Becoming Jane News Roundup: Miss Hathaway Meets the Press Edition
Our busy social whirl has whirled us right past the premiere of Becoming Jane last Tuesday night. Fortunately the ever-alert Fourth Estate has picked up our slack. Herewith a selection of coverage of the big night.
“I really thought there was no chance I was going to land this part. It just seemed absurd that the girl from ‘The Princess Diaries’ would play Jane Austen,
Oh, that’s okay, honey. We’re not sure who you played in the movie, but it sure wasn’t Jane Austen.
“I did a comparative essay on ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ funny enough, on how Jane Austen seemed to use real life examples (in her novels),” she said. “I got a B plus.”
Ooooh! Aaaaah!
The Arizona Republic stuck with a basic Q&A format:
Q: How was it working with director Julian Jarrold?
A: Very easy. He’s a completely easygoing guy. He wanted to make sure we were making a film we believed in but also one Austen fans would respect.
*raises eyebrow* Okay!
Last up, the Philippines site Inquirer.net, which delves a little deeper than some of the others.
She continued, “You can’t eat when you’re wearing a corset because your body can’t digest food.
Women wore corsets for hundreds of years–and even ate in them!–and the race managed to continue. We can’t help wondering how someone can play a historical figure and have so limited a view of history as to make such a short-sighted statement. Also, properly-fitted late Georgian/Regency stays should not be so tight as to cause digestive problems.
We asked Anne if she buys the notion that Jane Austen’s romantic heartbreak over the affair with Tom Lefroy, who reportedly inspired the Mr. Darcy character in “Pride and Prejudice,” sparked her writing.
“It’s a very controversial argument,” she answered. “I don’t think she needed to find Mr. Right to write. I shouldn’t say that because I’m the star of a movie that says she did.
Huzzah, dear! Nicely said.
The one time Vassar College and New York University student continued, “I think Jane did have heartbreak in her life. Not just a romantic heartbreak but she had extreme disappointments brought on by a lack of money and by society’s views of what a woman could achieve. Her sad life is probably more responsible for motivating her to write.”
Oh, you were doing so well. Her “sad life?” Because if she doesn’t have a maaaaaaaan she had a “sad life?” She couldn’t find fulfillment from her writing, her family, her friends? No wonder we wanted to find the nearest semi-sharp object and open our jugular vein after seeing this film.
July 27th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Kudos to the staff of Austenblog for working really fast.. I was just reading the Philippine Daily Inquirer this morning and thought if I should send a link, and was surprised that it’s already posted.
Keep up the good work!
July 29th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
About the corset–it couldn’t posslibly have been properly-fitted if she made that comment on it. They must have been running on the notion that if you could still breath, it obvously wasn’t “historically accurate.” Honestly. Who on earth was their costumer, anyway?
July 30th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Mags, honey, you sound desperate in your contempt for this film. You hate the idea of it; we get it. Just because Anne made a joke about corsets doesn’t mean she has a short-sighted view of history. Your singular obsession with one novelist implies that, indeed, it is you who has a rather limited range of perspective. Jane didn’t need a man to validate her life, but navigating the human experience without a partner is a sad way to live, regardless of what you say (and dare I guess, how you live your own life?). Much of Austen’s subject matter confirms that she likely shared this sentiment. No, she wouldn’t marry without love. No, she wouldn’t accept a subservient role in a marriage. Yes, perhaps that’s why she died unwed. However, don’t fool yourself into thinking it didn’t make her life a little sad.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Actually, I love the idea of a biofilm about Jane; just not this one. When I think Jane Austen, I think humor, fun, light, bright and sparkling, not oh-poor-Jane-she-died-without-a-man.
I need to go through my books to find the references, but there were some comments made by one of the nieces (I think Caroline Austen) who saw some of the letters before Cassandra burned them, and they indicated that Jane, later in her life, was happy to be single and childless because it freed her to write (and it’s likely that, had she married, she would NOT have been childless, let’s face it). I don’t think it’s sad she never married. She wasn’t alone. She had Cassandra, Martha Lloyd, her mother, her brothers, her nieces and nephews, her friends. And I doubt she would have wanted anyone feeling sorry for her or thinking her life “sad.”
And saying “you can’t digest food while wearing a corset” (especially, as I said, late Georgian/Regency stays) is like saying “you can’t digest food while wearing control-top pantyhose and a push-up bra.” They provide about an equal amount of constriction, in other words, just enough to smooth things down and boost things up. It’s not like they wore tight gowns and had to be laced tightly; they needed support up top and good posture for their fashions to look right, and that’s what the stays provided. It didn’t come across in the article as a joke, it came across as ignorant and short-sighted, especially from someone professing to have done sooooo much research.
July 30th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I don’t feel sorry for her, either, to be frank. She had a great life and tremendous success. I think a critical person would be drawn irresistibly to the conclusion that a woman whose subject matter was almost exclusively romantic love would not have been saddened to have died without it, though it is impossible to know. Even more difficult to digest than a hamburger while wearing a corset, however, is you basing your riposte, given all that you’ve said about Made Up Stories, on what someone remembers of a letter before it was burned. This makes your point of view less credible than the “Becoming Jane” script which was at least based on actual surviving correspondence.
July 30th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
a woman whose subject matter was almost exclusively romantic love
It was?
This makes your point of view less credible than the “Becoming Jane” script which was at least based on actual surviving correspondence.
It was?
August 1st, 2007 at 12:41 am
I think the sad time in Jane’s life was when the family was living in Bath, and they had no sense of permanent home or place–before they moved to Chawton. And yes, Jane’s lack of power and control would have come from her lack of a husband. Being a single woman in the 19th century meant lacking a home of one’s own to run, unless you were as lucky as Austen’s Emma, which wouldn’t have been likely. Jane was a powerful and wonderful woman, and I don’t think she’s made less so when we admit parts of her life were sad.
August 1st, 2007 at 11:35 am
“It was?” Part 1: If I’m mistaken and her works weren’t largely placed in the context of people falling in and out of love, please share with me the evidence. I’m not suggesting it is the subject of every sentence, but it is the context of most of her work.
“It was?” Part 2: From a link on your blog.
“The encounters included three balls, during which Austen and Lefroy danced and enjoyed each other’s company. After the last ball Austen wrote to Cassandra (January 9, 1796): I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. . . . He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. . . . [H]e has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove—it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded.
In Austen’s next surviving letter (January 14, 1796), she anticipates, with characteristic irony, an upcoming party at the home of Lefroy’s uncle: I look forward with great impatience to it, as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white Coat. . . . Tell Mary that I make over Mr Heartley & all his Estate to her for her sole use and Benefit in future, . . . as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care sixpence.
The next day she wrote: At length the Day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over—My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.”
The script took great liberties to fill in the blanks, but to base an argument against the artistic liberty taken based on the memories of someone who may have read letters that were later burned is weak considering your disdain for Made Up Stories.
August 1st, 2007 at 9:18 pm
In re Part 1: There is so much more to Jane Austen’s novels than the romance, which is why it’s a shame that the film adaptations so rarely get past it, and that someone can think her life and her oeuvre revolved around what was basically a high-school crush.
In re Part 2: The point of the page (I’m assuming you took it from the JASNA “Fact and Fiction” page) was to illustrate the tiny, tiny grain of truth that drowns in the morass of absolute fiction that makes up the film. If they were going to make up a story, they should at least have made up something good. And yes, I do find the memoir of someone who actually knew Jane Austen more valid than the almost complete disregard of the facts we DO know in the film.