Austen

[poliphilo]

I'm re-reading Pride and Prejudice. It's been a long long time. And my perceptions had become terribly distorted.

Austen is deceptive. She'll write these seemingly naive sentences and you'll think how charming, how quaint, how just like Daisy Ashford and then right at the end there'll be a little flick, like the stab of a scorpion's tail. One of the things the dramatizations tend to miss is that these people of hers are all young and inexperienced- even Darcy. His aloofness is less to do with him being Lord Byron and more because he's awkward and earnest and unsure of himself.

I'd like to see P & P done with really young actors. Kids in their late teens and early 20s. I know the characters are supposed to be older than that, but I
think the rules of early 19th century polite society were designed to delay maturity, so that a 28 year old woman or man in Austenland is no smarter than an 18 year old now.

I love the purity of her style. Short sentences, plain words. An 18th century
style- and vastly preferable to that of any English fiction writer for the next 100 years or more.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

It is indeed the Colin Firth/Jennifer Ehle production. It was good, and I went back and read the book again after I saw it.

No, I don't think Austin is Chick Lit. Marie, the 26 year old I know everything office mate is the one who said that. She's working on her Masters Degree and she knows EVERYTHING. However, she made the comment to the wrong person. He turned and looked at me and winked.

Mansfield Park...I may have to go revisit that one as well.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The problem (a minor problem) with filmed versions of Austen is that they weigh down the action with frocks and uniforms and beautiful country houses. Austen is emphatically not about such things. Her descriptions are very sparce and rarely go beyond telling us that a coat is blue or red.