ASECS, Albuquerque: Film Studies/Avoiding Erasure of Women’s Literary History/Race a cultural not biological construct/self-parodying theater

Olivia Williams as Jane Austen, writing Emma (Miss Austen Regrets, Ch 3)

Dear friends and readers,

This is the second of two conference reports on the ASECS conference I attended this past spring. You have ahead of you brief records of a session on “The Eighteenth Century on Film,” and of the titles of the papers on some Jane Austen films I missed (!); a session on Fanny Burney and women’s literary history; the plenary lecture on race, and a dramatic reading of a farce the last session of the conference.

“The Eighteenth-Century on Film” panel occurred late Friday afternoon (5/19/10, 4:15 to 5:45 pm). The first paper, by Srividhya Swaminathan, was on Amazing Grace: “The African Slave Trade and the Cinematic Eye.”

Inspirational moments

Ms Swaminathan suggested everyone can see that the way the slave trade and 18thc culture are depicted in this film is celebratory, biographical and hagiographic: 2007 was seen as an anniversary of the act of 1807. What has been less noticed is how it shows progress on race as a function of Christian belief which urges reform on people. That the movie was conceived as a vehicle to launch a missionary effort is shown by the “official website” which reveals the movie was funded and distributed by an evangelical wing of the Christian party (so to speak).

There are many historical inaccuracies in the film; but what it does reach out to do is dramatize Wilberforce’s conversion experience. We get a history as a progress narrative enacted by privileged white (mostly — all but one) men.

The movie is careful not to disturb the viewers for real: there is no dramatization of the middle passage at sea; no one seen at real labor on the plantations, no one whipped or left to die. Romance images abound.

Simple equations are made: The Duke of Clarence who is pro-slavery is also a snob, so he is easy to recognize and there is an implication an uncommon type.

The realities were highly complicated and serious reform can be said to arise from many people working for abolition. What is important here though is that this movie was funded by an evangelical group who were pushing a glorification of Christianity (as saving us from slavery) and conversion experiences.

Religious groups in US society have long been exempt from taxes because it’s said they are not political. Nothing could be further from the truth (as we all know). Here though is a flagrant instance of how popular entertainment of a supposed middle brow or ‘high quality’ costume drama, complete with prestigious actors used to forward an agenda.

The second paper, by Peggy Schaller, was another talk on Patrick Leconte’s Ridicule: “Ridicule and Role-Play 18th century feminism in contemporary film. In 1996 Ridicule was nominated best film of the year; it has impressive stars, enticing costumes, witty dialogue, was a box office success.

Ms Schaller showed that three female stereotypes in the film dominate the film: a highly sexualized woman, powerful and first seen naked; a young innocent mademoiselle, and and women as workers (servants, housekeepers, in taverns).

A typical moment and costuming of a woman from the film

Greer Garson as delicate lady with muddy dress (1940 P&P)

The third paper, by Janet Aikins Yount, “Pride and Prejudice of 1940: Aldous Huxley’s Approach to Cinematic Adaptation,” was a filmic analysis of the imagery of repeating objects in the film (like chickens) and of its ethical inferences. She seemed to have immensely enjoyed its silliness as part of a Utopian escape/refuge perspective for moviegoers leading up to WW2.

The proposal scene with Laurence Olivier as Darcy (another of the many non-comic high romance moments in the film)

The two early Friday sessions I missed were entitled: “Adapting Austen: Theory and Practice.” The first was chaired by Byrcchan Carey and the papers were Rachel Brownstein’s “A Pride of Prejudices”; Nora Nachumi’s “Doing Mr Darcy: Sexing up the Adaptations;” and David Richter’s “Theorizing Adaptations of Austen: From John Dryden to Dudley Andrews.” The second was chaired by Katherine Ireland and the papers were Andrea Cabus, “New Spaces: Austen Adaptations as Popular Intrusions into Critical Dialogue;” Deborah Nestor, “Selling Aunt Jane, or When Does Interpretation Become Appropriation in Adapting Jane Austen;” and Eleanor Ty, “Postfeminist and Other Guilty Pleasures in Guy Andrews’s Lost in Austen.

I love its opening paean to escape (Jemima Rooper as Amanda Price diving into her book, from Lost in Austen)

Je suis très désolée that I missed these. I write out names and titles in order to enable myself to keep an eye out for any papers by these people which may turn up in periodicals. Maybe my next paper on a film study will be on Miss Austen Regrets which I’m falling in love with — because it is so serious and I can take it seriously (see still at the head of this blog). I still grieve because I missed a paper on the 1999 mini-seris Aristocrats which I have asked about repeatedly on listservs, but the person who gave the paper stubbornly will not share even his or her thesis.

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Juniper Hall, Germaine de Stael’s residence where Burney was welcomed and Burney met her beloved husband

I attended two Burney sessions. I’ll treat the second first: organized by the Burney society, the topic was fashion, and I admit I found myself uncomfortable with the acceptance of some of Burney’s cruel humor (the monkey scenes in Evelina) and also the materialism and performative point of view on life implicit in talking about fashions in Burney. The conservative and pro-establishment- and conventions point of view in Burney came so strongly, I felt this was a post-feminist Burney (on post-feminism see below and “This long morphing life”).

The first session was not billed a Burney one, but “The Contrary Marys: The Fictionalizing of Wollstonecraft” (3/18/10, 9:4–11:15 am) turned out to be four papers mostly on Burney’s parodies of Wollstonecraft in The Wanderer; or Female Difficulties. In Tara Ghoshal Wallace’s “Self and Text: Wollstonecraft in Burney’s The Wanderer, Ms Wallace showed that we have a continuum of women who find themselves at risk of being criminalized because of the social institutions and customs they are surrounded by. So even if Elinor Joddrell (the Wollstonecraft) burlesque is over the top, the other women fleeing appalling husbands, unable to make a living, persecuted, losing their very voices make the hysteria of Elinor understandable. Ms Wallace was strongly persuasive on how the other women characters in the novel are intensely abused so that we are in a nightmare world where women do not succeed in freeing themselves or supporting one another. They all inhabit separate silos of pain.

Jennifer Golightly asked “Where in The Wanderer is Wollstonecraft: Radicalism, Feminism, and Jacobinism in 1814,” and suggested we should read Elinor as another Emma Courtney (from Mary Hays’s epistolary novel), showing outspoken unconventional norms of behavior, and unconventional sexuality. She linked these to Harriet Freke (Edgeworth), Mary Crawford (Austen) and Adeline Mowbray (Amelia Opie). Elinor empathizes with Juliette who is the book’s quiet and successful feminist.

The title of Andrew McInnes’ paper shows it was overlong and complicated, “Wollstonecraft’s Empire: Misogyny and Miscenegenation in Edgeworth’s Belinda, Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers and Opie’s Adeline Mowbray.” He spoke it too fast; I gathered he was trying to show how Wollstonecraft’s way of seeing women’s lives haunts these novels. I could not get myself to sit and listen to the fourth paper because my own session was coming up and I became too anxious in mind.

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“Do you imagine in reading my books that I am drawing my portrait?
Patience: it’s only my model” (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes (a detail), women’s baroque

The session called “Writing Women’s Literary History: Problems and Possibilities” (held Thursday, 3/18/10, 4:15 to 4:45 pm) was an exhilarating experience because so many people crowded into the room, all the speakers spoke with enthusiasm, and there was a lively question and answer discussion afterwards.

The chair was Jenny Batchelor who said she was troubled by the idea we are now in a post-feminist era, which seems to be a label to hide the reality that people are moving away from recovering women’s writing and overturning attitudes which disvalue and ignore it.

This then was a session on how to revive women’s literary history. Now we are being told (in the last decade) that women’s literary history is recovered, there is no need to rescue, and one can see since promotion and prestige come from studying men’s literary history and male texts, that “minor” women’s texts are again being forgotten, work is stopping, and we are told we are in a post feminist era.

This is not so at all. i don’t write explicitly feminist blogs on politics myself any more: but three minutes search turns up the huge disproportion of what is published by men as opposed to women, how much attention is paid to men’s causes. As to the politics of women’s lives, just yesterday I came across a news time where a woman high minister in Angola is trying to pass legislation to outlaw wife-beating. She knows it’s not enforceable, but it’s a start. Wife-beating is still common across the earth.

So this session was about ways to keep women’s literary history studies and a feminist progressive point of view going. It’s not easy because often you have to cross boundaries where lines are set according to male publications. Translation studies, crossing eras, and private papers are of enormous importance is recovering women, as well as huge compendiums of older history where women are simply named.

The women made suggestions on how we can continue to carve out areas where we find women’s books. Gillian Dow’s paper delighted me because she argued for what I so strongly believe in and wish I could do more of: she said that women’s novels crossed continually between the UK and Europe, and we need to unearth and study the networks of women responding to another across languages: e.g., Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote and her translation of Maintenon’s letters have French counterparts. We must look at the afterlife of texts: how they are edited and presented by later women. Julie Chandler Hayes argued for researching into vast compendiums for the names and histories of women writers and to study women as patrons and salonieres more.

Rosalba Carriera, detail from La Chaise, Venetian roccoco

Susan Carlile also looked at intersections between novels, especially the classic and famous ones by men and how women’s versions of these (say Sarah Fielding’s David Simple vis-a-vis her brother Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews) depart from imposed conventions. What did women write about Grandison or Clarissa (Sarah Fielding’s “Remarks”)? how translate Amelia (Riccoboni’s translation of Fielding). We must look through and past self-condemnations in books like History of the Penitents too. She quoted Susan Stave on how women had to conform to accepted modes, were barred from institutional education; we should look at anthologies like Poems by Eminent Ladies (1755). Look at their letters to one another, and also see them as colleagues of male writers.

Laura Engels spoke of women’s autobiography and how they present themselves as professionals; also of how we need to cross boundaries of centuries so we need to study Anna Jameson (a woman who began life as a governess, and boldly quit to write and when she made a mistake in marrying, managed to leave the man and eventually carved an existence out for herself as an independent travel writer and student of earlier literature). Anna Jameson belongs to 19th century studies but her studies are of 18th century women. If we go into the private papers behind the publications, we find treasure troves to rescue and recover.

I thought this an especially important point: Julia Kavanagh, a 19th century women writer is one of the first to write a history of women’s literature, and she writes about the 18th century. So you have to encompass both eras. (But this does not follow how people get jobs as a specialist in one era and I could see the limitations of some of the professed claims to try to do things differently. People affirmed the importance of periodization.) I also was so chuffed to see one of the women whose work I know and love (Jameson) turn up in this session.

Devoney Looser talked of how we should keep up a virulent scepticism that feminism has done its task; there is much left to be done. Her thing came out of her recent book: we need to study more older women or books written when they are older, their lives then. We have been over-valuing transgression, so to speak for itself too. We need less commitment to individual authors too. What about the vast body of anonymous work? We could and should look there.

The discussion afterwards was a bit demoralizing as it didn’t take long for someone to say, well we must not ignore men, someone else to worry about “being in a ghetto.” If the amount of people in the room were a sign of real interest rather than not having something better to go too, if these people were in a ghetto, it’s a hugely populated one.

Angelica Kauffman, Virgil at Brindisium, late 18th century neo-classicism

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The plenary lecture was given by Ruth Hill, a professor of Iberian studies and long-time student of 18th century American history. It occurred Saturday afternoon and was entitled “Race and the Atlantic Divide.” Her argument resembled that of Steve Olson in his Mapping Human History. Olson (who I read with my Advanced Composition on Natural Science and Tech students) demonstrates that biologically speaking we are across the earth so intermixed there are nowadays very few (he counts four) groups of people so separated from others that there distinct genomes produce a genuinely different look in someone. Now these distinct looks are a tiny part of each of our chromosomes.

Here is in a nutshell is Olson’s argument:

There is no genetic base for separating groups of people acros the earth as of different races; the salient features we pay attention to are tiny and not very important (texture of hair for example, color of eye). All the people on the earth have mitochondria which can be traced back to a single woman living about 150 to 200,000 years ago in Northeastern Africa.

We look different because of sequences of nucleotides on some of our chromosomes; these sequences are called haplotypes and peoples who have them are in the same haplogroups or races.

Race is shown to be a cultural concept, a construct used to shore up power and privilege. Everything is then done in education, bringing up children, and segregating groups of people to make them act differently as to manners and knowledge, clothes, language.

This was exactly Hill’s central point. She assumed that we would understand that race as a concept is a human invention, a cultural state of mind, and tried to show that before Darwin and supposed biological justifications of separating people into distinct groups, an acceptance of hybridity among individuals was assumed and accepted.

In a sense she was attacking the uses of science made by our society since the 19th century. She argued that folklore is less racist than more modern theories and the really rigid use of barriers emerged in the middle of the 19th century in the ferocious attempt to keep slavery going. She used the Spanish part of the US to show mixings of all sorts of peoples. She also spoke of an Atlantic divide and suggested that there was much more separation of peoples in Europe than the US (where we had so many native non-European asian featured people — Indians). Simply, there were lots of interracial couples.

Her mantra: color practices are social and not natural. In her formula, attitudes towards women by men are affected by their racial characteristics. Women were judged and evaluated first on the basis of how they conformed to different norms of female beauty, the European type feature being especially coveted. But if you look, you find mixed features repeatedly and people did realize and acknowledge this.

It also sounds liberal, decent, humane, but one problem in her talk was when she got down to documentary proof, she began to quote letters from Jefferson and she showed this man carefully distinguishing several generations of cross-race sexual births, and when one got to be an 1/8 black Jefferson really seemed nearly to accept the person as the equivalent of white. She also took heart in how Jefferson seemed to look at different races of human beings as so much animal husbandry.

It seemed to me these letters showed just as much intense racism as those who looked to large biological differences and didn’t worry themselves (so to speak) about degrees of mulato. She claims that Jefferson is taking hybridity seriously. Well, only when the person was not already a slave; if they were, then they were property. And would he have married a daughter of his to such a person. In the quoted letters he is also talking (in effect) theoretically about how many generation it takes before someone can pass for white.

How can one take heart from any of this? or argue that hybridity is an effective idea?

Also I wondered if Jefferson really saw the whites as equivalent to animals or only the blacks and mulatos. His talk about animal husbandry troubled me. I’d like to know if he allowed his friends to go to bed with black women slaves in his house as it is apparent Washington or one of these founding fathers (Madison?) and others did from printed copies letters I remember being shown

Further, when her speech was over, several of the questions (to my mind ironically) showed people really didn’t think of race as a cultural frame of mind at all. Further, some people appeared to be controlling their sense of offense at what had been shown. They needed to read Steve Olson. But even then her argument was not (to me) quite convincing.

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An engraving of Beggar’s Opera: contrasting it to Italian opera

The last event Jim and I attended was a dramatic reading and half-acting of George Colman’s “New Hay at the Old Market: an occasional drama” (1795). The usual people took large roles: John Richetti had two large parts, Lisa Zunshine, Christopher Mounsey. It was fun to see how the actors at the time could make fun of their own plays and the politics of who got to have what role, plays that are about the theater, but the session was over too quickly.

People were embarrassed to ask questions because that would seem to take what had happened seriously. I understand why this happens: there is the fear that people will start to be competitive or feel bad if they don’t do their part well if there is not enough joking. However, as I felt I had missed a long morning, I was sorry to go to a shortened session and really did want to ask questions about this farce. In this kind of session people also jockey for position to sit next to their friends or an important person, so it does begin more to resemble some of the bad aspects of luncheons.

Writing the conference up this time and looking at the sessions I missed above, and all the sessions with interesting topics about art, music and things I know little about (Venitian pastiche) that I could have gone to (instead of joining in on the popular easy play), I promised myself that the next time I go to one of these conferences I will not be lured away and will try new topics, and follow my own impulses. I know I won’t be able to go to one of these for a quite a while to come, and maybe that will galvanize me not to care who I am with or if anyone does or does not talk to me, but care very much for the privilege of hearing those really at work on my interests, look for the genuine, honest and non-pompous. How old do I have to be to be firm for myself?

Ellen