Reading Jane Austen

Learning to become a Janeite

The schedule for the Jane Austen book club is available here. We begin with Pride and Prejudice, 16th February 19.00 UK time. (Shakespeare details here.)

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The first thing you must do if you want to read Jane Austen is to put all adaptations out of your mind. Do not watch them. They are not complementary to your reading. They will not help you understand the novels. They are entirely inadequate substitutes.

I am personally quite relaxed about the quality of adaptations. After all, once you go to the screen, fidelity isn’t really possible. But how many of the people who thought the Netflix Persuasion was egregious were outraged about Darcy’s wet shirt or Margaret saying “You always say it will never rain and it always does”? Indeed, how many of them will admit that it is outrageous to include wedding scenes in Austen adaptations?

No, once you cross the line to television, you are simply doing something very different, and it is pointless, hopeless, and a little bit pathetic to pretend otherwise. If you want to take Jane Austen seriously, read the novels unencumbered by anything audio-visual.

One reason for my stricture is that television flattens everything to story. Austen is the great genius who invented the modern English novel, whose innovative narrative techniques have been justly compared to the inventions of Flaubert and the modernists, and whose prose is a globally recognised gold standard of English usage. Almost all of this is lost in adaptation, with the exception of dialogue in the very long BBC Pride and Prejudice.

Television struggles to convey irony. There simply isn’t any way of converting a paragraph like this into a scene for the small screen.

On the following Monday, Mrs. Bennet had the pleasure of receiving her brother and his wife, who came, as usual, to spend the Christmas at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly superior to his sister, as well by nature as education. The Netherfield ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so well-bred and agreeable. Mrs. Gardiner, who was several years younger than Mrs. Bennet and Mrs. Philips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant woman, and a great favourite with her Longbourn nieces. Between the two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a very particular regard. They had frequently been staying with her in town.

The first part of Mrs. Gardiner’s business, on her arrival, was to distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When this was done, she had a less active part to play. It became her turn to listen. Mrs. Bennet had many grievances to relate, and much to complain of. They had all been very ill-used since she last saw her sister. Two of her girls had been on the point of marriage, and after all there was nothing in it.

Notice the phrase “and within view of his own warehouses”. It is part of the narrative, but it is clearly the speech of the Netherfield ladies. Austen is satirising them by silently borrowing their phrase. The camera has no ability to ventriloquise with irony like this. Convert it into dialogue and all subtlety is lost, all malice gone. The same is true of the descriptions of Mrs. Gardiner and Mrs. Bennet. The detached brevity of the narrative provides a wit that direct representation would struggle to master. Again, having Mrs. Bennet speak the phrase “They had all been very ill-used” could work, just not in the same way. Don’t you enjoy the sharpness of the sentence, “It became her turn to listen.” Austen is bringing out the unspoken dynamic. Mrs. Bennet is funny, but also domineering; she is to be gently mocked, but also a little scorned. Austen’s prose walks a delicate line.

When I was young, I disliked Austen. I thought it was all fluff. I was challenged on this by the grand-daughters of some friends of ours, and so I read Pride and Prejudice. So compulsive did I find this novel, which I had been fairly indifferent to at fifteen, that I read it in a great haste during my commute. I had always enjoyed Sense and Sensibility. But I sent Emma hurling away in frustration many times. For the first hundred pages or so, I was charmed into submission by the writing, but Emma herself was always too much for me. Persuasion was beyond me. I read Austen’s letters out loud to my wife when she was pregnant, which was often highly enjoyable (too much about hats and hems though).