Burgo (Barry Justice) hysterically weeping on shoulder of his vampiric aunt, Lady Monk (1974 BBC Pallisers 2:3)
Dear friends,
Thus do all things come together: back to Palliser films & I find the Balzac book alluded to in the Pallisers is alluded to in Lost in Austen: if I can do it, there’s still a window for me to publish a paper on Palliser films. (Not sure I can as I’ve stacks of student papers to read, not to omit life’s daily tasks). Still trying, and what do I find but an allusion in Lost in Austen to the same book centrally used in Palliser 2:3.
About two weeks ago now I was told by the editor of a (proposed or coming) volume of essays on film adaptations of 19th century texts that there was still time (perhaps) and room for me to publish a paper on the Palliser films. Thus I’m now trying to devote my time — 6 to 7 hours a day I’ve managed thus far — to developing and writing a paper on the Palliser films by early January. It was at this editor’s suggestion I write a paper on Austen and film adaptations or Trollope and film adaptations for a possible published collection that began me on this long time work on films I’ve been doing the last three to four years.
I took it up and liked it a lot and took it much further. I thought I had long ago missed the “sell-by” date or the project had fallen through: she said other contributors were not wanting to write without a promise of publication for sure; maybe the publisher said no. It seems two essays are very weak and the publisher did not want to go forward. They are from the titles all so abstract and mine will not be but I assume since she said she liked what I wrote on my blog on Pallisers and her co-editor did (Thomas Leitch) I’d try. She invited me to use some of the enormous amount of material I’d created in my many blogs.
Well in an effort to find an angle I am thinking of using intertextuality in the Palliser films: Raven said more than once that he never owned a TV. He also never went on the set to supervise the filming of his mini-series. I have not located any allusions to other films that matter in his mini-series. He did worked hard and diligently and took more than 5 years over the Palliser scripts though I have found one type thus far: to books, political books specifically: The three episodes revolving Phineas’s time in prison have a striking allusions to Meredith’s Beauchamp’s Career:
Monk (Bryan Pringle, an honest thoughtful politician) picks up Phineas’s cell reading: Meredith’s Beauchamp’s Career (and then Trollope’s American Senator, Pallisers 9:18).
I went ahead and read that brilliant book and discovered that it may be read as a parallel type book to the two Phineas books (young man’s rise and near fall in politics) and that the allusion is significant in understanding the Palliser films’ take on the Phineas books. Ditto an allusion to the highly political (relevant) American Senator by Trollope in the same scene.
Now this is but one instance. In Pallisers 2:3, three times a character is seen reading Balzac’s Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans: Lady Glen twice, Mr Botts (both with grins) once.
Lady Glen (Susan Hampshire) as avid reader of Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes, Pallisers 1:2)
When Lady Midlothian comes to call, Lady Glen finds she is sitting on it and holds it out as the scene goes on. I know that Trollope said he was writing in the tradition of Balzac, and that Raven said he loved Balzac’s novels and referred to Balzacian country when he talked of writing the Palliser films.
So I’ve now read (and mightily dislike) an English translation of said novel: A Harlot High and Low by Rayner Heppenstall. I find the book at once revolting and a fascinating entry (so to speak), intervention into the French novel world of the 19th century by the masters (include Sand there). An online comparison of Hugo’s treatment of prostitutes and his reaction to the French revolution and huge injustices of society to Balzac’s probably captures why I disliked A Harlot High and Low.
And now to my finding: Yesterday I proctored three final exams — 2 hours and 45 minutes three times. So I got a lot of reading in 
. I did manage to churn through Balzac’s A Harlot High and Low (French: Splendeurs et miseres de Courtisanes) to the end.
For my project on Austen movies, I’ve now written four blogs on Lost in Austen. I find this movie fascinating and even enjoy it nowadays. Well, there is a studied allusion in Lost in Austen lost on those who have not read Balzac’s novel. The variously titled (the implication is all of these are phony) Marquise/Countess de or Madam) Serisy is an utterly corrupted and corrupting high society woman Lucien de Rubempre goes to bed with regularly — as do many of her escorts. She is one of the books courtesans (Esther, the book’s pathetic anti-heroine is its chief prostitute). It hit a memory chord and I realized that the startling fiction Amanda Price in Lost in Austen comes up with as a result of prompting by Wickham is an allusion to A Harlot High and Low.
Wickham (Tom Riley) teaching Amanda (Jemima Rooper) the dress and ways of the world (Lost in Austen)
The name is conjured up as one to conjure with by Wickham while he is dressing Amanda properly. He tells her to use it as one she can intimidate others with; thus are we are (those of us who recognize this) to know what Wickham’s been reading.
Amanda taking in the lesson of the Countess de Serisy
In the context of the film this does not criticize Wickham adversely because he is presented sympathetically as someone who can float through the world (the world “float” is Simon Raven’s used by Burgo Fitzgerald in his film adaptations of the Pallisers) even though he has no money or connections worth speaking of anymore; he’s a survivor and knows the techniques of lasting, including stitching for wounds, where women are who do this kind of thing, and we know he won’t mind when he discovers Caroline Bingley (denominated “Frosty-nickers” by Amanda) is a lesbian — we know she was planning to marry Darcy because it was the thing to do so know she will not mind heterosexual sex all that much. She doesn’t mind much, this hard female character. I remind all who have seen this parody re-creation Caroline is last seen jumping from Lady Catherine’s coach to meet Wickham waiting in the road for her.
Caroline (Christina Cole) playing hard flirtatious games with Wickham from the carriage
Amanda uses it at Rosings in front of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. It’s the first moment Lady Catherine treats her with any respect.
Amanda shortly before she plays the Serisy card for Lady Catherine (Lindsay Duncan), with Jane Bennet (Morven Christie) by her side
Lady Catherine is unwilling to insult or dismiss anyone who comes with the compliments of the Countess de Serisy. The address and place in Paris that Amanda comes up with when Mr Darcy asks her could she give them a bit more information about this Countess de Serisy who wants to send her compliments to Lady Catherine de Bourgh are those cited by Balzac whose seething distaste is found in the chapter of the novel (Penguin, p 349) called “A Parisian type.”
That Darcy is suspicious shows he is sharp and that is not quite fooled also shows he’s no dunce.
Darcy (Elliot Cowan) dubious
But that he never heard of this name or woman or place gives away he is something of an innocent (uncorrupted) man when it comes to the demi-monde.
I should mention that the paper I gave at the recent JASNA at Portland, “‘People that marry can never part:‘ an intertextual reading of [the gothic] in Northanger Abbey” has now been published jn Persuasions Online
Thus do all things come together,
Ellen
From Rebecca:
“I thought of this after reading Ellen’s recent post. I’d like to teach an undergrad course on Austen, but I get a bit frustrated when students have watched the movie instead of read the novel and want to compare (this just happened when I taught *Enduring Love*.) One of the reasons I don’t like to discuss movies of Austen’s novels is that I do not feel expert in films-as-texts; there’s a field of study that considers films from texts as being wholly distinct and only tangentially related and to me that seems like in fact an entirely differnt sort of course to teach. I would like to know if anyone has had success in helping students differentiate between the two genres and keeping them separate–or even out of the discussion?
–
Rebecca Alice Shapiro (*&)”
One thing I didn’t mention in the blog which I’d like even to emphasize in this comment is how fiercely misogynistic is Balzac’s book: I know the text could be taken as a partly a satire on the cruel attitudes towards prostitutes one finds in equally vicious people, but that’s the rub: equally vicious; Balzac loathes prostitutes high and low, and by that he means unchaste women. Read against say Hugo or Sand, he’s deeply reactionary. Online one comparison of Hugo’s treatment of prostitutes and his reaction to the French revolution and huge injustices of society to Balzac’s probably captures why I disliked this book
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/courtesans/Literary.html
This is not so of Lost in Austen. Guy Andrews and Dan Zeff seem to revel in Madame Serisy. They are amused. Perhaps the mode of parody and fantastic time-traveling allows this; on the other hand, when you take into account the obsession in the film with the female characters’s virginity and Darcy’s slow acceptance of Amanda as she is (a woman who has had a number of men and lived with one for a year), the carelessness over the original context of the allusion is similarly troubling.
And it’s worth commenting that this kind of erasure of the meaning of the original text allows for other things: for example, during much of the 20th century set texts for reading for French studies regularly ignored Sand (who shows sympathy for grisettes everywhere, especially _Horace_ which we read here) and chose Balzac, they are inculcating cruelty to the most vulnerable women. The only Sand chosen would be her late pastoral tales. They did assign Hugo but he idealizes his good women into saints.
E.M.
On C18-l John O’Neill wrote:
“I teach a seminar entitled “Jane Austen: Text and Film.” I assign students to read and study the novels and then to read and study their film adaptations. I spend a week on adaptation theory. I always assign at least two adaptations of each Austen novel, because I want students to understand that an adaptation of a novel is not the same as the novel. One of my mantras is this: “A film adaptation of any novel is a reading of the novel.”
I’ve just finished a semester of the seminar — the 8th time I’ve offered it, I believe — and I think it has been pretty successful.”
So I responded thus:
I use films a lot — for different reasons all of which I’ve come to think are legitimate. It’s not simply comfortable self-justification but experience over a number of years, and in the beginning Grave Doubts.
I agree with John that one way you can get students to see films as films and different from their eponymous novels (not the only source of the film by a long shot) is to show different film adaptations of the same book. Also take time to outline the film versus the book: you show them how differently everything is arranged and how many new scenes there are not in the original and how much is omitted or changed.
In my experience (and I’m just now reading — among many batches — one set of papers on one of the films two of my sections watched over the term) you can get many students to discuss film techniques surprisingly boldly — they are great on lighting, shots, angles, music, actors too, costumes. You can get them to notice how two films are alike. So films-as-films is not the problem.
The problem is the same one encounters in close readings of books. It is the unusual or rare student who can read a text and come up with an accurate reading or interpretation. The step from the literal thing we read and what it means is intuitive, a leap and must come partly out of the mind of the reader. One reason literary criticism sells so badly (and is bought by libraries or other academics or people who write literary criticism themselves) is few people really “see” this level of a text. They don’t want to read a book about that which they don’t see.
So I find it’s the unusual or rare student who having been shown or him or herself described these filmic techniques or changes, then goes about to show the changed meaning. This step is very hard. They can parrot the new meaning if they read it elsewhere (or you tell it them) but to come up with it themselves (which means they really understand it — the fragility of knowledge comes in here, how we don’t know what we may think we know unless we can process it in our own idiolect), but it doesn’t take much to find out that in fact they are thinking the meaning of the film is ‘just about” the same as the book. You can quote Primo Levi at them on how (from his Periodical Table) two different things are different when they are changed every so slightly, but they don’t take it in. What does happen for many is the film becomes a gateway to the book (as in Diana Casey’s article in Linda Troost’s collection).
Is this so bad? I think not after all. The reality is so many people get so much of their information from film so the exercise of showing how they are part together is worth it — hoping to show them propaganda techniques here. I said I use films for different purposes. I will have students who can’t understand very well what they read; the film helps enormously. The work of conceptualization and tone is hard and some can’t do it, especially if the book is long. So I’m not above it any more as this way I take more students with me.
What I try to do is discover which book has been beyond most of them and they are taking what they understand from the film. This is easy to do as the student gives this away in what he or she remembers — I can tell what’s from the book and film. If I have assigned such a book, I admit I usually drop it after that. This term I discovered that James’s Turn of the Screw is beyond most students; they get a great deal of depth and understanding from Nick Dear’s film, but as a literature teacher I want them to be able to read the book too. So while it may be that Dear keeps this text alive nowadays, I’ll drop both
.
Ellen
From Judy:
“It sounds as if you are very busy with all your projects – I hope they are all going well. The paper on Trollope films sounds like something which you will really enjoy doing and be able to get your teeth into. I’m thinking I will resurrect my costume dramas blog in the New Year and concentrate on classic adaptations as I get the most response to those, maybe going back to Dickens.:)”
“Many thanks regarding the comments about Austen and film because I think that I was being biased against another form of textuality (and perhaps my students). As I was reading your posts I was reminded of how very difficult it was to get students in a graphic novels course to discuss textual
elements other than the words–they couldn’t see the visuals as legitimate and new forms to analyze. This is obviously something I need to explore more.
Rebecca Shapiro”
In response to Rebecca,
I suggest that until recently the French have been way ahead of us, and if you think about Deleuze’s books studying movement-, action, time-images, you can see how free one can become of narrative and character. To my mind it stems from an earlier free-wheeling criticism like that we find in Bachelard, Barthes. They willing to dare to talk about what an image brings to mind and move intuitively.
It is not easy to do unless you can take your reader with you (get them to agree and see what you see).
Ellen
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