Jane Austen – Bitch Flicks

Concerning the Confusingly Named ‘Love & Friendship’ (Jane Austen’s ‘Lady Susan’)

Whit Stillman’s adaptation celebrates this power. Taking the text off the page necessarily removes it from the female form in which it is written and therefore extends the realm of female power. … Jane Austen is one of the most, if not the most, famous female authors in the world. Yet, over the course of a series of progressively shittier adaptations… a great comedian and social satirist has been pigeonholed as a romance writer.

This guest post written by Laura Witz is an edited version of an article that originally appeared at Witzster. It is cross-posted with permission.

Whit Stillman’s Love & Friendship follows the narrative of Jane Austen’s novella Lady Susan rather neatly and although many reviews seem to be, often ignorantly, telling us that this is Austen with teeth or some such, what I don’t think they realize is that Austen already has teeth. The film is great, but it is great because it is so faithful to tone.

Austen probably wrote Lady Susan when she was about eighteen (although it wasn’t published until long after her death in 1871), already aware that her hyper intelligence may not stand her in good stead as a woman, but long before the much sadder points in her life, when she was also to fantasize about being able to intellectually and physically subject herself to the whim of the man intended to be her superior (Mansfield Park).

Where in Mansfield Park the Lady Susan character (Mary Crawford) is sidelined and punished, in Lady Susan, she is celebrated. I once read that Lady Susan is a fantasy of female power in a world where, legally speaking, women had none. This power is in the most part manifested in the original text by the fact that the story is told through letters, a medium really only upper class women engaged in, and since the women control the letter form, they do in fact control the boundaries of this reality. Whenever men get involved, their letters are short and stilted and ineffective. I would argue that, to a degree, this reality is also an idealized version of a very real subculture that did exist.

Stillman’s adaptation celebrates this power. Taking the text off the page necessarily removes it from the female form in which it is written and therefore extends the realm of female power. The men in the film are useless and defunct, from the wonderfully silly Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett) (my new crush), to the priggish and apparently clever Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel) and in particular to the “very handsome” Mr. Manwaring (Lochlann O’Mearáin) who, although he appears in several scenes, has no lines, not one.

As in the original text, this is a battle between two women, Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale) and her sister-in-law Catherine Vernon (Emma Greenwell). Catherine has her mother (Jemma Redgrave) in her court and Lady Susan has her friend Alicia (Chloë Sevigny) in hers. Throughout the film, these two vie for power, over Catherine’s brother, Reginald, over Lady Susan’s daughter, Frederica (Morfydd Clark), and arguably over a position as matriarch of the family.

The film is great and so are the actors. Tom Bennett as Sir James Martin made me cry with laughter. And the ending, in particular, is very interesting. The original text finishes with Austen getting slightly bored and making fun of her own narrative form. Stillman’s adaptation sticks very closely to the spirit of the text, ignoring the potentially problematic tone of the final passage, which is arguably written in the voice of Catherine Vernon anyway. And most importantly, this film has steered clear of any attempt to romanticize the story.

As most people who know me know, I have an ax to grind where it comes to Jane Austen and I’ve been grinding it for the better part of the last seven years. Jane Austen is one of the most, if not the most, famous female authors in the world. Yet, over the course of a series of progressively shittier adaptations made by people who in some cases don’t even seem to have read the source text (Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice), a great comedian and social satirist has been pigeonholed as a romance writer. Now there’s nothing wrong with romance, I very much enjoy a good rom-com (and quite frequently a very crap one). But the fact is that this genre has been sidelined as one that is trivial and silly ever since Austen herself wrote and idle upper class young women got kicks from reading saucy French novels.

Of course if you actually look at Austen’s works, only Pride and Prejudice can reasonably be described as a romance and that romance is running alongside a lot of social commentary and out and out comedy. In particular, look at Sense and Sensibility, where Elinor marries Edward the bland (a far cry from Hugh Grant / Dan Stevens) and Marianne gets Brandon the old. As a rom-com alone, Sense and Sensibility fails since the major love affair of the text remains unfulfilled.

Dickens wrote romances into every book, but nobody refers to him as a romance writer. The name Allan Woodcourt – or I suppose Woodcourt – hasn’t been adopted as a catch-all for everything women desire and everything that is irritating about the romance genre (Bleak House, in case you’re wondering). Because Dickens doesn’t represent a threat because he is a man and therefore it’s okay for him to be a writer and we don’t need to undermine and diminish him.

So what if we make Austen adaptations that don’t conform to that stereotype? What if we write fan fiction that doesn’t include shit fantasies about pseudo-romances with a misunderstanding of Mr. Darcy? What if someone decides to adapt texts Austen wrote that do not conform to this? What kind of writer do we call her then? And that’s where Love & Friendship comes in. It might not seem groundbreaking that there is yet another period drama out there getting some attention and some critical acclaim, but trust me, this film is rocking my fucking world.

And Whit, if you’re reading this, I have an adaptation of the actual Love & Friendship that we can start work on any day. Although the title might be a problem.

Laura Witz is an editor and writer of plays and stories living and working in the UK. She has written plays that have performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Jane Austen Festival in Bath and her articles and stories have been published in a number of institutions and publications, a few of which can be found on her blog. Witz hopes to one day become an aerial clown. You can follow her on Twitter @Charlotte_Prod.

‘Sense and Sensibility’: Sister Saviors in Ang Lee’s Adaptation

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. …If we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

This guest post written by Melissa-Kelly Franklin appears as part of our theme week on Sisterhood. | Spoilers ahead.

Much is made of the erotic undertones of recent adaptations of Jane Austen’s work, particularly the wildly popular BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice directed by Andrew Davies, and so it is easy for one of Austen’s most prevailing and insightful themes to be forgotten. Austen is deeply interested in the relationship between sisters and the almost mystical intimacy that stems from it. For Austen’s women characters, this sibling connection is vital in being able to cope with all the trials that family life, social circumstances, and a patriarchal world casts in their direction.

Amidst the clamor of swooning over Mr Darcy’s wet-shirt and Pride and Prejudice’s subsequent pop-cultural appropriations, the importance of the friendship between the eldest two Bennet sisters can sometimes be overshadowed. Indeed, the sensation around the “sexing up” of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice somewhat sidelines the memory of another superb adaptation of the Austen canon, released in the same year: Sense and Sensibility. Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning adaptation of Austen’s novel, beautifully directed by Ang Lee in his English-language debut, focuses on the relationship between sisters Elinor and Marianne, not only to highlight their divergent personalities and thus the “sense” and “sensibility” of the title, but how necessary the sisters are to each other’s survival.

The family of wealthy Dashwood women find their fortunes irrevocably altered on the death of their father, whose home and fortune legally passes to his eldest son from a previous marriage and his selfish, insensitive wife. The four women are left without a home and a mere £500 a year to live on (to put this into perspective, this translates to roughly £16, 980 in today’s currency — $22, 580 in U.S. dollars — according to the National Archives’ currency converter). By the end of the story, the two eldest sisters are happily married: Elinor (Emma Thompson) to a comfortably-off, kind-hearted gentleman turned vicar, and Marianne (Kate Winslet) to an exceptionally wealthy and honorable colonel.

Some may argue that this preoccupation with handsome, eligible men makes it “fluffy” or even unfeminist. On this point, I agree with Samantha Ellis, who recently discussed the application of the Bechdel Test and why it “doesn’t always work.” She believes it is a useful tool in holding us accountable to creating complex female characters, but it should not be the only way in which we measure gender equity in film — indeed this was never its intended purpose. Ellis asserts that “sometimes women’s conversations about men are feminist”; Sense and Sensibility certainly falls under this umbrella. In the film, women’s survival is inextricably bound to marriage, when legal traditions like primogeniture prevented them from inheriting financial independence, and social propriety prevented them from earning money professionally, as Elinor so eloquently expresses to Edward (Hugh Grant):

“You talk of feeling idle and useless; imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope and no choice of any occupation whatsoever… At least you will inherit your fortune, we cannot even earn ours.”

On first glance, it may well appear that the film follows the usual trappings of the romance genre, in which the young women eventually marry the men that they love, who fortuitously possess more than ample funds to elevate them and their families from poverty, thereby “saving” them. I would argue however, that if we delve a little deeper into Lee’s adaptation it becomes clear that the sisters are not saved by the men they marry, but rather by each other, and multiple times throughout the story.

When considering which sister is the “savior” of the Dashwood family, Elinor immediately springs to mind. The opening scenes in the film reveal Elinor to be a self-contained, capable young woman, holding together a family falling apart at the seams as she navigates the grief of her mother and sisters. While the others are stricken at the loss of their father, Elinor is already pulling herself together and thinking pragmatically about their physical survival, comforting her mother and even initiating her youngest sister Margaret (Emelie Françoise) into the realities of their situation.

The importance of Elinor’s capability in this situation cannot be overstated: she is the only one of the women who fully grasps the finer details of their financial situation. In a private meeting between Marianne, Elinor, and their mother as they search for a new home, the widowed Mrs. Dashwood (Gemma Jones) suggests a small manor house, which is certainly a down-size from their expansive home Norland Park, but Elinor has to remind her that it is well outside what they can afford on their small stipend. Even after they move to the tiny Barton Cottage which is to become their home, Elinor monitors the housekeeping expenses with even greater vigilance, even cutting “beef as well as sugar” from their already meager diets. Without Elinor’s practicality, the Dashwood women may well have found themselves in even more dire circumstances.

As much as Marianne relies on her eldest sister’s good sense to ensure her immediate survival, Marianne’s spirited nature provides Elinor some respite from the gravity of the path that lays before them. Where Elinor would politely hold her tongue at their sister-in-law’s money-grubbing behavior, Marianne refuses to surrender her family home without highlighting the injustice at every opportunity. Marianne is appalled at Fanny’s request for the key to the silver cabinet for example, and rather than keeping her candid remarks between herself and Elinor, she pointedly throws the question across the breakfast table the next day: “How was the silver? Was it all genuine?” Elinor sweeps in to change the subject to something more appropriate, but one cannot help but wonder if she sometimes wished she had Marianne’s free-spirited belief in not “hiding her emotions.” Further to this point, Marianne is an important confidante for Elinor: teasing, probing and encouraging her to open up about her feelings for Edward. The confidences the sisters share when alone become an imperative cathartic release from the social restraints of the day, particularly for the propriety conscious and emotionally reserved Elinor.

The sister’s relationship, like that of any sisters, is fraught at times: their divergent attitudes towards social propriety and emotional openness sometimes puts distance between them. Marianne laments to her mother that at times she does “not understand” her sister, while Elinor privately confides to Colonel Brandon (played with the perfect combination of sensitivity, warmth and tortured sadness by the late Alan Rickman) that “the sooner [Marianne] becomes acquainted with the ways of the world, the better.” Despite her wariness of the way in which Marianne’s free behavior can “expose [her] to some very impertinent remarks,” Elinor remains unwaveringly loyal to her sister. When Marianne espies her faithless lover Willoughby (Greg Wise) across a ballroom in London, it is Elinor who is by her side, sharing in the indignity of being socially snubbed by him and his wealthy new fiancée, and it is Elinor who catches her sister when she faints (unlike that other version in which Brandon, in a cheesy “hero” shot, catches Marianne while glowering in Willoughby’s direction). In Thompson’s adapted screenplay, Elinor is there for Marianne through every indignity and public embarrassment, without agenda and in spite of her private thoughts on her sister’s past behavior.

Marianne similarly supports her sister in potentially uncomfortable social situations. Despite her public humiliation and unequivocal rejection from Willoughby by letter, Marianne leaves the sanctuary of her room and puts aside her grief to greet Edward — the man she knows Elinor is deeply in love with — when he finally visits them. Marianne’s warmth and friendliness towards him is to both make him feel at ease in their family circle, and show her support for her sister’s choice, whatever her humorous misgivings about his passionless reading and reserved nature she expresses earlier in the film. She selflessly dismisses his questions about her own health and redirects the attention to her sister, insisting “do not think of me, Elinor is well you see? That must be enough for both of us.” Little does she know that Edward is secretly engaged to the other woman in the room, Lucy Steele (Imogen Stubbs), an uncomfortable fact that only she is unaware of. At times, Marianne resents the secret she senses that lurks between her and Elinor and accuses her of hypocrisy when probed for the details of her intimacy with Willoughby: “That is a reproach from you, you who confide in no one.” Elinor replies that she has nothing to tell, but the audience knows she would share the secret if only Lucy had not elicited her vow of silence. Marianne retorts: “Nor I, we neither of us have anything to tell. I because I conceal nothing, and you because you communicate nothing.” However, when the truth comes out, Marianne rallies to her sister’s side, insisting that she for once put her own desires above those of others.

It is not until we see Elinor open up to Marianne as she lays unconscious, begging her to live, that we fully understand that not only does Marianne’s survival depend on Elinor’s practicality and pragmatism, but Elinor’s survival equally depends upon Marianne. In the dead of night, after a day of nursing her sister and the doctor’s warning for Elinor to prepare herself for the worst, Elinor begs her sister to find the willpower to fight for her life. Emma Thompson’s performance in this moment is utterly wrenching; she runs her hand along Marianne’s leg, as if to memorize the details of her beloved sister’s body before gripping her hand. She barely contains the wall of emotion threatening to overwhelm her: “Marianne, try. Please, try. I cannot do without you. I try to bear everything else. Please, dearest. Do not leave me alone.”

The first conscious words Marianne utters after her life-threatening ordeal are, “Where’s Elinor?” which further emphasizes the symbiosis of their lives. Despite their differences and the tensions they create between them, the two sisters could not survive without the succor they provide each other by simply existing, let alone the many moments of tangible support they afford one another when life in many ways, has been unrelentingly hard on them both.

Too often, Jane Austen’s work and its various screen adaptations is dismissed as trivial or thematically narrow; a period “chick flick” chiefly concerned with the pursuit of a husband to save the protagonist and her family from poverty as a result of the evils of primogeniture. It is worth remembering however, that Austen herself was a pioneer in her day as one of the first women to earn a living by her writing. Equally unconventional was her active choice to remain unmarried, after causing quite the local scandal when she accepted and then rejected the proposal of a wealthy neighbor within a twenty-four hour period. She instead chose to live with her beloved sister Cassandra for the rest of her life. Such was the closeness of their relationship, that their mother is reported to have said, “If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”

Austen’s own experiences of sisterhood make her renderings of sisterly relationships nuanced and detailed. Her works explore the complexity and intimacy of that connection — which may make the relationship fraught at times, but no less vital. Emma Thompson’s screenplay of Sense and Sensibility depicts this beautifully, revealing through Ang Lee’s insightful direction, that the story is much more about sisterhood than it is about romance or finding the right man.

Melissa-Kelly Franklin is an Australian-born, London-based writer and director of independent short films, with an honors degree in English Literature and History. Her feminist period short film Portrait is soon to premiere at international festivals, and she has two other film projects cooking in pre-production. Updates about her work can be found at melissakellyfranklin.wix.com/writer-director/ and she occasionally tweets @MelissaKelly_F.

“We’re Not So Different”: Tradition, Culture, and Falling in Love in ‘Bride & Prejudice’

Though clearly based on the novel, ‘Bride & Prejudice’ is a successful piece of transnational cinema, which uses the interracial relationship between the Bakshi’s second eldest daughter Lalita and white American Mark Darcy to discuss differences in race, tradition, and cultural imperialism.

This guest post by Becky Kukla appears as part of our theme week on Interracial Relationships.

The late 90s, early 2000s saw a boom of Jane Austen inspired adaptations hitting our screens. Clueless, Emma, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Bridget Jones’s Diary, and the later 2005 Pride & Prejudice are just some of the well loved movies which are pretty much straight translations from the book itself. This phenomenon is still going on (audiences just love Jane Austen) with the recent release of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies which is another, rather different take on the classic novel. There’s one Austen inspired film, though, which stands out above all the others: Bride & Prejudice (Gurinder Chadha, 2004). Instead of keeping it traditional with the era, nationality of the characters or even the country in which the original novel is based — Bride & Prejudice transports the story to India and introduces us to the Bakshi sisters. Though clearly based on the novel, Bride & Prejudice is a successful piece of transnational cinema, which uses the interracial relationship between the Bakshi’s second eldest daughter Lalita and white American Mark Darcy to discuss differences in race, tradition, and cultural imperialism. Of course it features a lot of singing and dancing, as any film dedicated to exploring social commentary should.

Writer and director Gurinder Chadha is renowned in her filmmaking for focusing on Indian women reconciling their culture and traditions with modern day living, usually prompted by the female protagonist living in the UK. Bride & Prejudice is no exception to this, apart from the location. The film primarily takes place in the Bakshi’s hometown of Amritsar but the family travels to Los Angeles, London, Windsor and Goa throughout the film — making the film a truly eclectic mix of both Bollywood and British Cinema. Chadha builds on the existing identity crisis within the original Pride & Prejudice and adds into the mix the clashing of cultures, expectations and a transatlantic love story. The story closely follows the novel; Elizabeth is replaced with Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), younger sister to Jaya (Namrata Shirodkar) and older sister to Maya and Lakhi. Lalita and Jaya meet Balraj (the Mr Bingley character, played by Naveen Andrews) and Will Darcy (Martin Henderson) at a spectacular wedding. Jaya and Balraj fall for each other in the first instance whereas (true to the novel) Lalita and Will spend the rest of the film misunderstanding each other, fighting and eventually declaring their love for one another.

Whilst we already know from their first meeting that Lalita and Will are going to end up together, a fascinating dynamic between them speaks volumes about the imperialist relationship between India and Europe/USA. It is through their relationship as people from two wholly different cultures that the film is able to explore just how perversely the West treats Indians and Indian culture. Whilst Jaya and Lalita are accompanying Balraj and Will on a trip to Goa, Will tells Lalita that his family plans on building a hotel in the area. He expects her to be pleased, assuming that she will be happy that his business will bring jobs to the area. Lalita, instead, is furious and talks at length about how the tourism industry is destroying the more rural parts of India. Lalita explains to Will that she can only see how the big hotel companies are draining the culture out of India, and that they want the experience of India without the Indian people. “Five star comfort with a bit of culture thrown in? Well, I don’t want you to turn India into a theme park.” We trust Lalita as our protagonist and we understand her views — the comparison between her home town of Amritsar and the beautiful tourist resort of Goa is proof enough that what she is saying is true. There is a clear divide in opinion about what Will Darcy believes is good for India, and what Lalita (the person who actually lives there) believes. It’s by no accident that Will Darcy is a white man trying to tell Lalita that he actually knows better than she does. Lalita herself mentions the history of British Imperialism within India, and accuses Will of doing the same with his family’s hotel business. Bride & Prejudice, although predominantly a feel-good film, doesn’t hold back with it’s thoughts on how Europe and America have systematically exploited the Indian people and land, and indeed continue to do so.

Throughout the film, the Bakshi parents’ main motivation is to marry off each of their daughters to a suitable husband. As Bride & Prejudice is an amalgamation of both British and Bollywood cinema, Will can almost be seen as a surrogate for Western audiences watching the film. Specifically, his view on arranged marriages. The arranged marriage is a slightly foreign concept for many viewers in Europe/USA in comparison to those watching the film in India, who would (generally) be more knowledgeable and understanding of the situation. Will speaks out about the concept, in a similar vein to how most Americans would feel — remarking how the idea of an arranged marriage is ‘backwards.’ The irony here of course is that in the original novel, the marriages are pretty much arranged for both Elizabeth and Jane. At least, their mother (in both Bride and Pride) is set on finding suitors for both girls, and each girl would only be allowed to get married with the permission of their father. The irony runs even deeper, when Lalita discovers that Will’s own mother is arranging him a marriage back in Los Angeles. Whilst Lalita accepts the differences and similarities within the two cultures, Will is unable to see past his ignorance and superiority to understand that the two of them are not so different or that the idea of an arranged marriage is not ‘backwards.’

Bride & Prejudice uses stylistic elements from both traditional Bollywood cinema with English dialogue and Western references as a metaphor for the interracial relationship between the two main characters. The visuals marry both types of cinema: we are treated to large scale dance numbers that are performed in English, or accompanied by a gospel choir on a beach in LA. If the technical elements of the individual national cinemas can come together, then so can Lalita and Will. The discourse within the film is almost postcolonial via the character of Lalita herself — she encompasses the traditional nationalism by performing traditional Bollywood choreographed sequences with her sisters and undergoing the conventional ‘love story’ narrative. Yet her views and opinions about the world she lives in are incredibly modern (particularly the song ‘No Life Without Wife’) which puts her at a unique crossroad.

Of course, these themes are surrounded by extravagant dance numbers, catchy songs and comedic dialogue. Despite its family-friendly, light-hearted approach, Chadha doesn’t hide the ideas about cultural imperialism. Bride & Prejudice proves that a film can be playful and funny but also make serious comments on race, tradition and culture. Its message is slightly diminished by the reconciliation of Lalita and Will at the end of the film — mostly because it takes very little time for Lalita to suddenly decide that Will is actually a nice guy. Most of Will’s niceness stems from the fact that the character of Johnny Wickham is worse than Will, putting him into a much better light in the Bakshi’s eyes. He does redeem himself and one of Bride & Prejudice’s accomplishments is that Lalita does not have to compromise her views and meet him halfway, like so many other flawed couples have to do. It is Will who changes his opinions completely and refuses to allow his family to build a hotel, much to Lalita’s happiness. It is coy, and the film ends with the double wedding of the two eldest sisters (as in the novel) but coyness doesn’t mean that it doesn’t speak volumes about the cross-cultural barrier that Lalita and (mostly) Will had to navigate around.

Recommended Reading:

Gurinder Chadha’s Bride & Prejudice: A Transnational Journey through Space & Time by Elena Oliete Aldea

Becky Kukla lives in London, works in film production, likes G&T’s, and watching every Netflix original series ever. She blogs about on-screen representation at her blog Femphile and writes for Film Inquiry.

Manawee, ‘Mansfield Park,’ and the Limitations of Compulsory Spunkiness

If Austen’s earlier ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility’ (both written by age 23) seem to represent “unnatural prudence” by justifying and approving the Madonna’s inhibitions, then her later Emma and Persuasion both defend “natural romance.” Between proper “prudence” and regretful “romance” hovers ‘Mansfield Park’; every avenue is intolerable and every gate locked.

Written by Brigit McCone.

In the 2007 biopic Becoming Jane, Jane Austen’s relationship with Tom Lefroy is turned into a period romance, ending with Austen refusing to elope with Lefroy for the noblest of reasons and vowing that her heroines will get the happy ending she has been denied. There is a problem with that theory. James McAvoy’s passionate, mischievous Lefroy resembles Austen’s early hero Henry Tilney, of Northanger Abbey, but is otherwise far closer to the archetypal Unsuitable Suitor: Willoughby, Wickham, Crawford and Churchill. If, as the tag-line of Becoming Jane claims, “their love story was her greatest inspiration,” this suggests not the wish fulfillment of “happy endings,” but intense conflict over the Unsuitable Suitor’s incompatibility with social approval.

In Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ female spin on Jungian psychology, Women Who Run With the Wolves, she chooses the African tale “Manawee” to represent the psychological challenges of romantic union. In the story, a man’s dog must discover the names of twins before the man can marry them, avoiding distractions of the flesh to deliver the names to his master. In Estés’ reading, the dog represents the man’s instinctual self; only by recognizing (“naming”) the civilized and wild aspects of woman as dual but inseparable (“twins”), while avoiding the temptations of instant gratification (“flesh”) in favor of deep knowledge, can man qualify himself as woman’s enduring mate.

The Madonna/Whore complex defines as “Madonna” any woman who wins social approval by conforming to convention, and as “Whore” any woman who violates social convention to act on desire (capitalized to distinguish the concept from sex workers). Patriarchal ideology demands that the Whore be rejected and the Madonna rewarded, to discipline female behavior. By contrast, Jane Austen’s writing has the logic of Estés’ “Manawee” fable: the inseparable duality of Madonna and Whore. Marianne Dashwood loves Willoughby, therefore Brandon must win Marianne by protecting his Whore ward who elopes with Willoughby; Elinor Dashwood loves Edward Ferrars, therefore Ferrars must prove his loyalty to the Whore, Lucy Steele, to win Elinor; Elizabeth Bennet falls for Wickham, therefore Darcy must protect her Whore sister who elopes with Wickham; sibling-doubles Henry and Mary Crawford are dismissive of Whore Maria, therefore must be rejected by cousin-doubles Fanny and Edmund; Frank Churchill loves loyal Jane, who Whorishly defies propriety with their secret engagement, therefore Churchill appreciates Emma; Knightley loves Emma, therefore he is protective of Jane and urges Emma to stop distrusting her; Captain Wentworth shows his love for Anne Elliot by appreciating Louisa Musgrove, whose Whorish passion Anne has suppressed. The pattern is too consistent for coincidence: no hero in any Austen novel wins the heroine without protecting her Whore counterpart. The intense resistance to sexual double standards that this implies is often unappreciated, because of the propriety of its expression.

Sense and Sensibility‘s Marianne is particularly fascinating in this light. Her binary with Brandon’s Whore ward establishes Marianne as Madonna, and therefore entitled to count as heroine. Her binary with super-Madonna sister Elinor, however, establishes Marianne as Whore, flaunting social conventions by writing to Willoughby and flirting openly. By centering dual Madonna and Whore heroines, Austen foregrounds the internal conflict over the love plots. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl“ points to convincing parallels between Marianne’s characterization and the symptoms of female masturbation pathologized as “hysteria” by that era’s medical literature. I’m skeptical, however, of Sedgwick suggesting eroticism in the tension between Marianne and Elinor, rather than drama of the divided self. Elinor’s romantic pain over Ferrars is exactly equal to Marianne’s over Willoughby; she attacks Marianne for daring to express what she herself suppresses, then mourns over Marianne’s fevered body as an inseparable part of herself. As Austen’s final completed novel, Persuasion, declares: “one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half.”

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D8pg1O8giQ”]

Emma Thompson gets this book

Andrew Davies, one of the most successful adaptors of Austen, has stated repeatedly that he believes elements of sex and love, even when pushed to the background by propriety, are always important (and faces Janeite wrath for this insight, as in this post dismissing the Whore as an irrelevant “bratty teenager.” As if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures) Davies famously modernized the sexual tension of Pride and Prejudice by adding scenes of Colin Firth bathing and fencing. His version of Northanger Abbey explores the sexual overtones of Gothic horror to portray Catherine Morland’s craving for thrill and exploration as basically sexual curiosity, while JJ Feild’s Henry Tilney does justice to the ideal hero as playful liberator (is there a petition for JJ Feild, James McAvoy or Tom Hiddleston to play all future incarnations of Willoughby, Wickham, Crawford, and Churchill?).

Austen’s own relationship to the Whore is conflicted: Lydia Bennet is foolish for eloping with Wickham, but we’re encouraged to despise Mary’s smug moralizing over woman’s irretrievable virtue. Austen’s early Lady Susan stars a wickedly anarchic Whore, who flaunts society’s ageism and sexual propriety, like a slightly tamer Marquise de Merteuil but without real punishment (summon Diablo Cody to adapt!). Emma marks the full repentance of the Madonna for her self-righteous enforcement of social values. Persuasion lets the Unsuitable Suitor hold the Madonna accountable: “I could think of you only as one who had yielded, who had given me up, who had been influenced by anyone rather than by me.”

We prefer our Austen heroines spunky but not subversive. Elizabeth Bennet is the fan favorite, a spitfire Madonna, mistaken in her judgments but never “one who yielded” to social pressure, nor one who “forgot herself” (i.e. forgot social pressure) by eloping. In Becoming Jane, Anne Hathaway plays Austen herself as just such a spunky tightrope-walker. She would never just “give Lefroy up,” but martyrs herself nobly for his starving siblings. That Lefroy went on to marry elsewhere (whether he named his daughter after Jane or not), rather than waiting until he had independent means to win her, thus reflects poorly on his faithlessness alone. Our heroine is above reproach. The problem with such spunkiness, and the fantasy of social immunity it represents, is that it trivializes social pressure. Spunky heroines suggest any female failure be blamed on their lack of bootstrapping pluck, rather than on crushing social systems. From a patriarchal perspective, Pride and Prejudice, which Austen herself considered “rather too light,” is the most comforting of her novels: dominant ideology is never confronted because the patriarch just happens to be wryly wise, the Eligible Suitor just happens to be desirable and the Unsuitable Suitor just happens to be “one of the most worthless young men in Britain” (though it’s made clear that Elizabeth would heed Aunt Gardiner and reject him regardless).

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Andrew Davies presents ‘The Strange Case of Lizzy Jekyll and Lydia Hyde’

Replace noble Darcy with foolish Rushworth, cynical Wickham with impulsive Crawford, and you have the brooding beast that is Mansfield Park, Austen’s most conflicted masterpiece. Instead of Dashwood duality, there are three sisters in the older generation: Lady Bertram married for prestige and became a pointless, pampered shell; Mrs. Price married for passion and became enslaved to her husband in crushing poverty; childless widow Aunt Norris is a nightmare spinster, channeling sexual frustrations and social resentments into interference in others’ lives. Against this universal failure, the younger generation struggles for happiness. Maria tries to choose Rushworth’s prestige, but revolts and pursues passion with Henry Crawford, before being dumped and joining Aunt Norris in hellish spinsterhood. Fanny is paralyzed by danger on all sides and favors her safely protective cousin, who actually craves Mary Crawford’s rebellious fire. Mansfield Park’s romance cannot be dismissed as insipid cousin-love; it offers real passion with the Crawfords, before tearing it apart through inhibitions and internalized whorephobia (if you liked Pride and Prejudice, you’ll LOVE Inhibitions and Internalized Whorephobia!). Though Henry has been amusingly described as the “original Nice Guy” for refusing to acknowledge Fanny’s lack of interest, what fascinates is Austen using her full powers to make us root for Henry, before mercilessly ripping him away. Henry is the hero who fails; he has “the open-hearted, the eager character” so prized in Persuasion, but he fetishizes a purity he cannot possess and disdains the love that sacrificed everything for him. Henry tantalizes with the promise of mental and sexual liberation, but his double standards turn his promise into Dead Sea fruit.

One of the most symbolic scenes occurs with Fanny stuck on a bench, watching Maria strain for liberation from fiancé Rushworth’s grounds. Rushworth runs for the key to properly release her, but Henry proposes dodging the iron gate: “I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.” A locked garden was a medieval allegory for virginity. We can read similar symbolism into Louisa Musgrove’s ruinous leap in Persuasion, which says of heroine Anne: “she had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.” If Austen’s earlier Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility (both written by age 23) seem to represent “unnatural prudence” by justifying and approving the Madonna’s inhibitions, then her later Emma and Persuasion both defend “natural romance.” Between proper “prudence” and regretful “romance” hovers Mansfield Park; every avenue is intolerable and every gate locked.

Bringing us to Patricia Rozema’s 1999 adaptation, Mansfield Park. In the book, the patriarch Sir Thomas’ trip to the West Indies is an excuse for his family to flirt freely, but Rozema confronts the implication that Sir Thomas is a slaver; his character is given a darker edge, while his eldest son is not feckless but traumatized by flashbacks of slavery. Rozema’s Mansfield Park can thus be compared to Mira Nair’s Vanity Fair, which uses Bollywood influences to foreground the colonized India merely mentioned in the book, or Andrea Arnold’s confrontation of racism in Wuthering Heights. It is notable that Austen chose to make her patriarch a slaver, particularly since the novel is commonly read as defending the Park’s “traditional values” against the modernizing Crawfords. In the book, Fanny’s question about the slave trade meets “such a dead silence,” while the estate shares the name of Lord Mansfield, the 18th century Lord Chief Justice who set a legal precedent for abolition. Rozema’s choice to highlight slavery’s implications is bold and refreshing, but her film frustrates with its compulsory spunkiness.

Rozema admits that she finds Fanny “annoying” and was trying to empower her by making her a “wild beast” and witty writer. Giving the lower class heroine a satirical tongue must have seemed like a good strategy for criticizing patriarchal values. But the spunky woman is gender’s Uncle Tom; her psychological immunity to suffering ultimately lets viewers off the hook. If you’re going to confront slavery in your radical Austen adaptation, you must equally confront the psychosexual torture of the Madonna/Whore complex. Instead, Rozema offers a stale reheating of Pride and Prejudice‘s comfort food: Fanny’s a smirking Elizabeth, Edmund’s a duller Darcy and Maria’s a bitchier Lydia. A really radical adaptation would treat Maria’s passion and confusion with the sympathy of Kate Winslet’s Marianne. A really radical adaptation would make Crawford the sexually magnetic center, giving Fanny the painfully paralyzed inhibition of Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter.

Mira Nair, Andrea Arnold, and Patricia Rozema are pioneering re-imaginings of classic literature, that confront our colonial past. But there can be no definitive adaptation of Mansfield Park, or confrontation of our patriarchal past, until we’re ready to get uncomfortable about sexual repression. Couldn’t Emma Thompson and Ang Lee take a crack at it?

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Patricia Rozema does not get this book.

Brigit McCone was Team Crawford in her naive youth. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and promising this will be her last Austen article.

“Smurfette Syndrome”: The Incredible True Story of How Women Created Modern Comedy Without Being Funny

Far more than a common trend in cartoons and superhero teams, the Smurfette Principle is an ingrained interpretative framework that limits female achievement to a model for male imitation, rather than an argument for female inclusion. In comedy, “Smurfette Syndrome” is a bias that asks whether individual women are “as funny as men,” rather than assessing women’s collective contribution as creators of comedy genres.

This is a guest post by Brigit McCone.

Professional female comedians are still asked in interview after interview whether women are funny. The usual response is a defensive list of funny women. But proof of funny women is no proof that women are funny, thanks to the dreaded Smurfette Principle. The “Smurfette Principle” dictates that women who succeed in male fields must be interpreted as a) unique and isolated, and b) a variation on a male original. Far more than a common trend in cartoons and superhero teams, the Smurfette Principle is an ingrained interpretative framework that limits female achievement to a model for male imitation, rather than an argument for female inclusion. In comedy, “Smurfette Syndrome” is a bias that asks whether individual women are “as funny as men,” rather than assessing women’s collective contribution as creators of comedy genres. Such as…

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Alice Guy’s irresistible piano syncs uncannily with Ray Charles

The Comic Novel

Murasaki Shikibu not only wrote the world’s first novel in the 11th century with The Tale of Genji, she included hefty doses of humor amidst all the karmic heartbreak. Whether revealing the bulbous nose of the mysterious Safflower Princess behind the silk screen, or working out the interpersonal dramas of a womanizer’s harem, Lady Murasaki wielded realism to puncture cliché. Murasaki Shikibu, along with Sei Shonagon (“the most natural wit in the history of Japanese literature”) and fiery, erotic poetess Ono no Komachi, became literary pioneers by accident: they were adopted as models for Japanese literature because their male contemporaries wrote in stilted Chinese to show intellectual superiority. As men switched to Japanese, women writers were squeezed out, leaving only their early classics.

On film and TV: Kozaburo Yoshimura’s 1951 adaptation of The Tale of Genji is a recognized classic. Peter Greenaway’s film inspired by Shonagon’s The Pillow Book reinvents it as a modern tale of a Japanese woman and an older Japanese man sexually servicing Ewan McGregor. A memorable riff on Shikibu’s “Princess Safflower” gag is featured in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Christian Comedy

Drama was strongly condemned by the Fathers of the early Christian church as immoral, in works like Tertullian’s De Spectaculis. It was a 10th century nun, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, who revived the tradition of playwriting by arguing that it could have a moral function. Hrotsvit became the first recognized playwright of medieval Europe, adapting the popular sex comedies of the ancient Roman Terence into an entirely new genre: virgin martyr sex comedy. Chuckle as Dulcitius attempts to ravish the virgins, but ends up humping a sooty pot instead! Giggle as soldiers attempt to strip the virgins, but discover their robes are stuck on! Then feel sorta bad when the virgins get burned alive and shot with arrows anyway. Martyrdom replaced marriage as the culmination of a female empowerment fantasy that began with immunity to rape. The subtle relationship between hermit and prostitute in Hrotsvit’s Paphnutius inspired novelist Anatole France and Oscar Wilde, while Hrotsvit’s Callimachus is identified as one of the sources for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Hrotsvit, however, gained acceptance by self-Smurfette: presenting her wit as an exceptional, divine gift contrasted with usual female witlessness.

On film and TV: Thais, a sexed-up rewrite of Paphnutius by Anatole France, was adapted into a faithful American silent film, and loosely inspired the only surviving Italian futurist film. Jane the Virgin is arguably a modern virgin martyr sex comedy.

Cabaret

In the 17th century, blacksmith’s daughter and shrine maiden Izumo no Okuni created kabuki as a mixture of cross-dressing sketches, sexual innuendo, musical performance, and titillating sensuality. It moved into the teahouses of the red-light district, allowing patrons to sit and drink while watching the show; that is, kabuki originally met the definition of cabaret. For empowering sex workers with social visibility and subversive self-expression, the Japanese authorities banned women from the stage to be replaced by all-male kabuki. Japan’s all-female Takarazuka revue, and witty writer-performers like Mae West and Gypsy Rose Lee in the Western cabaret/vaudeville tradition, carry on the legacy. Straight male comics often struggle to cross over into the diva humor of cabaret, yet it is female comic capability that is judged according to the masculine norms of stand-up.

On film and TV: Mae West defied ageism to become a Hollywood sex symbol in her late 30s, reportedly rescuing Paramount Studios from bankruptcy with She Done Him Wrong. The decadent culture of Weimar cabaret is depicted in the contemporary The Blue Angel, which introduced Marlene Dietrich, and the later musical Cabaret.

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Mae West’s anarchic comedy of sex

Romantic Comedy

I seem to regularly rant on Bitch Flicks about Jane Austen’s role in defining romcom, so I’ll be brief: the meet-cute, the bickering couple who mirror each other, the misunderstandings, public humiliation and sacrificed ego – this is the template of Pride and Prejudice. Though her achievement is trivialized by treating “romcom” as a gendered slur, Austen’s formula is actually fundamental to the male romance of films like Fight Club, as well as classic comedies like Some Like It Hot.

On film and TV: There have been numerous screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, as well as updates such as Bridget Jones’ Diary, Bride and Prejudice and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Parody Film

“If the future development of motion pictures had been foreseen at this time, I should never have obtained his consent. My youth, my inexperience, my sex, all conspired against me” is how Alice Guy Blaché described being given her start in directing by Gaumont because no one else saw the potential of film: Alice Guy invented the close-up, she hand-painted color film in 1897, experimented with synchronized sound in 1906 and made over 1,000 films, owning her own studio (Solax). She made action films with swashbuckling female leads and boat explosions, but makes this list for creating the first parody films. Although the first comedy film is the Lumiere brothers’ The Sprinkler Sprinkled, about a sprinkler… who gets sprinkled (it predates the “don’t name it after the punchline” technique), it was Alice Guy who parodied the special effects films of George Melies with 1898 cross-dressing farce At the Hypnotist’s and the earnest scientific documentaries of her male peers with 1900 botched-surgery farce Surgery at the Turn of the Century. She brought in slapstick domestic strife with 1902’s An Untimely Intrusion and explored sexual harassment through comic role reversal in The Consequences of Feminism. Mabel Normand was an early slapstick star who directed her own films. Studio boss Mack Sennett (Keystone) is on record saying that Charlie Chaplin “learned [to direct] from Mabel Normand.” Neither Normand nor Alice Guy is regularly celebrated among cinema’s comic pioneers.

On film and TV: Though many of Guy’s films are now lost, many more can be viewed free online.

Stand-up Comedy

It’s difficult to say when the comic monologues of vaudeville transitioned into recognizably modern stand-up, but probably while Moms Mabley was headlining at the Apollo. To understand her contribution, witness the comics who acknowledge her influence: Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Joan Rivers, Eddie Murphy, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock. Mabley exploited the freedom of old ladies to speak their mind, to confront taboos like alcoholism, poverty, racism, infidelity and sexual double standards, defining the comedian’s role as “truth teller” with a persona modeled on her grandmother, a former slave. Growing up Black and gay in 19th century North Carolina, Moms was bulletproof to hecklers before she ever hit a stage. Stand-up and fringe theater offer creative freedom to the minority perspective of queer comediennes of color, from the wild parodies of the Native American Spiderwoman Theater to figures like Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho today. Mabley is sometimes called the “first female stand-up,” but still isn’t widely acknowledged for pioneering the modern art of stand-up itself, despite Bill Cosby admitting that “she opened that door for a different kind of solo” (Cosby should know; he was quite the groundbreaking comic before moving on to beloved sitcoms and sex crime allegations).

On film and TV: A young Moms has a brief cameo opposite Paul Robeson in The Emperor Jones, rocking a tuxedo in 1933, before starring in 1948’s Boarding House Blues and 1974’s Amazing Grace. Whoopi Goldberg made a documentary about Mabley. You can find Mabley’s later comedy routines, for the Smother Brothers Comedy Hour and the Ed Sullivan Show, on YouTube.

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When Moms jokes about being forced into marriage, it’s because she was

Improv Sketch Comedy

The comic improv created in the post-war University of Chicago shifted the culture of comedy from stand-ups telling jokes to actors performing satirical sketches. This new style was introduced to the world by comedy duo “Nichols & May,” where Elaine May’s role in creating the skits was equal to Mike Nichols’. The sharpness of their satire and the danger from their live improvs brought improv skits mainstream, like a new art of comedy jazz. You might say that without Elaine May and Mike Nichols, there would be no Steve Martin, no Lily Tomlin, no Martin Short, no Saturday Night Live. In fact, Vanity Fair did say that.

On film and TV: Many classic “Nichols & May” sketches are available on YouTube. Elaine May brought geeky charm and Jewish humor to the romcom by writing, directing and starring in 1971’s A New Leaf, six years before Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. She was Oscar-nominated for writing Heaven Can Wait and Primary Colors, wrote The Birdcage and was an uncredited writer on Tootsie, but never got another chance to direct after Ishtar flopped (despite the film’s bad reputation being exaggerated).

Sitcoms

The first sitcom on network television, 1947’s Mary Kay and Johnny depicted Johnny and Mary Kay Stearns’ marriage, of which Variety said “much of the show’s charm is traceable directly to the femme half of the team.” The couple that defined the sitcom’s template was Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Ball and Arnaz created “more tropes than anything on television before or since”--they filmed the episodes in front of a live audience using multiple cameras, a unique format at the time, making the first reruns possible and keeping I Love Lucy in syndication worldwide. Ball and Arnaz’s Desilu studios also produced Star Trek. After breaking up with Arnaz, Lucille proved she could do it solo with The Lucy Show. Jennifer Saunders’ Absolutely Fabulous, Roseanne Barr’s Roseanne (which launched Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow) and Tina Fey’s 30 Rock followed in Lucille Ball’s sitcomical footsteps.

On film and TV: I Love Lucy has many episodes and classic scenes available on YouTube.

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Lucille Ball defining the tropes of TV humor

Supernatural Action Romantic Comedy (SARCom)

A supernaturally strong girl hangs out with her sarcastic, quipping gang – including bitchy golddigger and sweet, motherly one – while carrying on a feud/flirtation with her supernaturally strong, shapeshifting love interest, being pined over by a more impulsive, supernaturally strong shapeshifter, and fighting off demons-of-the-week and sexual harassers. If you guessed Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer you’d be right, but if you guessed Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2 you’d be a decade earlier. Today’s explosion of sarcastic, bickering romcoms with supernatural martial arts was fresh when Takahashi developed it with 1987’s Ranma 1/2, and her later Inuyasha. Takahashi’s immense success at blending male and female genres, creating entertainment that offers integrated empowerment to both sexes, has been Smurfetted in Japan, segregating female mangakas into a female genre (shoujo).

On film and TV: both Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha have been adapted into anime.

So that is the incredible true story of how women created the culture of modern comedy without being funny. “The Smurfette Principle” is still used to isolate female achievement, from cartoons to comedy clubs. We can only laugh.

Brigit McCone is grateful to the anarchic Rose Lawless and Emma Pearson’s Crash Test Cabaret for assisting at the comical birth of her cabaret alter-ego Voluptua von Temptitillatrix. Her hobbies include doodling and she will be linking to this article if anyone ever asks that bloody question about funny women again.

‘Belle’: A Costume Drama Like and Unlike the Others

People of color are often omitted from historical dramas (except to play slaves or servants), with the rationale that it’s not “realistic” to have them in the cast. We can see through this excuse in historical dramas in which casting people of color would match the story being told, but white people still have the biggest roles in–and sometimes even make up the entire cast of–the film, as in the recently released ‘Noah.’ Historical “realism” is not always what we think it is: literature and visual art through the ages confirm that people of color who weren’t slaves, like Alexandre Dumas the author of ‘The Three Musketeers,’ have been in Europe for as long as people have lived there. We need to see more of their stories onscreen.

People of color are often omitted from historical dramas (except to play slaves or servants) with the rationale that it’s not “realistic” to have them in the cast. We can see through this excuse in the historical dramas in which casting people of color would match the story being told, but white people still have the biggest roles in–and sometimes even make up the entire cast of–the film, as in the recently released Noah. Historical “realism” is also not always what we think it is: literature and visual art through the ages confirm that people of color who weren’t slaves, like Alexandre Dumas the author of The Three Musketeers, have been in Europe for as long as people have lived there. We need to see more of their stories onscreen.

Director Amma Asante, in her second feature, Belle tells the based-on-fact story (the script is by Misan Sagay) of a young biracial girl, whose Royal Navy Admiral father (Matthew Goode) takes her to the family estate just outside of London, so his great-uncle’s family and servants can raise her in late-18th-century, upper-class luxury her father says is “due to her.”

The girl, Dido, grows into a beautiful young woman (Gugu Mbatha-Raw in a star-making turn), wearing the finest dresses, often the same cut (with the outrageously low necklines and the upward thrust of breasts typical of the period–like a Maxim cover gone out of control) but in a different shade from those of her blonde, white cousin and companion Elizabeth (Sarah Gadon). Dido carries her father’s last name, and, when he dies, inherits a £2,000 annuity which, as Elizabeth points out, makes her an heiress. But Dido is not allowed to eat dinner with the family–or the servants, because, as her great-uncle, Lord Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson) tells her, neither situation would be “correct” for a woman of her color and social standing.

Dido’s isolation increases when her aunts take the initiative in finding a rich husband for her cousin who, because her father has remarried, has no dowry. Lord Mansfield hands the house keys to Dido and explains that since no gentleman will marry her (because of the color of her skin) and because of her social standing she cannot marry a man who isn’t a gentleman, she can soon replace her “spinster” Aunt Mary (Penelope Wilton) as the caretaker of the house.

During the family’s stay in London, Dido does attract suitors, for her beauty, charm and for her money. Fans of Jane Austen may see some parallels with her work, especially in Dido’s initial fraught interactions with John (Sam Reid), the vicar’s abolitionist son. Belle fails to give the same sense, as the best adaptations of Austen do (like 1995’s Persuasion) of the death grip manners and custom combined with the mores and opinions of their families and social circle had on women, especially young women, at that time (and the film takes place some decades before the works of Austen do). The film pays little attention to the necessity of a young man and a young woman of courting age to always have a chaperone present, a tradition that survives today in some strict religious communities in which the prospective bride and groom spend hardly any time alone together before they are married.

We see the reason for chaperones when Dido is alone with the loathsome older brother of the penniless gentleman who wishes to marry her. The brother manhandles her as he tells her how disgusting he finds her, and then, out of the camera’s range, seems to sexually assault her. This scene is the only part of the film that, at that time of strict sex segregation among unmarried, unrelated gentry, shows how privileged, white men felt free to sexually prey on women of color. Although the film makes clear that Dido’s father loved her mother, the implications of his meeting her on a Spanish slave ship are disturbing: the mother is never called a slave, so we can infer Dido’s father never owned her (unlike Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, the mother of his children who were born into slavery) but the relationship (while not rape, as it would be between a slave and owner no matter how much one “loved” the other) would still be an abuse of power if Dido’s mother worked for her father as a paid servant, as Mabel (Bethan Mary-James), the Black maid at the family’s London house, does.

The customs and mores of the present day always corrupt the “realism” of costume dramas: the well-scrubbed faces and bodies of the actors belying the fact that daily bathing is a relatively recent innovation, their clothes, in the days before dry-cleaning are spotless (in very early silent films we see stained clothes–over a hundred years after the events of Belle take place–were the norm), their accents in 18th century England are an anachronism. We suspend our disbelief to ooh and ahh over the pretty dresses, grand mansions and drawing room antics.

The problem with Belle is: we have to suspend our disbelief about the rampant racism, and to some degree the sexism (Dido, at one point, is the only woman in a court full of men and not one of them tries to throw her out) of the time as well. We see plenty of racist sentiment directed toward Dido (especially from Miranda Richardson, who plays the gossipy, sharp-tongued mother of Dido’s gentleman suitor), but the “good” people like Dido’s great-uncle and John end up espousing beliefs about racial equality very much like those the “good” white people of today might. Even though one character wrote a court decision that (spoiler alert) laid the framework for the eventual abolition of slavery in England, and the other (spoiler alert) married a Black woman, giving these 18th century characters (especially those based on real people who lived at the time) the mindset of the 21st century has the effect, as in Downton Abbey and to a lesser degree in Mad Men, of downplaying the racism of the past, the legacy of which we still see in the present.

Dido_ElizabethPortrait — The real Dido and Elizabeth

Americans don’t have to go back nearly 250 years and over an ocean to find overt racism about the “mixing” of the races from “good” white people. Abraham Lincoln, who signed the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation about 80 years after the events of the film take place, espoused racist beliefs in historical documents. Film and television producers avoided showing white and Black people together in any relationship other than as master and servant (even on talk shows) well into the 1960s. In the 1970s, when my family lived next door to an interracial couple, the children in the neighborhood called their son and daughter “zebras.”

The second of Dido’s suitors, John, is radically forward-thinking for the time. Much religious rhetoric in those days supported slavery, the way a lot of religious rhetoric today supports homophobia, so John would have had to be something of an apostate too: an unusual position for the son of a clergyman. He also would have been considered a crank and an outcast (like many forward-thinking people throughout history) in most social circles of the time. Instead, he suffers from Perfect Man Syndrome, a disease that also afflicts the romantic leads in Short Term 12 and the upcoming releases Obvious Child and Dear White People: men who are so ceaselessly caring, who never say the wrong thing no matter how aggrieved they are, that they might as well sprout wings and fly into the clouds as angels. Sam Reid’s relative lack of skill as an actor doesn’t help: I had to suppress a giggle when he shouts, “I love her,” in a scene that isn’t supposed to be humorous. The flawless Mbatha-Raw, in particular, shows him up, as does the presence of Wilkinson, Richardson, Wilton and Emily Watson (who plays Wilkinson’s wife) in the film who all give the type of serviceable performances that will neither diminish nor enhance their reputations as great actors. The film score by Rachel Portman (one of the few women who regularly composes music for movies) is also uninspired: cuing the audience to feel emotions the film doesn’t quite earn.

That said, Belle has a great lead performance from a Black actress in a Black woman director’s film of a Black woman’s script about a Black woman in European history (who wasn’t a slave): an opportunity that doesn’t come very often for audiences, so you shouldn’t miss it. If the long line for the women’s restroom after the film is any indication (women are the main audience for costume dramas in film and on TV) Belle will probably be a big art house success. Still, we see glimmers of a better, deeper movie in too few moments of Belle: in Dido’s own initial snobbishness, the trappings of which have left her in a lonely, untenable position. Later, we see her two identities, as an upper class woman and a Black woman, at odds with each other, captured most poignantly when Dido is asked to sit for a family portrait. At first we don’t understand why she’s upset at the request, until she points out that in the paintings on the walls of the mansion, Black people are always positioned at the feet of white people (as pet dogs, cats and birds were often painted with children at the time: in the otherwise excellent A Royal Affair–which takes place during the same general period–a Black child is also portrayed as a “pet” for the white upper class). At the end of the movie the director unveils the real portrait that inspired the film and in the original Dido’s face we see an expression hinting at the more complex and nuanced conduit to the past Belle might have been.

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Ren Jender is a queer writer-performer/producer putting a film together. Her writing has appeared in The Toast, xoJane, and the Feminist Wire. You can follow her on Twitter @renjender.

5 Reasons You Should Be Watching "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries"

Written by Lady T.

Are you watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? You should really watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. This modern adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is charming, funny, moving, and a total trip down the rabbit hole once you devote just a few minutes of your time watching the first episode. Here is said first episode:

Isn’t it great?

“Of course it’s great!” you say, “but I have very little time on my hands and I cannot devote my precious hours to such a complex project!”

Oh, but you can. Here are five reasons you should be watching The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.

Agency for Women
The women in Pride and Prejudice don’t have many goals in life. They want to make comfortable marriages, and that’s it. This isn’t a criticism of Jane Austen – making a good marriage was literally a matter of life and death for women in Regency England – but a benefit of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries’ modern setting is the wider options available to Jane, Lizzie, and Charlotte. Jane pursues a career in fashion, Lizzie and Charlotte in communications, and Gigi Darcy in…whatever technological position she has at Pemberley Digital. (Don’t ask me for details; I’m so not the tech expert.) Even Charlotte’s subplot with Ricky “Mr.” Collins is related to work, not romance. Watching these smart and dynamic women pursue their goals and dreams is bound to put a smile on any feminist’s face.

Charlotte Lu, Lizzie Bennet, Lydia Bennet, and Jane Bennet

Jane Austen in-jokes
Any Jane Austen fan will be delighted at the constant in-jokes and references made in Lizzie’s video diaries. One great example: In one of the Q&A videos, Lydia shows Lizzie her fake I.D. with the name “Mary Crawford” – a treat for any fans of Mansfield Park. In another episode, Lizzie mentions how much she likes empire-waisted fashion. In yet another, we finally get a glimpse of Kitty Bennet: a cat that followed Lydia home from school and does everything Lydia wants. (Poor Kitty. She’s the Milhouse of Pride and Prejudice.) These meta references are sprinkled liberally in Lizzie’s videos, Lydia’s videos, and the occasional Twitter conversation between the different characters. Jane Austen geeks will find these references highly agreeable, and not vexing in the slightest.

“Kitty” Bennet with Lydia and Cousin Mary

Ethnic diversity for the win!
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries isn’t just about white people. A fair amount of supporting characters – Charlotte and Maria Lu, Bing and Caroline Lee, and Fitz William – are people of color. Charlotte and Maria even had their own side story in the brief “Maria of the Lu” series sponsored by Collins & Collins. None of their characters are included as “token minorities,” either; they all have distinct personalities and are entertaining in different ways. Much like the world did not spin off of its axis when the creators of Elementary cast an Asian woman as Dr. Watson, the planets stayed in alignment when The Lizzie Bennet Diaries made Colonel Fitzwilliam gay and black.

Fitz William plays along with Lizzie

Lydia is Totes Adorbz
Lizzie’s irrepressible little sister, Lydia Bennet, is just as bubbly and energetic as ever, constantly interrupting Lizzie’s video diaries to make her own announcements to the viewers (and to call her sister a nerd). She’s bouncy, full of life, and seemingly shallow but also filled with love for her family, and her subplot with George Wickham takes an interesting turn. I don’t want to spoil too many details for new viewers, but let’s just say that modern-day Lydia Bennet is not the Kardashian-esque fame seeker I expected her to be. There’s a lot of warmth in this version of Lydia. I would not have minded if The Lizzie Bennet Diaries had kept their version of Lydia closer to the one of the original text, where the character is irredeemably selfish and impulsively trusting (thus serving as a nice parallel to Elizabeth’s judgment), but I’m very pleased with this more sympathetic Lydia. Mary Kate Wiles is fantastic as poor, loud, naive Lydia.

It’s Almost Over!
Episode 100 of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries will air on March 28th – and it’s the last episode ever! You only have a few weeks to catch up! Do it! NOW!


William Darcy and Lizzie can’t believe there are only a few episodes left!

Here is a link for you to catch up on the whole series via every platform, from YouTube to Tumblr to Twitter: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. You’re welcome.

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Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

Classic Literature Film Adaptations Week: How BBC’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Illustrates Why The Regency Period Sucked For Women

How BBC’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’ Illustrates Why The Regency Period Sucked For Women

By Myrna Waldron

Pride & Prejudice DVD Cover (Source: Wikipedia)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that those in pursuit of an English degree must be familiar with the works of Jane Austen. Fortunately for me, she is one of my favourite authors, and Pride & Prejudice is one of my favourite books. (And that’s saying something, as I read a lot.) It is one of the great novels of English Literature that can be utterly boring with the wrong teacher. Many times people fail to pick up on the social satire woven throughout the novel, especially since the language and culture is so different now that it’s 200 years later. Once you understand the social context in which the novel was written/published, and get used to Austen’s subtle brand of sarcasm, one can understand why Pride & Prejudice has endured so long. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Darcy is one of the quintessential Byronic heroes too.

The 1995 BBC miniseries adaptation is by far the most popular, and the reason why can be summed up in two words: Colin. Firth. I first watched the miniseries when I was 10, and read the novel for the first time at 15. I can say quite confidently that the miniseries strongly helped me to understand the novel better, but…that’s not the only reason why it was memorable for me. Puberty already had its iron grip on me at that time, and when I saw Mr. Firth as Mr. Darcy for the first time…let’s just say I realized I liked boys. Colin Firth has had a wonderful sense of humour about his signature role, more-or-less reprising it in the Bridget Jones series (Side note: Colin Firth is an actual character in the 2nd novel.) and in an interview with a French magazine that asked him who the women in his life were, he answered, “My mother, my wife, and Jane Austen.” Unusually for a western media production, the makers knew their audience, and presented the miniseries for the female gaze. Firth is shown bathing, fencing, and, most famously, swimming in the pond near Pemberley and emerging from it with a wet white shirt.

Regretfully leaving Mr. Firth’s impact aside, he is not the only reason why the BBC adaptation is culturally important. The 6 episodes of the miniseries grant far more lenience in terms of time constraints, and thus one of the most important themes of Austen’s novel is retained: Her feminism. The protagonists in her novels were all women, and she wrote them for a mostly female audience. Her primary goal was to create sympathy for the status of women and the little rights they retained. Reminder: This is an era where women could not vote, had no bodily autonomy, could not freely marry whomever they chose, were restricted to domestic spheres, and, in some cases, could not even inherit their father’s estate. Pride & Prejudice, and the BBC adaptation, touch on several of these issues, subtly and sometimes directly condemning them from a feminist outlook. In addition to this feminist subtext, part of Austen’s social satire is pointing out the ridiculous class restraints in which the characters had to endure.

The Bennet Sisters, From Left To Right: Lydia, Jane, Mary, Kitty, Lizzy (Source: http://ladylavinia1932.wordpress.com/)

The protagonist of Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet, usually called Lizzy, is the 2nd of 5 sisters and the favourite of her father because she is witty, intelligent, and well-read. Her older sister Jane is sweet natured and the most beautiful, middle sister Mary is plain, sanctimonious and withdrawn, and youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are boy crazy and impulsive. Lydia most closely resembles her mother in personality and is thus her favourite. Mrs. Bennet is absolutely obsessed with the idea of marrying off her 5 daughters as soon as possible, and to rich men if they can manage it. The girls must endure their mother’s constant conspiring to marry them off – the elder sisters are resigned to their mother’s obsession, but the teenage youngest sisters are thoroughly swept up in their mother’s enthusiasm.

The major issue the Bennets face is that none of the daughters can inherit their father’s estate. They are confined to an entailment, which is a legal inheritance document stipulating that a hereditary estate can only be passed on to a certain person, usually the eldest living male relative. Unfortunately, the closest male relative to Mr. Bennet is Mr. Collins, a minister who is insufferably smug while pretending to be caring. When he suddenly descends on them for a visit, he is met with a certain degree of resentment, for when Mr. Bennet dies, Mr. Collins is fully within his rights to immediately throw out the grieving widow and daughters onto the streets. Thus, there is a practicality to Mrs. Bennet’s obsession – if her girls do not marry, they will be helpless and homeless.

Mr. Collins in this adaptation is utterly revolting. Greasy and simpering, he constantly brags about his rich patroness, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, (who is also Mr. Darcy’s maternal aunt) fawning about her even while miles away. He has visited with a mission – Lady Catherine thinks he should marry, so he figures he might as well choose from one of the Bennet sisters. Vainly, he sets his sights on Jane first as she is the most beautiful, but after being persuaded that Jane has another suitor (more on him later) he instead moves on to Lizzy, the next prettiest daughter. His attempts to woo Lizzy are incredibly repulsive and shortsighted, for he has chosen the worst possible match for him out of the 5 sisters. A bootlicking and hypocritical minister could not possibly be happy with a headstrong and brutally honest intellectual. It’s kind of sad he never noticed Mary and tried to court the sisters solely based on their looks, for although she’s plain she would have been a far better match for him.

Pemberley (Source: austenprose.wordpress.com)

Lizzy rejects his proposal with disgust, and he quickly moves on to proposing to the next closest target – her best friend Charlotte Lucas. She accepts, not out of even remote attraction, but because she felt she had no better option. At 27, she is already considered an old maid. She is not wealthy, she has no wealthy relatives, and she is not considered beautiful. So Charlotte explains to Lizzy, with a heartbreaking look of resignation, that she took all that she could get, and that she’d at least live in relative comfort. Later, when Lizzy visits her, she admits that she encourages her husband to spend as little time as possible with her. The social commentary exhibited here is staggering – I could not help but feel desperately hopeless and sympathetic for Charlotte’s situation. How awful to have to agree to marry such a repulsive man in order to prevent a future of poverty.

Jane and Lizzy fortunately have other potential suitors. Jane falls in love with Mr. Bingley, a relatively wealthy young man who has bought a manor nearby to their home. He is charming and amiable, contrasting sharply with his best friend, the brooding and proud (and even wealthier) Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy. They meet the Bennets at a ball, where Mr. Darcy offends the others by refusing to dance with anyone. He later reveals that he was feeling more socially awkward than disdainful, but he has already done the damage of appearing arrogant and snobbish, and Lizzy immediately develops a bad opinion of him (she is the “Prejudice” to his “Pride”). Jane and Bingley are very well matched, but their presumed engagement is for a time derailed due to societal restraints. At a ball held at Bingley’s manor, Mrs. Bennet brags loudly about Jane’s not yet confirmed engagement, Mary monopolizes the piano and performs poorly, Mr. Bennet publicly admonishes her for it, and Kitty and Lydia loudly and childishly flirt with the visiting soldiers. Jane is also shy and emotionally reserved, and so Mr. Darcy concludes that she is not especially interested in Bingley. He thus uses these excuses to convince Bingley not to propose to her, which is the first of many plot points where an individual is unfairly judged by the actions of her family.

Although at first Mr. Darcy is not particularly impressed with Lizzy, he quickly grows an attraction to her. At subsequent balls he asks to dance with her, compliments her to others, and will not hear any criticisms against her. Bingley’s younger sister Caroline hopes to gain Mr. Darcy’s affections by putting Lizzy down, and thus tries to find as many physical faults with her as possible. This is a commentary on how there is societal pressure for women to compete with each other, and to only value their physical attractiveness – not much has changed in 200 years. Nevertheless, Darcy proposes to Lizzy, and it is an infamous disaster. He begins by expressing his ardent love for her, but then starts ranting about how his love goes against his character, upbringing, and will. He also states that his social status is likely to take a hit since she is neither wealthy nor well-connected. Unsurprisingly, Lizzy rejects his proposal with anger and disgust. She criticizes his arrogance and pride, and condemns him for what she believes is a particularly heartless act – the cold treatment and cutting off of his childhood friend Mr. Wickham.

Mr. Darcy and Lizzy (Source: bbc.co.uk)

Mr. Wickham is one of the local soldiers, and catches Lizzy’s attention because he is of similar intellect to her and is charming. She already has a poor opinion of Mr. Darcy, so she readily believes Wickham’s sob story about how Mr. Darcy stopped his ambitions of becoming a minister, denied the small inheritance that Darcy Sr. had promised for him (Wickham’s father was Darcy’s father’s steward), and forced him to live in poverty, despite them having grown up together. Although Darcy cannot deny that he has acted arrogantly, he defends his actions regarding Wickham in a letter to her. In a flashback, we see Mr. Darcy at Cambridge walking in on Wickham fooling around with a young woman. Mr. Darcy explains that Wickham then left university, and requested a lump sum of 3000 pounds rather than an annual stipend. He thought they had then parted ways for good, but then found out the depths of which Wickham could descend.

Wickham likes to prey on teenage girls. He locates Darcy’s much younger sister Georgiana and seduces her, promising to elope with her. Darcy was never sure if Wickham’s aim was to get at Georgiana’s fortune, or to get revenge on Darcy. Fortunately, Darcy discovers the elopement in time to prevent it (and prevent Georgiana’s being sexually exploited) but both siblings would remain traumatized by the memory of how close she came to ruin. Lizzy is forced to believe Darcy’s story since it involves his younger sister, but she and Jane resolve to keep the truth of Wickham’s behaviour quiet since they have not been authorized to reveal the details, nor do they want to damage Georgiana’s reputation. Yes, Georgiana would be the one who would suffer from this, not the grown man who preyed on a teenage girl. This decision to keep quiet would come back to haunt the Bennets in the worst of ways, for it was not just Lizzy whose attention was caught by Wickham…but Lydia’s as well.

Lydia is given permission to follow the soldiers’ regiment to Brighton and stay with a friend of hers (much to Lizzy’s reluctance). She is not supervised at all, and Wickham convinces her to run away with him one night. She believes he is going to marry her, and is excited and anticipates how jealous her elder sisters will be that she has married first. (There’s that competing between women for male affections again.) We get short vignettes of her exile with Wickham – they are staying in a small room in a disreputable part of London. Lydia is shown wearing her dressing gown, but it is never directly implied nor stated whether she had premarital sex with him. Most likely she has, as since she is not wealthy there was only one thing about her Wickham would be interested in. Notably, none of the characters even dare to directly mention the worst-case scenario of Lydia’s behaviour, but Mary sanctimoniously summarizes the inequality of gender dynamics of the time: “The loss of virtue in a woman is irretrievable … A woman’s reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful, and therefore we cannot be too guarded in our behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.”

We interrupt this essay to bring you some fanservice. (Source: telegraph.co.uk)

The other sisters believe their chances of making a good marriage are now nonexistent, as the news of Lydia’s “loss of virtue” have tainted her family by association. The best that they can hope for is that Lydia and Wickham have at least married, preferably before his bedding her. Mr. Collins even smugly states that it would have been preferable if Lydia had died. It is very damning that a family has to hope that a possibly sexually exploited teenager has married her seducer. Nowadays there would at least be an attempt to arrest Wickham for statutory rape, but society has not changed so much that there wouldn’t still be shaming of Lydia for being a sexually active teenage girl. We can look to the recent tragic case of Amanda Todd, a very young teen enticed by an adult into posing topless on a webcam, blackmailed, and driven to suicide by the public shaming of her actions.

Mr. Darcy, humbled by Lizzy’s dismissal of him as arrogant and feeling responsible for not exposing Wickham’s character, decides to intervene. He locates the pair (Lydia is foolishly amused by this, Wickham angered), and makes Wickham agree to marry Lydia by offering to pay off his many debts. They are married with only Mr. Darcy and Lydia’s maternal aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, in attendance. Mr. Darcy insists on letting the Gardiners take the credit, and swears them to secrecy. They return home and are enthusiastically welcomed by Mrs. Bennet (whose opinion of people tends to revert back and forth to opposite extremes depending on whether they are useful to her regarding marrying off her daughters). Lydia brags about her marriage to her sisters, and never learns just how close she came to permanently ruining her reputation and her family’s as well. But she lets it slip that Darcy was involved in arranging her marriage.

These altruistic actions, and a visit to Mr. Darcy’s manor Pemberley, where he is adored and praised by his servants, gradually change Lizzy’s opinion of him. Eventually, a rumour spreads to Lady Catherine de Bourgh that Lizzy and Mr. Darcy, her nephew, are engaged. In a fury she comes to the Bennets’ home and verbally abuses Lizzy, adamant in her belief in her social superiority. She vehemently objects to the engagement as Lizzy is far beneath her nephew in both social status, familial connections and wealth, not to mention that she believes that her daughter Anne and Mr. Darcy have been betrothed since childhood. Lizzy is headstrong and defiant, however, and counters all of Lady Catherine’s insults. In reference to their social status she she states, “He is a gentleman. I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.” Not only has Lizzie skewered the ridiculous standards of class distinction in her era, she has made a subtle feminist statement as well. She also refuses to promise not to become engaged to Mr. Darcy, which is a solid social commentary on not letting the upper classes use their status to bully others.

The Double Wedding (Source: blogspot.com)

In the meantime, Mr. Darcy has told Mr. Bingley that he was mistaken in thinking that Jane Bennet did not return Bingley’s affections, and gives his blessing to their engagement. Bingley then takes the earliest opportunity he can to propose to Jane, which makes the normally reserved girl deliriously happy. When Mr. Darcy and Lizzy next meet, she reveals she knows who saved Lydia’s and her family’s reputations, and thanks him profusely. He tells her that he was only thinking of her happiness, and restates his love for her, promising never to bring it up again if she still feels the same way she did before. She has since realized that she has gradually fallen in love with him ever since visiting Pemberley, and accepts his proposal this time. There are many interpretations of the implications of this famous ending, but this time I’m going to do a feminist one: We know that Lizzy is progressive and headstrong, and likely as feminist as her creator. She could then possibly see Mr. Darcy’s actions as feminist ones, as he has directly prevented the fallout of a misogynistic society’s double standards. He has also demonstrated generosity and a willingness to help the most vulnerable. So she and Jane have a double wedding with Bingley and Darcy – all pairs as inseparable as they have always been.

As a whole, Pride & Prejudice and its miniseries adaptation strongly posit some feminist criticisms and subtly satirize the social standards of the time. Most notably, the story condemns entailments/inheritances that favour only male relatives instead of more direct (and equally rightful) female relatives, viewing relatively young women as old maids, forcing women into unwanted marriages to avoid homelessness and poverty, judging entire families on the basis of an individual’s actions (or judging an individual on the basis of their family’s actions), encouraging women to compete with each other for the affection of men, putting a woman’s entire worth on her virginity, allowing grown men to prey on teenage girls, and condemning a young woman for having premarital sex instead of her exploiter. Whew. It really sucked to be a woman during the Regency Period. For a 200-year-old book…that’s a whole lot of feminism. Bless you, Jane Austen. (And bless you, Colin Firth.)

Full disclosure: I recognize that this is more of a literature essay than a television review. My only excuse is that throughout high school and university I have written more essays about Pride & Prejudice than I can remember. Good habits are hard to break.

Myrna Waldron is a feminist writer/blogger with a particular emphasis on all things nerdy. She lives in Toronto and has studied English and Film at York University. Myrna has a particular interest in the animation medium, having written extensively on American, Canadian and Japanese animation. She also has a passion for Sci-Fi & Fantasy literature, pop culture literature such as cartoons/comics, and the gaming subculture. She maintains a personal collection of blog posts, rants, essays and musings at The Soapboxing Geek, and tweets with reckless pottymouthed abandon at @SoapboxingGeek.