Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Some people quote the Sound of Music as being their ultimate movie, others are into Pollyanna, and still others frequent the channels of Discovery & read Geographic Magazines as their favourite past-times... So I thought, that it was time I let the geek in me come out and share my love of Jane Austen films with the world of Renewal Youth. A few of us girls have started this movie club of sorts where we pick out a different movie each week to watch while the men go off and do their thing; although secretly we know they are dying to watch it with us.


So far on our list we've seen:
- Pride and Prejudice (Old school BBC version)
- P & P (Modern version with Keira Knightly)
- Bride and Prejudice (Bollywood version)
- Emma (Modern version with Gwyneth Paltrow)

Still to come we've got planned:
- Emma (old version)
- Clueless (based on modern day Emma)
- Sense and Sensibility (BBC version)
- S & S (Modern version with Hugh Grant)

Jane lived a really bizarre life...

She was born in Steventon, Hampshire, where her father was a reverend at the local parish and was the second daughter and seventh child in a family of eight. The Austens did not lose a single one of their children, which was very unusual in those days. Cassandra Leigh, Jane's mother, sent them all to a wet nurse in a nearby village a few months after birth to be looked after for another year or longer.

Her mother was a hypochondriac (or had a 'health phobia'): basically a person who tends to exaggerate their symptoms no matter how insignificant or excessively worries that they have a serious illness . Many people suffering from this disorder focus on a particular symptom as the catalyst of their worrying, such as gastro-intestinal problems, palpitations, or muscle fatigue, rapid heart beat, sweating, muscle tension, stomach discomfort, and numbness or tingling in certain parts of the body (hands, forehead, etc.). This explains why in Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennett is always complaining about her 'poor nerves' and her 'palpitations & flutterings'. Jane obviously based this particular character on her own mother.

She published her works anonymously and only really became famous after she was dead.

She first started to write for family amusement as a child and was very shy about her writing; she wrote on small pieces of paper that she slipped under the desk plotter if anyone came into the room.

The theme that prevails in most of her works is that the young heroines must marry in order to secure social standing and economic security; yet Austen herself never married and was considered by society to be an old maid at the young age of 25!

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." (from Pride and Prejudice, 1813)

As she grew into adulthood, she still lived with her parents (I told you she live a bizarre life) carrying out those activities normal for women of her age and social standing: she practiced the pianoforte, assisted her sister and mother with supervising servants, and attended female relatives during childbirth and older relatives on their deathbeds. Austen was particularly proud of her accomplishments as a seamstress. She also attended church regularly, socialized frequently with friends and neighbours, and read novels - often of her own composition - aloud with her family in the evenings. Socializing with the neighbours often meant dancing, either impromptu in someone's home after supper or at the balls held regularly at the assembly rooms in the town hall. Her brother Henry later said that "Jane was fond of dancing, and excelled in it".

Virginia Woolf called Austen "the most perfect artist among women."and still others considered her to be right up there with Shakespeare, among "the fine painters of life".

Now although I am not too keen on the idea that you have to get married in order to be accepted properly into society and to have a stable income, (that's just how it was back then I guess) I just love how most of her stories have such good morals. If just one person in the whole family was to go out and sleep with someone outside of marriage, then it would bring shame to the whole entire family! They would be disgraced unless a marriage was quickly arranged. They led such simple lives and everything was uncomplicated. Yes, we have definitely moved on from then, I mean, what female wants to wear a dress every single day of their lives? But morally oh how far this world has fallen! Makes you think...