund Bertram’s going to be. Agatha is taken from her poor family and placed with a rich family, like Fanny Price. Count Cassel is a cad, like Henry Crawford. Agatha is seduced and has sex outside marriage, like Maria Bertram. But these similarities only emphasise the startling differences between the play and Mansfield Park: Jane Austen’s novel is much deeper, subtler, and more sophisticated.  

Lovers’ Vows in Mansfield Park 

Look at the scene in Mansfield Park where the characters argue about which play to perform: 

“All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal, Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively dismissed with yet warmer objections.” (Ch.14) 

I only just read The School for Scandal—imagine if the characters picked Sheridan’s play! 

One must ask, does Jane Austen pick Lovers’ Vows because she likes it, or because she thinks it’s a stupid play that demonstrates the bad taste of Mr Yates and emphasises the impropriety of staging such a play in Sir Thomas’s absence? I don’t think there’s anything to indicate that Jane Austen personally thinks it’s a great play. Either way, many (obtuse) readers complain about Mansfield Park and call Fanny Price a priggish bore partly because they impose modern thinking on the novel (saying what’s wrong with staging a play at home?), but mainly because they don’t know Lovers’ Vows. Fanny isn’t fond of the plan to act when Sir Thomas’s away, but she becomes strongly opposed to the play only when she reads it: 

“Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance, that it could be proposed and accepted in a private theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation—the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Edmund would certainly make.” (ibid.) 

Read the play and you’ll see why. 

Apart from that, rereading the theatrical episode in Mansfield Park is now much more interesting when I know the characters they’re playing. It’s quite a joke that the dim-witted Mr Rushworth plays Count Cassel, who is a cad, though they’re both foppish. There’s also something rather funny about the way Maria and Julia Bertram fight to play Agatha, when Henry Crawford plays Frederick, her son, and the role of Agatha’s former lover, Baron Wildenhaim, goes to Mr Yates—Henry and Maria flirt with each other whilst playing mother and son (hello, Jane?). But of course the way Austen sets it up is perfect: Agatha and Baron Wildenhaim only have a couple of lines together at the end whereas she and Frederick have relatively long scenes together—scenes that involve touching. As Mary Crawford says to Fanny: 

“… I looked in upon them five minutes ago, and it happened to be exactly at one of the times when they were trying not to embrace, and Mr Rushworth was with me. I thought he began to look a little queer…” (Ch.18) 

Funnily enough: 

“As far as [Fanny] could judge, Mr Crawford was considerably the best actor of all: he had more confidence than Edmund, more judgment than Tom, more talent and taste than Mr Yates. She did not like him as a man, but she must admit him to be the best actor, and on this point there were not many who differed from her.” (ibid.)

I wonder if Jane Austen’s suspicious of actors—ironically, it’s whilst being an actor that Henry drops his act towards Julia and makes obvious his preference for her sister. 

So what about Edmund and Mary Crawford? Edmund plays Mr Anhalt and Mary plays Amelia. Now when I have read Lovers’ Vows, I can see better Fanny’s pain as she watches Edmund and Mary Crawford rehearse the love scene, especially when Fanny has grown up with Edmund the way (I think) Amelia has grown up with Mr Anhalt. 

Regardless of Jane Austen’s judgement of the literary merit of Lovers’ Vows, she uses it to great effect in Mansfield Park, moves the plot forward, and reveals a lot about every single character in her novel—knowing Elizabeth Inchbald’s play deepens my understanding and appreciation of the novel. 

Visiting Jane Austen’s House Museum

A few days ago, I finally managed to visit Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, Hampshire. It was great. 

This is where Jane Austen revised her first three novels, and wrote her last three novels Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion. The table’s much smaller than I thought! 

I don’t know what flowers Austen had in her garden back then, but here are a few photos of mine of the flowers now. 

Also wandered around Chawton. Tiny, charming village. 

In case anyone wonders if I have visited Shakespeare’s Birthplace Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon, here are a few photos from 2023. 

Dombey and Son: “I have nothing else to sustain me when I despise myself”

I almost quit on Dombey and Son, around page 425 or so. It is a transitional novel (according to my friend Himadri, the Dickens expert): Florence Dombey is insipid (Dickens clearly learnt and improved himself when he later created Amy Dorrit and Esther Summerson); Walter Gay is a blank; the supporting characters are forgettable, lacking the vitality of the ones in Bleak House or David Copperfield; there are some deeply moving passages but some passages drag; and the highlight (up till that point of the novel) is little Paul.  

But I’m glad I read on, because Dickens gives us some magnificent scenes, such as the scenes between Edith and her mother Mrs Skewton, between Mrs Chick and Miss Lucretia Tox, between Edith and Florence before the wedding—who says Dickens can’t write women? For those of you who have not read the novel, or read it long ago and don’t remember, here’s a quick summary: Mr Paul Dombey is a rich man, a cold man, who doesn’t care for his first wife and doesn’t notice his daughter Florence, as he only wants a son; his first wife dies after giving birth to little Paul; Miss Tox takes advantage of her close friendship with Mr Dombey’s sister, Mrs Chick, and tries to insert herself into his circle, trying to ensnare him; but on a trip after the death of his little son, Mr Dombey is ensnared by someone else, and marries the beautiful but penniless Edith. 

The confrontation between Edith and Mrs Skewton is one of the greatest scenes in the novel. We have seen them for some time, but now we see them for what they truly are: a mercenary, calculating mother who has raised her daughter for the sole purpose of catching a rich man, and a proud daughter, full of self-loathing and painful awareness of the sordid transaction now taking place. 

““You might have been well married,” said her mother, “twenty times at least, Edith, if you had given encouragement enough.”

“No! Who takes me, refuse that I am, and as I well deserve to be,” she answered, raising her head, and trembling in her energy of shame and stormy pride, “shall take me, as this man does, with no art of mine put forth to lure him. He sees me at the auction, and he thinks it well to buy me. Let him! When he came to view me—perhaps to bid—he required to see the roll of my accomplishments. I gave it to him. When he would have me show one of them, to justify his purchase to his men, I require of him to say which he demands, and I exhibit it. I will do no more. He makes the purchase of his own will, and with his own sense of its worth, and the power of his money; and I hope it may never disappoint him. I have not vaunted and pressed the bargain; neither have you, so far as I have been able to prevent you.”” (ch.27) 

What a scene. The quote from the headline comes from the same conversation. Dickens is extremely good at depicting resentful and broken women—we see it in Great Expectations, in Little Dorrit—we see it here. Compared to Mrs Skewton, Jane Austen’s Mrs Bennet is much more likeable.  

The second confrontation is even better, when Edith tells Mrs Skewton not to corrupt Florence. When Dickens first introduces Edith, she’s a proud, genteel woman, weary of it all. Slowly he removes the layers: she has been taught and forced to catch a rich man to lift herself and her mother out of destitution; she has been degraded and corrupted, “fallen too low, by degrees, to take a new course”; but she’s aware, and has the conscience not to let her wicked mother destroy an innocent soul. In Florence, she sees a pure girl she could have been. 

The depiction of Edith during the “courtship”, during the preparation for the wedding, and at the wedding is magnificent: she doesn’t love Mr Dombey but doesn’t care; this is what she’s made for; she’s so full of self-loathing and contempt that she’s indifferent to it all. Next to her, Austen’s Charlotte Lucas is tame.  

I also love the scene where Mrs Chick tells her friend Miss Tox about her brother’s upcoming marriage. 

“Miss Tox left her seat in a hurry, and returned to her plants; clipping among the stems and leaves, with as little favour as a barber working at so many pauper heads of hair.” (ch.29) 

Who says Dickens cannot write women? This is one of those things I keep coming across over and over again on the internet, but people seem to repeat it without examining it, without thinking much about it. 

Look at Miss Tox at the wedding: 

“Miss Tox emerges from behind the cherubim’s leg, when all is quiet, and comes slowly down from the gallery. Miss Tox’s eyes are red, and her pocket-handkerchief is damp. She is wounded, but not exasperated, and she hopes they may be happy. She quite admits to herself the beauty of the bride, and her own comparatively feeble and faded attractions; but the stately image of Mr Dombey in his lilac waistcoat, and his fawn-coloured pantaloons, is present to her mind, and Miss Tox weeps afresh, behind her veil, on her way home to Princess’s Place.” (ch.31) 

Miss Tox previously didn’t create a strong impression—here, just a few lines give her life, get us to feel compassion and pity for her. 

This is masterful. 

What makes a good screen adaptation?

I have seen 7 screen adaptations of Anna Karenina. That probably tells you I’m a bit mad. But as a lover of literature and cinema, I’m also fascinated by adaptations—what makes a good one? 

Let’s start with Anna Karenina. Among the 7 versions I have seen, the best is without doubt the 1977 series by the BBC, with Nicola Pagett. We all know filmmakers have to make cuts, we all know filmmakers have to simplify the story, but the problem with most adaptations of Anna Karenina is that they don’t convey the complexity of the characters—Karenin in early adaptations tends to be portrayed as a monster whereas Karenin in some later adaptations is portrayed more sympathetically, with Anna and Vronsky presented as shallow and selfish—the 1977 series is the only one which depicts the complexity and self-contradictions and multiple facets of Anna, Karenin, and Vronsky; the only one which reminds me of the qualities for which I love Tolstoy’s novel. 

If we talk about War and Peace, Bondarchuk’s film series from 1966-1967 is popular, but I would argue that it only focuses on the epic-ness of the book. It is technically spectacular but shallow and hollow, stripping the story of depth and complexity, removing Tolstoy’s philosophical and religious ideas, reducing Pierre’s search for meaning, simplifying the “thinking characters” (Pierre and Andrei), paying little attention to emotional conflicts between characters, etc. The 1972 series by the BBC, though imperfect, shows a much better understanding of Tolstoy’s characters and ideas, and respect for the text. 

This doesn’t mean I think only faithful adaptations are worthwhile, doesn’t mean I think filmmakers have to be slaves to the sources. When I complain about film adaptations, people sometimes accuse me of being a purist, but I’m not. I find it fascinating when a classic story is moved to a different setting, a different culture: the story of Dangerous Liaisons for instance is moved from 18th century France to feudal Korea in Untold Scandal, and modern-day America in Cruel Intentions; Fingersmith, set in the Victorian era, is adapted into South Korean film The Handmaiden. 

Sometimes it doesn’t work quite well: Bride and Prejudice does a few clever things, moving the story of Pride and Prejudice to modern-day India and making Mr Darcy American, and it’s fun enough, but it doesn’t have the sense of urgency of Jane Austen’s novel, either in the sisters getting married or in the Wickham sub-plot; the Mrs Bennet character is therefore just vulgar and annoying; and Lalita (the equivalent of Elizabeth Bennet) comes across as nationalistic and more confrontational than witty, which gets tiresome after a while. But sometimes it works wonders: in Ran and Arashi ga oka, Kurosawa and Yoshida take King Lear and Wuthering Heights respectively as a starting point, and create something different, something very Japanese, something that stands on their own. As I wrote in a recent blog post about Wuthering Heights, Arashi ga oka is its own thing—Onimaru is not Heathcliff; Kinu is not Catherine; Hidemaru is not Hindley; Mitsuhiko is not Edgar Linton; Tae is not Isabella; Yoshimaru is not Hareton; young Kinu is not Cathy—the characters can be mapped onto Emily Bronte’s characters but they are different and their relationships are different. And yet it captures the violence, savagery, eroticism, and strangeness of Emily Bronte’s novel, which the supposedly faithful adaptations of Wuthering Heights don’t do, as most adaptations only focus on the love story, reduce the malice and brutality, and often cut the second generation.

A similar example is Clueless: loosely based on Emma and set in an American high school, it is its own thing, loved by both Jane Austen’s fans and people who have no idea it’s inspired by a 19th century novel; yet at the same time, Amy Heckerling captures the essence of Austen’s novel much better than some supposedly faithful adaptations do. What I mean is that Emma might be snobbish, she might misperceive everything, she might make a mess of people’s lives, but she means well and wants to do good and has self-reflection—we also see this in Cher in Clueless, whereas Anya Taylor-Joy and especially Gwyneth Paltrow portray Emma as bitchy, catty, even two-faced, nothing like Austen’s character. 

The trouble is that most screen adaptations are not faithful adaptations which take the text seriously and show great understanding of the source story (such as the 1995 Pride and Prejudice); but they are also not interesting adaptations which take the novel as a starting point and become their own work of art (such as Jan Švankmajer’s Alice). Most adaptations are usually somewhere in the middle. 

Take for example the 2005 Pride and Prejudice: it doesn’t transcend its source material and become its own thing; what we have instead is a film which focuses on the attraction and romance but neglects the theme of pride and prejudice, and the development of Elizabeth and Mr Darcy; Matthew Macfadyen’s Darcy doesn’t show much change throughout the story; and Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth often behaves out of character (can you imagine Jane Austen’s Elizabeth eavesdropping on her family members then bursting in on them? Or watching Georgina behind a door then running away like an intruder, with no manners? Or snatching a letter from her father’s hand?).

Or, take the 1999 Mansfield Park: it takes liberties but doesn’t become an original work of art; it’s just an awkward adaptation by someone who doesn’t accept Fanny Price as written by Jane Austen and turns her into something else, and has her accepting Henry Crawford at first, going against the text.

The 2022 Persuasion also seems to be an odd thing that is neither approach: perhaps I shouldn’t comment as I haven’t seen the whole film, but from what I have seen, it is neither a faithful adaptation, depicting the Regency era, nor an independent film with the story moved to the modern era; instead, Carrie Cracknell has characters of different skin colours wearing Regency costumes but speaking modern slang, and changes the character of Anne Elliot beyond recognition (it is perhaps aimed at the audience of Bridgerton).

And this is something lots of people don’t seem to understand: whenever someone criticises a film adaptation for misrepresenting or betraying the text, some people just say fidelity is unimportant and the film is its own work of art, but most of the time it isn’t—most of the time it doesn’t have enough strengths and originality, most of the time it doesn’t transcend its source material—all we’ve got is just a poor film that doesn’t quite transfer a great work of art onto the screen. 

10 favourite adaptations of literary works (in chronological order): 

• Rebecca (1940) 
• The Innocents (1961), from The Turn of the Screw 
• Tom Jones (1963) 
• Woman in the Dunes (1964) 
• Anna Karenina (1977) 
• Ran (1985), from King Lear 
• Arashi ga oka (1988), from Wuthering Heights 
• Alice (1988), from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 
• The Age of Innocence (1993)
• Pride and Prejudice (1995) 

The Other Bennet Sister and “diverse casting”

In my previous blog post about the TV series The Other Bennet Sister, I wrote about all the changes made to the characters of Pride and Prejudice, and the resulting loss of subtlety and complexity. Now I’d like to address the racial aspect of the series. 

In The Other Bennet Sister, Mary is the black sheep, the one bullied or at least neglected by everyone else in the family, the one assumed to have no prospects. The optician’s son however takes an interest in her, and asks her to dance with him at the ball, so she does, and she dances with him twice. Charlotte Lucas then tells Mary to be careful: two dances imply liking; the third time is going to be remarked upon. Then Mrs Bennet appears and, displaying a cruelty and harshness not seen in Jane Austen’s character, tells Mary not to dance with or speak to him any longer, as he’s an optician’s son, and an association with someone in trade would ruin the prospects of her sisters. 

The remarkable part here is that we can all see that he’s Indian, but nobody mentions his race, as though class is the only barrier. 

From what I can see, there are other non-white characters in the rest of the series, and this is something we see again and again: Netflix and the BBC and Channel 4 and ITV and other companies randomly cast black and brown people in adaptations of 19th century novels and other period dramas. This has gone on for years and seems to have become standard practice. And I have always disliked it. Why do you assume that I need to see someone “looking like me” represented on the screen? Why do you assume that I need to share the same race or ethnicity as a fictional character in order to find them relatable? Why do you assume that I would relate to a character just because we have the same race? What do I have in common with, for example, the characters in Crazy Rich Asians? Why would I want to see actors of the same ethnicity as me randomly cast in adaptations of classic European novels, like Hong Chau playing Nelly Dean in Wuthering Heights? Do we not have our own stories? Do we not have our own classics? Do production companies not understand how insulting this is? 

More importantly, “diverse casting” in period dramas is a whitewashing of history, as though 19th century Britain had been a colourblind society, as though people of all races back then had been equal, as though racism had never existed. If someone grows up watching these films and TV series—every single one has black and brown people as middle-class and upper-class characters, on equal footing with white characters—that person is going to have a very distorted understanding of the past. Bridgerton may have the excuse that it’s a fantasy world, but what excuses does The Other Bennet Sister have? 

I’m going to note too that this is very different from casting in Shakespeare. My favourite King Lear production has a black Lear (Don Warrington). My favourite version of Coriolanus has a black Coriolanus (David Oyelowo). Shakespeare’s plays are full of artifice—race-bending is no big deal as long as it doesn’t draw attention to itself and the play is taken seriously. But film and TV are supposedly more naturalistic; if it doesn’t present itself as a fantasy world as Bridgerton does (which I have never watched), it would be taken to be meant to be realistic; and the depiction of Britain in the late 18th, early 19th century as a colourblind society is unrealistic. I would even say that the erasure of the racial prejudice of the past—erasure of the experiences of victims of racism—is a racist lie. 

Unfortunately I seem to be the only one having these opinions. 

Why I stopped watching The Other Bennet Sister

With apologies to Aled, my former classmate who’s in the cast.  

When I first heard there was going to be a TV adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister, a Pride and Prejudice spin-off, I already had apprehensions: it’s about Mary, the most boring of the Bennet sisters. This is how Jane Austen describes her: 

“… After a song or two, and before [Elizabeth] could reply to the entreaties of several that she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her sister Mary, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.

Mary had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached. Elizabeth, easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well…” (ch.6) 

But Janice Hadlow wrote a novel focusing on her, so I thought maybe something interesting could be done about the character of Mary: she’s the only plain one in the family; she’s the odd one out between two pairs of sisters (Jane – Elizabeth and Kitty – Lydia). 

In the end, I only watched 2 (out of 10 episodes). The Other Bennet Sister, I think, has 3 main problems. 

First of all, in Pride and Prejudice, Mary’s not only plain and boring, but also conceited, priggish, and rather oblivious; in the series The Other Bennet Sister (I haven’t read the book), Mary is bookish, socially awkward, more likeable than Jane Austen’s character, and constantly bullied by her own family. At the beginning, it feels as though they want to turn her into Fanny Price. Almost everyone in the series—at least in the first 2 episodes—is mean-spirited: everyone makes fun of Mary; Mrs Bennet treats her cruelly and constantly puts her down; Caroline Bingley mocks her before others, in a way that a genteel woman would not; Charlotte Lucas, now her friend instead of Elizabeth’s, becomes two-faced and “steals” Mr Collins behind her back; even Elizabeth, who in Jane Austen’s novel only looks at Mr Bennet when Mary embarrasses herself in public, now insensitively says to Mr Bennet “Papa, this has gone too far, and if you don’t step in, I will” when Mary can see her. All these characters are changed beyond recognition. Even if we pretend that The Other Bennet Sister is its own universe and separate from Pride and Prejudice—ignoring that the series passes over most plot points of Jane Austen’s novel, expecting the audience to be familiar with the story—the changes are terrible because they make the characters one-dimensional and extremely unpleasant. Elizabeth, described several times as quick-witted, here displays no wit. 

As the characters are all one-dimensional—Mrs Bennet especially is not only annoying but cruel and obnoxious—the series feels one-note. Perhaps it’s going to improve from the third episode, but I’m not interested enough to continue. 

Not only so, the series constantly gets on my nerves as it’s written by people—native speakers—who don’t know proper English. The Other Bennet Sister portrays Mary Bennet as an awkward, pedantic girl who corrects a guy during a dance for saying “less” when he should say “fewer”, and yet Mary says “My mother is concerned for my sisters and I.” These errors take me out of the story. 

(I’m not even going to talk about the racial aspect of the casting). 

Now some of you might say I should not dismiss a whole series after watching only 1/5 of it and perhaps it would get better, but I’m going to say that the first 2 episodes (at least) are very crude and very silly. Not a fan.