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Jane Austen’s Family Jewels
I watched again a particularly dismal film version of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. So dreadful I shudder to recall its failings. The writers took such liberties with the dialogue they gave lines to the wrong characters, moved conversations from one part of the book to another and the very worst crime of all – made stuff up.
One complete out-of-time puzzler, they made the climax of the story a chase scene. A chase scene! And unbelievably it’s the heroine who is literally running around town after her man. What the ?!?!? Eventually at the peak, at the moment where they profess they still love each other, she has copious amounts of spit in the corners of her mouth. Gross! Sure, she’s just finished running across town, but come on, isn’t there a gaffer, best boy or dolly grip who could have interrupted with a “Wipe your mouth, luv. That’s icky”. And the kiss that follows ranks very high as the worst in film history.
Anthony Head (of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame) played the foppishly proud Sir Walter, and he was probably the best part of the film. His part was small, however, so that isn’t saying much. Still as I groaned and rolled my eyes through the the hour-and-a-half I started to think about Austen and her family dynamics. I began to think about what Jane Austen family would have been the best in which to grow up.
The novels
Fanny Price of Mansfield Park started her life with a dirt poor,over-crowded family in ramshackle apartments near the docks of Portsmouth. Yes, I think we can cross her off the list quickly. The Eliott family of Persuasion is right out. Sir Walter and eldest daughter Elizabeth would have been miserable company. A well off situation, but pretty unfulfilling I would imagine.
Can’t say that Emma’s household would have been any better. Even if she was the wealthiest of all Austen’s heroines, the worrywart Papa would put anyone off their feed (and on to wholesome gruel, if he had his way). Mr. Knightly stopping by each day as a fond older brother would have been comforting if we wasn’t so darn ‘older brother’-y. Brotherly of the time mind you – nothing like my four.
The Bennets of Pride and Prejudice? I dunno. That Lydia/Kitty duo were rambunctious and I bet they’d steal your hair ribbons when you weren’t looking. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet got along in quite a twisted manner. They could have benefitted from some relationship therapy, I think. Sense and Sensiblity doesn’t spend any time elaborating on the family before the death of Mr. Dashwood, but we know they lived comfortably, had a nice library and a piano. There’s something odd about those older girls, however, and in an essay I once read suggests that Marianne was possibly ‘not all there’, as they say. Not my favourite of the books, so not my choice of family either.
Cathy Morland (Northanger Abbey) grew up in a big family of ten children. They weren’t poorly off, father was a clergyman, and they all seemed to have a fair amount of freedom what with a slack home education, liberal reading material and going on trips with the neighbours. This might just be the winner. I wonder if I could have had a pony?
If we extend this to ‘any’ Austen family perhaps the Musgroves (Persuasion) would be fun. A half dozen kids, easy going parents, just that one unhappy brother – so pitiful he is written out of any films. But then he was shipped off to sea, so he wouldn’t have been too much of a pain. They had sufficient loot that they were respectable enough for the Eliotts to let their youngest daughter marry into the family. Admittedly not the best of connections but Mary, herself, was pretty simple, and Charles Musgrove was far better than Anne’s sailor suitor.
The Morland or the Musgroves it is. Any one of us could slide right in to the novel and not be noticed from a galloping horse. What about you? What literary family (doesn’t have to be Austen) would you spend some quality time with?
4 Responses to “Jane Austen’s Family Jewels”
Boy that is a toughie. How about Little Women? i am just asking.
And ps by the by, I have been trying to add a book to the list but “IT” won’t work. Am I doing something wrong?
Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin of Master and Commander series: at sea, drinking sherry, eating soused hog’s face, playing stringed instruments and fighting Bonaparte
I want to be in the Bronte family. All those chilblains and tuberculosis, and Heathcliff howling on the moors. cool.
Mum has a good one. The girls had ‘jolly fun’ growing up poor, didn’t they?
Sue’s non-fiction choice was a freaky sort of family if you read the biographies, but the kids ran the show in that household. As long I wasn’t one of the sisters shipped off to die at boarding school this would be an interesting family.
Not sure about Randy’s Jack Aubrey. I haven’t read enough to give canonical evidence, but I wager if you grew up as Jack Aubrey’s younger brother you’d have a hero complex or an inferiority complex. And if you were Jack’s older brother you’d probably hate the swaggering bloke for stealing all the attention from Mum and Dad. If you were his sister, mind you, I imagine he’d bring home some interesting fellows to flirt with.