Please divert your Cluebats
I have some good news and some aggravating news. The Compendium people have heard the aggravating news before, and so has Bethany... but it is possible that my readership extends beyond this, at least to Whitney (look at that; I've mentioned you again!) and Jenaba and ABFG, so I am going to post it here because I CAN.
But first the good news. Some of you may have heard of a movie hitting the US this summer entitled Becoming Jane. It is supposed to be a biopic about my girl Miss Jane-- Jane Austen, that is. Unfortunately, it has quickly become apparent that the movie is not so much with the accuracy to historical fact and is, in short, a Made-Up Story. This news grieved me to hear. The bad part is that they're marketing it (as they did with King Arthur, and you will remember it bugged me then, too) as The Absolute and Factual Historical Truth Beyond Dispute in All Ways. I am here to tell you now, it is not that. Heed the disclaimer: Becoming Jane is a Made-Up Story. Yes, Jane Austen did briefly know a young man named Tom Lefroy and they were infatuated with each other. But he was a) a respectable young man, unlike in the movie and b) practically engaged to someone else, so Jane's mentor, his aunt (I think?) Mrs. Lefroy c) encouraged him to go away so as not to entangle Jane's feelings which were d) not yet very serious, and they e) more than probably never met again. He could not be fairly called the inspiration for all of her best work; that is silly. He was not anywhere near the love of her life. As plot details have come out, Janeites everywhere have been up in arms, dealing out liberal punishment with the Cluebat of Janeite Righteousness (tm Austenblog).
Per a reviewer on Austenblog, however, the situation is not so bad as it was generally believed to be. My main problem was the mangling of historical fact which is absolutely known. The rumor was that, for example, they were going to have Jane's sister Cassandra get married. Which she never did. Because her fiancee died of the yellow fever. She and Jane lived their whole lives together; well, Jane's whole life, anyway. However, a person who went to see an early screening said that the first half doesn't have all that much stuff that is Made Up at all! Cassandra does get engaged, but her poor fiancee is dead by the end of the movie. No vows exchanged. I hate to be relieved about Thomas Fowle's dying, but... well, it should be accurately represented. Anything else is unfaithful to his memory and Cassandra's. Of course, the second half of the movie takes some major license, and Jane does a thing or two that she would never, ever have done (whited out for spoiler): HALF-ATTEMPTED ELOPEMENT WTF!. However, this seems like more the kind of thing you can take dramatic license with. Like, we don't have anything written down saying that Jane did or did not do this thing, and while of course she didn't because all of her characters who do it are irresponsible and stupid, which indicates that she looked down on the practice... the fact that it's in the movie doesn't bother me so much, as long as we all keep in mind that the movie is a Made-Up Story. The other quibbles with the movie have to do with the costumes being from all over the place, time-wise, the dancing being wonky, and the whole thing looking too much like the 2005 version of P&P. These things don't bother me too much. I think it's actually kind of smart of them to play off of the most recent version of Jane Austen's work that their target audience would have seen, and it could even be cool. The period things... meh. I'm not a purist when it comes to movies. I liked the 2005 P&P. I'm a very forgiving audience member, and if I intend to like something I usually do. This report gives me hope that there will be plenty to enjoy in Becoming Jane, and that pleases me. I now want to see it once again. Hooray!
Now for the aggravating (Ally, if you read this... and you remember who it is in reference to [not you, I promise]... um... well, you can beat me up if you want to. I won't be hypocritical. I just feel the need to vent this. I don't expect agreement or even comprehension.):
Something happened in Women in Fiction the other day that really pissed me off. There's this rather cynical girl in my class, who is just way too objective in my opinion. This particular day she began a comment with, "What I don't like about Jane Eyre..." or "What's wrong with Jane Eyre is..." or maybe even, "The reason I don't like Jane Eyre," I can't remember, and something about how she has no follow-through and constantly undermines herself and sabotages her own happiness and sells herself short of living up to her ambitions, or something. Which is kind of crap anyway. I mean, do you have no concept of having to balance a liberal mentality with a conservative time period, GEEZ! Just because Jane's ambitions are not yours does not mean that she is not a fully self-possessed woman who achieves what she wants because she is determined and has a will to do so! And this girl did the same thing with Elizabeth Bennet ("The thing I don't like about Elizabeth, the reason I just don't like her is that she's vain and selfish." PLEASE! There is a difference between selfishness and self-respect!).
This same person adores Fevvers, the heroine of Nights at the Circus, which takes place in 1899 but was written in the 1980’s, with 20/20 hindsight and a modern mentality. The worlds can’t even be compared. As I wrote in my notebook, “No. You don’t get to say a word when you like this cartoon of a woman and you insult those who do not have wings.” (Okay, maybe she's not that cartoonish, but literally, Fevvers has wings. Are you incapable of seeing a woman metaphorically fly?) While a modern author can perceive the means of breaking out of social structures, how were Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte supposed to do the same when they were fighting for the simple privilege of women being considered as rational human beings? They could manipulate and subvert those structures and make them work for them. When Jane and Lizzy get married, it is no different from a woman today deciding to get married. You can’t say that’s wrong. They earn for themselves the option of choice. That is not a cop-out. That is not weakness. Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet are remarkable women. And…
I realize why this bothers me so much. It is because I am the opposite of objective. I always want to be on these characters' sides. To defend them, to the death. Why do I feel this way? Because. For me, this girl saying this was like her attacking one of my friends. It was like her saying, "What I don't like about Marten is..." or "The reason I don't like Bethany is..."
And what's a person's natural response to this kind of attack? You want to beat that person up. To defend your friend, because he or she is your friend and YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT MY FRIENDS LIKE THAT.
Of course, I care about and love my real friends more than Jane and Lizzy, because Jane and Lizzy are fictional. I do realize this. But at the same time, throughout my life, there have been times when it has felt like these fictional heroines-- Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, Jo March-- were the only ones really there for me; when I was alone and I was upset I could imagine them there, I could imagine what they'd say; if I felt like no one in my real experience could understand what I felt like, there would be someone not real who I felt like could, had she been real. It’s not the same as defending a fandom, like I have done in the past with Star Wars, etc. That’s more like, if you don’t get it, that’s your problem. This is more personal than that.
And that is why there was almost a smackdown in Women in Fiction.
In the words of Jane Austen (via Henry Tilney, one of my foremost pretend boyfriends), “The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.” In this spirit, I have introduced a new lj tag, “the intolerably stupid,” to deal specifically with people who piss me off with their literary stupidity.
But what makes it more frustrating is that I feel like I let Jane down. I wasn't able to defend her like I should have. For one thing, I felt like there was no opening to talk, and second, I wasn't sure what to say and couldn't trust myself to give the subject the coherence it deserves. Still, if I don't defend these heroines, who will? So I’m venting a bit here. And now I am finished.