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Hindustan Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
A stroll down Jane street: Poonam Saxena on Austen as the ultimate comfort read
Everyone has a few comfort films or comfort books that bring them special joy. I have a set of comfort books or, perhaps more accurately, a comfort author. She wrote only six major novels in her lifetime but, no matter what I am reading, one of these is almost always open on my Kindle alongside. Since this year marks the 250th birth anniversary of this globally celebrated writer, I'm happy to dedicate this week's column to the peerless Jane Austen. Most English-speakers are familiar with Austen, but I suspect many know her more through the countless TV and movie adaptations of her works than through her books themselves. And that is a pity. The six novels (Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, all published between 1811 and 1817) illuminate a small, cloistered world of village landlords and clergymen, army men and navy officers, matrons, dowagers and spinsters, young girls waiting to make suitable marriages, and a genteel rural life of country dances, card games and tea. But what makes Austen special is that she populated this frankly-fairly-dull world with the most delightful and diverting characters. There were her heroines and heroes, of course, but also a supporting cast so entertaining, they can eclipse the main actors themselves. Her sharp observations on society, class and the predicaments of women were spot on and strike a chord even today. The final stroke of genius: her ironic humour, which lands even at the nth reading. These gifts that she brought to the page are why her stories are still being retold centuries on, as Hindi and Tamil films, as manga works in Japan, even as the Bridget Jones film franchise. (In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to see Austen as the original template-creator of the modern romcom.) Pride and Prejudice is the tale retold most often, and the one that invariably tops the list of Austen's best-loved work. I yield to none in my love for this wonderful novel. But the book I keep gravitating to is one of her least-popular novels, Northanger Abbey. Published in 1817, soon after her death, this is the frothiest and funniest of her works. Its heroine is 17-year-old Catherine Morland, daughter of a clergyman, who is invited by her kindly neighbours, Mr and Mrs Allen, to accompany them to Bath. Catherine is an unexceptional, sweet-natured girl, slightly naïve as a result of her youth and sheltered upbringing. I find her the most appealing of Austen's heroines (followed by Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice). While in Bath, Catherine falls in love with the charming, witty clergyman Henry Tilney, and strikes up a close friendship with the effusive Isabella Thorpe (only to discover later that she is a vain and selfish coquette). The characters are sketched with Austen's signature drollness. She writes, for instance, that Mrs Allen was 'one of that numerous class of females whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any man in the world who could like them well enough to marry them.' Her descriptions of Isabella's dull brother John and his obsessions with the latest carriages, their new features, how many miles they can cover in an hour etc are hilarious (and remind me of all those boring men one meets who are obsessed with the latest cars). Catherine is youth itself: light of heart, prone to flights of fancy. She has an all-consuming passion for Gothic romances. So taken up is she with thoughts of sinister castles, ancient housekeepers, gloomy passages and 'secret' doors that she becomes convinced at some point that Tilney's father, a formidable retired general, has either murdered his wife or is keeping her locked in a secret room on the family estate. (Northanger Abbey is often seen as a satire on the Gothic novel.) But Catherine also has one of the most memorable lines of dialogue in any Austen novel. Asked for her thoughts on the subject of history, she says, 'The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.' Comfort reads that combine sharp insight, wit and humour with engaging storytelling and happy endings are rare. Rarer still is the ability to do this while creating characters one wants to meet over and over again, as if they were old, beloved friends. Austen delivers on all of the above. Every single time. (To reach Poonam Saxena with feedback, email poonamsaxena3555@
New York Times
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Forgotten Writers Who Influenced Jane Austen
It is a truth universally acknowledged (at least in publishing) that books about books sell well, and, judging by their profusion, that includes those devoted to Jane Austen Inc. 'Jane Austen's Bookshelf,' by Rebecca Romney, would seem optimized for readers who like to absorb their masterpieces by osmosis. Yet it springs from a place more personal and idiosyncratic than the cozy title might suggest. Put it another way: I certainly didn't expect to make so many furious notes in the margins. A longtime dealer in rare books who has made regular appearances on the TV show 'Pawn Stars' and who knows her Richardson from her Fielding, Romney had come to believe that Austen was, if not unique among women writers of her time, certainly superior — that her place in the canon must rest at least partly on the relative inferiority of her peers. Then she read Frances Burney, and realized how many writers had not just influenced Austen — but been great in their own right. 'In spite of my supposed professional curiosity, I realized I had missed something,' Romney writes. 'And it stung.' Upon discovering just how little she knew of those female writers who informed Austen's own work — having tacitly fallen into what Katha Pollitt calls 'the Smurfette principle,' in which a single archetypal female fills a sort of quota — Romney acts. She amasses the titular collection while using her knowledge of book selling to explore exactly how all these women fell from the canon. Sleuthing ensues. Tantalizingly little survives of Austen's letters. But her remaining correspondence and her own novels provide a road map to her literary tastes: the Ann Radcliffe Gothics referenced in 'Northanger Abbey,' the scandalous Elizabeth Inchbald play mounted by the houseguests in 'Mansfield Park,' the Hannah More sermons against which Austen's novel-loving heroines rebel. Romney reads through the works of these writers and others, plus a slew of secondary sources, in the process evaluating her own reactions as a 21st-century woman. Romney is no ordinary reader: She approaches her 'investigation' with discipline and zeal. ('No, I won't stop quoting Holmes,' she writes menacingly — and accurately — of Sherlock.) Also, she wants to read the books in contemporary editions. The project takes chutzpah, and Romney has it. 'Literary trivia is my joy and my currency,' she tells the reader. 'Besides the ability to quote the Great Detective in nearly any situation, I can also tell you how many steps led to his flat at 221B; I can recite Sappho in Greek and Horace in Latin; I have participated in public readings of 'Ulysses'; and I have seriously considered getting a tattoo of a Catullus verse. Yet I had completely missed some of Austen's predecessors.' (As to my annotations here, I'll quote Mr. Darcy: 'You may imagine what I felt and how I acted.') As she knows, she is not the first to take on the subject: Feminist Recovery is an established school. Romney acknowledges her debts to Dale Spender, to Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, to Audre Lorde. As for the physical copies, Romney concedes that, in a digital world, this is not the treasure hunt it was even a generation ago. Indeed, I was less interested in seeing her hot on the case of the Missing Canon or tracking down a first edition of Charlotte Smith's 'Elegiac Sonnets' than I was in watching this one reader learning, and thinking, in real time — as her sometimes reflexive presentism and flippancy ('#notallmen') give way to a sympathy that extends across centuries. Her narrative bravado evolves to something truer and more genuinely seeking as her confidence in her own reactions increases. Throughout, Romney gives the reader glimpses into her own story: She describes a conservative Mormon childhood in which she fought against the gender and intellectual strictures even as she learned to value community. For her, these struggles over morality and conduct are not historical abstractions, but a part of her lived experience — and her present. Her passages on overcoming internalized misogyny to appreciate romance novels (via Burney's 'Evelina') are a small gem of passionate criticism. 'Books are not static things,' Romney writes. 'One reason I love reading is that I can examine the emotions it stirs safely from a distance, at my own pace. When I'm rereading, I'm doing that, and more. I'm remembering the emotions of the last read.' 'Jane Austen's Bookshelf' stirred some emotions of my own. My penciled exhortations in the margins, some of excitement or communion, others of irritation, are in a way a response to Romney's invitation to join in her intellectual tussling. Of her own process, she writes, 'I underlined. I dog-eared. I argued with the authors at the bottom of the page.' I did the same; and then I hunted down a copy of Charlotte Lennox's 'The Female Quixote' and Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi's 'Letters to and From the Late Samuel Johnson.' It may be how new canons are formed; it's certainly how enthusiasms are shared.
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Leo Woodhall's ‘Bridget Jones' Wet Shirt Moment Is So Hot—and So Important, Actually
Mid-way through my screening of Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, the entire audience let out a collective squeal. If you've seen the fourquel, you can probably guess which scene it was: Leo Woodhall had just dived into a pool in a crisp white button-up. It's a truly beautiful moment of cinema. Bridget is at a garden party. She is waiting for the arrival of her new boyfriend, Roxster (Woodhall), a 29-year-old pretty boy and (checks notes) park ranger of some sort. A tiny dog 'falls' into the water and happily starts swimming to the other side of the pool. Seeing this 'disaster', Roxster, who has, it seems, arrived on the scene just in time, promptly dives in to 'save' him. Time seems to stand still. The entire crowd of middle-aged party-goers stares on, their jaws practically on the floor. He emerges from the pool, dripping, his white shirt clinging to his body—everyone (audience in the cinema, audience on the screen) is mesmerized. One one hand, this moment gives us all what we came to the cinema to see: Leo Woodhall being a total hottie. (Sorry to objectify him, but this is a big part of his task in this film. Even he knows it; as he recently told The Guardian, 'I felt some pressure for that day [at the pool], because I knew that it was all about kind of being ogled.') But on the other hand, this is a moment that goes way beyond offering up some eye candy for the girls and gays in the crowd—it's a moment that has both historic cinematic roots and a deeper sociological meaning. Yes, really. Please hear me out. First of all, putting a hot guy in a wet shirt is a very serious tradition in the romance genre. (I myself wrote about it for GQ a few years ago.) It was perhaps most famously done in the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. In a now infamous scene, Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy dives into a murky pond near his estate to let off some of that broody steam. When he emerges in nothing but a dripping white shirt and breeches, he is shocked to find Elizabeth Bennett (Jennifer Ehle) is touring his home. Cue some sexy stammering and averted eyes. The romantic-lead-in-a-wet-shirt has since become something of a trope. Rain storms have appeared in countless period dramas (Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Jane Eyre, to name a few), while men have been sent diving into ponds or fountains in countless other on-screen romances (Princess Diaries 2, Love Actually, Bridgerton, and, of course, Bridget Jones 1 and 2). The Bridget Jones team ia, of course, all too aware that their latest wet shirt scene with Woodhall is an allusion to Firth's moment in Pride and Prejudice and to the countless other wet shirt clad romantic leads that followed. The moment is, in one way, something of an ode to Bridget's one-time love interest, Mark Darcy. Also played by Colin Firth, Mark Darcy was partly inspired by the leading man of Pride and Prejudice—so, it's only fitting that Bridget gets a new love interest who has his own Mr. Darcy moment. In Mad About the Boy, though, the wet shirt moment is ultimately subverted. Instead of emerging from the pond and stammering something awkwardly to Bridget, (that kind of withdrawn wooing is reserved for her real love interest, Chiwetel Ejiofor's Mr. Wallaker) Roxter grins unabashedly and peels his wet shirt off without a second thought. The moment is both totally swoon-worthy and kind of hilarious—after all, we've all seen the first Bridget Jones films and we're all in on the wet shirt joke. But, dare I say it, the moment is more than merely hot and funny—by making a pointed nod to the trope of the dripping wet male romantic lead, the film is actually making an important point. If the first Bridget Jones film was about the stigma of being single in your thirties, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is about the stigma of being single—and trying to date—in your fifties. Back in the early 2000s, Bridget found herself ridiculed and pitied for being single and unmarried. It's no wonder writer Helen Fielding was so inspired by Pride and Prejudice—evidently, the early aughts had more in common with Jane Austen's time than we like to think. Bridget, now in her fifties, once again finds herself single after Mark's tragic death. And, once again, she finds herself the subject of judgement and ridicule from the smug marrieds in her life. It's time she settled down with someone appropriate, they imply during a particularly awkward dinner party in the film's opening moments. Instead, Bridget finds herself attracted to a younger guy who just so happens to be super hot. And, shocking all of her friends and acquaintances, he likes her, too. The fact that a 50-something-year-old single mother like Bridget could get someone like Roxster is a shock to them all—even though it shouldn't be. This brings us back to the pool moment: Not only are they swooning at his dive into the pool, they're also aghast at the fact that he chose Bridget. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy does what the series has always done best—it proves there is no one 'right' way to live or love as a woman, regardless of your age or your looks or whatever else it may be. So, yes, giving this version of Bridget a hot young hero who can pull off a classic wet shirt moment? It's actually kind of revolutionary.
The Guardian
26-01-2025
- The Guardian
‘Forgotten' sites linked to Jane Austen feature in new Hampshire trails
The coach-loads of literary-minded tourists in search of whispers of Jane Austen tend to head to the grand cities of Bath or Winchester – but a 'forgotten' Hampshire village with strong connections to the writer is getting in on the act. Villagers in Overton near Basingstoke have decided they have been too modest for too long about their very solid Austen links and are bidding to attract more visitors this year, the 250th anniversary of her birth. An enthusiastic band of volunteers have set up a series of walking and cycling trails that take in the sights Austen would have come across when she lived in the area for the first 25 years of her life, and where her ideas about society, love, and family took shape. This weekend the first official guided tour is taking place and accommodation providers are undertaking marketing drives to try to bring in Austen aficionados this year and in the future. Austen was born in the nearby very small village of Steventon in 1775 and grew up in the area, strolling around the meadows and along the banks of the trout-filled River Test and shopping in 18th-century Overton. Anna Thame, one of the volunteers behind the Overton Jane Austen Trails scheme, said residents were keen to remind the world at large of their Austen links. She said: 'This is where she lived for 25 years but Overton fell off the Austen map and nobody is sure why. It's been the best-kept Austen secret until now. We have been forgotten, really. 'Overton was a bustling, raucous kind of place and it is where life was for Jane in her early years. It's where the merchants were, it's where she posted her letters. She wrote early drafts of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey here. The influences of these villages shaped her.' The trails take in the site of the Steventon rectory, where Austen was born and where the family lived until 1801. The rectory has been demolished, probably one reason why the area has slid off the Austen map. The trails pass the grand Court House, overlooking Overton, where Jane's brother, James Austen, lived. Another key feature is the site of the post office – where Austen once told off the postmaster for overcharging her, and from where an early incarnation of Pride and Prejudice was sent to a publisher. The book was rejected by return post. The house of Austen's friend, Anne Lefroy, in another village, Ashe, is also highlighted. Austen had a romance with Lefroy's nephew, Tom Lefroy. In 1804 Anne Lefroy fell from her horse at the top of Overton Hill and died. 'So many of these events must have affected her,' said Thame. 'We wanted to bring these stories back to the light.' There are seven volunteers in the core trails team, all women. The project has been funded by the UK government's shared prosperity fund to the tune of £15,836 and supported by Overton parish council, among others. Another volunteer, Valda Stevens, said her family had lived in the area for generations, but she had not known much about the local Austen connections until the project was launched. 'We've done quite a lot of investigation of old newspaper cuttings and looked at parish registers, which has been particularly rewarding. We've found lots of connections between people who live here now and those who were here in Jane Austen's time,' she said. Noelle Gibbs, also a project stalwart, said: 'It's exciting looking at Jane Austen through the prism of Overton. Jane loved walking and she loved the countryside. To be able to walk in the same countryside where she walked is wonderful.' The Jane Austen Society has given its seal of approval: 'The trails put Jane Austen back on the map in this corner of Hampshire, reminding us of her roots in Steventon, where she developed her genius as a writer.'
