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Bad Girls or Austen heroines?; Whose are the better ficitional females?
Topic Started: May 23 2014, 09:54 AM (321 Views)
ElspethR
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A few years ago I wrote an article called Going Off Austen, which was surprisingly picked up by the official magazine as a guest essay. It was like parting with a best friend of 20 years. Having a Kate Winslet phase, I watched her version of Sense and Sensibility this week and also began reading the script of Patrician Rozema's Mansfield Park. The latter might be of interest in here as it's got sort of lesbianism in it.

Nikki and Helen bond over classic novels - though I don't recall Austen being among them. I wonder if they like her or if their feelings are similar to mine, below. I sense that Nikki might share my views:

It struck me again how insipid and outdated much of Austen is: she's said to have sparkling wit, but she lampoons only the dull and shallow world of Society - something most of her readers cannot relate to (and I for one am glad of it). Her heroines have no special gifts or any original ideas about a larger world - they're not Hypatias discovering astronomical breakthroughs; they all play the piano but few are gifted and passionate (perhaps S&S's Marianne being an exception). But I'm surprised whenever I recall that Beethoven was contemporary, and yet the tinkling piano pieces we hear in Austen movies are nothing like the rousing, complex work of Ludwig. Austen people never discuss art or politics. The only thing she rallies against are entails, causing gentlewomen poverty, and "blaggards" who prey on young girls.

Except, in Mansfield Park, as interpreted by Patricia Rozema in 1999. It's the only Austen I've seen that's a 15 certificate (it was nearly an R in the US) because it shows sex and slavery, and drugs. At last - a world that's real, that engages with issues wider than the gossip and matchmaking of balls and round card tables.

Most of Austen's plots are around outmoded indiscretions, about rules we happily no longer have, a world where a woman can lose her character over being seen alone with a man. These are noncorporal, almost asexual beings, whose professed passions are at odds with their lack of openness and physicality, and many viewers are upset on the rare times that this is changed in adaptations.

Austen heroines are confined as much as Bad Girls characters, that social mores and those big houses are also kinds of restraints as much as prisons are places for those who break society's delicate rules (some of our imprisonable offences, as BG shows, are quite arcane and about control and exclusion). As BGs are people who've committed crimes (of course, there were those in Austen's day too, but we're a world away from those) perhaps that's why the cruder, harder side of women is visible at Larkhall and not at Longbourn. You might argue that heartache comes to both sets of people, and that violence, crime, war and poverty aren't needed for human drama. (However, there are many soldiers in Austen, so we're aware of war, even obliquely).

The men - even the heroes of Austen - are kinds of jailors. Colonel Brandon tells Elinor in the 1995 film of S&S that he gave his ward 'too much freedom' - and look what she's done with it (got pregnant!) [I note this is screenwriter Emma Thompson's précis, not an Austen quote]. Mr Darcy also wants to control and tidy the embarrassing upsetting elopement. Mr Knightley in Emma is like a big brother or father and I struggle with seeing all three as romantic heroes; I want to satirise them too.

Whereas Jennifer Ehle makes a wonderfully watchable vivacious Lizzie in P+P, whereas Kate Winslet brings passion to Marianne, I struggle with those stories now, and it's only Rozema's Mansfield Park - the controversial, adult certificate that diversified from the delightful English genteel of other adaptations - that I really have much enjoyment with.

I think I'd prefer Nikkis and Helens, who seem flesh and blood women - or is it not the heroines but those round them that I mind? Would I swap a Dockley and a Yvonne for a Mrs Bennet or Lady Bertram, a Sean for Mr Bingley...? because I found some of those peripheral characters in Bad Girls harder to put up with too. It's been said that both Bad Girls and Austen are camp, and both are very British.

Anyone else got any thoughts?
Elspeth

author of Parallel Spirals

http://parallel-spirals.webs.com/
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mlbach
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Keys for the handcuffs!
I think being a woman in Austen's day was like being a prisoner, and a woman tried to find the most benign jailer possible, because there were few protections provided by the law. Women couldn't vote, I'm not sure they could inherit land (hence the entails), there was no recognition of rape within marriage, and if a man wanted to beat his wife, there was little beyond public censure as punishment. If a wealthy man wanted to get rid of his wife, he only had to find 2 doctors who could be bribed to have her committed to an insane asylum. Gentlewomen had maids to help them dress, partly because most clothing was designed so that a woman had to be helped to get dressed. (In Victorian times a person could buy something called a "whore's hook" that enabled a woman to dress herself.)
I think Austen's works can be read as straight romances, but I think she intended for them to be social satire as well. I don't think I would call them camp.
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magical_mist
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Interesting stuff ladies..I have to caveat my response by saying I'm not particularly well read in literature as I am a science graduate so you can ignore all my thoughts henceforth! My Austen knowledge if based on the tv adaptations/films such as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. The women at the forefront of those novels appear to be dainty society women, and subject to the middle class ideals and norms - marrying suitably seemed to preoccupy Ms Austin a lot! However we all know that during the same time period there were poor woman in workhouses and perhaps the luckier ones who were in service that had more grim matters on their mind. I'm not criticising Austin as such, thought I'm not drawn to her, but I just think that she wrote about a particular (fictional) demographic. The only Nikki novel I can recall at this moment is the prison themed "Little Dorrit" by Dickens. I believe there is a lesbian-ish Miss Wade character in that novel, and I wonder if that's why Shed put that book in her hands. I once saw a documentary on Dickens and it seemed he was a bit of a b***** to his loving and loyal wife, to the extent that he took a lover and disinherited his wife. I can't imagine Nikki being bowled over by him! I suppose all I'm saying is that Shed may have wanted us to note but perhaps not read too deeply into their book choices. I do think now you mention it that Austin is quite notable by her absence. Would be interesting to know what the reading list of the OU course Nikki was doing really looks like. One final query, what do you think is camp about Bad Girls? Just wondering as I'm always looking for new points of view.
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ElspethR
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Thanks for your thoughts! I'd like to clarify that my calling Austen camp was about adaptations, not so much the novels, but I am still reading S&S and do find camp moments.

I like your observation magical mist that Austen is missing from Nikki's OU reading, as far as we know; she reads Romeo and Juliet and wants to change the genders (as I think lots of gay people do to straight stories), recommends lesbian Oranges are not the only fruit to Helen; and apart from child's eye philosophy in Sophie's World (which I recently tried and couldn't get into), I can recall only Middlemarch and Little Dorrit mentioned.

I'm intrigued by the lesbian in the latter - ah, do you mean the Maxine Peake character in the Andrew Davies adaption... again, a pushy, unpleasant woman (this could lead to a new thread about lesbians in mainstream stories).

It's a shame to see marriage in Austen's day as seeking a benign jailor, Mlbach; I think even Austen is seeking love matches and champions those who find them. But she didn't mention any of the dark aspects you did (by the way, I'm always hot on sources, rather than repeating hearsay - can I ask how you know that?).

Can anyone see Nikki and Helen in frocks, or imagine the other inmates as villains or confidantes in these stories?
Elspeth

author of Parallel Spirals

http://parallel-spirals.webs.com/
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mlbach
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Keys for the handcuffs!
Well, women of Austen's day wouldn't necessarily call it seeking a benign jailer. They'd call it marrying for love. But how can true love between two people exist when there is such an imbalance of power? That was the reality of life at that time. And that is the reality of a relationship between two people on opposite sides of the bars in prison. I think Helen saw that very clearly, which is in one reason (besides her professional ethics) she would/could not act on her feelings for Nikki while she was Nikki's jailer.
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cagey
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mlbach
Jun 6 2014, 01:38 PM
But how can true love between two people exist when there is such an imbalance of power? That was the reality of life at that time.


Thank you for summing up the reason why Austen is still readable today and totally on point for the state of the sexes, as she might say.

PS - I assumed Nikki was reading for a course in Victorian lit, ergo, no Austen.
Edited by cagey, Jun 8 2014, 03:55 AM.
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magical_mist
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Elspeth R: Certainly not a bad thing to look for sources..I'm not claiming these are the most academic of sources but draw your own conlusions... I learned of the Miss Wade "lesbian" character from watching the hilarious Miriam Margolyes on the Graham Norton Show. She was doing one woman show tour of Dickens characters and spoke about Miss Wade in Little Dorrit (23 mins in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s7hkd_r9po) Now I know this may not be official Dickens scholarly opinion but Margolyes is pretty learned on the subject. At that point my eyes flicked open as I recalled it being one of Nikki's books. In terms of the documentary I saw on Dickens a few years ago, Dickens was played by Griff Rhys Jones and though I can't find the actual show to link to there is some stuff on his relationship with his wife here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2196704/Letter-reveals-Charles-Dickens-attempts-separate-wife-falling-love-teenage-actress.html and here http://www.charlesdickensinfo.com/life/marriage/. Incidentally Dickens aside...if you've never seen Miriam Margoyles interviewed I'd highly recommend it. She is particulaly outrageous on Graham Norton and she's been on about 4 times so there's plenty of clips. I've laughed till I'm sore at her.
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ElspethR
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Thanks for all your links Magical Mist. I am going to amuse myself with Ms Margoyles shortly. Still unhappy to call a love match a benign jailor, Mlbach, and I was asking where you got your assertions about what marriage was like in Regency England. :)

I don't recall Nikki's OU English course being called "Victorian literature"; having studied lit myself, it's usually not the specific till postgraduate level and she's reading classics before Helen puts her on the course. Romeo and Juliet are also of course not Victorian, but often if it's a genre, it's 19th literature, and Austen would fit with that.


I got sick of Austen and her gentrified smelling salts and wanted to find a better theme so I watched the new film Belle about a dual heritage women in aristocratic 18th C England (so in Austen's lifetime but not when her books were published). Like Bad Girls, it's got a forbidden love story, close female friendships (the Julies?) and issues! it's not jus the colour/class issue of Belle being an illegitimate partially black woman in a frock, but agreter one about slavery and insurance. It gives the colourage that problems that seem too big to chance can be, and sometimes that a very few people can have great power in altering it. I shan't spoil the story more but it features the ship Zong. There is one Austen adaption, Rozema's 1999 Mansfield Park, which explicitly deals with "black cargo" and unlike most prim authors, has a few shocking scenes. It has drugs, class, poverty, abuse, adultery, golddigging and a bit of lesbianism. Sounds like an episode of bad Girls!

Anyone else seen either of these recommended films and want to compare or comment?

For a laugh (this is more Bad Girls) has anyone seen the YouTude spoof Jane Austen's fight club?
Elspeth

author of Parallel Spirals

http://parallel-spirals.webs.com/
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