3 days ago
Don't blame children who misbehave, it's the parents' fault
Hell, said Jean-Paul Sartre, is other people. But recently it seems his compatriots have concluded that hell is other people's children, as an increasing number of French restaurants, hotels and campsites declare themselves child-free zones.
Sarah El Haïry, the French high commissioner for childhood, has declared war on what she described as 'violence inflicted on children': government lawyers are exploring the possibility of taking legal action against establishments that ban children.
It is quite the societal volte-face since 2012, when Pamela Druckerman, an American living in Paris, published French Children Don't Throw Food, a bestselling account of Gallic parenting style. French children, she reported, were taught from their earliest years to comport themselves in a civilised fashion. They did not expect to monopolise adult attention, and understood the meaning of the word 'no'. The contrast with their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries, Druckerman concluded, was startling.
If what El Haïry describes as 'la tendance 'no-kids'' is spreading, the responsibility lies with parents. Of course children should be a welcome part of wider society. But if it is cruel to exclude them, it is equally cruel for grown-ups to relinquish parental responsibility. The current vogue for 'gentle' parenting, which tends to venerate the child's feelings to the exclusion of all else, has had consequences that are anything but child-friendly.
It takes a village to raise a child: but if the child is allowed to become a tyrant, the village will move elsewhere. This, as El Haïry has noticed, is a bad thing all round. But she may find that good manners and consideration are a matter for persuasion, rather than legislation.
'Posh' accents don't ruin period dramas – poor writing does
Jane Austen is the gift that keeps on giving. The stage, film and television adaptations of her novels are legion, as are the innumerable spin-offs and homages. For the 250th anniversary year of Austen's birth, the BBC has commissioned a couple of Austen-related dramas and a drama-documentary. Miss Austen, screened in February, was based on Gill Hornby's 2020 novel about Austen's sister, Cassandra.
The Other Bennet Girl is a ten-part adaptation of Janice Hadlow's 2009 novel, inspired by the middle Bennet sister, Mary, and scheduled to air later this year. Plain, anxious and socially awkward, Mary seems destined to fulfil her mother's dire prophecies and end up an impecunious spinster. Yet Hadlow's novel searches beneath the introverted, unhappy surface to find in Mary's character a complicated personality that is a perfect match for the TikTok generation, who already adore Jane Austen.
Producer Jane Tranter explained the ways in which the drama is intended to 'offer a proper, welcoming hand to a modern audience'. There will be no 'fetishisation' of period costume and hairstyles. 'Strange curls or weird-y hats' risk distracting viewers, Tranter argued. And once you put an actor in a period costume, they 'start speaking posh, and not everybody spoke posh in those days'.
Indeed not: the internet offers a fascinating selection of linguistic fossils, including early recordings of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who retains a touch of Lincolnshire accent; and the philosopher Bertrand Russell, thought to be the last repository of the Whiggish 'Devonshire House drawl'.
So Tranter is right: not everybody spoke 'posh'in the days before public broadcasting made received pronunciation the accepted standard accent. But the idea that authentic settings produce stilted performances is demonstrably untrue. In a recent edition of Radio 4's The Reunion devoted to Andrew Davies' 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the designer Dinah Collin described the painstaking historical accuracy with which the costumes were made. Yet a livelier, more universally beloved version of Austen's novel it is hard to imagine.
It is understandable that the BBC is keen to court a younger audience, and quite reasonable for writers and directors to bring an unorthodox approach to historical drama. But to conflate the two risks patronising the very audience they hope to charm.
The critical faculties of the TikTok generation are just as sharp as those of the generation who cherish the memory of Colin Firth in his sopping shirt. If The Other Bennet Girl is well written, acted and directed, they'll watch it. And if it isn't, they won't – whatever the accents of the cast, or their lack of weird-y hats.
