Jane Austen’s Persuasion: Random observations, current controversy, two questions and two finale scenes

Oct 31 2010 Published by under Reading Reflection

This is a motley post about Persuasion, with mostly observations from other people. I make a couple of observations and ask two questions. At the end, I include the final scenes from the 1995 and 2007 adaptations, which make for an interesting contrast in interpretation.

1. In 2008, Sarah Frantz, an Austen scholar, reported on giving a paper on romance with several other romance scholars at the Jane Austen Society of North America. Among Sarah’s comments:

…for Janeites to disavow the romance label is, I think, at best disingenuous and at worst, willfully rewriting literary history.

This article, for instance, makes me crazy.

Of the new “chick-lit” style covers of Austen, Thompson argues: Of Persuasion: “Pure Mills & Boon, in fact; and sublimely inappropriate to the tone of this sad, shadowy novel.” Did she read the same novel I did? Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel because she takes a sad, autumnal tone and turns it into the most stunningly compelling expression of the power and optimism of romance you could ever hope to read: “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.” Indeed.

2. I enjoyed reading Nandrea, Lorri G. “DIFFERENCE AND REPETITION IN AUSTEN’S PERSUASION.” Studies in the Novel 39, no. 1 (Spring2007 2007): 48-64. Some quotes:

At the very beginning, Austen defies such a narrative structure by repeatedly assuring us that everything is already over. The “history and rise of the ancient and respectable [Elliot] family” has been told already and has reached its “finale”; the “very awkward history” of Elizabeth’s courtship has ended, as has Wentworth’s courtship of Anne: “this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close”. No situation seems open to progress, complication, or development. Moreover, though most of the characters are in motion by the end of the fifth chapter, none seem to be moving toward anything.

…

Indeed, the plot of the novel will be composed of a complex series of repetitions.

…

Throughout this novel, Austen probes the relationship between foreseeable futures and unforeseeable events. The act of persuasion itself bears a special relationship to the future tense, often relying on the seductive articulation of a projected scenario.

…

Ultimately, the novel makes it possible to picture social hegemony itself as a continuously renegotiated product of persuasion, the result that obtains when many individuals are persuaded to share a particular point of view.

…

And yet the text also tells us that there is no such thing as too late. A sense of the ways in which present and future are underdetermined by the past works to preserve the chance of the future–especially its chance to differ from whatever has already happened–together with the revolutionary potential of every single “now.”

3. A controversy has arisen in recent weeks over Austen’s writing. From BBC News:

The elegant writing style of novelist Jane Austen may have been the work of her editor, an academic has claimed. Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University reached her conclusion while studying 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen’s unpublished writings.

From Jane Austen Today, a good summary post of the recent brouhaha.

Sutherland is not new to controversy. In 2009 she accused another scholar of stealing her ideas:

Oxford academic and Austen authority Professor Kathryn Sutherland is claiming that a new book by award-winning biographer Claire Harman has copied her own radical ideas about the novelist, pulled together over 10 years of research and published by her in 2005.

“I have never accused anyone of using my material before,” said Sutherland this weekend, “but it feels a bit like identity theft. Claire has been very canny and she writes very well, but I am finding that I cannot write about my own research because people tell me it is too similar to the key arguments in Claire’s book.”

I liked what Jonathan Jones had to say at the Guardian books blog:

Jane Austen’s style is not a bit of polishing on the surface of her novels, it goes deep into their structure, which is why they are so satisfying. Elegant moral thought is embedded in the design of her characters, their comic voices, the ironies of her plots. At their most achieved, the effect is not just witty but profound. But they are not always perfectly achieved and that is significant. You can see evolution, improvement in her work and, some say, decline as well. It makes no sense to attribute her brilliance to the hand of a (male) editor when we can so clearly see her learning on the job, see her style grow. It is organic, it is not in fact a “style” but a voice. Jane Austen’s voice is special and it is unique.

It’s interesting to contrast Sutherland’s claims with the touching biographical notice of the author in Persuasion‘s preface her brother Henry:

The style of her familiar correspondence was in all respects the same as that of her novels. Every thing came finished from her pen; for on all subjects she had ideas as clear as her expressions were well chosen. It is not hazarding too much to say that she never dispatched a note or letter unworthy of publication.

4. “Austen’s triumph was to make everything connect” in “the kaleidoscope of her mind” (129) From Harris, Jocelyn. Jane Austen’s Art of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.

5. Not about Persuasion, but this synopsis gave me a huge giggle:


JANE BITES BACK (Ballantine. 2009. ISBN 9780345513656. pap. $14), Michael Thomas Ford sends up both Austenmania and the vampire craze. Turned into a vampire in the 19th century, Jane today owns a small bookshop in upstate New York. She watches other people capitalize on her name while she attempts unsuccessfully to sell her unpublished manuscript. Complications include her fellow vampire Lord Byron and confrontations with Bronte fanatics.

–from Jerrit, Jessica. “No Persuasion Necessary: Jane Austen’s Eternal Appeal.” Library Journal 135, no. 15 (September 15, 2010): 107.)

6. My favorite negative review of Persuasion from Amazon.com:

I don’t know what all of you are talking about. I found this book to be boring, bourgeois and completely unsympathetic. I can not imagine anyone relating to any of these characters, unless you are extremely rich and live in 19th century England. It was, however, well written.

7. I was struck again in reading Persuasion what remarkable insight Jane Austen had, and more than that, the ability to express it. That’s my true joy in reading Jane Austen. For example, when describing Anne’s father, she writes,

Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation.

I think another writer would have ended her observation with “character”. But by adding “and of situation” Austen captures the way some people are born on third base and think they hit a triple.

Or when Anne is thinking about the Musgroves, and how happily married they are:

Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance, but still, saved as we all are, by some comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments…”

To me, the phrase “saved as we all are by some comfortable feeling of superiority…” elevates this into a very astute observation.

The early scene when Anne stays home with her injured nephew is one of my favorites, because of the way Austen captures the way people lie outlandishly to themselves for their own selfish ends. Anne’s sister convinces herself that she doesn’t need to stay home, that Anne should do it, because:

…I am of no use at home, am I? and it only harasses me. You, who have not a mother’s feelings, are a great deal the properest person.

See, being a mom makes you a poor choice to nurse your child … because you feel too much. That’s the ticket!

8. Everything about Chapter 23 is magic. I especially loved:

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove any thing.

And of course, at that very moment, a man is writing something, that she allows to prove something very important.

9. A question: What do you make of Lady Russell?

10. And another one: Why did Captain Harville Wentworth say he had found Anne so altered?

11. There are many film adaptations of Persuasion. I watched the 1995 one with Ciarán Hinds, which I liked a lot. Here are two video clips of Anne and Captain Wentworth meeting after she reads his letter, the first from the 1995 version, and second from the 2007:

YouTube Preview Image YouTube Preview Image

Although I think the 2007 Captain is better looking, I prefer Hinds in the role. how about you? Have a favorite (or least favorite) Persuasion adaptation?

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Monday Morning Stepback: Jane Austen Fight Club, Metaphors, and Chocolate on My Tongue

Jul 25 2010 Published by under Monday Morning Stepback

The weekly links, opinion, and personal updates post

Links of Interest:

I rarely embed videos, but Jane Austen’s Fight Club is too funny to make you click over (via Jezebel):

Via @shannonstacey, SluhPile Hell has the top 25 worst children’s books ever. The winner is this gem:

@MJsRetweet: Daddy Has an Itch. Mommy Smells Like Fish: A Child’s Rhyming Guide to STD’s

Amazon announced last week that its ebooks sales outpaced its hardcover sales. This article at CNET helped me decipher Amazon’s claim. Of special interest in the CNET piece was this comment:

Certain genres are doing very well on the Kindle. Romance novels, for instance. These titles are typically very big in paperback not hardcover. According to Wikipedia, in 2004, romance novels made up 54 percent of all paperbacks sold.

Levi Asher is wondering why philosophy gets no respect in Living in a Dark Age. After seeing The Twilight Saga: Eclipse today, in which Edward and Bella’s class valedictorian exhorted her peers to “major in philosophy cause there’s no way to make a career out of that!” I am wondering, too.

On the bright side, Feminism is not finished according to the Guardian. The article discusses F-Worders Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune’s Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement.

From the LA Times’ Jacket Copy, The Library of America Launches a Blog

Called Reader’s Almanac, it focuses on joining the current online discussions that touch on the works and authors in the publisher’s catalog, such as William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.

From The Constant Conversation, “I couldn’t handle all the judging”, about a woman who actually uses newsprint to cover hardbacks of which she is ashamed to be seen reading, such as …  Charlaine Harris!

At HuffPo, Sonya Chung on Art Before Life: Questioning the Parenthood Question.

…it would seem that, “Will motherhood make me happy?” is a highly flawed, question to start with. “Will it enrich my life?” or “Will it enlarge my soul?” might be closer; and yet, ironically, the more accurate the question, the more abstract and less answerable. “Am I capable of being a good mother?” seems crucial, although one inevitably gets lost in the labyrinth of “capable” and “good,” unpacked and debated ad nauseum along with the others.

“Will I regret it if I don’t?” strikes me as the most fraught and least productive of all the questions. Regret for not doing something is inevitably a muddled emotion, since all you have on the other side of inaction are romantic notions of what could have been, as opposed to an actual appraisal of specific loss. And this question is often driven, I think, by negative impulses: a nagging sense of self-distrust (am I deluding myself with hedonism, clinging to autonomy?) and /or the habit of chronic discontentment (will I be tormented if I don’t have what everyone else has?).

Again from the Guardian, this time the Books Blog, The Novel is Centuries Older than We Have Been Told.

YA author Hannah Moskowitz on Boys and YA. This is a hot topic: 146 comments and counting.

Stop writing this boy you’ve imagined in your head and write a real boy. Make him gross or sweet or angry or well-adjusted or affectionate or uncomfortable or confused or ambitious or overwhelmed or smitten or anxious or depressed or desperate or happy. Write a boy the same way everyone has been telling everyone, forever, to write a girl; free of gender stereotypes, three-dimensional, and relatable.

From Nathan Bransford, Top Ten Myths About our EBook Future

Lorraine Ali wrote Behind the Veil for the NYT Fashion page. Then we had Martha Nussbaum’s NYT article in the Stone on the subject of Muslim women and veils. And now we have a response by Racialicious here.

I realize I don’t have many romance links this week. But here are a few:

Erotic romance author Victoria Janssen has a thoughtful post on Eroticism in Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold:

Therefore, I looked at Sebastian’s erotic journey. At first, he can sense the barriers between him and Rachel. The only way he can allow himself to think of removing those barriers is with sex; he’s a dissipated rake; seduction is what he does. He cannot change his character except through sex. He thus makes her into an erotic object, and seeks to break her down to his level. “Her passivity irked him.” “He felt pity for her, and curiosity, and an undeniably lurid sense of anticipation.” “She was in his power, a virtual slave. The situation was unquestionably provocative, but it ought to have been more so, more stimulating. He hadn’t really gotten to her yet. She simply didn’t care enough.” “Because of her reserve, touching her seemed a daring encroachment, almost like the breaking of a taboo. But wasn’t that what made her irresistible?” “…that master-servant simulation had piquant sexual overtones he found stimulating.”

Blogger and newly published f/f erotic romance author Katiebabs/ KT Grant is wondering Why Can’t GLBT and Straight Romances Go Hand in Hand? Great comments.

Jean at AAR is wondering Where Are all the Foreign Romances?

From Jackie, a late report on her wild and crazy doings at RomCon 2010.

Metaphor

U Chicago philosopher Ted Cohen gave a talk Saturday in Camden, at a conference in which I also participated, about jokes and metaphors. We got a lot of jokes, of course (“Why don’t Episcopalians have orgies? Too many thank you notes to write.”). During the Q and A, Cohen said there are two ways in which the world would be unbearable: one would be “if we had so little in common that we never laughed at the same jokes. The other would be if we had so much in common we always laughed at the same jokes.”

Cohen said some things about metaphor in particular that I wanted to relate.

He said that the literal use of language proceeds according to the rules, but the use of metaphor is about exercising a kind of freedom from rules (and “Freedom From Rules” was indeed the title of his talk). He acknowledges that there are constraints on metaphors, but they are not decisive. He mentioned Eliot’s Wasteland, and Donne’s words, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main”.  Eliot and Donne were not literally talking about a wasteland or a continent. To read it this way would be to see only literal falsehoods.

Rather, it takes something more to make a metaphor. It takes a kind of genius. No one can prove what a metaphor is about. Rather, there is a hope that there is something we can share. The author takes a chance on this. We are joined in our humanity. We share the world, or we are estranged.

In a really nice article at Novel Matters, The Care and Feeding of Metaphors, author Latayne Scoot quotes Aristotle:

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance.

Personal

I had a really nice time in Camden. After the conference, I attended a cocktail party and spent some time talking to people about — among other things — where to eat in Rockland (one town south, where I was headed later that evening). One woman recommended a few places to eat. Her name was Nancy Jenkins. I figured out the next morning that she was NY Times and Food and Wine and Mediterranean cuisine cookbooks writer Nancy Jenkins.  But that’s the coast of Maine in the summer for you.

My husband drove down and we attended a concert by the Wood Brothers Saturday night. I had spent eight hours that day talking with other philosophers about “what is the good” (the conference theme). I believe we can profitably use the tools of philosophy to think about that question, and I was happy to get the chance to do it.

But the Wood Brothers’ song, Chocolate on My Tongue (lyrics here), offers a much simpler meditation, equally valuable. Enjoy.

Wishing safe travels, professional advancement, lots of fun, and literary fulfillment to everyone attending RWA this week!

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Dancing in Romance Novels

Apr 17 2010 Published by under Genre musings

Jessica’s note: While reading Meredith Duran’s Written on Your Skin recently, I was struck by how lovely and important a brief bit of dancing in the country was to the couple’s developing relationship. I thought right away about another book, Julie Ann Long’s To Love a Thief, in which the hero teaches the heroine how to dance as part of a general education in how to be a lady, and gets schooled himself. I thought it might be nice to do a post on dancing in romance, and to ask readers to share their favorite dance scenes.  Janet offered to take the lead. Thanks, Janet!

Doing without Dancing

By Janet Webb, aka @JanetNorCal

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue to any body or mind;—but when a beginning is made—when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.
—Jane Austen, Emma

Dancing, in historicals that are accurate (mostly) for the Regency era, can be a time out of time. When else could a man and a woman speak together without the presence of a chaperone or a group of friends? I am speaking in particular about the waltz, although other dances certainly allowed for conversation as well. And more than conversation: sometimes the repartee and just the sensation of closeness seem like a first sexual encounter. Intensely moving and sometimes setting the tone for a relationship.

In Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Darcy is invited by his friend Mr. Bingley to dance with Elizabeth Bennett. He declines and his reasons, rather snobbish and patronizing, are overheard by Elizabeth. Her pride is hurt and she is prejudiced against him. They do eventually dance though, and different feelings and emotions are felt by them both. This is the essence of a meaningful “minuet” LoL: feelings change, sometimes, through physical proximity.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBgaO9Va5cA

Of course, “Our” notion of dancing in historical romances almost entirely focuses on the waltz and the truth is, dancing was more like Scottish country dancing today — dances done in groups. This is why, for example, in Georgette Heyers’s Friday’s Child, there is a scene at Almacks when George, Lord Wortham tries, yet again, to convince Isabella Milbourne of his undying love for her, but  is constantly interrupted by the movements of the country dance — and their increasingly heated and uncomfortable interchange amused everyone watching. Dancing was not a deux, or at least not often, in Regency times.

Or consider Sylvester by Georgette Heyer: Sylvester arranges for Phoebe to come to London after he rescues her from a carriage accident. She is on the road in the first place because she is running away from a marriage proposal from him, a duke! He is quite insulted when he learns she would rather become a writer, living with her former governess, than marry him (not that he wants to marry her!). He’s a duke and very prideful and he’s both intrigued and insulted by her behaviour. Wait, there’s more. Phoebe wrote an extremely clever roman a clef based on her horrific London season the year before: Sylvester is the erstwhile villain. It is published soon after she returns to London and although it is fiction, it is hauntingly accurate. Sylvester is furious. As one might expect, the rumours of authorship start to fly and Sylvester insists that Phoebe waltz with him: ostensibly to quell the rumours but he rips into her and she flees the dance floor. One doesn’t have to be a scholar of Freud to understand the sub-text: both of them have feelings for each other that are by no means entirely negative.

Occasionally the dance floor can be the first place where a couple interact with equal footing, like in An Unwilling Bride by Jo Beverley. Lucien is a marquess, a dangerous and glittery blond. Beth, his fiancée, a former school teacher, is quite terrified of the feelings he evokes in her and the power he holds in the relationship. Their first dance is at their engagement ball and it’s a courtly minuet a deux. Here’s a passage:

They turned to face each other. She watched him carefully. When, as she expected, he performed an elaborately deep full bow, she sank into as deep a court curtsey as her skirt would allow, her eyes correctly on his at all times.  Then she rose slowly with smooth control. She did not place her hand in his outstretched one until the last moment to make it clear to all that she needed no assistance in rising.

This was somewhat of a turning point for them. In a pleasing reflection of that pivotal moment, they dance the same dance at their wedding.

Sometimes a dance allows a gentleman – or more likely a rake – to cut through convention. This happens in A Summer to Remember by Mary Balogh. Kit has bet his friends that he can convince the most Ice Princess-like lady of the ton to marry him. Of course, he has not even met her when he agrees on this wager and when he arrives at a ball that Lauren is also attending, he knows he’ll never be able to get past the phalanx of her over-protective family. A friendly matron presents Kit to Lauren as an acceptable partner (remember, there always has to be an introduction if a couple has not previously met) and Lauren agrees to waltz with him. That act of deliberate stepping outside her role on Lauren’s part starts the chain of events moving. And of course Kit speaks to her in an unusually double-entendredrish way.

In Balogh’s Slightly Dangerous, Christine has formed a very poor impression of Wulfric, the duke of Bedwyn. She has been in attendance at a house party with him – and others – for a week or so. At the closing ball she changes her opinion of him. Wulfric asks a homely, overlooked gentlewoman to dance, and Christine is forced to admit to herself that nothing but sheer gentility and grace on Wulfric’s part could have been the impetus. Christine and Wulf also have one of Balogh’s trademark natural surroundings sexual coming-togethers  … because their dance was interrupted when a clumsy oaf landed heavily on Christine’s foot, they continued their waltz outside in the garden and, as they say, one thing led to another.

Concluding with another Balogh, A Christmas Bride, one sees how a dance can restore – or at a minimum, paper-over – a damaged reputation. Pris, the former mistress of Precious Jewel, is now married to Gerald, but their married life is lonely because they removed from the ton because of her former profession. Edgar, the hero of A Christmas Bride, sets a scheme in motion whereby Gerald and Pris join him and his family and an assortment of aristocrats, including the very haughty and reserved Duke of Bridgewater, for the Christmas season. When the duke asks Priscilla to dance with him at the Christmas Day ball the reader knows that from then on, Priscilla and Gerald will be able to rejoin their peers in English society. It is an intensely satisfying moment.

Thank you, Janet!

Like Janet, all of my examples are from historicals. Which makes me wonder: can dancing be significant in a contemporary romance, given we know the couple can just go get naked if they choose? Are couples in paranormal too busy fighting the bad guys to dance?

What do you think are some of the most memorable dance scenes in romance?

39 responses so far