Photo Friday

Jane Austen’s House. Chawton, Hampshire. August, 2006.

What’s in a name?

That which we call a rose  by any other name would smell as sweet. William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

Is this true? I’m not sure. I think names are very much part of who we are. I cannot imagine myself with a name other than my own. I would not be myself had my mother named me Carla Romina, as she almost did. Thank goodness she didn’t, not that the name isn’t pretty, but I am not a Carla, and definitely not a Romina.

I have been thinking of the meaning of names, and doing a sort of word association exercise with the names of characters in my favorite books. Some authors are very good at choosing (or making up) names that seem appropriate for the characters that bear them, either because of their personalities or due to the roles they play in the stories.

Jane Austen was very meticulous and careful about everything she put in her novels, including names. Frederick Wentworth, from Persuasion, for instance. Went-worth. An appropriate name for a man who became more valuable when he was gone, whose worth increased as he went.

Mr & Mrs Gardiner from Pride & Prejudice, whose name sounds like the word garden. They are nurturing, productive people who foster the good relations between the one-time antagonists of the story. Pemberley, the perfect house where true stewardship of the land lives in elegance and comfort. It would be the secret name of my grand estate, if I had one. Secret, because I think naming a house something so grand would be a bit pretentious.

Emma Wood-house, whose flimsy fantasies regarding her neighbors fall under their own weight. She lives at Hartfield, the field where she will come to know her own heart, and in the village of Highbury, where she, who has never seen the sea, is buried in her own machinations. Mr Knightley, the knight who wants to rescue her from herself, who lives at Donewell Abbey, the place where things are done well. Harriet Smith, the little nobody. Jane Fairfax, the fair one who hides the facts, and Mr Frank Churchill, who can be churlish and childish, and is the opposite of frank.

Lucy Steele, who is cold, determined and hard as steel. The Dashwoods, who must leave their home and make a dash for Devonshire. Edward Ferrars, who is ferried around aimlessly, without an occupation, and Col. Brandon, who is branded old and infirm by the woman he loves.

Fanny Price, the mouse who becomes the prize at the end of Mansfield Park. The Crawfords, who must crawl out and hide. Northanger Abbey, where General Tilney lives in anger.

Jane Austen repeated several names, like Mary, Elizabeth, William, Catherine, and Fanny, in keeping with the realistic tone of her work, and as would be in a country village. Her names fit. Lady Catherine de Bourgh would turn an ugly shade of puce had she been named Lady Fanny Price, I think.

In Daniel Deronda, which I am reading right now, I have found some interesting names too. Miss Harleth, who so far seems more a harlot than a nymph. Offendene, where Gwendolen gives offense to her neighbors and friends. Rex, the king of the house. Mrs. Glasher, the one who lashes out in revenge. Grandcourt, the great match, and Lush, whose name brings to my mind a repulsive, uncouth man out for what he can get.

I love the name Deronda. I’ve read that the name was probably inspired by an artist friend of George Eliot’s, Francois D’Albert Durade, who painted her portrait, but I haven’t found any other references to it being a real surname. It’s a brilliant name for the character, a distinctive, uncommon name for a man of mysterious origins and elegant mind.

If I were a character in a book I’d like my name to be something like Cecilia, Annabelle or Olivia, with a surname like Wharton, Bailey or Croft. In a Spanish book, any of those names would work, and I’d like a surname like Obregón, Aragón or Ferrer.

I like literary names that are realistic and appropriate, but at the same time memorable and well-thought out.

The Janeite Test & Becoming Jane

Someone at my favorite discussion boards posted a link to the Janeite Test. It’s a well-written quiz, difficult enough to make it interesting. I like the question about the male-only scenes, because it shows the author of the quiz knows her stuff. The answer is ‘false’, by the way.

I got 96 per cent book knowledge, and 94 per cent Jane Austen knowledge. Not bad, but not good enough. I’ll have to take it again to see if I can do better.

In a related Jane Austen note, I watched three quarters of the movie Becoming Jane on one of my flights from Honduras. What a farce! It’s appalling, a shameless attempt to cash-in on the popularity of Jane Austen, which should be resisted.

I have a theory: I think the filmmakers really wanted to make a movie of Pride & Prejudice, but their timing was off, as that adaptation was just done two years ago, so they thought they’d make it anyway, but would simply call it something different. They’ve taken the plot of Pride & Prejudice (even some of the lines), and pasted it on Jane Austen herself.

Had I gone to the theatre to see it, I would have walked out in disgust. Anne Hathaway was bad, so bad I was shocked. She was wooden, dull and charmless, her face a blank, expressionless mask without the humour and personality of a real person. I liked James McAvoy, though. He was believable as the Darcy-ahem-Tom Lefroy character. Other than that, it was all a waste.

Becoming Jane was so vile that I think it has replaced the 1999 movie of Mansfield Park by Patricia Rozema as the worst Jane Austen movie ever.

In Love with Dickens

I just finished reading The Chimes, and I loved it. I felt a thrill of excitement every time I picked up the book and with every word I read I became conscious of how much I liked the story.

I cared about the characters, and I put myself in their place. I thought about people in financial stress, and how easy it is to lose everything. I thought about the news I read recently, about the minimum wage in the U.S. going up to a meager $5.85, and how there are people who actually live on $5.85 an hour, or less. It must crush the spirit to have a job and still not make it, still have to struggle to pay the bills and live a life of deprivation. I wonder what I would do, how I would fight, how I could win, if I were in their place.

Dickens is unashamed of his advocacy for the poor and downtrodden. I hear his voice in every page and it moves me. It speaks to my better feelings, to my sense of justice and my disgust for the arrogance of the cold-hearted rich, including entire governments.

The Chimes has a fast pace. It moves seamlessly from one scene to the other, like in a dream, and the imagery is very powerful, whirling and tumbling in a dizzying, sometimes frightening twirl. My mind is full of the little hunchback who dwindled to a leg.

The story is short, less than a hundred pages, and the characters move in and out of view, but they are well defined and Trotty, who is the center, is an endearing, vivid creation. He is playful, fragile and caring. Alderman Cute is funny and sad at the same time, mostly because he is so real. I am sure he is alive right now.

Jane Austen is my favorite writer, and I mourn the books she didn’t get to write. Six completed novels, one epistolary short novel, unfinished fragments and early satires plus her personal correspondence are all I have. I comb through the ivory over and over, reading the books from different perspectives, studying the background and the history. All because I yearn for more. 

Charles Dickens lived a long life and has a long list of published works. I am happy to have so much more left to read.

Mansfield Park

“She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father’s head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca’s hands had first produced it. Her father read his newspaper, and her mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual, while the tea was in preparation-and wished Rebecca would mend it; and Fanny was first roused by his calling out to her after humphing and considering over a particular paragraph-…”

Can you tell that this passage was written by Jane Austen? It is a remarkable paragraph in the work of a writer who rarely gives detailed physical descriptions of her people or her places, but Mansfield Park is a remarkable book in many ways.

It is a serious, solemn and thoughtful story, full of symbolism and with a depth and scope that should be a slap in the face of those who like to disparage Jane Austen’s work as ‘fluff’, ‘chick-lit’ or worse: Barbara Cartland in a high-wasted frock, a mind limited to matrimonial concerns, a writer bent on making advantageous matches for her blushing damsels.

I am always incensed by the criticism that Jane Austen never wrote about wars, or politics or social strife and rebellion, because it mainly means that she didn’t write about men. Women of her time generally did not go off to war, did not run for office or live an adventurous life. They stayed home, waited and, if they were any good, lived inwardly. That is why getting a husband was an important choice for a woman, because it could be the difference between heaven and hell, between having a home and living on charity; and choosing the right husband, one who could be a pleasant, caring companion for life, and who could support a family in comfort, was not really an exercise in gold digging, but the sensible ambition of any intelligent woman.

The plot of Mansfield Park is seen through the eyes of Fanny Price, a poor relation who is taken from her parents at the age of ten to be raised by her rich uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram.  His benevolence is a cruel mix of good intentions, neglect and indifference, and having brought her to live at Mansfield Park he does nothing to ensure her comfort, but is oblivious to the unkind treatment she receives at the hands of his family.

As a result, Fanny is self-berating, timid, unassertive and easily wounded. She never speaks in her own defense and never fights back, but meekly accepts abuse and neglect. This submissiveness has given Fanny Price the reputation of a prig and a bore and she is arguably the least liked of Jane Austen’s heroines.

In my view Fanny’s meekness is not really meekness but deference, deference to the people on whose charity she depends; deference to the people who raised and abused her, but when it really matters, she does not submit. She will give them her silence but not her heart. Her character is stronger than her demeanour would suggest, as she resists the demands of her benefactor and refuses to marry a wealthy man whom she knows to be corrupt.   

I think Mansfield Park the house, and its inhabitants, represent society at large; a society “governed by motives of selfishness and worldly wisdom”. It is significant that Sir Thomas Bertram has businesses in the West Indies, where, as Fanny’s question about the slave trade indicates, he profits from an industry (very likely sugar) involved in slavery.  The ultimate hypocrisy is revealed, as the grandeur of his house is supported by the exploitation of human beings.

The book shares the name of the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, Lord Mansfield, who, in 1772, presided over Somersett’s Case and gave the judgment that declared slavery unlawful in England. Jane Austen wrote in a letter that she was ‘in love’ with a leading abolitionist, Thomas Clarkson, and this leads me to believe that the use of the name is not a coincidence. Jane Austen was careful and thoughtful in every detail of her work, including the naming of her characters.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this reading of Mansfield Park. I don’t mind Fanny’s subservience, because she gets the last laugh in the end. She represents “the sterling good of principle and temper” and is the only one in the story whose judgment is consistent, untainted by vanity and self-interest. Part of me would have liked a different choice for Fanny, but isn’t it like real life that people will love someone in spite of his or her emotional blindness and insensitivity?

I have gained a new appreciation for Fanny’s inner life, and while she lacks wit and liveliness, she grows in stature for her capacity to remain unspoiled by the pain of her early life.

Every feeling revolts!

Someone has made a movie about Jane Austen’s life. It is called “Becoming Jane”, and it stars Anne Hathaway in the title role.

Anyone less suited to play Jane Austen I am hard pressed to find. I don’t know whose idea it was, but I find it insulting that they would give the part to such an inexperienced actress. I don’t think she’s qualified to play an exceptional woman like Jane Austen, and no, running around Manhattan in stiletto heels in The Devil Wears Prada does not count. Anne Hathaway’s talent is still unproven in my opinion, and I am even more upset because the filmmakers obviously think that having an American actress, any American actress, will help them make money. Whatever happened to talent? Whatever happened to art? In the words of Elizabeth Bennet “The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it”.

The filmmakers have relied on the book “Becoming Jane Austen: A Life” written by Jon Spence, who takes reading between the lines to the limit and makes some highly improbable suppositions about Jane Austen and her life’s work. In short, Spence claims that a well-known flirtation from Jane Austen’s youth marked her for life, that it was a serious love affair that could have culminated in marriage, and that the recipient of her attentions inspired Pride and Prejudice and the character of Elizabeth Bennet.  

The book has received several mentions in the press, due to the film’s publicity, and I’m sure the author will get quite a bit of ‘pewter’, as Jane called it. Good for him, but I think it’s shameful that he had to come up with a theory that has no foundation outside of his willful imagination so he could give his biography an interesting twist.

Much is made of the fact that Jane Austen lived a quiet life, unmarred by unspeakable tragedy or self-destructive tendencies. The scant corroborated details of her life come from her letters and from family recollections given many years after her death. She was not famous in her lifetime, she published her books anonymously and her sister Cassandra destroyed who knows how many letters after Jane died. All this makes it difficult to spin out the story of her life into a sensational money-maker and so her biographers usually concentrate on a specific angle to distinguish their work. Jon Spence (and the makers of the movie) have taken an arguably important part of Jane Austen’s early life and stretched it far beyond its bounds. 

Tom Lefroy is mentioned in Jane’s first surviving letter, and she describes him as “a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man”. He was the nephew of a friend and neighbor and though she might have “exposed herself” by being “most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together,” she knew all along that his visit would be short and he would leave. She says so herself in the same letter. I’m sure she probably always remembered him, but there is just no proof that it was anything more than a fun, youthful flirtation. Deidre Le Faye, the editor of Jane Austen’s Letters, says so in this article.

The problem with a fictionalized biography is that it gives the wrong impression about the subject. I dread to think of how many people will see “Becoming Jane” and think the story is true, and will forever think of Jane Austen as a forlorn woman, unable to write an original story purely from the genius of her imagination.

And it’s already started. This article made me fume and bristle. I fear the worst for the coming months.