The Jane Austen Book Club Part 21

2002-Elsa Solender, past president of the Jane Austen Society of North America60 Having reviewed all the available films and critical reactions to them in the specialized libraries of London, Los Angeles, and New York, and having begged, bought, or borrowed a library of books and articles on adaptation from literature to film, I have reached one definitive conclusion about try-ing to re-create "Jane Austen's World" faithfully and authen-tically on film in a way to satisfy Janeites. In a single word: Don't!

2003-J. K. Rowling61 I never wanted to be famous, and I never dreamt I would be famous.... There's a slight disconnect with reality which happens a lot with me. I imagined being a famous writer would be like being like JaneAusten. Being able to sit at home in the parsonage and your books would be very famous and occasionally you would correspond with the Prince of Wales's secretary.

NOTES.

1. Jane Austen,The Works of Jane Austen, vol.6: Minor Works, ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford, London, and New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1969), pp. 43 1-435.

2. Ibid., pp. 436-439.

3. B. C. Southam, ed.,Jane Austen and the Critical Heritage (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), vol. 1, p. 40.

4. Mary Russell Mitford,Life of Mary Russell Mitford, ed. A. G. L'Estrange (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1870), vol. 1, p. 300.

5. David Lodge, ed.,Jane Austen's Emma: A Casebook (Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hamps.h.i.+re, and London: Macmillan Education, 1991), P. 42.

6. Southam, Jane Austen and the Critical Heritage,vol. 1, p. 106.

7. A. J. Beveridge,Life of John Marshall (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916-1919), vol.4, pp. 79-80.

8. [Thomas Henry Listen, unsigned review of Catherine Gore,Women As They Are, inEdinburgh Review, July 1830, p. 448.

9. T. J. Wise and J. A. Symington, eds.,The Brontes: Their Friends.h.i.+ps, Lives and Correspondence (Philadelphia: Porcupine, 1980), vol2 p. 180.

10. The Academy,1 (February 12, 1870), pp. 118-119 11. Southam, Jane Austen and the Critical Heritage,vol. 1, pp. 224-225.

12. Anthony Trollope, "Miss Austen's Timidity," in Lodge,Jane Austen's Emma: A Casebook, p.5l.

13. Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell,The Second Person Singular and Other Essays (London and New York: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1921), p. 66.

14. Willa Gather, "The Demands of Art," in Bernice Slote. ed.,The Kingdom of Art (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), p. 409.

15. The Academy,53 (January/June 1898), pp. 262-263. 16. Mark Twain,Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing, ed. Mark Dawidziak (New York: St. Martin's, 1996), p. 128.

17. John Wilts.h.i.+re, quoted in B. C. Southam, ed..Critical Essays on Jane Austen (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), p. xiii.

18. Henry James, "The Lesson of Baizac," in Leon Edel, ed.,The House of Fiction (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1957), pp. 62-63.

19. The Academy,69 (November 11, 1905), p. 1171.

20. The Academy,74 (January/June 1908), p.622.

21. Virginia Woolf,A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1957), pp.

50-51.

22. Gilbert Keith Chesterton,The Victorian Age in Literature (New York: Henry Holt, 1913), p. 109.

23. Quoted in Christopher Kent, "Learning History with, and from, Jane Austen," in J. David Grey, ed.,Jane Austen's Beginnings: The Juvenilia and Lady Susan (Ann Arbor, MI, and London: UMI Re-search Press, 1989), p. 59.

24. Rudyard Kipling, "The Janeites," in Craig Raine, ed.,A Choice of Kipling's Prose (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 334.

25. E. M. Forster, "Jane Austen," inAbinger Harvest (New York: Har-court, Brace, 1936), p.

148.

26. Penelope Vita-Finzi,Edith Wharton and the Art of Fiction (New York: St. Martin's, 1990), p. 21.

27. Arnold Bennett,The Author's Craft and Other Critical Writings of Arnold Bennett, ed.

Samuel Hynes (lincoln: University of Ne-braska Press, 1968), pp. 256-257.

28. Rebecca West,The Strange Necessity (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928), pp. 263-264.

29. D. H. Lawrence,Apropos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (London: Mar-tin Seeker, 1931), pp.

92-93.

30. W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice,Letters from Iceland (New York: Random House, 1937), p. 21.

31. Ezra Pound,Letters from Ezra Pound, ed. D. D. Paige (New York: Harcourt. Brace, and World, 1950), p. 308.

32. Thornton Wilder, "A Preface forOur Town" (1938), inAmerican Characteristics and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 101.

33. H. G. Wells,The Brothers: A Story (New York: The Viking Press, 1938), pp p26-27 34. D. W. Harding, "Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen,"Scrutiny, 8 (March 1940), pp. 346-347.

35. Quoted by Anthony Lane, "Jane's World,"The New Yorker, Sep-tember 25, 1995, p. 107.

36. Edmund Wilson, "A Long Talk About Jane Austen,"The New Yorker, June 24, 1944, p. 69.

37. C. S. Lewis, "A Note on Jane Austen," inEssays in Criticism: A Quarterly Journal of Literary Criticism, 4, no.4 (Oxford: Basil Black-well, 1954), p. 371.

38. Lionel Trilling,"Mansfield Park," in Ian Watt, ed.,Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 126.

39. Kingsley Amis, "What Became of Jane Austen?" in Watt,Jane Austen: A Collection of Critical Essays, p. 142.

40. Angus Wilson, "The Neighbourhood of Tombuctoo: Conflicts in Jane Austen's Novels," in Southam,Critical Essays on Jane Austen, p. 186.

41. Margaret Drabble, "Introduction,"Lady Susan; The Watsons; San-diton (Great Britain: Penguin, 1974), p. 7.

42. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979),The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth -Century Literary Imag-ination (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1984), pp. 154-155.

43. Vladimir Nabokov,Lectures on Literature, ed. Fred Bowers (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980), p. 10.

44. Fay Weldon (1984),Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen (New York: Taplinger, 1985), p. 97.

45. Katha Pollitt, "Rereading Jane Austen's Novels,"The New Repub-lic, August 7 and 14, 1989, p. 35.

46. Kent, "Learning History with, and from, Jane Austen," p. 59.

47. Y. Matsukawa, "Melus Interview: Gish Jen,"Melus, 18, no.4 (Win-ter 1993), p. 111.

48. Edward W. Said,Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 84.

49. Belinda Lus...o...b.., "Which Persuasion?"Time, August 14, 1995, p. 73.

50. Carol s.h.i.+elds and Anne Giardini, "Martians in Jane Austen?"Per-suasions, 18 (December 16, 1996), pp. 196, 199.

51. Martin Amis, "Jane's World,"The New Yorker, January 8, 1996, p. 34.

52. Anthony Lane, "The Dumbing of Emma,"The New Yorker, Au-gust 5,1996, p. 76. 53. James W. Michaels, "Jane Austen Novels as Management Manu-als,"Forbes, 159, no. 5 (March 10, 1997), p. 14.

54. Susan M. Korba, "'Improper and Dangerous Distinctions': Fe-male Relations.h.i.+ps and Erotic Domination inEmma," University of North Texas Studies in the Novel, 29, no. 2 (Summer 1997), p.

139.

55. David Andrew Graves, "Computer a.n.a.lysis of Word Usage inEmma," Persuasions, 21(1999), pp. 203, 211.

56. Quoted in Natalie Tyler, ed.,The Friendly Jane Austen (New York: Penguin, 1999), p. 231.

57. Anthony Lane, "All over the Map" (review of the filmMansfield Park), The New Yorker, November 29, 1999, p. 140.

58. Nalini Natarajan, "Reluctant Janeites: Daughterly Value in Jane Austen and Sarat Chandra Chatterjee'sSwami," in You-me Park and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, eds.,The Postcolonial Jane Austen (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 141.

59. Shannon R. Wooden, "'You Even Forget Yourself': The Cine-matic Construction of Anorexic Women in the 1990's Austen Films,"Journal of Popular Culture, Fall 2002, p. 221.

60. Elsa Solender, "Recreating Jane Austen's World on Film."Persua-sions, 24 (2002), pp.

103-104.

61. Quoted at www.bloomsburymagazine.com.

Questions for Discussion

Jocelyn's Questions

1. Austen's books often leave you wondering whether all of her matches are good ideas. Troubling couples may include: Marianne Dashwood and Colonel Brandon, Lydia Bennet and Wickham, Emma and Mr. Knightley, Louisa Musgrove and Captain Benwick. Do any of the matches inThe Jane Austen Book Club create disquiet?

2. Do you like any of the movies based on Austen's books? Do you ever like movies based on books?

Have you seen any of the adaptations of Austen's novels that star a Jack Russell terrier named Wishbone? Do you want to?

3. Isit rude to give a person a book as a gift and then ask later if the person likedit? Would you ever dothat?

Allegra's Questions

1. We seldom go to elegant b.a.l.l.s anymore, but high school proms still play a prominent-too prominent-role in our personal histories. Es-pecially if we didn't attend them. Why does every teen romance movie end up at the prom?

2. Does any part of your answer have to do with dancing?

3. InThe Jane Austen Book Club, I take two falls and visit two hospitals. Did you stop to wonder bow a woman who supports herself making jewellery affords health insurance? Do you think we will ever have uni-versal coverage in this country?

Prudie's Questions

1. What I meant in that section about irony is that just because everyone finds their social level at the end ofEmma doesn't mean Austen approves ofit. Like with Shakespeare, it's hard to read Austen and know what her opinions really were about much of anything. Can the same be said of Karen Joy Fowler?

2. Il est plus honteux de se defier de ses amis, que d'en etre trompe.Agree or disagree?

3. Which of the women ins.e.x in the City is Deanreally most like?

Grigg's Questions

1. Jane Austen's books were initially published without the author's name and tagged "An Interesting Book," which alerted the reader that romance was involved. If Austen were publis.h.i.+ng today, would she be considered a romance writer?

2. Austen lovers and science fiction readers feel a similar intense con-nection to books. Are there more book communities you know of that engage with a like pa.s.sion? Why these and not others? 3. Many science fiction readers also love Austen. Why do you suppose this is true? Do you think many Austen readers love science fiction?