Jane Austen

[WeakAnkles]

She is so real, even today. While I enjoy reading Austen novels, I often have the problem, that the characters lack character (to me!). For example: Jane Bennett or Eleanor Tilney do seem nice and empty, perfect 18th century ladies, like they're supposed to be, but not really interesting in the end. I see real feminist tendencies in Emma.
I'm a little surprised that "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey" seem to be so popular. The 2007 movies were good (Persuasion, I didn't like the running scene) and great (Northanger Abbey), maybe because of that?

I don't think you can really appreciate Persuasion until you've had your heart broken. And then you can see it as the total wish fulfillment fantasy it is. LOL!

 

[LRK]

Hmm, I hated MP the first time I read it. It was really a slog to get through it the first time. But it has definitely grown on me. So I'd rank it third:

1. Pride and Prejudice (I want to be Elizabeth Bennett when I grow up)
2. Persuasion
3. Mansfield Park
4. Sense and Sensibility
5. Northanger Abbey
6. Emma

I think I'm just too American to like Emma. All that blather about class distinctions just rubs me the wrong way. But it is perfectly plotted. You know that JK Rowling learned a ton about plotting from reading it. I'd bet money on that.

Yes, I would be totally into a JA book club. Including the juvenalia, because Love & Freindship (sic) is one of my very favorite pieces of JA's work.

Your mention of J K Rowling reminded me of a notion I had once - do you think Mrs Norris, the cat, is named after the "Mansfield Park" character?

About "Persuasion" - that is my co-favourite with "Pride and Prejudice". Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliot are my favourite Jane Austen heroines - both speak to me in their completely different ways...

 

[solani]

Your mention of J K Rowling reminded me of a notion I had once - do you think Mrs Norris, the cat, is named after the "Mansfield Park" character?

Yes, Rowling mentioned that.

 

[LRK]

Yes, Rowling mentioned that.

Oh, that's so cool - thank you!

 

[ManyCairns]

Isn't it Emma that has the wonderful setup with Mr. Woodhouse always taking gruel and urging others to do the same, and then in a later chapter Knightley is trying to make some small amends and does not quite take agree to taking gruel himself, but is willing to be sensible of its wholesomeness? - that makes me howl every time. Not very funny if you haven't had the buildup, but if you have, the payoff is great.

 

[LRK]

Trailer for a new Jane Austen movie - it's actually based on Lady Susan, but the film is called Love and Friendship:

http://deadline.com/2016/03/love-fr...nsale-chloe-sevigny-whit-stillman-1201725084/

 

[GoddessMinerva]

^^Very cool. I read all the Austen books sans one(Mansfield Park) back in 2012/13. I will probably read it sometime though. I didn't read it because I saw the 2007 tv movie version and I was pretty sensitive to abusive relatives treating someone like a second class citizen kind of thing at the time and thought reading it would just make me angry! Bit silly, but I knew I would feel hot flashes of anger pretty consistently throughout so I figured - best avoid. I should add the person was not myself, someone else - which tends to make even angrier because there's not anything you can do to change if those involved will not.

OKay, so I guess would rank them like this;

1)Pride and Prejudice
2)Sense and Sensibility
3)Emma
4)Northanger Abbey
5)Persuasion


So I am pretty typical finding the sort of "big three" as my favourites. I enjoyed NA because it was a pretty fun read, and I did happen to find Persuasion maybe a little duller than the others. I'm sure that's not a very fair reaction but there it is. I really love the 4 episode 2009 adaption of Emma. I think it just makes Emma so much more likeable despite her flaws and is really just very enjoyable. I would be surprised if I was subconsciously putting Emma up in my estimation. I knew someone who loved Emma, and it was their favourite and when I read Emma/saw the adaption(I read and watched the accompanying adaptions around the same time) it made total sense. She had in some ways a modern equivalent upbringing and seemed to enjoy just sort of interfering with people(in a nice way I suppose but still). This person jumped through hoops to set me up with someone, despite the fact I didn't wish to be at all. I actually think her choice was pretty good(unlike Emma's haha) but she refused to understand the fact I didn't want to date at the time, so it didn't go anywhere.

 

[rosacotton]

Trailer for a new Jane Austen movie - it's actually based on Lady Susan, but the film is called Love and Friendship:

http://deadline.com/2016/03/love-fr...nsale-chloe-sevigny-whit-stillman-1201725084/

Thanks! I read "Lady Susan" years ago. From the trailer the film looks lovely and funny. I am looking forward to seeing it!!

 

[LRK]

Thanks! I read "Lady Susan" years ago. From the trailer the film looks lovely and funny. I am looking forward to seeing it!!

It's been years since I read it too. I think it's fun that it's not only the "usual suspects" being dramatised - oh, which reminds me, apparently there's a movie adaptation of her unfinished novel "Sanditon" in the works - according to this interview with Charlotte Rampling:

http://deadline.com/2016/02/oscars-charlotte-rampling-45-years-interview-best-actress-1201703442/

"--- and then I’m going to be doing a Jane Austen film. It’s going to be one that nobody knows because it was the novel that she never finished. It’s called Sanditon, and actually takes you out of the Jane Austen world of the country, towards the seaside. This is about individuals starting to think that they got to start to make business, and the idea is to build a health resort."

 

[Sam L]

I've read Emma, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. I have all her novels but I haven't read the rest of them.

 

[rosacotton]

It's been years since I read it too. I think it's fun that it's not only the "usual suspects" being dramatised - oh, which reminds me, apparently there's a movie adaptation of her unfinished novel "Sanditon" in the works - according to this interview with Charlotte Rampling:

http://deadline.com/2016/02/oscars-charlotte-rampling-45-years-interview-best-actress-1201703442/

"--- and then I’m going to be doing a Jane Austen film. It’s going to be one that nobody knows because it was the novel that she never finished. It’s called Sanditon, and actually takes you out of the Jane Austen world of the country, towards the seaside. This is about individuals starting to think that they got to start to make business, and the idea is to build a health resort."

More exciting news! I like Austen's fragment "Sanditon." I also am a fan of the completion of the novel by Another Lady: http://www.amazon.com/Sanditon-Jane...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459027051&sr=1-1

 

[LRK]

More exciting news! I like Austen's fragment "Sanditon." I also am a fan of the completion of the novel by Another Lady: http://www.amazon.com/Sanditon-Jane...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459027051&sr=1-1

I've read that, though it's many years ago - might have been in the '80s. There was something at the end that I felt Jane Austen would not have approved of - when the heroine showed herself willing to elope, and even though they didn't, we were meant to regard it as a good thing that she was prepared to forego common sense in favour of romance. I felt that struck something of a false note to me.

(It's funny what one remembers - it's not like I remember anything else really!)

 

[madforskating]

I'm absolutely obsessed with Jane Austen myself, I love all her books and watched all the movies.
Can I put in a good word for the 2009 BBC version of "Emma"? Romola Garai is an amazing actress (and she looks like Kaitlyn Weaver) and Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley is really handsome

 

[skylark]

We saw that ^^^^ 2009 BBC version recently and really loved it! Jonny Lee Miller is my favorite Mr. Knightley EVER :luv17:

I can't choose between Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma and Romola Garai's. She's a wonderful actress; (one of my favorites is her starring with Ioan Gruffud in Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce and his fight against the slave trade.) And this is a two or three episode adaptation of Emma, so that is great.

 

[likevelvet]

My coworker and I always talk Austen at work; today, she came in with a little cut on the tip of her finger, wrapped in a JANE AUSTEN BANDAGE! In tiny script, it said, "A woman, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can." I was beyond impressed

 

[Spirals for Miles]

Bumping this thread because Jane Austen is hecking awesome

 

[phoinos]

I'll contribute to the bumping by replying to a comment from over a year ago!

I'm absolutely obsessed with Jane Austen myself, I love all her books and watched all the movies.
Can I put in a good word for the 2009 BBC version of "Emma"? Romola Garai is an amazing actress (and she looks like Kaitlyn Weaver) and Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightley is really handsome

I have mixed feelings about this version. On the one hand, Jonny Lee Miller! I've had a crush on him since I was a kid watching Hackers for the first time (don't judge me! ), so seeing him as one of my favorite Austen men is just . Romola Garai is also fantastic in it. Her vivaciousness is charming and captivating, and really makes you understand how Emma can come to be the center of the little Hartfield world.

On the other hand, I felt this version was a bit modernized, which led to deconstruction of some of my favorite dialogues in the book. I hate it when they "simplify" Jane Austen's language to make it more palatable for today's audiences, but maybe I'm just weird. Also, I wasn't a huge fan of how they tried to juxtapose Frank Churchill, Jane Fairfax, and Emma, even leading Emma to actually come out and say "Frank, Jane and I are tied together in some mysterious way" (I remember that line so clearly because I hated it so much... lol). I can overlook the modernity and most aspects of their different kind of interpretation, but that line was just too meta to be believed. Who thought it would be a good idea? Why would Emma believe she had any special, mysterious connection with a man she has never seen before in her life and another girl she knows from past, social acquaintance? Why would she believe that those two people have any kind of connection to each other? It's just ridiculous.

Sorry for the rant. I really do love a lot of things about that version, I just wish whoever wrote the script for the Gwyneth Paltrow Emma movie could have been involved in adapting the BBC version too, because the dialogue was a lot snappier and closer to the beauty of Jane Austen's original language. They definitely wouldn't have put that line in...

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Up again?
How is it that I am not surprised of finding janeites on a figure skating thread?
My "order of preference" among novels is :
- Emma (with the most loveable of Austen's wonderful male pictures, unfortunately no adaptation did him justice, far from it, though BBC 2009 had a character who could have creditably played Robert Martin, which is saying a lot; and Mark Strong was not a bad choice in A&E 1996 but Andrew Davies really didn't catch the depth of this character in the scenario, quite the opposite; after all maybe the "least wrong" was Paul Rudd in Clueless, to me the best adaptation, the choice of skipping his character an let him aside being anyway compulsory in a mere movie);
- Pride and Prejudice, having the best adaptation maybe because the novel is so well fit for a mini-series, with its "operatic" construction (I mean Italian opera, as Jane Austen has shown to like in Persuasion) alterning sentimental comedy, farce, social drama... and Andrew Davies nailed it, plus it had wonderful music and wonderful actors : I find this adaptation "faultless in spite of all its faults". I couldn't watch more than ten minutes of the 1980 BBC adaptation because Mr Bennet is shown as such an abusive, tyrannical father. I saw short extracts of the 1967 adaptation and liked them. I didn't like the 2005 adaptation at all, a sort of modern construction upon the theme, but still in costume...
- Northanger Abbey, for its staunch humour, but also more subtle with Eleanor Tinley, whose triple entendre "such a sister-in-law, Henry, I should delight in" deserves a place somewhere near Price and Prejudice opening sentence among Jane Austen's so memorable quotes; I liked very much the 2009 adaptation;
- Persuasion, so mild in rythm — just like the way of life imposed to Jane Austen herself — yet full of feelings;
- Sense and Sensibility, which 1995 adaptation I liked much, mostly for its pictural quality;
- Mansfield Park, last only because I like less dark stories; I must say there I really see Henry as a villain, and understand very well why Fanny, should she not have been in love with Edmund, would never have accepted it, seing well through him; had she accepted him, he would have after a few months, let her rot in some remote place, maybe without even any means of living, while going back to London life and seduce married women while complaining about his misfortune in having married such a bland woman; I suspect him to be, instead of the not-so-interesting Mr Wickham, the inspiration behind the character of Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones Diary (at least, the short extracts I saw). I have never tried to watch any adaptation.

I have not read her letter, but I did her juvenilia, Lady Susan, Sanditon and The Watsons.

 

[icetug]

- Emma (with the most loveable of Austen's wonderful male pictures, unfortunately no adaptation did him justice, far from it, though BBC 2009 had a character who could have creditably played Robert Martin, which is saying a lot; and Mark Strong was not a bad choice in A&E 1996 but Andrew Davies really didn't catch the depth of this character in the scenario, quite the opposite; after all maybe the "least wrong" was Paul Rudd in Clueless, to me the best adaptation, the choice of skipping his character an let him aside being anyway compulsory in a mere movie);

I guess you mean George Knightley?
There will be 2020 movie based on "Emma" (to be released on Valentine's Day, of course ) and Johnny Flynn was cast as Mr Knightley. I'm looking forward to the movie as its trailer is very promising.

 

[DizzyFrenchie]

Thank you so much!
Yes, I mean Mr George Knightley.
Unfortunately the trailer didn't work, but now I know this film will happen, I will try to find trailers.