Tuesday Open Thread: Mr. Darcy Is Consumed With Lust Edition
If that title doesn’t bring the fangirls running from their RSS feeds, then we’ve completely lost our touch. 
This week’s open thread is less random than usual, and in fact is reflective of the meta fun we weirdo Internet types have with Jane Austen and her work. We don’t think she would mind much.
Alert Janeite Kirsten sent us a link to the latest Kate Beaton comic. We’re big Beaton fans at AustenBlog World Headquarters, and would love to read her take on a P&P comic–it’s bound to be hilarious.
Alert Janeite Sion sent us a link (and Alert Janeite slw2004 posted in comments) a link to a blog with Uncomfortable Plot Summaries to many books and films, including Pride and Prejudice:
Woman with gold-digging mother nags wealthy man into marriage.
WHAT? Lizzy doesn’t nag. (But that’s why it’s uncomfortable, we suppose.)
This is an open thread–let us know what’s going on in your patch of Janeiteville.
Comments are closed.
Har! I thought those plot summaries were a hoot! So wrong, and yet so right!
LOL! Thanks for the laugh this morning–loved the plot summaries and the comic
.
Marilyn Brant
According to Jane, Oct. 2009
Thanks for the laugh with the plot summaries!
I was surprised to find a Jane reference in the memoir I’m reading, Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. The author describes his life after his wife passed away very suddenly, and how he has all this useless knowledge he learned from her.
She loved to sew, so he knows a lot of things about making clothing, and he describes sitting in a room of women watching the A&E P&P, where the women are talking about Jennifer Ehle’s dresses. He starts going on about the empire waist and they all think he’s crazy for being a guy who knows those things
Apparently I’m the go-to girl for my friends when it’s time to play “identify the period movie.” I helped a friend yesterday on the very vague mention of the girl’s name being Amy identify Little Dorrit. (We were positive once I asked if it contained the ‘new’ Mr. Darcy and it was confirmed!)
I am currently reading Carol Shields’ “The Box Garden”, and there’s a great Austen reference. The main character is talking about her distant relationship with her sister, and says,
“had we been shaped by a tradition of kindness and had our sensibility been monitored by learning, we might even have resembled Jane Austen’s loving, clinging, nuance-addicted chains of sisters with their epistles and their fainting spells and their nervous agitation and their endless, garrulous, wonderful concern for one another. As it was, we were stamped out of rougher materials: dullness and drudgery, ignorance and self-preservation.”
Emma4 pictures are at http://www.pemberley.com/bin/emma/emma.cgi?read=30665.
IMDB has Dan Fredenburgh down to play John Knightley.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0292744/
During the scene in Little Dorrit when Arthur read Amy’s letter, I suddenly wondered if the romance in Emma Watson would have been more believable had Emma and…whats-his-name, her gentleman had a similar correspondence instead of just the one letter declaring his feelings and she realizing she returned them.
I’m currently reading a biography on Maureen O’Sullivan and it touches briefly on her playing Jane in Pride and Prejudice. The author mentions that in this version Elizabeth was the oldest of the sisters. I’ve seen this film but don’t recall there being any mention of Lizzie being the oldest instead of Jane. I wonder why they were switched them.
To Rosa– perhaps because Lizzy is more forthright, they believe it makes the most sense for her to be oldest. In the 1949 Little Women, Amy is older than Beth instead of the other way around, because the filmmakers likely figured that Beth’s shyness would make more sense in a younger child.
Okay, clearly whoever thought Elizabeth was portrayed as the oldest sister was mistaken. I’ve seen the Greer Garson version many times, and they do refer to Jane as Miss Bennet, and Elizabeth as Miss Elizabeth, or Miss Eliza. I adore the 1949 version of Little Women, but yes, the filmmakers had a dilemma to deal with. Amy has to grow up. Beth dies (spoiler alert!
). So they tried to make Elizabeth Taylor look as young as possible, then let her grow up. By the way, Margaret O’Brien absolutely slays me as Beth. I weep whenever I watch that film.