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 Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. 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. 

On Emma (2009), starring Romola Garai [updated]

 

Why do we—I mean I—keep watching different adaptations of the same novel? 

Yesterday I saw the 2009 Emma, which is the 4th version I’ve now seen of Jane Austen’s novel, after Gwyneth Paltrow (1996), Kate Beckinsale (1996), and Anya Taylor-Joy (2020). Or the 5th, if you count Clueless (1995). 

(I mention the years so you can see the Emma craze from 1995-1996—I don’t know why though). 

At the moment, I’m not quite sure if my favourite is the Kate Beckinsale version, or the 2009 one with Romola Garai, by which I mean that both are very good, but neither have the perfection, the this-is-obviously-the-best-ness of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. 

Let’s start with what I like about the 2009 series. Consisting of 4 episodes, it’s the longest of the versions I’ve seen: it has time to develop the story, to show the glances and half-smiles and secret looks, to let us see Emma change over time. It looks good: well-framed, well-lit, showing the beautiful English countryside. Some of the supporting performances are excellent, especially Blake Ritson as the good-looking but oily, mercenary, small-minded Mr Elton, and Rupert Evans as the self-centred, thoughtless, but charming Frank Churchill. I also like that Harriet Smith is not turned into a goofy and ridiculous character, as done in some other adaptations: portrayed by Louise Dylan, she is simple, impressionable, not very bright; but there’s a gentleness and timidity about her that makes Emma, Robert Martin, and others love her. Most importantly, Jonny Lee Miller is a very good Mr Knightley, and there’s great chemistry between him and Romola Garai. The 1996 TV movie depicts accurately the age gap from the novel, but Kate Beckinsale and Mark Strong have less chemistry, and I think it’s better when Mr Knightley can be seen as a romantic interest— he may be 16 years older, he may scold her and lecture her, they may be old friends, but there must be something that convinces us about the transformation of their life-long friendship into romantic love, something that makes us rejoice in their realisation and their happy ending—Romola Garai and Jonny Lee Miller have it, and make me realise that it’s not quite there between Mark Strong and Kate Beckinsale.

In many ways, it is a good adaptation, and I do like the way the series emphasises Emma’s loneliness and listlessness after her sister and then her governess gets married, leaving her alone with her father, without a female companion, without guidance, without something to do. 

But there are certain things that don’t work quite so well. For some reasons, Sandy Welch (the screenwriter) and Jim O’Hanlon (the director) tone down some of the characters: Mr Woodhouse is less tiresome and ridiculous; Miss Bates is less garrulous and exasperating; Mrs Elton is still self-centred and annoying but less vulgar, less crass, and actually quite physically attractive. These changes—when I think about them—affect how we see Emma. And that leads to the most important question: how is Romola Garai’s performance as Emma? In some ways, she’s a very good Emma: Emma meddles with people’s lives and messes many things up, but Romola Garai has that charm, that innocence and pure-heartedness of Jane Austen’s character, whereas Gwyneth Paltrow or Anya Taylor-Joy can come across as catty, disdainful, even fake, and extremely unlikeable. But Romola Garai plays Emma as animated, high-spirited, almost like a teen girl—perhaps almost like a modern teen girl—I prefer the elegance of Kate Beckinsale, and her approach to the character. 

What do you think?  

Addendum: I forgot to mention that during holiday, I watched When Harry Met Sally for the first time. What a wonderful, delightful film! The characters are all different, but I thought about When Harry Met Sally as I watched the close friendship between Emma and Mr Knightley turn into romantic love. 

Jane Austen’s 250

16/12/2025 is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. 

Over the years, I have written about her characters, ethics, and technique, and she has such a firmly established place in the Western Canon that there’s no need to praise, so I’d like to write a bit about what Jane Austen means to me.

Two recurring themes in Austen’s novels that particularly resonate with me are balance, and the difference between appearance and reality (also a major theme throughout Shakespeare’s plays)—over and over again, Jane Austen writes about misperception and misunderstanding and hypocrisy and deceit… Mansfield Park is my favourite of her novels because it explores these ideas so well, because it’s the most complex and visual of her novels, and because it also conveys the sense of displacement, akin to the experience of an immigrant: Fanny Price doesn’t quite feel at home at Mansfield Park, but also doesn’t feel at home back at her parents’ house in Portsmouth.

But lately I have realised that there have been moments when I felt something like embarrassment, or defensiveness, about Austen because she is narrow, because she doesn’t write about death, because she doesn’t write about Big Ideas—that’s so foolish—is not love a serious theme? Is not courtship? Marriage? Coming to understand yourself, and grow, through love? Picking the right husband? Resisting the pressure to accept a man you know would make you miserable? Living and having feelings again at a time when you feel you have lost your chance of happiness? There is nothing trivial about any of this. Screen adaptations and (some part of) the fandom might turn Jane Austen into romance or chicklit, but she is subtle and serious, and I do think she is better than anyone at writing about love—about falling in love, about getting a better understanding of yourself thanks to love, about adapting and improving yourself for someone you love.

In her four masterpieces—Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion—Jane Austen explores different kinds of love, different aspects, different angles. She adopts different tones. She uses different techniques. Pride and Prejudice for example is light, bright, and sparkling, with lots of dialogue. Mansfield Park is sombre, and she uses more layers and metaphors. Emma is where she masters the free indirect speech, blending the voice of the third-person narrator with the voice of the protagonist, colouring your perspective of the scene. Persuasion is autumnal, her warmest and most romantic novel. I say Austen is narrow—and in some sense, she is—but these four novels are all quite different. She is wonderful. 

It is no wonder that 250 years since her birth, over 210 years since the publication of her novels, Jane Austen is still one of the most celebrated and beloved writers. 

Why read plays? (P.2): Plays vs novels

I know, I wrote that the last blog post was my response once and for all to the mantra “Plays are meant to be seen, not read.” But I want to write about a different aspect: Why read plays? What do plays offer that novels do not? 

(Ibsen staring into your soul). 

Considering the popularity of novels, I think we can all name the advantages of novels. Some might argue that novels dig deeper into characters’ minds and have more psychological depth, but I don’t agree—look at Shakespeare—Hamlet and Macbeth and Brutus and many other characters question themselves, struggle with themselves, and people have analysed them for 400 years. But scope is one advantage: a play cannot have hundreds of characters and a wide range of experiences like War and Peace. Length and span are another: The Winter’s Tale might be an exception in making a jump of 16 years, but it doesn’t cover 16 years; War and Peace spans from 1805 to 1813, then jumps to 1820.

However, plays have their own strengths—I’m not even talking about plays as performance, but as text. Plays show a clash of perspectives. I won’t talk again about the range of views in Shakespeare—I think I’ve been annoying enough about this subject—you all know what I would say. Instead, look at Ibsen. In The Wild Duck, he shows the contrast between a character who thinks human beings need delusion and can’t cope with much of the truth, and a character who tears down a marriage to set it on a new foundation of truth and destroys everything. In An Enemy of the People, he depicts a man of integrity, a man of courage standing up for the truth, but at the same time also lets us see the concerns of the townspeople, and makes us feel uneasy about the heroic man. In Rosmersholm, he depicts three different people—or four if you count Mrs Helseth—grappling with a suicide and questioning, blaming themselves. What actually happened? Who is to blame? 

Occasionally you find a novel with the same quality. Tolstoy for instance enters different characters’ minds and depicts their different—clashing—perspectives. William Faulkner has multiple characters narrating the story, in The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. But even when a novelist switches between different perspectives, there is narration—there is someone shaping how you see characters and events—you are always aware of the authorial presence. The closest a novel gets to a play in this aspect is the epistolary form: in Dangerous Liaisons, the finest epistolary novel I’ve read, you see the different perspectives, you see the manipulators set out their plan and see them at work, you read between the lines and imagine the effect on the receiver of each letter. 

Normally, a novel focuses on a single point of view, or has an omniscient or objective point of view. In the former case—when the story is narrated by the protagonist (such as Jane Eyre) or an observer/ another character (such as Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby), or it has a third-person narrator but mainly focuses on a single perspective (such as Jane Austen’s novels)—we see everything through that one perspective. With the third-person narrator who focuses on one character’s point of view, we can see the author: Jane Austen’s use of free indirect discourse for instance creates a double perspective, a dual voice—the narrator’s voice blending in with the character’s voice. But even when a novel has a first-person narrator, you can see the author somewhere between the lines: even though Lolita is seen through the eyes of Humbert Humbert, we can see—even without the framing device—that Nabokov is not Humbert Humbert. 

In the latter case, when the story has an omniscient or objective point of view, there is a narrator guiding the reader, which you don’t get in plays. Take Rosmersholm, for instance. What goes on in Rebecca’s mind when she cries out in joy and then rejects Rosmer’s proposal? And because there is no narrator and we are restricted to what the characters say, Ibsen gets us to see the situation in a certain way in the first two acts then turns everything upside down in Act 3. Even then, we only have fragments and there are things we would never know. What actually happened? What’s the truth about the relationship between Rosmer and Beata? What was on Beata’s mind when she decided to kill herself? 

Himadri (Argumentative Old Git) says: 

“I think Ibsen makes use of the fact that there *is* no narrator - no-one to interpret things, even by implication.

[…] This communicates a sense of mystery - not in the sense that the narrator isn’t giving us answers, but in the sense that there is no answer to give that may be articulated.

I don’t know to what extent this is possible in a novel.

A sense of the mystery of our human lives, of its inscrutability, is difficult to convey in a novel, where you’re aware of the authorial presence, even if the authors do their best to keep themselves in the background.”

Even in An Enemy of the People, a play that seems more straightforward than other Ibsen plays, there is a sense of mystery: what happens in Dr Stockman’s mind between Act 3 and Act 4 that he, when he has the chance to speak to people in town, decides not to speak about his findings about the baths but, instead, to have a rant about “the common man”? And more importantly, as Himadri has put it, why is the truth about the endangerment to public health so important to Dr Stockman, considering his contempt for the public? 

That sense of mystery is one of the fascinating things about Shakespeare. Why does Hamlet not act? What goes on in his mind when he tells Ophelia “Get thee to a nunnery”? Why does Iago hate Othello so much that he sets out to destroy him? Does he actually suspect Othello of having slept with his wife? What does Viola see in Orsino? Where does Leontes’s jealousy come from? 

Let’s have a discussion. 

Brief comments on the 2005 Pride and Prejudice

 

As fans were celebrating the 20th anniversary of the film, I thought why not revisit it? So I did. And I didn’t like it, though visually it is beautiful. 

Let me explain why. 

First of all, at two hours, the film feels a bit rushed. This is a common complaint, I know—certain things get cut, certain characters are underdeveloped, the film cannot have the complexity of the novel—but I can’t help noticing that the 2005 Pride and Prejudice emphasises the attraction and romance and neglects the prejudice, and the development of the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. Some of it is because the Mr Wickham plot is barely there—there is not much space between the introduction of Mr Wickham and the reveal of his character (Elizabeth doesn’t have much time to like Mr Wickham for the revelation to be a blow either). The film also reduces the ridiculousness of Mrs Bennet, and the wit and irresponsibility of Mr Bennet.

Another problem is that Matthew Macfadyen is not very good as Mr Darcy. Keira Knightley is good as Elizabeth Bennet (much better than her own performance as Anna Karenina) and I can see why her Lizzie is so beloved, but Matthew Macfadyen is more or less inexpressive for the entire film. Colin Firth is so popular as Mr Darcy not because he’s hot (though that helps), but because he conveys so well the pride, the awkwardness, the struggle between his own passion and his distaste for Elizabeth’s embarrassing family, and above all, because he depicts the change, the development of Mr Darcy. As a character, Mr Darcy unfolds rather than changes, but he does adjust his manners—because of Elizabeth’s “lectures”, he learns to open up, and learns to speak to strangers with more warmth and friendliness. I saw that in Colin Firth’s performance; I didn’t really see it in Matthew Macfadyen’s. 

There are other irritations. Certain lines seem wrong (Mr Darcy says “You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love… I love… I love you”—really?). Certain actions seem out of character. Would Elizabeth join with others in eavesdropping on her parents, or on her sister? And then burst in on them? Would she remain in Pemberley, knowing that Georgina is there, then watch her behind the door only to suddenly find Mr Darcy and run away like a rude intruder? Would Elizabeth snatch a letter from her father’s hand? 

I would also add, though some of you may find it petty, that after the clearly-spoken BBC adaptations I recently saw, I couldn’t help noticing that a few times in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, the dialogue was almost drowned out by music, or other noises (such as the sound of rain). 

The main strengths of the film are the cinematography, Keira Knightley’s performance (I did like her witty, amused look), and the bond of the sisters, especially between Elizabeth and Jane. 

But as a whole, the 1995 series handles much better the characters and their relationships.

Now did you know that there’re currently two Pride and Prejudice series in the works? One is a six-part series, made by Netflix, with Emma Corrin and Jack Lowden in the main roles. The other is a ten-part adaptation of The Other Bennet Sister, a spin-off focusing on Mary Bennet (the Bennet sister nobody likes). Not hard to tell that both would be travesties.

Note: This blog post was originally published on 16/6 but emails were not delivered. I'm republishing it on 20/6 (with content unchanged) to test the new mailing system.

Brief thoughts on the 1983 Mansfield Park

The chief strength of this series is the script—this is an adaptation made by people who understand the novel and take it seriously and get the tone right—I think anyone who, like me, loves Mansfield Park would think that it’s in many ways a better effort than some recent adaptations. I have often complained that Mansfield Park fares less well on the screen than other Jane Austen novels because people often want Fanny Price to be something other than she is, and modern filmmakers, clearly thinking they’re “improving” on the book, change her, modernise her, make her more “fun”. I have never understood it. Do we not have enough girlbosses? The 1999 film is a travesty and the 2007 film I don’t even bother to watch—just look at the casting of Billie Piper in the role. Here in the 1983 series, there’s no modernisation, no condescension. Fanny Price is quiet, unimposing, unassertive, but perceptive, self-reliant, firm, and she has a different kind of strength. 

There is also a strong cast, especially Bernard Hepton as Sir Thomas, Anna Massey as Mrs Norris, and Jonathan Stephens as Mr Rushworth. 

Unfortunately, I cannot praise it the way I have praised the 1972 War and Peace or the 1977 Anna Karenina, also done by the BBC. The production values are lower, some of the blocking and staging feel a bit awkward. I’m not sure how I feel about Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny—for the large part, she’s all right, but I don’t particularly like the way she sometimes moves her hands. I don’t really like Nicholas Farrell as Edmund either, who I think looks rather too old for the role, and the switch from Mary to Fanny at the end feels rather sudden. 

But the most unconvincing are Robert Burbage and Jackie Smith-Wood as the Crawfords—I don’t think there’s anything wrong with their acting as such, but the Crawfords are the most attractive and charming of Jane Austen’s villains—so charming that some readers even fall for them, prefer Mary Crawford to Fanny Price, and think that Fanny should have accepted Henry—the actors aren’t quite right for the roles.  

I also think that, spanning 6 episodes, the series has time to develop the characters and their relationships but handles the first half much better than the second half. The first half is very good, from the depiction of Fanny’s place at Mansfield Park, to the ha-ha sequence, to the play-acting sequence. I especially like the way the series depicts Henry Crawford flirting simultaneously with Maria Bertram (Samantha Bond) and Julia Bertram (Liz Crowther), sporting with their feelings—what a rake—which doesn’t escape Fanny’s eyes. The acting is good. Like the novel, the series makes me feel sorry for the vain Julia and the ridiculous Mr Rushworth. 

It is in the second half that the series does less well—I mean the way Henry starts with wanting to break Fanny’s heart but falls in love with her, and the way he, despite his feelings for Fanny, can’t resist the fun and flirtatious Maria. Perhaps part of it is because the actor isn’t convincing in the role, I don’t know.

In short, this is a more faithful, more serious adaptation of Mansfield Park than later versions, which I appreciate. But there are flaws. 

Thanks to Brian Green for telling me about this adaptation. 

On the narrowness of Jane Austen

A recent (stupid) conversation on the hellsite previously known as Twitter has made me realise something interesting. When it comes to range of characters and experiences in writing, the extreme of range would be Shakespeare, who seems to contain everyone and everything (also able to depict a wide range of characters though not as much as Shakespeare are, I would say, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Cao Xueqin); and the polar opposite in this regard would probably be Jane Austen. 

I mean, even compared to other great authors who write about domestic life, Jane Austen’s remarkably narrow: she mainly writes about the landed gentry; servants are neither heard nor seen; other races are not mentioned, except in the unfinished Sanditon; almost all the conversations between male characters take place with a woman present; her characters barely discuss politics or social issues; her novels only depict a tiny part of society; etc. She’s narrower than Henry James, Edith Wharton, George Eliot, even Charlotte Bronte (I’m thinking of Shirley and the Luddite uprisings). 

Isn’t it extraordinary then, how popular she is? Her novels are read and beloved and adapted around the world. And even though the majority of her readers and fans are women (and some philistines think Jane Austen’s novels are only for women), we know that Jane Austen is admired, even loved, by quite a few male writers and lovers of literature. Clearly there’s something universal about Jane Austen’s novels, about her themes of love and courtship and people misperceiving things and misunderstanding each other and misunderstanding themselves—these things happen to everybody regardless of background, regardless of race, regardless of nationality, regardless of gender, regardless of religion. And perhaps, it’s precisely because she leaves out discussions of politics and social issues and leaves out her own opinions that her novels have such wide appeal, that readers of different views and background can all claim her as their own (I have seen conservatives call her conservative and feminists call her feminist, for example). 

When I think about Shakespeare’s popularity and influence around the world and throughout history, it’s easy to understand as Shakespeare is so large and there’s a Shakespeare for everybody: those who don’t like tragedies can go for the comedies; those who don’t like comedies can go for the histories; those interested in politics have the Roman plays; those fond of fairies have A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest; those preoccupied with race have Othello and The Merchant of Venice; those interested in the subject of colonialism (and part of a national independence movement) find something in The Tempest, and so on and so forth. The wide appeal of Jane Austen’s novels, despite their narrowness, is in a sense more puzzling and thus more fascinating. 

What do you think? 

Why do some great novels resist adaptation?

Yesterday I watched two Czechoslovakian films: Alice and When the Cat Comes (both of which I recommend). As I was watching Alice, Jan Švankmajer’s wonderfully dark and disturbing adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I thought about classic novels that were adapted for the screen over and over again. 

And I thought, why are some great novels so much harder to adapt than others? 

I’m not talking about novels with an odd structure, an obvious challenge such as Moby Dick or The Sound and the Fury or One Hundred Years of Solitude. I’m also not talking about faithful adaptations—you can’t accuse me of being a purist—just film or TV adaptations that can stand on their own as works of art. Like Jan Švankmajer’s Alice. Or Dr Strangelove. Or Ran.

But clearly some novels seem to resist adaptation. Take Don Quixote for instance. This is one of the most important novels in the world, this is a novel that has been adapted a million times, and yet—perhaps I am ignorant—there is not a single adaptation that is considered a good film of Don Quixote. BFI has an article called “The troubled history of Don Quixote on film”, about the failures of Orson Welles and Walt Disney and Terry Gilliam to bring it (successfully) to the screen. Terry Gilliam in the end managed to make The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 2019, but it’s not successful, is it? Critic score of 66% and audience score of 59% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Anna Karenina, another favourite novel of mine, also doesn’t seem to work well on the screen. The challenge of the depth of Tolstoy’s characters is not the only reason. The 1972 adaptation of War and Peace, with Anthony Hopkins as Pierre, demonstrates that it’s possible to convey the depth of characters and the conflicts between them—the only flaw of that version is Natasha (many people love the Soviet version, but it’s only because they seem to be fine with Sergei Bondarchuk stripping away all psychological and philosophical depth and character development). But there is not a single good adaptation of Anna Karenina* and I have seen six different ones: Greta Garbo (1935), Vivien Leigh (1948), Tatiana Samoilova (1967), Sophie Marceau (1997), Keira Knightley (2012), and Vittoria Puccini (2013). There is always something wrong—with Anna or Vronsky or Karenin or all of them—not to mention that the Levin strand is almost always reduced to a mere subplot. 

But I guess the complexity of Tolstoy’s characters is the main reason. Filmmakers tend to go for a simpler version. 

Wuthering Heights is another hard one. Jane Eyre has an excellent adaptation in 2006, with Ruth Wilson as Jane and Toby Stephens as Mr Rochester. Some people seem to like the 2011 film with Mia Wasikowska, for some reason. But Wuthering Heights has not had a single good adaptation—we all agree, yes? The news of the version currently in the works doesn’t particularly cheer anyone up either. How could Emerald Fennel possibly cast Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff? Madness. 

My favourite Emma: Kate Beckinsale. 

The case of Jane Austen is easier to understand. Almost all of her novels have had a good adaptation: Lady Susan has a brilliant adaptation in 2016, confusingly named Love and Friendship; Northanger Abbey has been adapted only once** in 2007, with Felicity Jones, which seems popular enough; Sense and Sensibility has the Oscar-winning film in 1995 with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet; Pride and Prejudice has the 1995 series, with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, leading to the Austen craze and the whole Janeite industry (though there are, oddly, some people who prefer the Keira Knightley film); Emma has a great adaptation in 1996 with Kate Beckinsale, which is my favourite, though the consensus is that the best one is Clueless; Persuasion has a celebrated version, also in 1995, with Amanda Root as Anne Elliot and Ciarán Hinds as Captain Wentworth. All filmmakers have left to do is to “ruin” them with some “subversive” adaptations, like Netflix has done with Persuasion and presumably will do again with Pride and Prejudice (well, for those who like that sort of thing, that’s the sort of thing they like). 

The one Jane Austen novel that has not had a good adaptation is Mansfield Park. But that is not hard to understand: modern filmmakers cannot handle a morally serious and sombre Jane Austen novel and a heroine so unlike the Strong Female Character trope of Hollywood—Fanny Price, strong in a different way, is not a girlboss or a kickass heroine—filmmakers keep feeling a misplaced urge to “improve” on the book.  

But I do wonder why Wuthering Heights hasn’t got a good adaptation. Is it only because filmmakers keep sanitising and romanticising the story? Or is there some fierce, intense quality to Emily Bronte’s story that makes it impossible to work on the screen? 

But I suppose people are going to attempt again and again. 

** Addendum: There is also a version in 1987 that I did not know about. Thanks, Brian. 

* updated on 13/6/2025: I have now watched a wonderful adaptation of Anna Karenina from 1977. 

Oh these shameless moderns!

1/ Over the past few months, I have been bombarded with Facebook ads for The Duchess (of Malfi), featuring Jodie Whittaker. 

What is it? you ask—why is “of Malfi” in brackets? It’s because this is a contemporary adaptation of Webster’s play. “A bloody revenge tragedy made marvellously modern”, says The Telegraph. The Duchess of Malfi stripped of its poetry, stripped of its language. Reduced to its plot. Reduced to something about “the patriarchy” and “female resistance.” 

One ad has the writer-director, Zinnie Harris, discussing “why she thinks John Webster’s classic text is still studied in school and remains relevant today.” 

I’d say The Duchess of Malfi endures because of its poetry, not because of its plot. Zinnie Harris herself mentions language and imagery—then why did she remove all of it? 

I’ll give you two quotes from Webster’s play:  

“BOSOLA Do you not weep?

Other sins only speak; murther shrieks out: 

The element of water moistens the earth, 

But blood flies upwards, and bedews the heavens. 

FERDINAND Cover her face. My eyes dazzle: she di’d young.”

(Act 5 scene 5) 

“ANTONIO […] In all our quest of greatness, 

Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, 

We follow after bubbles, blown in th’air. 

Pleasure of life, what is’t? only the good hours

Of an ague: merely a preparative to rest, 

To endure vexation…” 

(Act 5 scene 4)

2/ In 2022, Netflix released an adaptation of Persuasion. A “subversive new take on Jane Austen”, according to British Vogue. Persuasion Fleabag-ified. Anne Elliot regularly breaks the fourth wall and at some point says “Now we’re worse than exes, we’re friends.” Her sister Mary calls herself “an empath.” Someone says “It’s often said that if you’re a 5 in London, you’re a 10 in Bath.” Isn’t that relatable? British Vogue says “The introduction of direct-to-camera moments and doses of contemporary humour make Anne’s inner journey immediately relatable, in a way that might have been impossible under the standard conventions of the buttoned-up Regency drama.”

“Impossible”, they say—why do they think so many people love the book? 

But that’s not all. Carrie Cracknell, the director said “I’ve always loved casting in a color-conscious way. A conversation that I’ve had with lots of the actors that I’ve worked with over the years is how powerful it can be for a diverse audience to see themselves represented in historic cultural texts and stories, because in some way it sort of broadens the scope of the audience who can feel part of this story or can feel ownership over this story.” 

How marvellous! Where would we be without Carrie Cracknell and people like her? Since its publication in 1817, we pitiful people of colour have never felt that Persuasion was ours till Netflix condescended to help us feel included. 

3/ Today, at The Open Book in Richmond, I came across a book called She Speaks! What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said by Harriet Walter. 

“An incisive, funny, mischievously subversive homage to Shakespeare’s heroines, written by one of mine,” Meera Syal blurbs. 

Tamsin Greig says “With characteristic wit, compassion and fierce intelligence, she gives tantalising voice to the Bard’s female greats.” 

These are the opening lines of the introduction on the dust jacket:

“Dame Harriet Walter, renowned for her wonderful portrayals in Succession and Killing Eve, among others, is one of Britain’s most acclaimed Shakespearean actors. Now, having played most of the Bard’s female characters, audaciously she lets them speak their minds.” 

I’m sorry—do they not speak in the plays? 

One of the reasons Shakespeare is called the greatest writer of all time is that his range of characters is unequalled—he creates characters of different backgrounds, races, nationalities, classes, sexes, sexualities, religions, political views, points of view… and also different types of characters—he contains everything. Look at the female characters he created—look at Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth and Gertrude and Volumnia and Rosalind and Beatrice and Isabella and Viola and Portia and Imogen and Desdemona and Emilia and Hermione and Juliet’s nurse and so on and so forth—and Harriet Walter or the intro writer thinks she “lets them speak their minds”? That she imagines what “these women were really thinking”? And Walter thinks “the mirror that [Shakespeare] held up to nature reflected a predominantly male image of the world” and he needs her to “let a little sunlight in on some of his women’s stories”? 

The arrogance is incredible. 

The Female Quixote: “silently cursed his ill Fate, to make him in love with a Woman so ridiculous”

1/ I’m taking back my comment earlier that Arabella’s ridiculous but lovable. 

“… You are a foolish Wench! replied Arabella, smiling at [Lucy’s] Simplicity. Do you think I have any Cause to accuse myself, though five thousand Men were to die for me! It is very certain my Beauty has produced very deplorable Effects: the unhappy Hervey has expiated, by his Death, the Violence his too-desperate Passion forced him to meditate against me: the no less guilty, the noble unknown Edward, is wandering about the World, in a tormenting Despair; and stands exposed to the Vengeance of my Cousin, who has vowed his Death. My Charms have made another Person, whose Character ought to be sacred to me, forget all the Ties of Consanguinity; and become the Rival of his Son, whose Interest he once endeavoured to support: and lastly, the unfortunate Bellmour consumes away in an hopeless Passion; and, conscious of his Crime, dooms himself, haply, with more Severity than I desire, to a voluntary Death; in Hopes, thereby, of procuring my Pardon and Compassion when he is no more…” (B.4, ch.9) 

Delusional and narcissistic. At the beginning, Arabella seems rather sweet and compassionate and non-judgemental, just odd and foolish. But she becomes increasingly narcissistic as the story goes on. 

“Will your Ladyship, then, let poor Sir George die? said Lucy, who had listened very attentively to this fine Harangue without understanding what it meant.

Questionless, he must die, replied Arabella, if he persists in his Design of loving me.” (ibid.) 

Mental. We know Sir George’s not gonna die from his love for her, but she doesn’t know that—does she not come across as callous about death? She also expects men to risk their lives and kill for her. Why does Mr Glanville love Arabella? It’s madness. 

There are, I think, three problems in Charlotte Lennox’s characterisation of Arabella. 

First of all is, as written above, her narcissism. One of the reasons Don Quixote is such an enduring and lovable character is because Cervantes combines in him ridiculousness and goodness, or nobility—the same goes for Fielding’s Parson Adams, another character modelled after Don Quixote. Or if we compare Charlotte Lennox and Jane Austen, Emma Woodhouse misperceives everything; she is foolish, snobbish, meddlesome; but she is lovable because her meddling comes from a desire to do good for others and she is capable of self-reflection.

Arabella is irritating and extremely frustrating—not only does she misread everything, but she also makes it impossible for others to speak and clear things up. 

“Reasons! said Sir Charles: there is no making her hear Reason, or expecting Reason from her. I never knew so strange a Woman in my Life: she would not allow me to speak what I intended concerning you; but interrupted me every Moment, with some high-flown Stuff or other.” (B.5, ch.5) 

Another problem is that Lennox tells us that Arabella is an accomplished woman, that Mr Glanville is charmed by “the agreeable Sallies of her Wit, and her fine Reasoning upon every Subject he proposed” except romances or the subject of love, but Lennox doesn’t show us. Again, look at Don Quixote: we do hear him talk about a wide range of subjects; we can see that he’s highly intelligent and knowledgeable; we do get the impression that he’s a good and sensible and understanding man, as long as the subject of chivalry doesn’t come up. We never hear Arabella talk about anything else. 

“I shall not trouble myself to deny any thing about them, Madam, said Miss Glanville; for I never heard of them before; and really I do not choose to be always talking of Queens and Princesses, as if I thought none but such great People were worthy my Notice: it looks so affected, I should imagine every one laughed at me that heard me.” (B.5, ch.1) 

This leads to the third problem: The Female Quixote is one-note. Lots of things happen in Don Quixote. Lots of things happen in Joseph Andrews. Lots of things happen in Northanger Abbey. Lots of things happen in Emma. Everything in The Female Quixote is more or less variation of the same joke—how many times are we going to watch Arabella misperceive things as resembling those silly romances? how many times are we going to watch others laugh at her, or get speechlessly confused about her?

The first one is not necessarily a fault—we don’t have to like the protagonist to recognise the quality of a book—after all my favourite novels include Madame Bovary, Wuthering Heights, Lolita. But the other two points explain why the book is now little known. The Female Quixote still keeps me reading just because Charlotte Lennox is funny, very funny. 

2/ After the set-up, the plot of The Female Quixote is driven by the pursuit of Arabella by two men: Mr Glanville, a good man who loves her (for some reason) and can’t stand silly romances; and Sir George, a mercenary man who eyes her fortune and courts her in the style of those romances he has also read. 

Charlotte Lennox interrupts the central joke of The Female Quixote with Sir George’s narration of his own life, completely made up and in the style of romances: 

“… I love you, divine Philonice; and not being able either to repent, or cease to be guilty of loving you, I am resolved to die, and spare you the Trouble of pronouncing my Sentence. I beseech you therefore to believe, that I would have died in Silence, but for your Command to declare myself; and you should never have known the Excess of my Love and Despair, had not my Obedience to your Will obliged me to confess it.” (B.6, ch.9)

He does know these books very well—he’s clearly determined to catch Arabella (even if it makes him look like a bellend before everyone else). 

“The Silence of Philonice, continued Sir George, pierced me to the Heart; and when I saw her rise from her Seat, and prepare to go away without speaking, Grief took such Possession of my Spirits, that, uttering a Cry, I fell into a Swoon, which, as I afterwards was informed, greatly alarmed the beautiful Philonice; who, resuming her Seat, had the Goodness to assist her Women in bringing me to myself; and, when I opened my Eyes, I had the Satisfaction to behold her still by me, and all the Signs of Compassion in her Face…” (B.6, ch.10) 

It is very funny—but just in small doses—Charlotte Lennox drags this on for 10 chapters, 10 tedious chapters—it would probably be more enjoyable if one knew those French romances and hated them with the same passion. The conclusion of this episode however is hilarious, in its unexpectedness—Lennox probably has to take a while to build it up for that hysterical conclusion. 

I’m curious about how the novel’s gonna end. 

The Female Quixote: “supposing Romances were real Pictures of Life, from them she drew all her Notions and Expectations”

1/ My blog isn’t much read, I guess, when I keep blogging about books most people haven’t read and probably haven’t even heard of. But there are three reasons for me to pick up The Female Quixote; or The Adventures of Arabella (1752) by Charlotte Lennox: a) I’m currently wandering around the 18th century; b) it was—surprise!—inspired by Don Quixote; c) it in turned inspired Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. 

(Perhaps I should make a reading list of Fiction Suspicious of Fiction). 

It’s also a good idea to read The Female Quixote right after Evelina because a) Arabella is 17, the same age as Evelina; b) they are both sheltered girls who don’t know much about the world, and have a series of “adventures”; c) I can compare Charlotte Lennox and Frances Burney, both early female novelists. 

Now you’re gonna ask, if Don Quixote takes aim at chivalry romances and Northanger Abbey parodies gothic novels, what about The Female Quixote? Its target is 17th century French romance novels. Readers of Lennox’s novel may find this website useful.

Interestingly enough, The Female Quixote and Madame Bovary—separated by about 100 years—both have a go at female readers who think life is like romance novels, but they are extremely different.

2/ Like Parson Adams in Joseph Andrews, Arabella is so clearly modelled after Don Quixote that we could all recognise it even without the author’s acknowledgement: 

“For Heaven’s sake, Cousin, resumed Arabella, laughing, how have you spent your Time; and to what Studies have you devoted your Hours, that you could find none to spare for the Perusal of Books from which all useful Knowledge may be drawn; which give us the most shining Examples of Generosity, Courage, Virtue, and Love; which regulate our Actions, form our Manners, and inspire us with a noble Desire of emulating those great, heroic, and virtuous Actions, which made those Persons so glorious in their Age, and so worthy Imitation in ours?” (B.1, ch.12)  

Some details come straight out of Don Quixote, such as the call for book-burning. I’m not calling Lennox’s book a rip-off—I’m saying that there’s something about Cervantes’s novel that resonates with lots of people and inspires lots of books.

One thing: what I heard about The Female Quixote before picking it up made me think that Arabella mistakenly assumed everyone to be in love with her when they’re not—that’s not her delusion—many men are indeed attracted to her—her problem is that she bases her own conduct upon 17th century romance novels and judges everyone according to these ridiculous standards and makes erroneous assumptions about everything she sees. Her delusion and wild distortion of events make her closer to Don Quixote than Catherine Morland (Northanger Abbey) or Emma Woodhouse.

Like Frances Burney, Charlotte Lennox is very funny. The most important thing she seems to have learnt from Cervantes is how to create a character who appears rather mad and misperceives everything and acts oddly but who is nevertheless lovable—Arabella is nuts, but you can slowly see why Mr Glanville thinks that her weirdness “notwithstanding the pain it gave him, could not lessen the love he felt for her”. 

Did Jane Austen learn from Lennox to create Emma? 

3/ So who is Arabella’s Sancho? 

“… I have reason to expect, I shall suffer the same Violence that many illustrious Ladies have done before me; and be carried away by Force from my own House, as they were.

Alas! madam! said Lucy, terrified at this Discourse, who is it that intends to carry your Ladyship away? Sure no Robbers will attempt any Mischief at such a Time as this!

Yes, Lucy, replied Arabella, with great Gravity, the worst kind of Robbers; Robbers who do not prey upon Gold and Jewels, but, what is infinitely more precious, Liberty and Honour. […] And Heaven knows when I shall be delivered from his Chains!

God forbid, said Lucy, sobbing, that ever such a Lady should have such hard Hap! What Crime, I wonder, can you be guilty of, to deserve to be in Chains?” (B.2, ch.10)

Charlotte Lennox gives Arabella’s maid Lucy, Sancho’s susceptibility and cowardice—let’s see if Lucy’s going to develop, as Sancho does. 

However, if Dulcinea doesn’t exist, Arabella’s love is very real and that’s her cousin Mr Glanville. 

4/ The Female Quixote is in some ways closer to a play. Little description. Little narration. Mostly dialogue. 

I’ve noted something interesting: 

“Lady Bella, from the Familiarity with which Miss Glanville treated this gay Gentleman, concluding him her Lover, and one who was apparently well received by her, had a strong Curiosity to know her Adventures; and as they were walking the next Morning in the Garden, she told her, that she thought it was very strange they had hitherto observed such a Reserve to each other, as to banish mutual Trust and Confidence from their Conversation. Whence comes it, Cousin, added she, being so young and lovely as you are, that you, questionless, have been engaged in many Adventures, you have never reposed Trust enough in me to favour me with a Recital of them?

Engaged in many Adventures, Madam! returned Miss Glanville, not liking the Phrase: I believe I have been engaged in as few as your Ladyship.

You are too obliging, returned Arabella, who mistook what she said for a Compliment; for since you have more Beauty than I, and have also had more Opportunities of making yourself beloved, questionless you have a greater Number of Admirers.

As for Admirers, said Miss Charlotte bridling, I fancy I have had my Share! Thank God, I never found myself neglected; but, I assure you, madam, I have had no Adventures, as you call them, with any of them.

No, really! interrupted Arabella, innocently.

No, really, Madam, retorted Miss Glanville; and I am surprised you should think so.” (B.2, ch.9)

By not using speech marks, Charlotte Lennox blends together the voice of the narrator and the voices of the characters. I should think more about its effects.