Jennifer Ehle on Elizabeth and life after P&P
Last summer, Jennifer Ehle agreed to answer questions put to her by bloggers and fans alike. DaddyPundit at Blogcritics published some excerpts. The whole interview is available here, at the Jennifer Ehle Fan Blog.
My favorite bit?
Of the following men from Pride and Prejudice - Mr. Darcy, Mr. Bingley or Mr. Bennet - which would you want your son to grow up to be like and why?
~ These are the options?! It’s amazing the species continues.
Ouch! Now that you put it like that Jennifer, I guess you have a point.
Update: Thanks so much to Tina from the Jennifer Ehle Fan Blog for notifying us about the Ehle interview. I spent a little more time with the interview, and found this lovely bit as well:
“The relationship between Mr. Bennet and Lizzie was always my favorite part of the book. It was, for me growing up, the love story in the book; and I would weep whenever I reread it and would get to the bit where Lizzie tells Mr. Bennet that Darcy is the best man she has ever known. It is such an important part of the whole female fantasy of the story — the favorite daughter who idolizes her father above all men and then, when he fails to protect Lydia from herself, is exposed as a mere human being. Then, and only then, is the young woman free to find her own mate and open her heart to him.
I suppose I will expose myself as a shallow thinker when I admit to never having considered that particular aspect before, that Elizabeth loved Darcy only after her father’s great failing occurred.
Of course that’s one reason I love Jane so much; no matter how many times you read her you always can find something new.
I will own to be a bit scandalized by this most shocking admission by Ehle:
I have always loved Austen — Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion are my favorites.
Still have not read Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey.
Not read Northanger Abbey? Somewhere Mags is reading that and weeping.
October 24th, 2005 at 10:37 pm
I’m weeping too! NA is the best of all! It’s the funniest and the sweetest!
And she hasn’t read MP? Wow! I thought that was a favorite with Janeites. I always thought it was the dullest of her works until the last few weeks when I’ve been on a MP bindge!
I guess it’s easy to do when you buy a dramatized radio version and an audio book all in the same week! MP prooves Jane’s wit and genius once again!
Hooray for Jane!!!!
October 25th, 2005 at 1:32 am
…I should have been in bed a looonnnggg time ago…
Anyway, I too never saw the Mr Bennet/Mr Darcy “flip” that way either. Just goes to prove that Jane is still a genius after all these years.
I’ve noticed similar things like this cropping up in Persuasion as well - you think you know a story, but you never really do, do you?
BTW: The JE interview seems v. interesting. I only got through the first part but will try to read the rest tomorrow (as in today)
October 25th, 2005 at 1:44 am
One more thing…
As much as I love P&P (still my favorite) I have to say that Mansfied Park is her most masterfully “written” work IMO.
I can see why a lot of people don’t like it or get it or put off reading it, though. After you’ve read the big guns first (i.e. P&P, Persuasion) most would have trouble with MP as not “romantic” enough. If I had my way, I’d suggest readers new to Austen read them in this order:
1. Sense & Sensibility
2. Mansfield Park
3. Emma
4. Pride & Prejudice
5. Persuasion
6. Northanger Abbey
7. Lady Susan/The Watsons/Etc…
I would explain why in detail, but I’ll save that for later if anyone is interested… and when I’m wide awake.
October 25th, 2005 at 10:28 am
I am interested, Teresa. Pray write on!
October 25th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
*weeping for Jennifer*
I bet she’d love her some Henry.
And I never saw it that way either–not sure I buy it completely, but it is interesting, and I, too, enjoy the relationship between Lizzy and Mr. Bennet.
I personally think that Emma is Jane’s masterpiece, though Persuasion is my sentimental favorite, and of course NA for Henry and the fun.
October 25th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
Just rub it in, Mags, just rub it in…
Anyway, IMO S&S, MP, and Emma are just so unromantic and practical (which doesn’t mean I dislike them) that if you were to read P&P first you would not know what to do with yourself after.
I read P&P first as a romantic, starry eyed teenager (around the time most people are introduced to it) and it was many, many, many years before I could appreciate any other book of Janes.
P&P is too perfectly written, too interesting, too powerful and almost too much for a teenager to process without a certain level of maturity.
Take that same impressionable teenager and give them something like MP or Emma to read after P&P and they will in nearly every case (but certainly not in all cases) revolt. It would be hard for anyone to find anything to admire in Fanny or Emma after getting to know Elizabeth.
That is also why I feel why so many people who read JA fan-fic get “stuck” in P&P related stories - they can’t disconnect because the romance of it has sucked them in and will not let them go.
I could talk on this topic forever, but this is probably not the place. E-mail me if you’d like to continue.
October 26th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
Very good points, Teresa. I only wonder if people will give up before getting to P&P, but I agree that it raises expectations (”light & bright & sparkling”) the reader may not find in the other novels.
Mags, have you seen the movie yet?
October 27th, 2005 at 9:56 am
I just read MP for the 3rd time - and I can’t like it. I’m not a romantic teenager. But everything is wrong with Fanny, Edmund and the story. How could one like them? I can’t understand.
May be you’re right it’s better to read something else but P&P, first. But I think the most Janeites started with P&P. And maybe they would have never become Janeites if they would have started with MP.
My favourites are:
1. P&P
2. Persuasion
3. Emma
4. NA (or 3. NA and 4. Emma ;))
5. Sense and Sensibilty
6. MP
October 27th, 2005 at 10:28 am
I stumbled upon P+P as a ‘lil girl - ok, I was 8 or 9 - read the translated serial version in my mum’s monthly women mags. So, couldn’t help but fell in love with it very earlier on. Now I’m wondering if it had been S+S or MP instead - would I react the same way too ?
October 28th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
Never got around to seeing it, frankly, though I think I have free passes waiting for me at home…
October 29th, 2005 at 12:03 am
Thanks for the link, guys.
I’m with Sonja- just can’t understand the appeal of MP. Fanny is…well…a bit of a wet blanket.
*waits to be stoned*
Mrs Norris made me swear out loud.
October 30th, 2005 at 8:00 am
I am amazed nobody has pointed out that if JE is so moved by rereading ” the bit where Lizzie tells Mr. Bennet that Darcy is the best man she has ever known” she must be rereading her old scropts, since that particular line appears nowhere in the book she professes to love so much.
October 30th, 2005 at 9:06 am
It is not everyone who reads a book over and over, like we all seem to do, so I don’t blame JE for the mistake. I still found her comments on the book insightful, and the whole interview a pleasure to read.
October 30th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
Perhaps she’s just paraphrasing? It has been a decade since she read the book, since they finished filming.
January 9th, 2006 at 9:28 am
jennifer Ehle says it in her 1995 version, and when she says it, it does appear to be pointedly directed at Mr. Bennet, and that’s when I had the thought that she meant Darcy surpassed her father. it’s a wonderful interpretation, but it’s not expressed in the book. Occasionally someone outJanes Jane.