Info on Maggie Smith and Julie Walters roles in BECOMING JANE
Well, the games have begun…and you can’t blame us for this one!
A commenter in the BECOMING JANE photos thread below posted a link to an article in the Daily Mail from a couple of weeks ago that we missed. First, the interesting part:
The pair, according to the film, are driven apart by their mothers, played by Dame Maggie and Walters, who disapprove because neither lover comes from a wealthy family.
Mothers? We sincerely doubt that Tom Lefroy’s mother will show up in this one. We think they mean Anne “Madam” Lefroy, who was his cousin, or possibly his aunt, we have to look it up and our books are not to hand. So this information is not especially dependable, but it could mean that our initial suspicion was correct and that Maggie Smith will play Mrs. Austen and Julie Walters will play Madam Lefroy.
Now, for the fun and games! Let the spork-fisking begin (as our line-by-line snarks have been delightfully labeled elsewhere).
JANE AUSTEN will be given the Hollywood treatment in two weeks when shooting begins on Becoming Jane — starring Anne Hathaway, James McAvoy, Dame Maggie Smith and Julie Walters. But the £9 million production has already been mocked by Austen experts, for whom the plot is not a truth universally acknowledged.
Mock? Who, us? *polishes halo*
The film portrays the author as a romantic who is inspired to write her greatest works by a thwarted love affair with Tom Lefroy, a real-life suitor with whom she flirted when she was 19. Helen Lefroy, Tom’s descendant and vice-chairman of The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom, has dismissed the “fanciful” idea that Tom and Jane shared a passion that was stifled only by their mothers’ disapproval.
So don’t blame us for this one. Not that we’re not enjoying it or anything.
Hathaway, who recently appeared in Brokeback Mountain, will play the author as desperately in love with Tom, a dashing Mr Darcy figure
D’OH!
played by McAvoy, exchanging smouldering looks on country walks and on the dancefloors of Hampshire mansions.
Douglas Rae, of Ecosse films, said that the passion would be as intimate as possible within the constraints of late 18thcentury customs. “There is a lot of passion in the film, but it is passion across the ballrooms and the soirées and walks with other people,” he said.
Well, that’s good to hear. Though we were hoping for at least one hot snog. If you’re gonna go fantasy, go all the way.
The pair, according to the film, are driven apart by their mothers, played by Dame Maggie and Walters, who disapprove because neither lover comes from a wealthy family.
And Mrs. Austen interfering in her daughter’s love affairs is like P&P how again? Imagine Mrs. Bennet turning away anything that comes in the shape of a lover to one of her daughters!
But Mrs Lefroy, 85, told The Times that this had little basis in fact. Tom, who was about to start practising law at Lincoln’s Inn, would have found Austen too independent in spirit, she said. “What people don’t wish to note is that after he met Jane he became engaged to the sister of his college friend, Anthony Paul. There are letters in Ireland that show she (the sister, Mary) was a fairly simple girl. I think he liked Mary because she was biddable. People of his ability didn’t want intellectuals. He wanted a housekeeper.”
That’s very interesting. We wish more people would keep in mind that both of them seem to have moved on to other relationships after this flirtation.
Romantic Austen enthusiasts point to correspondence from Jane to her sister Cassandra on January 15, 1796, which states: “At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow at the melancholy idea.” But the previous day she had written that she did not “care sixpence” about Tom. It is not clear in which letter she was being sarcastic.
Both, actually. All the letters about Tom have a rather lighthearted and silly quality to them.
Mrs Lefroy, who is Tom’s first cousin four times removed, believes that Austen merely mined Tom for information for her writing. “I do think she realised that her destiny was to write. If she had married and had children she would not have had enough time…
Hear, hear!!!!
… And she was so very emotionally tied up with Cassandra that she would not have wanted to leave her.”
Umm…not willing to go so far. No. Why couldn’t Cassandra have come to live with Jane and Mr. Jane? That was why she accepted Harris Bigg-Wither’s proposal, after all, so that her sister and mother would have been guaranteed a home. Fortunately, her brothers were able to provide it, as well as the independence Jane needed to write. They didn’t make the Austen ladies rich, by any means, but they weren’t starving in the hedgerows either. (We keep telling our siblings that we want them to pay our bills and keep house for us so we could write–and blog–full-time but they just look at us funny.)
And one more thing: about the comparisons to SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. The big difference there is that SiL was delivered with a great big wink. Nobody pretended it was anything other than a fantasy. If they show Jane Austen drinking out of a coffee mug with “Souvenir of Steventon, Hampshire” on the side of it, then the two films can be compared. (And we think that would be totally cool, incidentally.) If they deliver it as a straight bioflick, the comparisons to BRAVEHEART and ELIZABETH are more apt, we think. Don’t forget: MADE UP STORY!
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Helen Lefroy, Tom’s descendant and vice-chairman of The Jane Austen Society…
Mrs Lefroy, who is Tom’s first cousin four times removed…
Which is it; surely a “first cousin four times removed” is not a descendent?
April 3rd, 2006 at 2:21 pm
I thought she was a descendant of Anna and Ben Lefroy (Jane’s niece and Anne “Madam” Lefroy’s son). I could, however, be wrong; but if so, then she is a cousin four times removed. Correct?
There’s a bit of confusion in this article, as I pointed out.
April 3rd, 2006 at 3:38 pm
It seems like they are setting this film up by “formula”. I can almost guarantee it will go something like this:
Girl meets boy.
Girl and boy fall in love.
Girl’s and boy’s family disapprove.
Boy declares his undying love (while standing in the rain… having crossed three plowed fields).
Boy has a gut-check (wimp-out) moment… tells girl that perhaps their elders are correct.
Girl has nervous breakdown… takes to her bed… starves herself tragically.
Boy standing on deck of ship bound for Ireland (in the rain, with stirring, yet tragic score playing in background)
Closing shot: Girl with stiff upper lip and fighting back tears picks up her pen and (in a ah-ha moment) “finally” discovers writing.
Also, (my book is not to hand in my case also) is the Lefroy flirtation before or after Cassandra’s doctor fiance dies at sea? The doctor was more or less penniless, wasn’t he, so how could they say Mrs Austen would object to such a lover in Jane’s case? If it were afterwards, (which I think it is) then the writers don’t have a leg to stand on. (which in this case, they probably don’t care).
Yes, like you’ve said: MADE UP STORY!!!
April 3rd, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Oh, my. These reporters, they can’t resist the old “truth universally acknowledged” bit, can they?
The funny thing is, in its original context, that “truth” is an obsessive fantasy projected onto innocent & largely unsuspecting neighbors. A MADE-UP STORY!!!
April 3rd, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Okay, have the book now.
The Rev. Isaac Lefroy was Tom Lefroy’s uncle, so his wife Anne (Madam Lefroy) was Tom’s aunt by marriage.
Their youngest son, Benjamin, married Anna Austen, the elder daughter of James Austen, Jane’s eldest brother. Ben would be Tom’s first cousin.
I think Helen Lefroy is descended from Ben and Anna but I’m not sure. However, if she is, then “first cousin four times removed” sounds correct. Since (if that is correct) she also is descended from James Austen, she can be called a collateral descendant of Jane Austen, but not Tom Lefroy.
In re Teresa’s question about the time line of l’affaire Lefroy and the death of Cassandra’s fiancé, Tom Fowle: Tom Lefroy left Ashe for London in January 1796. Tom Fowle sailed for the West Indies, never to return, the same month. He was a naval chaplain, not a doctor, and yes, he had no money, which is why he and Cassandra did not marry, and why he accepted the job as chaplain; apparently he was promised a good living when the mission was completed. He died in February 1797 in Santo Domingo and was buried at sea; word reached Cassandra that summer, I believe.
Now, if they are in London later, it looks like Eliza was married to Henry–is the blond dude in the photos Henry? They married December 1797. Jane usually stayed with them when she came to London to take care of her literary activities.
Though various perspectives of the story disagree, I suspect that Jane Austen simply liked Tom Lefroy a lot more than he liked her–because ultimately, even if he later confessed to having “a boy’s love” for her, he didn’t marry her. I think that is partly the point that Helen Lefroy makes. And as Teresa pointed out, there were likely no objections on the Austens’ side, as long as they waited till he was admitted to the bar and had an income of some kind. They didn’t need their daughters to marry rich, only comfortably.
All dates and family info from Jane Austen, A Family Record by William and Richard Austen-Leigh and Deirdre LeFaye.
April 3rd, 2006 at 10:43 pm
*snort*
For some reason I got Tom Fowle confused with Dr. Stephen Maturin from Master and Commander.
April 4th, 2006 at 12:07 am
Does no one wish to comment on the Harry Potter cross-overs? Maggie Smith is Professor Minerva McGonagall and Julie Walters is Mrs Molly Weasley in the HP films.
(First time I’ve commented here.)
Bobbie
April 4th, 2006 at 10:39 am
That “coffee mug with “Souvenir of Steventon, Hampshire” on the side of it” would be such a blast, wouldn’t it?
April 4th, 2006 at 10:43 am
Or better yet: “Souvenir of Hampshire: Jane Austen Country!”
April 4th, 2006 at 10:45 am
As far as the HP reference goes, I don’t know that it even occurred to me yet, and that’s saying something as I am a pretty rabid HP fan. As much as I love her as McGonigall, I have to admit when I think Maggie Smith, I think of her in my favorite role in Gosford Park. I love it when the movie producer is telling the plot of the Charlie Chan movie and she asks how it ends. “I don’t want to give it away,” he says. She replies, with absolutely letter-perfect dead-on delivery, “Oh, none of us will see it.” I howl with laughter EVERY TIME.
April 4th, 2006 at 10:51 am
I think Helen Lefroy is descended from Ben and Anna but I’m not sure.
Helen Lefroy wrote a piece in the JAS Annual Report a few years ago (or a few decades ago?) about her ancestry. I’ll look for it tonight.
April 4th, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Comparisons to Braveheart and Elizabeth? I never saw Braveheart, and I HATED Elizabeth. In that vein, I certainly wouldn’t mind a biopic on JA if it actually contained facts. But, if it’s like Braveheart and Elizabeth, I will have to restrain myself from throwing things at the screen.