Jane Austen – Auxiliary Memory

by James Wallace Harris, Tuesday, January 14, 2020

Over the past year, I’ve lost my ability to binge-watch TV. My mind just doesn’t latch on to shows like it once did. However, Sunday night I watched three episodes of Sanditon and then last night finished up the season by watching five more episodes. Only two have been broadcast, but if you donate to PBS and sign up for your Passport account, you can stream all eight episodes now.

Sanditon is based on a Jane Austen unfinished novel. She had completed about 24,000 words when she died. If you’re really interested you should read what Wikipedia said about the unfinished novel and the new TV series. The first of the eight episodes cover what Jane Austen originally wrote, so the next seven episodes are new. The show does have the feel of Jane Austen except for two glaring issues. There are a couple of sex scenes, and some British viewers claim the ending is not what Jane Austen would have written. I was thinking the ending might be setting us up for a second season, so I was withholding judgment.

I was completely delighted with the mini-series and thought it very Jane Austen-ish for the most part. Farmgirl Charlotte Heywood gets to stay with Tom and Mary Parker, a well-to-do family who live in Sanditon, a seaside village. Tom pours his fortune and others into making Sanditon a prosperous vacation destination. That reminds me of the spa town Bath from the Austen novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. Tom has a brother, Sidney who insults, ignores, and irritates Charlotte no end. We’ve seen that relationship before with Mr. Darcy. Charlotte also reminds me of Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, being a naïve visitor in a grandeur society and growing up quickly. Charlotte has a lot of Emma Woodhouse in her too by her meddling. Sanditon also has a rich old woman, Lady Denham who is a lot like Lady Catherine de Bourgh of Pride and Prejudice. The only thing missing are red-coated soldiers, but this work might be set after the Napoleonic Wars, or Jane had planned to write about them in later chapters. One new character type for Jane was Miss Lambe, a black heiress, who was in the unfinished manuscript. If only Jane had finished this story. Would she have made the story almost a cliché of her earlier work? Or would it strike out to be distinctly different like all her six famous novels?

One of the intriguing aspects to the unfinished Sanditon that Wikipedia points out is the story has been finished before in various ways by a number of authors. Mary Gaither Marshall at the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) wrote an extensive essay about the completers: “Jane Austen’s Sanditon: Inspiring Continuations, Adaptions, and Spin-offs for 200 Years.” Her essay suggests most of the continuations were off the mark in terms of actually writing something that Jane Austen would have written. At first, I wanted to try some of these completions, but after reading Marshall’s essay closer, I’m not so sure. Too many of them added silly gimmicks.

After enjoying the miniseries I read the unfinished Austen novel. It’s twelve chapters barely fleshed out the first episode. The next seven episodes don’t contradict what Jane Austen had started, but there is little evidence to suggest that’s where she was going. Tom Parker’s obsession was the likely plot in my mind. Eleanor Bley Griffiths gives a few clues to the difference between what Austen wrote and what Andrew Davies adapted for the miniseries. See “How closely is Sanditon based on Jane Austen’s original unfinished novel?” and linked essays. I feel after watching the show, that it might be the best of the continuations when it comes to finishing Jane Austen’s book.

If you don’t like Jane Austen, you probably won’t like Sanditon. Regency-era England has social norms and manners that seem silly and very politically incorrect to modern minds, although the TV writers did add some modern feminist insights. There are certain complications in the miniseries that I’m not sure Jane would have approved, but then maybe she would have. If there is a heaven I picture Jane being mobbed by fans asking her about all these adaptations. We assume Jane Austen had to censor herself for her early 19th century audiences, and if she had had more freedom probably would have explored some of the issues that modern adapters have added.

JWH

by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Back in May, I watched a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about Norway’s slow TV movement. You can watch the video here. Slow TV is watching ordinary events for hours at a time, like watching the view out the window of a train. It’s a step up from watching paint dry or grass grow – but not by much. I turned to my wife and told her she was already a slow TV fan. She’s been watching a live webcam of two eagles raising a baby for weeks – hours every day.

Slow Snail Life Animal Slime Small

Yesterday, I found “The Case for Taking Forever to Finish Reading Books.” I’ve always known I read too fast, even when I’m intentionally trying to read slowly. That’s why I love audiobooks – they go very slow. My friend Mike has given up audio books because he wants to read even slower.

For years I’ve kept a pace of reading one book a week – or 52 in a year. This year I’ve slowed down. In the first half of 2017, I’ve only read 16 books instead of 26. Still, that’s speed reading compared to the author of the article above, who has spent five years reading In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust, and is only two-thirds finished.

My TV buddy Janis and I have rushed through ten episodes of Glow in about a week. We took about as long to finish Season 3 of Fargo. I’m not a slow TV watcher, but I’m wondering if I should be. Tonight my friends and I will be watching Emma, the fifth of six Jane Austen films we’ve watched in five nights. Tomorrow night is Persuasion. Already, I struggle to remember the plot and characters of Northanger Abbey, the first we watched on Saturday night.

If I had watched these six films in six weeks instead of six days would it have improved the experience? This is my Jane Austen week. I’ve been gorging on her biographies. I wish I had time to read her books again. Like most of my study manias, I’ll feast on Austen for a week or two and then forget her for years. Instead of trying to consume all of her quickly, I wonder if I had taken one novel, read it slowly, and studied its history, would I know Jane Austen better?

Reading the biographies concurrent with the movies reveals why she developed her plots. Studying one novel intently for one month would be intensely revealing, both of Austen and of early nineteenth-century English history.

The trouble with reading slower is reading less. I read fast so I can read more. I’m starting to wonder if I need abandon my quest to read everything great. It was never a particularly practical ambition. Over and over again I anguish over the fact that I can’t remember what I read, and I always come to the same conclusion – reading is for the moment. It’s not about remembering. I cannot store facts in my brain like entering data into a computer.

Reading is about experiencing a moment. My guess is reading very slow makes that moment a fuller. (Can you imagine a fatter moment?)

This week is all about Jane Austen. Next Tuesday is the 200th anniversary of her death. I need to read her at the pace Norwegians watch the scenery from a riverboat traveling down a river. Maybe I can stretch my week into a month. I know no matter how hard I try I won’t remember 99.9% what I read.

Mansfield Park But if I can slow down, both in my contemplation of what I’m reading and in my need to finish the project, I can go deeper into Jane’s world. I have so many other books I want to read, so many authors I want to consume – but does that matter? Can I go slow enough to forget future ambitions that follow this ambition? If I could go slow enough I’d never leave Jane Austen. If I could go even slower I’d never leave Mansfield Park.