Jane Austen's 250th Birthday: "Miss Austen" and "Jane Austen Wrecked My Life"

I am a big Jane Austen fan, so every day is Jane Austen day to me. And, I think that my interest in Austen deepens as time goes on.

Austen's six completed novels were published in a very short time frame, between 2011 and 2017. The 200th anniversary celebrations of the publication of those novels made more of a splash, I think, than the observation of the 250th anniversary of  Austen's birth.

I think this anniversary, however, might be the reason we are getting the romantic comedy Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, as well as the BBC/WGBH production of "Miss Austen," based on the novel by Gill Hornby. And I am grateful for both!
I had heard of "Miss Austen," the novel, when it was first published, but I did not see myself as someone who enjoyed Regency novels per se, and so I never seriously considered reading it.

When I began watching "Miss Austen," I expected nothing and wasn't invested in it.
"Miss Austen," is about the (fictional) efforts of Cassandra Austen, twenty years after her sister Jane Austen's death, to find existing letters written by Jane, and edit them to protect Jane's reputation. A subplot is the frustrated romance of the daughter of this family, friends of the Austen family (a niece of the man to whom Cassandra Austen had once been engaged): she had been in love with a local doctor, but her father objected to the proposed match because a doctor was below the clergy in the social order. 

Watching it, I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed it, and the things that I liked most about it were the acting, the dialogue, and the way in which the screenplay's real-life events closely mirrored the events -- and concerns -- of Austen's novels.
Author Gill Hornby explained that she wrote the book to make the argument that Cassandra's actions, in editing or destroying her sister's letters, was motivated by the best of motives: a loving sister's desire to shape and preserve her sister's reputation. I find Hornby's argument that Cassandra Austen's actions were motivated by loyalty very persuasive.

A fellow Austen fan pointed out that the film Jane Austen Wrecked My Life has very little Jane Austen content. 

The only Jane Austen content I can recall in this movie is early, when Oliver, who is a literature professor (but is working for the Jane Austen Residency because his parents need help with it), says that he thinks Austen is a little overrated (a look of disbelief crossed my face at this point), and Agathe, the aspiring writer, says that Austen created the first women characters who were not caricatures:

Oliver: 
"She has a rather limited scope if you compare her writing to, say, Dickens or Shakespeare."
Agathe:
"Until Jane Austen came along, all female roles were solely written by men, and they were either portrayed as idealized perfection or monsters. Jane Austen made them human beings, that's all -- even capable of humor."
I wanted to mention these two wonderful quotes from the film, and its trailer: 
"I believe that some books become part of our lives because they reveal to us our true nature." 

And: 
"Literature is like an ambulance speeding through the night to save someone." 
(Isn't that *just* wonderful?)

Camille Rutherford, the actress who plays Agathe, has the most plastic face. She seems to look different in every scene, and she's so expressive. I found it fascinating to watch her act.

Publicity done by the director, Laura Piani, on YouTube, suggested to me that she was motivated to write the script for this film by a desire to create a good romantic comedy, inspired by rom-coms of the '90s (and Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner), rather than to write an homage to Austen specifically, although you could name some additional correspondences to Austen's novels if you wished to do so. 
Online, I found a review that panned the film, and I wasn't surprised: this film is not for everyone, and I think it is a subtle film, right down to its relaxed pacing. The quotes I love are probably not even noticed by some viewers. Writer's block is probably not a condition everyone can identify with. 

As I finish this post, I find myself wondering about what defines a romantic comedy. I find myself thinking of The Devil and Miss Jones, which was definitely partly defined by a time and place and which doesn't contain any reference to loss and grief, if I remember correctly, but also remember North & South, and The Magic of Ordinary Days, in which grief and loss play a strong part. Romantic comedies are not realistic; they're fantasies. But I suspect that rooting the fantasy in a very specific and recognizable reality strengthens the quality of the story. 

Why She Wrote by Lauren Burke and Hannah Chapman

I bought this book a few months ago (although it was published back in 2021). It's by Lauren Burke and Hannah Chapman, with illustrations by Kaley Bales.

In a way, it's just perfect: it's a pop culture mash-up! Short biographies of women writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, authors of "classic" fiction (and nonfiction), presented in a graphic novel format.

I think that we are in another "Jane Austen" moment (more on that later), in part because this year is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, in 1775.

And, I attended a program on Mary Wollstonecraft this afternoon, and the speaker, Charlotte Gordon (author of Romantic Outlaws: the Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley), in which Frances Harper was mentioned. My ears perked up: Frances Harper is one of the authors treated in this book!

 So it's all rather an opportune time to be considering this book.

I find myself wanting to call Why She Wrote a graphic novel. Of course, it's not a novel of any kind. It's about twenty short biographies of women writers of the 19th and 20th centuries.  But it is abundantly illustrated with "cartoon stories," cartoon strips that illustrate key episodes in the writers' lives.

It's a fun and entertaining book. Part of it is that it's so easy to read. And I think the other part of it is finding out about the backstories of well-known authors like Mary Shelley, and about writers I knew nothing about, like Frances Parker. 

When I first sat down with the book, I was in a certain kind of mood. I wanted to read a story about a "win," as if classic literature were a basketball game. So, I decided to read the account of the lawsuit that Frances Hodgson Burnett won. That certainly was a win!

It's a beautiful book, as a physical object, and I think it would make a great gift for a teenager or young adult, especially at Christmas -- because of the short, easy to read chapters, it's something you can pick up and enjoy even if you have only 30 or 60 minutes to give to it. 

I learned about this book through the "Bonnets at Dawn" podcast, hosted by Lauren Burke and Hannah Chapman. I strongly recommend it. Many of the authors in Why She Wrote are discussed in the podcast.

 

 

 

 

 

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

I never felt any need to read War and Peace. I am not really a fan of long books. I didn't really like Anna Karenina, which I certainly thought was too long, and shapeless, as it reached its conclusion.

But about two years ago, an opportunity came up to read it with an online book group, and the desire to spend time with a friend who was eager for me to join her in participating compelled me to sign up.

I'm so glad I did. 

I struggled with War and Peace at the beginning. I quickly fell far behind in the reading schedule, and then had an accident which prevented my reading! But I started listening to the free LibriVox recording on YouTube, and grew to really appreciate it. 

I found Pierre to be a confusing character: I expected that Pierre was supposed to be the hero! But there were so very many disagreeable things about Pierre that made it impossible to consider him a hero! (Early in the novel, Pierre is involved in a an incident in which a policeman is tied to a bear and thrown into the Neva River. That didn't seem heroic.)

Pierre is an idealist who finds it hard to select a career and settle down; he seems to lack direction and focus. In one of the early scenes of the novel, he expresses admiration for Napoleon at a party, even though Napoleon and Russia are already enemies. He's passionate, but awkward.

But over time, I fell in love with Pierre, his school friend, Prince Andrei, and his childhood friend, Natasha Rostova. 

I feared that I would hate the military scenes, and that I would find them hard to follow. I did find them hard to follow, and in other ways they confused me. The description of physical space Tolstoy offered was not something I could understand. The soldiers didn't behave the way I imagined they would. But, as the novel wore on, I became more and more interested in what Tolstoy had to say. 

I found that I identified with Pierre, Natasha, and Andre, despite their faults. In fact, I found myself loving Prince Andrei despite his many faults. I imagine that we see Tolstoy himself in all three of these characters, which is that much more fascinating when you consider that Pierre and Prince Andrei are temperamental opposites. 

There is a chapter, I believe in Volume II, in which Nikolai, Natasha, and their father, Count Rostov, go to visit the Count's brother. They go wolf hunting. It is a beautifully written chapter. Some animal lovers will find the capture of the wolf very sad, as I certainly did. But I was enraptured by Tolstoy's writing, its precision in describing the hunt and the reactions of Nikolai and Natasha.

I wouldn't have guessed that I would love War and Peace, nor that I would be so interested in Tolstoy's views; I would say his views about history, politics, human psychology and religion become, in essence, part of the story. Perhaps it would be fair to say that the "narrator," and the authorial point of view, is another character in the story. 

In fact, while I definitely do not agree with Tolstoy about a number of subjects, I think I grew to love, and even more, to be sincerely interested in his authorial voice. I am not really a fan of philosophy at all: as discussions and language become more abstract, it is harder and harder for me to understand. But I listened to the first Epilogue, and most of the Second Epilogue. The two epilogues are mostly an opportunity for Tolstoy to talk more about his philosophy. The first epilogue does contain information about what happens after the end of the novel, to Nikolai, Natasha, Marya and Pierre. 

The book group I joined proposed reading one chapter a day. The chapters in War and Peace are short, and there are about 360 of them, so it seems like a very manageable plan. But, I found it hard to keep up, as it turned out. I found it hard to find time to read every day, and when I did have time to read, I found that I wanted to read more than one chapter. It wasn't working well, and I was falling further and further behind.

And, as the author of the introduction to my copy of War and Peace pointed out, the novel is a portrait of a society in crisis. The loss of Moscow is an event for which no plans have been made and for which neither the army nor the civil authorities are prepared. Tolstoy has a lot to say about governance in the royal court, in Moscow, and in the Army in the years covered by the novel, how historians present these events, and what reverence we should offer the historical accounts (very little, according to Tolstoy). 

After I'd finished this post, I found myself thinking: I haven't really explained either why anyone else should read War and Peace, nor why I loved it. 

I found this rather fun post by a writer who explains why they read War and Peace: https://lighthousewriters.org/blog/nine-reasons-read-war-and-peace.

I personally don't think that the fact that finishing War and Peace is an accomplishment is a good enough reason to read War and Peace. I think the reason to read War and Peace is that it is fun, and it is very, very clever. And, I don't think it is for everyone, and I don't think that it would have been for me when I was younger. 

Above all, Tolstoy can write. He's a beautiful writer, who is a sharp observer of the world around him and who describes human nature with tremendous psychological acuity.