Jane and the Doctor

If there is a sun in the solar system of ladies, located in Galaxy Anglophilia, which is smack in the middle of the Universe of Nerdery—if there’s an object of such size and immense gravity that it pulls everything else toward itself and gives it all something to orbit—that sun may lie somewhere near the intersection of Jane Austen, Sherlock Holmes (and especially Sherlock), and Doctor Who. And if this week’s news is correct, we may soon be feeling the pull of that sun: Mark Gatiss (Mycroft Holmes; also John Dashwood from 2008) has confirmed, vaguely, that he might be writing a Jane Austen episode for an upcoming season of Doctor Who.

Batten down the hatches, my friends. It’s all coming together.

Gatiss has written a number of Doctor Who episodes, and I’m sure he doesn’t need my help throwing a story together, but the opportunities here are practically endless. And so I present to you, readers, a selection of possible Austen-oriented plots featuring everyone’s favorite humanoid alien in a police-box spaceship:

– Henry Crawford is actually an alien masquerading as a Regency douchebag; the Doctor arrives to take him out and fly the TARDIS over the ha-ha. Fanny accepts the Doctor’s invitation to travel as his companion, and grows a spine as a result of her newly broadened experiences.

– The Doctor accidentally lands the TARDIS in the middle of the ball at Netherfield, where he accidentally sweeps Mrs. Bennet off her feet. Having realized his error, he accidentally forces Lizzy and Darcy to dance, where they fall in love and accidentally circumvent the entire plot of Pride and Prejudice.

– The Doctor visits Catherine Morland at Northanger Abbey. “I KNEW IT!” she cries.

– John and Mrs. John Dashwood are revealed to be selfish aliens with no regard for the human family unit. The Doctor chases them back to their corner of the universe and restores the Dashwood ladies to their rightful fortune, though they retain their lease on the seaside cottage as well, where the Doctor stops by every time he wants to hear the sound of the sea on Earth.

– Anne Elliot meets the Ood, and gets along with them pretty well.

– Emma Woodhouse attempts to matchmake the Doctor with Miss Bates; he politely and regretfully dashes off to chase the Cybermen out of the strawberry patches at Donwell. He and Mr. Knightley celebrate and commiserate later with a nice glass of Scotch.

What about you? Where do you see the Doctor showing up in Austen?

Catching Up with Emma Approved

So, now that’s been five months, I guess this is the point where I confess to you that I haven’t been doing a good job of following Emma Approved. I meant to! I honestly think what Pemberley Digital is doing is pretty interesting, and after my epic Lizzie Bennet Diaries catch-up, I promised myself that this was the time I’d stick with it.

And then…I didn’t. I’m currently twelve episodes in—a little less than a third of what’s currently out.

To some degree, this is not the fault of Pemberley Digital or anybody else, except myself: I am terrible at watching videos on the Internet, period. If you are not an awkward college-choir rendition of a choral piece I’m trying to learn, or a meme that everybody else went crazy over six months ago and I’ve been pretending to understand ever since, I probably am not watching you on the YouTube machine. I am trying to get better about this. Internet video: sometimes it’s fun!

But there ARE some choices on Pemberley Digital’s part that I think have helped me keep my distance. First of all, I have to say that the changed-names thing really threw me off. Back when we discussed EA for the first time, a commenter explained that they’d changed a few characters’ names so as not to overlap with characters in LBD: since the two series take place in the same universe, they didn’t want to have a George Knightley and a George Wickham. I get that, kind of; clarity is key, and I can see that picking other historical-sounding names also might not have been the best choice, either. But ALEX? ALEX KNIGHTLEY? It’s a small detail, but it makes me crazy. (Not, however, crazy enough that I didn’t exclaim over Mr. Knightley when I saw him in a car commercial the other day. Good on you, getting TV jobs!)

This brings me to some less-small details: primarily, what’s the deal with Miss Taylor? I see Annie’s value in terms of establishing Emma’s character, but her storyline in the series doesn’t come from the book; it doesn’t even serve a corollary function here. In the novel, the Taylor/Weston wedding is practically a footnote, and a minor bummer for Emma. In the series, Emma creates a circle of havoc trying (sucessfully) to make it happen when Miss Taylor has cold feet. In any case, isn’t Harriet’s story enough to let us know how Emma operates? I hear there are further plot deviations later, and I guess I can’t shake my fist about them until I’ve seen them. (Motivation!)

It’s not that I’m not enjoying what I’ve seen. I think Joanna Sotomura makes a great Emma, and I remain intrigued by the tie-in Internet presence (and surprised it hasn’t simply eaten Pinterest whole). I like Harriet and B-Mart (hee). I just…have concerns, I guess.

What about you all? Are you watching Emma Approved? What’s your take?

Jane Austen Roundup of Internet Greatness: A Woolf, A Troll, Etc.

What’s that you say? It’s the end of the week, and all you want is some fun Jane Austen links while you wait for the weekend to appear? Well, don’t say we never did nothin’ for you.

Virginia Woolf on Persuasion and the unwritten novels of Austen (via New Republic)

The Quotable Jane Austen for Evil People: Persuasion Edition (via The Toast)

Action Jane and Thorin Oakenshield Fight A Troll Doll (via AustenBlog)

Deborah Yaffe on Goofy Austen News (Girl, we feel you.) (via Deborah Yaffe)

Stamps Celebrating Pride and Prejudice’s 200th Birthday Are LOVELY (via The Guardian)

(Especially delightful: Northanger Abbey. That GLOW!)

Let’s All Sit Around and Talk About Which Austen Heroes Are Our Soulmates! (via Buzzfeed, obvi)

(Answer: Knightley.) (It’s because I said Mindy/Danny, isn’t it?)

I now pronounce it The Weekend. Be free! Be free!

 

Happy Valentine’s Jane

Okay, everybody: Today is Valentine’s Day. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Today, have you confessed your continued love and faithfulness after an eight-year break? Spent some quality time with a friend (while her husband putters in his garden)? Squeezed the hand of a beloved sister? And let’s be real: Have you sent someone a picture from the Internet to express the depth of your affection?

Oh, you’re missing that last one? Let us help. We made these Valentines just for you! Take them to heart, send them to your loved ones, and remember: We love you like Mr. Rushworth loves a puffed sleeve.

(For you ladies who would prefer see Mr. Knightley fully clothed [we assume to better remove his clothing in your mind], here’s a different version.)

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Would You Rather…

Put away your pride and your high hopes for the world, kids; today, we’re playing a game. It’s Would You Rather: Austen Edition! So, tell me.

Would you rather…

…be single and a burden to your parents OR marry Mr. Collins?

…share a dorm room with Mary Bennet OR Miss Bates?

…fall down a hill in the rain OR fall off the seawall in Lyme OR fall off the ha-ha?

…be daughter to Mrs. Bennet OR Lady Bertram?

…find yourself suddenly dating Mr. Willoughby OR Mr. Wickham?

…be poor in a cottage by the sea with no servants OR be very wealthy but married to Mr. Elton?

…never be spoken to again by Mr. Bennet OR Mrs. Bennet?

…take a turn about the room with your crush, OR allow him to admire your figure from afar?

…wear a necklace from Mary Crawford OR play a pianoforte from Frank Churchill?

…marry a guy who said something mean about you at a party OR a guy you haven’t seen in eight years OR someone who points out your screw-ups?

Aaand GO!

 

The Holiday Letters of Jane Austen

 

What a year! Sadly, we lost our father and then our brother and his greedy wife took the whole inheritance. We moved into our current home–it’s a bit snug, but at least we don’t have too many servants to keep us comfy! In the spring, Marianne injured her ankle (b00), but also met a nice young man and another nice older man (yay!).  Elinor keeps the house running (and seems to have met a nice young man, but we don’t know what his deal is yet), and Margaret just sort of…does whatever. Happy holidays from our family to yours!

 

This year, I turned the big two-seven. Still single, but what can you do? Spent some time at the beach, and it looks like my friend Louisa’s going to be okay. If you know any lonely but faithful (and handsome) sea captains—and by that I mean, one very specific lonely but faithful (and handsome) sea captain—you might want to subtly let me know. Merry Christmas!

This year at Longbourne has been very exciting! Three of our girls were married, two of them taking us quite by surprise, and two of our sons-in-law are very rich! (I’ll let you decide which is which!) Mary continues reading something boring, and Kitty must find a personality of her own, now that our Lydia’s gone away! Mr. Bennet spent lots of time in his study. Maybe next year these old nerves of mine will get a break!

 

Happy holidays from the Woodhouse-Knightley household! Pretty much everybody we know got married this year, including me! Go figure. Mr. Knightley moved in so Dad could stay at Hartfield. The rest of the year was full of parties, picnics, one very mysterious pianoforte, and a whole lot of personal growth—but we won’t get into that. Just make sure to come see our new strawberry patches this spring, each and every one of you! Happy New Year!

 

Aaaaand, SCENE.

 

 

 

Happy Janesgiving!

Guess what, everybody? It’s pre-Thanksgiving, Austenacious-style! Action Jane is at the head of the table, awaiting her eggs and onions; don’t you see the glow of the twinkle lights (or maybe that’s just, you know, the Internet)? Afterwards, we’ll have alcohol-spiked cream. But first, let’s go around the table and say what we’re thankful for! I’ll start.

I’m thankful for Emma Woodhouse, who is a lovely girl and a bull in a china shop, all at once, in the way that people are.

I’m thankful for Jane and Mr. Bingley, who are always pleasant and forebearing, and never get anything done.

I’m thankful for Mary Crawford, who is neither a heroine nor a villain, but is interesting nonetheless.

I’m thankful for Anne Elliot, who proves that sometimes we find love with handsome sea captains even after the advanced age of twenty-seven.

I’m thankful for Mr. Knightley, who can be a little judgmental, but is mostly a really good guy.

I’m thankful for Elinor Dashwood, who keeps it together until the very end, and for Marianne Dashwood, who keeps it together almost never.

I’m thankful for pianofortes, for necklaces given in friendship/schemery, for trips to the strawberry patches, and for treacherous walks on the seawall.

I’m thankful for Mr. Collins, and Mr. Rushworth, who love expensive staircases and wear pink.

I’m MOST thankful for you—yes, you, specifically—who share your thoughts, and your humor, and your reading time with us on an astonishingly regular basis. Truly, you guys are the best.

So, Austen Nation, what are YOU thankful for?

 

 

(In other news, Austenacious is taking Thanksgiving week off. See you after the turkey settles!)

Emma…Approved?

Emma Approved, the new adaptation of Emma from the creators of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, premiered yesterday on YouTube. We’re exactly four minutes and twenty-four seconds in…which sounds like Judgmental Conjecture Time to me!

My first thought was, “…Do I like this person? I’m not sure that I do.” Which, of course, is the beating heart of Emma. I assume that I feel like giving her the side-eye because Emma Woodhouse is cutesy and self-important, and I’m watching an excellent portrayal of those elements of her personality, and not because the performance itself is cutesy and self-important. I reserve the right to change my mind. Much like Miss Woodhouse, I accept only the best from my webseries.

Not to generalize too much, but I wonder whether Emma isn’t also a slightly harder “get,” demographically.  In terms of Austen fans on the Internet, nerdy, goofy Lizzy Bennet is Our People, and Ashley Clements is Our People (if you don’t know this, you clearly are not Twitter-stalking her, as we are), and so it was easy to embrace her. Emma, aside from being a less wholly likeable character than Lizzy, is less Us than Lizzy. After all, who feels handsome, clever, and rich—or beautiful, clever, and brilliant, as it’s put here—on a daily basis?

Also, you guys, can we all agree that “beautiful, clever, and brilliant” is no “handsome, clever, and rich”? As with every time Jane brings up money—which was, oh, only ALL THE TIME—I think the “rich” part of Jane’s original equation is important. I miss it, and also I wish “clever and brilliant” were less redundant.

Anyway, all that said, I think their take on a modern Emma is spot-on. She’s a lifestyle blogger, because of course she is, and the Emma Approved tie-in website is perfect (check out the outfit roundup!), not to mention a brilliant marketing opportunity. The modernization of these stories is something I think these folks do really well—I keep going back to my deep relief that, in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Charlotte Lu got a job with Mr. Collins, and not a lifelong relationship built mostly on gardening; the shift makes perfect sense for the modern world without losing emotional heft. I look forward to seeing how they take on a particular mysterious pianoforte.

(I gotta say, though, the name changes totally take me out of it. That dude is adorable, but Alex Knightley? GIRL, PLEASE.)

One down, many many to go.

 

 

 

And Now We Come to the End: Emma, Chapters 51-55

Today, readers, is the big day: the end of the era of Emma! Should we all hug and cry and say we’ll see each other during summer? Shall someone play “Free Bird” as our class song? I don’t want to make a speech. Someone else should do that. And then in four to six weeks, someone can mail us that all-important piece of paper, to declare that we all read this really long and cringe-inducing novel and came out the other side. Ready?

First, a few minor observations:

– You know, I WANT to be cool about Mr. Knightley and his crush on the junior-high set, because it was a different time and I don’t think Jane meant anything by it (though we’re certainly allowed to be scandalized by Wickham and fifteen-year-old Georgiana Darcy, over in that other universe), and we all know Mr. Knightley is nothing if not an obnoxiously upstanding citizen. But that “saucy looks” comment is totally not helping.

– I do, however, love Mr. Knightley’s comments about the inconvenience of giving a large musical instrument as a gift. Once, a college friend spontaneously gave my roommate and me a betta—Simon the Wonder Fish!—who was beautiful and a source of great joy for about six days, when he died, probably because we were keeping him in a plastic lychee-jelly bucket, which in retrospect was likely  full of BPA and other fish-murdering toxins. That was one dramatic fish funeral (in the bathroom, naturally). I feel like a pianoforte at a house that isn’t even your own is probably kind of like an unexpected pet that’s going to die in less than a week.

– And, okay, it makes me so happy that Mr. and Mrs. George Knightley live happily ever after in her home, or rather her father’s home—that Mr. Knightley gives up his estate for the good of goofy old Mr. Woodhouse. Because he is judgy, yes, but sweet! Which I suppose is the conclusion I’ve come to in general. Judgy, but sweet. I think I can live with that.

– As delightful as Paul Rudd is in Clueless—and everything else; let’s be real—I keep trying to insert him into a plain old Regency adaptation of Emma, and failing. I just don’t think he’s stern enough unless he’s talking Clinton-era environmentalism, you know?

Sooo, this is the end of Emma. And…what? We started this read-along primarily because Mrs. F couldn’t hang with Emma herself long enough to get through the book. I guess the question is: do we feel differently now, about her or about the novel?

I think I’m mostly relieved: not because Emma marries Mr. Knightley in the end, though I enjoyed the romance portion about a thousand times more than I remembered, but because she doesn’t stay who she was at the beginning of the novel. (This is my main complaint about Mansfield Park—Fanny Price never learns anything, so what, exactly, is the point?) I don’t know that I hate Early Emma as much as many of you, but can you imagine—nobody points out the horror of her comment to Miss Bates (or anything else), and Emma remains exactly who she is and continues leaving a wake of social and emotional havoc behind her, and maybe she never marries, or maybe she marries somebody like Frank Churchill, who thinks she’s always right. Hartfield and the surrounding area, and eventually Earth and the moon and the sun and the universe, are sucked into a black hole of her self-regard. And that’s the end. And all because Mr. Knightley failed to deliver that key lecture in that benevolently affronted tone of his!

Okay, maybe it’s not quite like that, but…kind of. In any case, Emma is the Austen heroine who most harms other people with her flaws—the rest simply hang themselves with their judginess/lack of self-control/overabundance of self-control/overabundance of imagination—which I think makes her redemption seem extra necessary. When she finally does change, the release of tension is palpable.

I still have my doubts about Frank and Jane Fairfax, but you all already know about that. I just don’t know, you guys.

So. Now that it’s over, how are you and Emma? Lay it on me.

The Good Parts: Emma, Chapters 41-50

So am I right, or am I right, or am I right: this penultimate section is where Emma gets good.

Because: the strawberry patches of Donwell, and then Box Hill. Ohhhh, Box Hill. What I love about the climax (or whatever the bad version of “climax” is) of the novel is how very Emma it is—just a thoughtless remark, something true but unspeakable, aimed at someone so helpless that it’s like a hawk attacking a baby bird without realizing that it’s a terrible thing to do. Like, maybe it wouldn’t get EATEN so much if it would stop being such a BABY BIRD.

But after the carnage (and Mr. Knightley’s lecture; I don’t know WHAT kind of bird HE is, and maybe this simile is dying anyway) comes what I see as the greatest single moment of character growth for Emma in the whole novel. Of course the best recompense for Emma’s words is the one thing she never wants to give Miss Bates: her time, and therefore her respect. I love this—it’s not an elaborate apology, which would only embarrass Miss Bates further. Emma’s deliberate visit to the Bates house displays the kind of thoughtfulness she’s never been thoughtful enough to realize she was missing. It’s a nice moment, is what I’m saying.

(I forgot to say earlier that I love the part where Mrs. Elton is pleased to see the strawberry patches of Donwell, but would have been just as happy with the cabbage fields, because she really just wants to go somewhere. Anywhere! It gives me such comfort to know I’m not the only one who gets this way, even if it’s me and Mrs. Elton. Usually, it ends with my mom and a spontaneous ice cream cone. So that’s nice.)

And then scandal—scandal!—comes to the Bates-Fairfax home, and you guys, I have such conflicted thoughts about Frank Churchill. On one hand, I think he’s the least of the Austen scoundrels. Can we even call him a scoundrel? How about just a garden-variety tool? So he flirted with the ladies while he was secretly engaged to a nice girl. Because my previous memory of this book was practically nonexistent, I kept waiting for him to have defiled somebody and left her pregnant and alone. But no! He got cranky in the heat, kept his engagement on the DL (by mutual consent, though), and anonymously bought the lady a pianoforte. Gee, that guy’s the worst!

But then I also think: is this the ending we want for sweet, pretty-much-awesome Jane Fairfax? Jane the author presents Jane the character’s happy ending with Frank Churchill as…well, a happy ending. And I just keep thinking that, pianoforte aside, she could do better than that guy. Doesn’t Jane deserve someone noble, who has a good relationship with his mom and doesn’t use his undercover-taken status to hit on girls in front of his fiancee?

Maybe this is just Jane being realistic: the nice girl ends up with the guy who’s kind of a jerk without being actually THAT bad, and likes it. I guess that’s a thing that happens.

Aaaand then we waltz our way into the home stretch of romantic-comedy territory, and seriously, it’s so much fun. Emma loves Mr. Knightley, but oh no, maybe Harriet ALSO loves Mr. Knightley, and Emma’s really trying to stop screwing poor Harriet over, but maybe in this situation it would be worth it, and Harriet thinks MAYBE Emma might be wrong about something, but anyway it’s all okay because Mr. Knightley loves Emma too. And only since she was thirteen! So THAT’s a relief.

“…If he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he would have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.” IS THAT A JOKE ABOUT MR. KNIGHTLEY? (This is like that one time in Jane Eyre where there’s a joke, and it throws me off every time.) Not a natural comedian, and not really a graceful subject of humor, that George Knightley—he’s too busy being noble. But I guess in his moment of romantic bliss, Jane gets away with it.

What do you think, readers?