Chez Jane
The Telegraph has a snarky article about visiting the Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton. We like snarky, though the snark here seems to come from an imperfect understanding.
Joe Wright, director of the eagerly awaited new film version of Pride and Prejudice, is only the latest of a long line of revisionists who have tried to rescue the novelist from her prissy chocolate-box image, promising social realism instead of the usual emphasis on empire-line frocks and gently heaving bosoms.
It will be interesting to see how he fares, and whether he enrages the Janeites - the Barmy Army of the literary world.
They are a formidable lot and their devotion to their heroine is touchingly absolute. No literary property in England - not Anne Hathaway’s cottage near Stratford, not Wordsworth’s house in the Lake District - feels quite so much like a shrine as Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, Hampshire.
There is only a “prissy chocolate-box image” because the media persists in writing about it.
Inside the house, whispering is the order of the day, as if someone has just died. A lock of Jane’s hair in one of the cabinets sets the reverential tone. One misses the boisterousness, the shrieks of laughter, which one likes, rightly or wrongly, to associate with her.
Curious; we thought one spoke in a low tone in museums out of respect to our fellow visitors. Our bad.
But whether you are a fully paid-up Janeite or just a dabbler, on no account should Chawton be missed. This is Jane Austen’s world - or the closest approximation we have to it.
Fair enough. See you in a month or so. 
September 19th, 2005 at 5:13 pm
Well, I visited Chawton Cottage a couple of years ago, and I don’t recall any whispering.. least of all from the volunteers on duty, who spoke up in robust county tones, as I recall.
September 19th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
When Kathleen and I go (now that she found us cheap train tickets after a panicky e-mail from me), I doubt there will be much whispering going on!!!