A lovely post - thanks! Sometimes, I think one just needs to have a different light shone on something, or just to see it from another aspect. I've sometimes had "Oh, of course!" moments where a whole book which I didn't quite get came into focus as a result of an insightful comment here on RP,

FWIW, I think the Merchant Ivory "Sense and Sensibility" starring Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant is close to perfection. It certainly helped me appreciate the book a lot more.

Siobhan-
I have always loved Austen, but daughter with Master's in Eng. Lit did not-until I coerced her into watching that same version of P&P during her undergrad years. She was always a Shakespeare girl.
Perhaps it was seeing their physical selves (besides the obvious Colin Firth thing...)-do you find that you are very attuned to body language in your daily life? That production of P&P is so well-done visually-their facial expressions, gestures and movements-that perhaps something there sparked your subconscious!
I second Martin's recommendation of that version of S&S.

You might find this interesting - an article about Chawton being renovated....

Here is a link that might be useful: Renovation of Jane Austen's home

I agree with the above comments!

I bought all the various DVD versions of Austen's works & the Emma Thompson S & S is wonderful as is the Firth version of P & P-IMO anyway...I have heard others say they prefer the earlier BBC versions.

The only one I have still to read is Persuasion, I have been looking for a good hardback as I like to keep certain books...I will keep looking - just wish we had a decent book store here! I will probably end up getting one on line.

Pat

I think good movies can focus on something that brings the story alive in a way we might pass over in the book.
I love Jane Austen, but I admit I didn't read Northanger Abbey until after I watched the BBC Masterpiece Theatre version -- which is hilarious. You must rent it.
I love the Sense & Sensibility with Emma Thompson in it (I think Ang Lee directed it); I also like the BBC version very much.
I like the BBC (Colin Firth) version of P&P and I also like the movie version with Kiera Knightley -- it's a very 1st person pov, and I like Mr. Darcy's infamous proposal in it -- really made from a place of pride (vs. Colin Firth's interpretation).
Persuasion, imo, is one of her most romantic books.

Siobhan,

I found when I saw a production of a Shakespeare play performed live, that suddenly I could relate to the play on a more intense level. I had always loved the language and stories, but the extra subtleties of expression, movement of character etc brought so much more to the play for me. I wonder if that's what happened with P & P for you. Seeing the characters made it more interesting and real.

Congratulations! I have been an Austen admirer for many years now. Few writers succeed as completely in using wit and a sprightly writing style to tell a story of flawed people finding happiness almost in spite of themselves.

I find each book has a distinct flavour, so I am puzzled by the criticism often leveled at Austen that all her books are "the same". The early books are a delight of course, but I prefer the more complex and slightly darker masterpieces like Persuasion or Mansfield Park.

Happy reading.

Siobhan,

Oh lucky you to be discovering Jane Austen for the first time. I hope you have a very happy summer.

Dido

Yesterday I was in a shop and witnessed a rather funny scene - a mother was frantically exhorting her 11-year-old daughter to let her purchase clothing (for the daughter).

Mother: Look, look, look! Those colors!

Daughter: Mom, I tried on my swimsuit. It fits fine.

Mother: Please, just look. I'm dying to buy you one.

Daughter: I don't need a new one.

Mother: They're adorable! And those blouses, did you see them?

Daughter: Mom, I have too many clothes already.

Mother: Let's get you a new backpack!

Daughter: (Indicating bag over shoulder) I like the one I have.

Mother: Just look! Will you just look?

Daughter: No.

Mother: Please!!!

Daughter: No.

Now, what would Jane do with this scene? If she were alive, is this not the thing she would choose to turn into a story?

I understand what you mean regarding the films...
S&S is my least favorite Austen. It took me three tries to get into it. After that I read all of Austen's other works and liked them (some more than others). I thought perhaps I just didn't 'get' it. So I read it again, found I understood it perfectly well, and just did not care for it.
But, interestingly enough, S&S the film (the one mentioned above, with Emma Thompson) is my favorite of all Jane Austen film adaptions. It is brilliant! It is one of those films I could watch daily.

I also think the film Emma, the one with Kate Beckinsale, is great. I really loathed the character Emma in the book, but seeing the actress and her facial expressions made me understand her (the character) more.
I will look forward to hearing your opinion of Mansfield Park, which is my favorite.
CMK

Jane Austen is a wonderful writer! I love all of her books. I was recently looking to read Mansfield Park. I was looking for a good place to buy the book, and I stumbled across this website: www.booksonboard.com. They have really reasonable prices, and I have come to enjoy the convenience of eBooks. They carry a lot of Austen's titles.

Here is a link that might be useful: Jane Austen

Siobhan, isn't that a scene from Sense & Sensibility between Elinor and her mother? Or have you read that one yet?

I've had the experience of an actor enriching my appreciation of a character or novel. I take it not as an indicator of my unsubtle mind, just that I'm not omniscient. (I need to be reminded sometimes ;-D)

I downloaded Emma earlier today. I'm doing my own Austen Summer, undoubtedly inspired by seeing your thread title.

Some time ago I watched the two different versions of Mansfield Park & scratching my head I wondered how Fanny could be so different in each film - so I read the book...loved it & it settled a lot of issues for me-the idea that she wa a flirt was absurd!

That is also a reason I would like to read Persuasion to dicover how Austen really portrayed her characters,

Pat

I haven't read Sense & Sensibilityyet but I have requested the film with Emma Thompson. Very much looking forward to that!

I might have to have a summer and autumn of Jane, or perhaps two summers of Jane as I don't want to tear through all six novels. First is Pride and Prejudice which I'm reading slowly with much reference to annotations.

Maybe at some point I will suggest one of the novels for discussion here - we seem to have the best discussions with classics.

Siobhan, I hope you really enjoy Pride and Prejudice. It is a very fun book. I find that Austen's books mature with time. The tone of her novels gradually becomes less slapstick. Elizabeth Bennet, with all her faults, is a very modern heroine. I find the heroines of the later books are less "proactive", and are often forced by circumstance to watch from the sidelines. I suspect this reason may be why so many readers find Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) too passive, missing her complexity as a character.

Last night the DH picked Sense and Sensibility from a pile of DVDs. To my surprise, he insisted on watching it, probably in some attempt to please me. To his surprise, he quite enjoyed it. "Things haven't really changed at all, have they?" was the oft-repeated comment. Really an excellent film. Emma Thompson is wonderful, as are all the actors. We've been very disappointed by several recently released films, so a good older one was most welcome.

I'm about halfway through Pride and Prejudice. My, the book is very faithful to the film! ;)

I must say, were it not that I enjoyed the Paltrow movie of "Emma" and the modern version "Clueless," and that it is Jane Austen after all, I would have given up on Emma. Frankly, I'm finding I just don't like our eponymous heroine or her father. Why would I want to spend hours with them? Then again, my distaste probably stems from recognizing myself in this clueless woman who tries to run everyone's life.

Chris, I agree that Emma Woodhouse is a bit hard to take. But really that is the fun of the novel: the author and the reader get to laugh up their sleeves at her appalling behaviour. Of course, Emma makes a fool of herself but is ultimately redeemed by a metaphorical swift kick in the backside. She is basically a good person, though often a foolish one.

Tim, I recognize my shallowness of mind (what an Emma locution!) in that I always expect to like the protagonist and become irate when I don't. Going from distaste to laughing at Emma took me a while. Austen has done the unusual here in making her heroine unlikeable, hasn't she?

On a related note, I just watched Cranford (BBC) and now I am very interested in reading Elizabeth Gaskell's books.
(And watch the other BBC dramas of her works: Wives & Daughters & North & South)

Chris, I don't think you're shallow at all. I think your response just shows how successful Austen was in creating a complicated character.

Ajpa, Gaskell's short novel Cranford is a wonderful read!

Didn't Jane Austen herself once say of Emma that here was a character that no one but Austen herself would like?

I, too, discovered my love of Austen's books some years ago upon seeing a movie, this one an earlier BBC version of Northanger Abbey. I had tried to read several as a teenager and thought they were boring. It was a wonderful discovery for me, very possibly life-changing.

This past month I traveled to Italy and England. Knowing what a fan I was, the friend I was staying with took me to Jane Austen's house near Chawton. It was a thrill to walk though her house. While there I picked up a Collector's Library set of the six books in small format with 1890's illustrations by Hugh Thomson. I already had the Modern Library editions of each book but I had to have these.

Rosefolly

This has certainly been enlightening to me, and very, very enjoyable. I just turned 50 this month, and I can't help but feel I have received a funny kind of half-century birthday gift from, well, somewhere. How remarkable that so many have gained understanding of the books through the excellent film adaptions. I don't know if there is anything else like it. Dickens, maybe?

I watched Emma with Kate Beckinsdale - I am glad I knew that I was not supposed to like her or I would not have got past the first ten minutes! I quite enjoyed the film. Having read Emma as a teenager and retaining none of it, and having seen the film with Gwyneth Paltrow and retaining even less than none of it (all I remember is the person I watched it with), I am glad to have some understanding, and even to have learned something of human nature in an enjoyable way. I will probably read Emma last or at least towards the end. I haven't decided on the order, but I am reading, very slowly, Pride and Prejudice right now. I think Mansfield Park will be next. Anyone have any ideas?

Emma is my favorite of all the Austen books, but not for the characters. Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor of S&S are women I could imagine having as friends-and Fanny Price needs mothering badly, another role I have experience with. I like Emma because of the way the character is drawn-Austen did indeed say something like "I am going to take a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like." We all know an Emma-as someone said above, some of us see Emma in the mirror-but Austen created such a complete portrait of her-I just love the craft of it.

Persuasion is my favorite. I purchased the book and DVD together a few years ago and have watched the DVD several times since. It's the one with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, much better than the one shown recently on PBS.

Persuasion is my favorite, too. I love the theme of second chances in a life that has turned out to be disappointing. It has a bittersweet quality that has always appealed to me.

Having said that, I really do like them all. Mansfield Park is fascinating to me. Some of the moral issues that are being weighed in the book seem trivial to modern sensibilities, others are timeless; but I like its exploration of what it is that makes a good person, and how easily the world overlooks these true qualities.

Northanger Abbey is the lightest novel she wrote. If you grew up reading Victoria Holt and similar writers as I did, you will laugh at this wonderful spoof of the gothic novel, popular in Austen's day as well as the 1960's and 70's.

Sense and Sensibility is a story of two sisters who embody the extremes of a debate going on in Austen's own time. Marianne (Sensibility) stands for the Romantic movement, all emotion and aesthetic experience and the sublime experience of nature. Elinor (Sense) expresses the values of the Enlightenment, self-discipline, prudence, knowledge, and moral virtue. Each one has something the others lack, and in the story, they both learn this. I love this book, too.

Emma you already know, a story of just how wrong an intelligent, overly confident young woman can be. And Pride and Prejudice you are reading now.

I'm thinking that pretty soon it will be time for me to re-read Austen yet again.

Rosefolly

I just love the beginning lines of Pride & Prejudice. They tickle my funny bone each time I read them.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."

What a great discussion.

Siobhan asked:

>How could a film adaption, no matter how excellent, compare to classic literature? Why did watching actors on a screen raise my consciousness?

My experience was that I did not really understand the British class system until I saw it on the silver screen.
IMO, the Regency was the last flowering of the all-confining embrace of class. Victoria, the rise of the middle class, and the subsequent devaluation of the aristocracy made 19th C Britain more like the 20th C than the 18th.

The nearly total lack of options for any of Austen's heroines (and for Dear Jane herself) was made much more clear to me by the films.

BTW, anybody remember the Masterpiece Theater version of P&P with David Rintoul? A much stiffer, stuffier D'Arcy than the Corinthian Firth portrayed. (For those who have forgotten their Georgette Heyer, a Corinthian was a gentleman who indulged in athletics such as boxing or fencing.)

Balrog, I just finished a reread of Heyer's A Convenient Marriage. Surely, I must now reread The Corinthian.

I listened this week to Persuasion and while Anne Elliot is perhaps my favorite Austen Heroine, I think it my least favorite of her novels. I recognized a couple of bits so I must have read it, or seen it, before. Does anyone remember any productions of Persuasion?

Austen's depictions of Ann's father and sister were delicious, and, as intended, I disliked them thoroughly. My 21st century self was railing constantly at Sir Walter and Miss Elliot and at Ann's situation. I don't like to be angered so much.

The Mrs. Smith bit was too much of a deus ex machina to be a graceful bit of writing. I'd like to think Austen would have worked her into the plot earlier if she'd had a chance in this posthumous novel.

>Does anyone remember any productions of Persuasion?

There was a very good version with Ciaran Hinds and Amanda Root done by the BBC in 1995. (thanks, IMDB!)

One reason I like Persuasion (aside from the fact that it was the first Austen I read) is that Captain Wentworth is a reminder that the worlds of Jane Austen and the naval adventure series (Hornblower/Aubrey-Maturin/Bolitho/usw.) are contemporary. Of course, most naval captains did not spend all their time at dances, nor did their sisters have the war piped into their parlours after dinner.