Lost in Austen - an analysis [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

View Full Version : Lost in Austen - an analysis

Newcomer-2

03-11-2010, 11:59 AM

Lost in Austen, 2008 film.

A fantasy on Pride and Prejudice, directed by Dan Zeff, screenwriter Guy Andrews, staring, Jemima Rooper as Amanda Price who takes the place of Elizabeth and Elliot Cowan as Darcy. Unfortunately Gemma Arterton’s Elizabeth Bennet is a minor character in Lost in Austen. While she initiates the shift back in time through a bathroom portal a la C.S. Lewis’s magical cupboard, Elizabeth's into the 21 century London and Amanda's into the 19th. Bennet's household, the film does not offer us a clue why Elizabeth would do this or more important why at the end of the story she would wish to remain in the mad hubbub of present day London. However that's a quibble, since I enjoyed the take-off on Pride and Prejudice and highly recommend the fantasy.

Guy Andrews, not to be confused with Andrew Davis of the 1995 P&P adaptation, 'spares no expense with sets and costuming and the cinematography is lovely as in most Austen novels that have come to film'. Pemberly is visually stunning, more opulent than in any other adaptation and more historically accurate, especially in the formal gardens, than in any other adaptation and emphasizes the social distinction between the aristocracy and the landed gentry of the Bennet's family. An acute and ironic visual comment is the architecture of Collin's parsonage. Cold, vertical and dreary as is the character played by Guy Henry. Darcy's observation to Amanda “You make the most elliptical comments” applies to the whole of Lost in Austen as an original interpretation of Pride and Prejudice. I think that Austen would be pleased.

This should give you a flavor of the multiplicity of interpretations, adaptations to the P&P storyline. Amanda Price portrayal is contemporary, uncouth, as when in the Netherfield ball she kicks Collins in the groin, sarcastic of the proprieties and sensibilities, and at the same time nostalgic of Elizabeth's certainties. By shifts of perspective, Lost in Austen gives a new, deeper perspective and appreciation of the original.
A most unexpected and delicious is the reference to the 'Firth/Ehle' P&P, the infamous wet shirt scene where Amanda asks Darcy to jump, perhaps wade is more accurate, into the pool. I think the view is more lingeringly erotic for the juvenile Janites, than what Andrew Davis concocted and emphasizes the vulgarity of Davis vision.
The film is almost 3 hours long but too short as one hopes for more, especially of Elizabeth's adventures in the 21 century.

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 06:53 AM

THIS ESSAY MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS ALTHOUGH IT DOES NOT REVEAL AS MUCH OF THE PLOT AS IT LOOKS INTO IT

A lot has been said in the press about the series Lost in Austen: about the casting, costumes, story (Life on Mars) and all that is appropriate about a series. But I have not seen a lot so far about the series on a more analytical level. I will attempt to do that.

Brilliant as the series was in terms of scenery and everything else, brilliant it was too in terms of structure and approach. Not only the idea was great: having a girl of now get stuck in the world of then (although not totally original); but also the total concept was worked out very well by the author of the series Guy Andrews. As adapting proves already difficult, because one cannot get carried away with his characters, asking oneself how characters would respond in case something strange happens, is a real challenge. Guy Andrews managed that very well. I am not here to blow Andrews’s trumpet, but I will throw a glance at what the man wanted to say with his series. A lot, as it seems…

The first episode starts thus:

‘It is a truth, generally acknowledged, that we are all longing to escape.’ The main character, Amanda Price, goes on about the fact that she likes to escape to Pride and Prejudice, her favourite book; that she knows the words by heart; that that book is like a window opening into that world; that she can almost touch that world and almost see Darcy… Here she gets a little too much carried away for her own liking and goes back to the book with ‘where was I?’ It is only then that the opening credits start.

This introduction, apart from being a fun variation on the start of Pride and Prejudice, will mean a lot and sets the tone for a first facet of the series: the insecurity of women in this day and age, where they are modern women (self-confident, speaking their mind), but at the same time all dream about Darcy (as Elizabeth in the last episode will also show on the Google search page ‘The Darcy-obsession’). And why is this? That is what Amanda will come to understand as she goes on through the door which ‘her need only opens’ (in the words of Elizabeth Bennet) and gets on through the story of Pride and Prejudice.

If we read the start of Pride and Prejudice, which the start of Lost in Austen was inspired by and based on, we can easily see what Andrews meant. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.’ (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 1) We can begin to understand how Amanda feels: she looks at her own life and feels that she is supposed to do certain things (work, earn money, go out with her boyfriend and all kinds of things), and why? Because ‘it is so well fixed in the minds of the’ people that surround her. She ‘must be In want’ of all this. Yet, no-one asks her if her life is the one she wants.

Episode one starts with a portrait of Amanda’s life, a life we all know: having a job, a boyfriend, stress. ‘[She] patch[es] [her]self up with Austen.’ She is not the only one who likes to sometimes ‘stay in with Elizabeth Bennet’ (the success of good costume drama shows that) and yet, she asks herself the question if she is a loser… Is it so strange that she likes stories of 200 years old? is it strange that that story still speaks to her, despite its age? It is obviously a question a lot of women ask themselves… Women have everything to be at ease: they are no longer ‘the wife of Mr X’, they can earn their own money, they can divorce if they are tired of their husbands, they can have sex with whomever they want, as often as they like (even with different men every week) and what-not. They have everything to be happy, if we look back at the days of Elizabeth Bennet. In fact they are expected to be happy with this kind of life, because ‘we have already come so far’ as feminists would say… So, this girl feels as the men in Pride and Prejudice: such an awful lot is expected of her… She does not know whether that is what she wants, and yet everyone tells her she has no problems, so no reason to be unhappy or uneasy. Why does Amanda then need to ‘patch [her]self up with Austen’? What is it with Darcy and Elizabeth that hypnotises her and so many other women? Is it ‘Colin Firth in clingy pants’ alone, or is it more than that?

Just at the moment she reads Elizabeth’s sentence: ‘Had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner…’ (refusing Darcy’s first proposal), the bell rings and Amanda’s boyfriend comes in, totally drunk, and proposes to her with a bottle-opener… Indeed, ‘you are mistaken if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.’ (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 34) One of the most important moments in the novel and a turning point for both characters, will also become a turning point here. Of course, Michael is not as proud as Darcy in this case, but Amanda cannot possibly find it In her heart to marry him. She does not find him prince charming. She is not sure, and the ‘mode of his declaration’ was not at all convincing… It is the morning after that (or even the same night?) that she finds Elizabeth Bennet in her bathroom. Amanda next starts to reminisce about whether she was hallucinating, whether there is too much Austen in her life, or as her mother would profess: not enough boyfriend…

When she goes to her mother, a mother who is notably divorced and going through a midlife crisis decorating her house instead of having sex because ‘one can stop and have a cup of tea’, the two talk about the proposal. The mother is in favour of it: he does no drugs, does not beat her up, and she urges Amanda not to waste her life pretending what she is not. What can Amanda want more in a man? what is there more to find in a man? Amanda professes that she is not in love with Darcy, or ‘Colin Firth in clingy pants’, but that she has standards. She loves ‘the love story, Elizabeth, the manners, the language and the courtesy,’ ‘it is part of what [she] is and what [she] want[s].’ But will she be happy at the end of her life, though, waiting for prince charming? Or will she end up forever waiting because there are no Darcys in the world and frustrated at the thought?

It is after this that she reads chapter 59 of Pride and Prejudice: the conversation between Jane and Elizabeth after accepting Darcy’s proposal, and it is also then that Elizabeth reappears in Amanda’s bathroom. By this time, the novel’s characters have gone through a process of change: Darcy has come off his high horse and Elizabeth has come away from presuming she knows everything so very well… As Lizzy of Lost in Austen intimated the first time, it is Amanda who has opened the door for her, not she herself who decided to pass through it. And it will be indeed Amanda who passes into Regency England through the door in the bathroom because she needs to. After the door slams shut, Amanda is stuck and will have to start her learning process, with her copy of Pride and Prejudice almost as a guide tucked in her jacket…

It is then that she meets Mr Bennet, Claude as his first name turns out to be (very appropriately the name of a useless emperor of Rome, featured in another ITV-series I, Claudius), and that she declares that Lizzy and she have swapped places, because Lizzy is writing a book and the house was too noisy for that. Whether she is really writing one, remains to be seen. What is sure, is that Amanda is stuck in the story. That they indeed have swapped. She still tries to convince Elizabeth to open the door again, but Amanda’s need compels her to stay. A first light will be shed on that need, and the need of us all, at the ball of Netherfield where she kisses Bingley in a drunken fit of passion.

There she says what it is about:

‘In my world, Mr Bingley, all I ever do is dream about the loveliness of your world. The stately, elegant rituals and pace of courtship, of love-making as you call it, under the gaze of chaperones, of happiness against all odds and marriage… Here I am, I talk to you for two minutes, I kiss you and you… So I’m a little disappointed in myself, Mr Bingley. I feel like those guys that discovered that stone-age tribe and gave them the common cold, wiped them out. (Bingley sneezes)’

This in itself is not merely a declaration of frustration at her loose morals, compared to his (naturally because we are freer now than people were then. Free to snog outside the door of a nightclub), but it is also a declaration of her view on our freedom: the common cold wiped the tribe out. It is something the discoverers did obviously not think about because they have no trouble with it, but when it wipes the tribe out they see how potentially dangerous it is. It is because we are used to it, that we can fight it and conquer it. This, in Amanda’s mind, is also the case with us. We can kiss and make love (have sex as opposed to the use of the word in Austen’s times) with anyone without people questioning our honour, but have we not lost the importance of it all? As Michael, who asks for ‘Amanda’s hand in marriage’ with a bottle-opener, have we not lost the importance of love, family and marriage/fixed relationships in our society of total freedom? That is at least what Amanda seems to feel will happen to Bingley and the other characters if she carries on like she does; it is the same as what Mrs Bennet fears; and it is the same as what Lady Catherine fears and why the latter comes to take an attempt at throwing her out of Regency Society because ‘land, blood and property’ are the only things that matter. Amanda finds herself in danger of ‘spoiling’ the ideal world (of the noble savages) she discovered.

After this, Amanda tries to get Elizabeth back again (also partly because she herself is seducing Bingley instead of Jane), but again her need compels her to stay and the door does not open. This, time, a letter is shoved under the door:

‘My dear father,
I pray you, sir, not to trouble your mind about your most headstrong daughter. I quite flourish in Hammersmith. I’m minded to sojourn her alone a while. If I might be so presumptuous as to offer advice to my own father, then I would admonish him to pay particular attention to Miss Price. She is intimately acquainted with the doings of our family and I cordially believe her its most formidable ally. Trust her.

Your affectionate daughter, Elizabeth

Although this is a letter to her father, Amanda has to read it and pronounces ‘Trust her’ rather to herself than to Lizzy’s father. This provokes a thinking and it highlights Elizabeth’s role in Lost in Austen as an indication for Amanda’s learning process. Elizabeth was also born out of time, but in the end both Amanda and Elizabeth belong to the world of women, like Mrs Bennet and Jane who rebel respectively against Lady Catherine and Mr Collins in the end. Also the men will have to face up to their own needs, like originally Darcy did in Pride and Prejudice. Mr Bennet will take responsibility for his daughter, Bingley will rebel against Darcy and reproach him for losing him Jane, and Mr Bennet will also respect his wife better for speaking her mind. Like this he does lose ‘authority’ as a husband, but he will no longer see her as a sad burden who is overdue because the children have been born (though no heir). All this because of the influence of Miss Price (Bingley who ends up sneezing)… As Elizabeth and Amanda are both women, as ‘noble savages’ they should be able to cope in another society and change as a result, but only on the outside. Deep inside, both are good people and essentially the same although shaped by their own societal rules. Elizabeth will discover the modern world, while Amanda will discover more of a traditional role as a woman. Although Elizabeth stays true to her role as traditional woman, caring for the children of the Rosenbergs. As it turns out, all appliances are on, but are they necessary?

If we go back to the beginning, does this not indicate that people have and had a certain image of women? Women are not even allowed to choose anymore what they want, be it a more traditional role or a more modern one. In the days of Austen they were the property almost of their husbands and the only thing they needed to do was find a husband and have children. Now, they have jobs, they have relationships that start and even end, unlike in Austen’s days, they can even postpone having children, but are they still allowed to care only for their children and husband? can society cope with that view? or are they put inside a box, as the men in the second paragraph of Pride and Prejudice, so that they ‘must be in want’ of all this? What if they are in want of a Mr Darcy? That is probably what Amanda wants to escape to unconsciously when she reads Pride and Prejudice, only, it ‘frightens [her] to death’ as Lady Catherine puts it later in the series. It frightens Amanda to death because it is not what she learned she is as a woman. As in the second paragraph of Pride and Prejudice, people are supposed to be in want of something: women are now not naturally ‘in want of’ a husband, but now, they are ‘in want of’ everything else plus a partner, while there is no father in Western Europe who will consent to maintain his daughter(s) until she/they get married… As such, Amanda needs to discover her traditional side as a woman in that world of Regency England. And Elizabeth will have to discover her modern side, although with a traditional twist.

The first episode concludes after Jane has left for Netherfield, in an attempt of Amanda to save the day for Jane and Bingley.

Bibliography:

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Behind the Name

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813

Newcomer-2

03-12-2010, 09:27 AM

It's refreshing to read something intelligent and more so that attempts to get at the emotional truth of a work of art. Well done.

When you complain “But I have not seen a lot so far about the series on a more analytical level.”, I might point to the shortcomings of the Forum where analysis of literature get short shift to gushing. True that there has not been a psychological analysis but after-all Lost in Austen is a commercial, ie. entertainment venture, and if it succeeds beyond the banal, it is a reflection on the screenwriter and the director.
You might look at the review in http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/lost-in-austen-a-review-of-the-movie/, Jane Austen's World, as it is more thorough than the rest.

I differ only in your assumption that Lost in Austen can be watched as episodes on Blinkx, Youtube or Ovation. The work demands a continuity that is not possible with the interruption of commercials.
Would you read Il Canzoniere in fragments to get at the unreachable Laura?

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 09:42 AM

My avatar is not Petrarca, but Savinien Cyrano, better known as th base for the literary character Cyrano de Bergerac.

There are very good discussions on this forum, but it is calm right now. I don't know where the book club went, but they had some pretty interesting ones. It is pretty calm right now, everywhere. I don't think one should blame others for not wanting a deep, drawn out discussion. :hand:

At any rate, whoever wants to make something thorough as Andrews has done (because there is more to come), needs to do it in a drawn out way, even if that means in several episodes. Otherwise we have to go back to the days of Spartacus or Gone with the Wind with a sitting of 3 hours at least. We don't want that. Or otherwise we can opt for the Hollywood trash of nowadays which is not really worth watching.

The series is very thorough as it turns out and offers more to look at on even a forth time basis, but it needs its time.It only requires some concentration to be bal to watch it...

Virgil

03-12-2010, 10:02 AM

The book club is reading Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf. Come join us if you can. :wink5:

This is a very good essay Kiki. You certainly enticed me to watch the series, if it ever comes round. Was the essay for school or were you just wanting to write this and share?

jadrianne

03-12-2010, 10:10 AM

deals with with a lot of problems of nowadays society .I will try to talk about some of them.

First women have always wanted more freedom: freedom to choose their own husband , their own house, to have a job etc. During the era when Austen lived women were supposed to get married. To have a lover without being married meant for a woman to be marginalised by society ;this didn't happen to a man; the parents, the family played a very important role; they didn't let their daughter to have lovers .In modern times the family's role is constantly diminishing and thus the consequences.

If a man liked a girl ( such is the case in Pride and Prejudice) he courted her, danced with her etc..Only if the girl was too let's say stupid ( the case of Lydia) she would runaway with him ,by this provoking scandal .
But today it's very easy for a man to obtain from a woman what he wants, because most women think that if a guy likes them he will marry them .Big mistake ! This is the case of Amanda : she thought that life is like a novel, in the sense that a man would marry her if she moved in with him and they will live happily ever after (but in doing so she acted more like Lydia than Lizzie ).

It is a very unhappy case in my opinion : she finds her escape in a novel where courtship and true love are praised.Only when her boyfriend proposes to her in a very disgusting manner she realizes that she had done wrong and this is not the sort of life that she wanted!

Amanda makes her second mistake when she travels into the past: she assumes that all you have to do is to read the novel and to know it by heart.She forgets that she is not Lizzie but only an outsider and that she cannot erase all that she has learned as a girl living in present days in a flash .

kelby_lake

03-12-2010, 01:56 PM

In Lost in Austen, when Darcy finds the novel of P and P, why is he not surprised that it's a paperback?

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 02:24 PM

Haha, now that's a great pertinent question! It hadn't occurred to me yet, but actually you are right.

@Virgil:

Not an essay for school (I am 27!). I put it on here to share because I was so enchanted by i!

There are three more parts, though. Every one deals with one episode.

About the book club: I meant the Jane Austen one. Persuasion was a hit, then Sense and Sensibility was much less, and since then I haven't really seen anything.

I am now reading The Hunchback by Hugo in French, so I'm still scheduled to be busy for a while with that ;). So no Steppenwoolf for me yet...

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 02:30 PM

jadrianne

03-12-2010, 02:56 PM

is this : that we are given a unique chance to glance at a transformation ( with all that implies physically ( hairstyle,clothes etc) and spiritually ) of two women that are separated by time :

Lizzie the Austen era woman tries to become a modern woman and viceversa for Amanda?

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 03:04 PM

A transformation takes place, yes, but not as one would presume: Lizzy does not change more than her nature permits, Amanda neither.

I don't know how to say it... I think maybe the two merge into one kind of person, although with their own special tweeks.

Have you seen it? Otherwise you should really look for it. It is so so so good. I would say, one of the most original and best in the last few years. Romantic clap-trap, but with some background.

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 03:22 PM

Episode 2 starts with Amanda arriving at Netherfield in the rain, having run after Jane to try to get her back as she is at risk of dying from croup. Mr Darcy, like in the original story and the adaptation of 1995, can be called intrigued by this soaking wet woman. While at Netherfield, Amanda is compelled to eat oysters and larks while sitting opposite Darcy, but there is more than that: she is challenged to play. Amanda, who cannot play the piano and is not really very exercised singer, a truly modern woman, in the end sings Petula Clark’s Downtown.

When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go downtown
When you’ got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know, downtown

Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
[Lalalalalalala.. and] the neon signs are pretty
How can you lose?
The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares

And go downtown
(Things'll be great when you're downtown
No finer place for sure, downtown)
Everything's waiting for you.

That is indeed where Bingley and Lydia will go (just what he professed to do after Amanda had sung the song), or at least will attempt to go: Downtown to Hammersmith. However, the song also highlights the ability to escape to another environment when one feels alone. It is what Amanda tries to do in Pride and Prejudice. When she feels down, gets upset by people being unfriendly, is stressed because of her job… she reads Pride and Prejudice. Escape is, too, what Charlotte will do ‘when life bec[omes] irreparably’ boring and lonely for her; it is what she and Elizabeth agreed to do when they were children: to escape to Africa.

When Amanda is finally returned from Netherfield, after having saved Jane from an attack of croup with paracetamol and having told Bingley that she is a lesbian (in an attempt to make him fall in love with Jane instead), she returns to the door in the Bennets’ attic to tell Elizabeth about Collins who has just arrived, but as before, the door nor Elizabeth budge. Things now go totally wrong, as he proposes to Jane. Just in time, Amanda turns up with Charlotte Lucas, but Collins presumes it is Amanda who’d like to get married to him. In favour of her, he abandons Jane, but Amanda has not a mind to get married, although she is now engaged to him… In the meantime Bingley is ‘bewitched’ by Jane and Darcy starts his role as buttress, we will later see what significance the word has...

It is altogether strange when Wickham comes on the scene: when Mrs Bennet, cured Jane, Kitty, Mary and Amanda return from Netherfield: the wheel of their carriage breaks and Wickham arrives as the hero to lend them his carriage. As it will turn out, he will gain a greater role that is less villainous than in Austen’s original. He gives a first indication towards the theme for Amanda when he says to her: ‘You fascinate me. I confess it, you have endured great hardships in your life, as have I.’ This, Amanda, nor other readers of Pride and Prejudice, believe, but it will turn out to be true when the real circumstances of Georgiana’s so-called elopement are revealed. Darcy still does not want to know him, but so he does not want to know Amanda and there is a strangely common theme in that…

In an attempt to have Jane and Bingley still bond, now she has unwillingly high-jacked Collins, Amanda sends the two off into the garden to look for voles and tells them to sing ‘when they find anything’. The fact that they are going to look for voles is not surprising as it is an animal which is monogamous, knows ‘dating sites’ in nature, and as it is a species where males help to care for the little ones. The animal seems to be a coming together of Regency England and modern England: place where people meet in certain designated places (like the Assembly Rooms in Bath, and not in some or other bar), but where father also cares for the children. It is at this point in the series, that Darcy for the first time really speaks to Amanda, unlike the time they danced at the ball in Meryton, because he wanted to save the honour of his friend Bingley: ‘What advise you to sing, Miss Price? Because I have found something of interest.’ Amanda is stupid enough to ask what that is, and he answers: ‘You. You are not what you seem.’ And the two continue:

Amanda:
I can’t disagree with that. Look, I know you have a very poor opinion of me. That’s the way you are at the moment, and that’s ok. But one day, Mr Darcy, you will thank me.
Darcy:
In the meantime, Miss Price, you must content yourself with a warning. If you wound Bingley, you will find my displeasure painful and entirely unrelenting, for my…
Amanda:
…opinion once lost, is lost forever. Yes, I know.Darcy: (looks surprised at the expression)

What the two say here, especially Darcy, is striking. It is a first glimpse at his struggle. Wickham will turn out to be totally innocent and Darcy will end up fighting for his buttresses and he himself as a buttress, not knowing what he should think of himself (as in the original and the 1995 adaptation). It is ironic that he here warns Amanda not to wound Bingley as he is doing it himself (in the original and in the adaptation of 1995) by not taking seriously Bingley’s feelings and preferring society above human wishes. But he himself now starts to see something in Amanda that is not what is on the surface. Indeed, she at that point is not polished as normal people in his acquaintance and in a certain way she could stand for ‘the noble savage’ erroneously identified with Rousseau (who is also referenced in episode 1 implicitly when Mr Bennet has lent Bingley a book on Rousseau, but also more explicitly in episode 4 by Bingley himself when making a spear). The theory of the noble savage professed that all people were good at heart and that society made them bad. Rousseau did not believe this so radically, but he did profess that foremost a good society was needed to make good men. Essentially, Darcy sees something good in Amanda that he is not supposed to see and cannot believe that he can see, as he himself relies on society to tell him what is good. Amanda is clearly not of that society and is clearly an example therefore, of ill-breeding. Why does she fascinate him?

When the ball at Netherfield comes along, Wickham spreads rumours about the origins of Miss Price’s income of a staggering £27000 a year (compare Darcy’s income of £10000 a year! The 27000 was of course the wages of Amanda in modern day Hammersmith, which is a normal wage in modern day London ): her father is a fish monger. A fortune in trade was not the best you could get, and naturally, Collins does not want to marry Amanda anymore as he cannot have an income from trade if he is to become a bishop… He does not only withdraw his offer of marriage on that basis, but also advises her that wanting the society of Mr Darcy would now be a total impertinence. She, who does not care for this as a modern woman, can just not contain herself and kicks him in the balls. Although Darcy shows her the door politely, he is intrigued by this unpolished kind of person. And probably even more intrigued at his interest in that unpolished wretch…

The second episode then concludes with Jane marrying Collins, as he is now free from Amanda, and Charlotte’s decision to go to Africa. Although there is also another dialogue of Amanda and Darcy:

Amanda:
You are better than this. I know you are, Fitzwilliam Darcy, because I’ve had you in my head since I was 12 years old. So, why are you behaving like such a total… git? Jane has no money, so what? Bingley’s got stacks. What right do you have to thrash their love because of an accident of birth?
Darcy: (he stares out of the window)
There is no accident in birth.
A:
Do you know why I am so angry?
D:
You were born thus.
A:
I’ve been in love with your life for 14 years. Cut my heart out, Darcy, its-‘s your name written on it with Elizabeth’s. God almighty! Here, you are… one half… the greatest love story ever told. You. And you know what? You don’t deserve her.
D:
Is this interview concluded? It is so difficult to tell.
A:
You are such a disappointment, I can hardly bear to look at you.
D:
A deprivation I shall endure as stoically as I can.A:
You’re so relentlessly unpleasant! I just can’t get at the real you!
D: (until now he has been staring out of the window, now he turns to Amanda: )

Madam! Behold, Fitzwilliam Darcy! I am what I am! If you find yourself unable to get at an alternative version I must turn to being glad. I despise the intrusions of a woman so singularly dedicated to mendacity, disorder and lewdness. They repel me. You repel me. You are an abomination, Madam! Good afternoon to you. (Leaves the room).

From intrigue and fascination, in one go Darcy has gone to total disgust. As in 1995, he addresses nature for help through the window, his own human nature that is strangely attracted to Amanda/Elizabeth, but a nature which his society so much has polished that he cannot find it, like Amanda. As such, he is troubled when he finds himself strangely liking this ‘savage’. Their two views on societal structures also differ: Darcy, having been born before the times of Darwin believes that society’s structure is given by God, so indeed ‘there is no accident in birth’ and as he says in his very first scene: ‘God loves a gentleman, it is the gentleman’s duty to return the compliment.’ God loves a gentleman, because He has given him great wealth and power (to a certain extent) unlike to the poor, so he must do his duty and do what God expects from him (i.e. go to church, marry the one God would approve (as Caroline Bingley puts it the end)). Amanda, on the other hand, is born in a time where birth and status is not God-given and so indeed calls his status an ‘accident of birth’, which it is to her. Hardship and poverty are no longer at courtesy of God, but are one’s own responsibility. And so, he can change his views/behaviour, in opposition her who ‘was born thus’. He believes her to be born thus, so he himself is also born thus. There are not two Darcys within the one, or are there?

Bibliography:

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Moderators, please, if Petula Clark's song or any other transcription of dialogues is against copyright rules, then please notify me.

jadrianne

03-12-2010, 03:28 PM

a big problem arises :

What if both them become bored and want go back again?

Let's say that Amanda has nothing to lose : nothing good awaits her in modern times .What does she have : a boring job, a small apartament, a sellfish and ignorant mother, an ill-manered boyfriend?

But Eliza, well that's another question : she has a good father , a good sister Jane ( well although her sisters and her mother are annoying still you can't say that she doesn't hate them that much ) , a good friend ;it's true that she doesn't have a job but she is educated and she has attracted men that would like to marry her ( even if let's say that Wickham and Mr. Collins are not good suitors that doesn't mean that she can't meet someone interesting in the future-referring to the beginning of the novel where Mr Darcy hasn't made his proposal ) .Won't she miss the persons she loves in the future?

What if that door closes forever and she remains in the future?

Another problem: Lizzie is in the future but she is flesh and blood (she hasn't reincarnated herself in Amanda's body and neither did Amanda).So can she make a future of her own with no papers , no credit card on her name and not a small evidence that she has been born in the modern world?

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 05:34 PM

Yes, that seems a little strange, but I don't think one should think so far. We cannot actually go into another world, and Lizzie is not even real, so she can't actually step into Amanda's bathroom for real.

However, it would be possible to see Lizzie as a nonexistent side of Amanda.

But after all, does it mater whether it is really possible? More fantastic things have been without being possible...

Virgil

03-12-2010, 05:53 PM

@Virgil:

Not an essay for school (I am 27!). I put it on here to share because I was so enchanted by i!

:lol: So you are 27, what does that mean? I finally got my masters degree when I was 38, or around there. One can go to school at all ages. :wink5:

kiki1982

03-12-2010, 06:04 PM

Ok, yes. I suppose in my mind school euals young people or something?

Maybe I should start o a degree then, although it is not really necessary as housewife, but just maybe for my own pleasure.

:smilielol5:

Newcomer-2

03-12-2010, 10:44 PM

It would seem that I eared in honoring Kiki with Petrarch's laurels. I will not retract. First since the avatar looks like Petrarch and second who the hell is Savinien Cyrano? Has he earned the laurel wreath?

But to the point: in the 2nd. installment of L in A analysis, {EDIT}
What she does in the second part is summarize the story line, rather than analyze. What is the importance of Amanda singing Petula Clark's Dowtown? She can not play the harpsichord, emphasizing her limited accomplishments as a 19th. century lady. In the Dvd it has been edited out! An artistic decision? Now Darcy's speech is important, since through it the director gives us a glimpse into Darcy's character that is at odds with his portrayal in P&P.
When she summarizes that Amanda is free, that Collins breaks the engagement, she glosses over that Amanda knees Collins in the groin, in full view of the Netherfield assembly, and Darcy again comes to her rescue.
However the biggest error is her interpretation of Darcy's speech, “ ‘God loves a gentleman, it is the gentleman’s duty to return the compliment.’ God loves a gentleman, because He has given him great wealth and power (to a certain extent) unlike to the poor, so he must do his duty and do what God expects from him (i.e. go to church, marry the one God would approve (as Caroline Bingley puts it the end)).” and continues with “Amanda, on the other hand, is born in a time where birth and status is not God-given and so indeed calls his status an ‘accident of birth’, which it is to her. Hardship and poverty are no longer at courtesy of God, but are one’s own responsibility.“
Her reading is moralistic, religious, which is at odds with the intent of the director/script-writer. This is clearly indicated in the scene where Amanda is invited to a religious service of psalm reading, handed a book of psalms, which she glances at and returns to Kitty and Mary, uninterested. Amanda is not pious.

Darcy's “ ‘God loves a gentleman, it is the gentleman’s duty to return the compliment.’ “ is purely a comment of the upper class social upbringing, devoid of any moral or religious implications.
In analysis one should stick to the script and avoid philosophizing. {EDIT}

kiki1982

03-13-2010, 05:24 AM

Never heard of the brilliant theatrical piece Cyrano de Bergerac? C'est étrange, car vous parlez le français.

{EDIT}

At any rate, I will not descend into discussing this with you because it is futile if people do not listen. My interpretation stands and it fits with its subject. There are two more parts to come that will make more things clear. It will be beneficial for people looking on the internet for information.

Petula Ckark's song matters as it is another indication to escape.

Darcy's speech 'God loves a gentleman...' is important as it highlights a different way of thinking of before Darwin. Amanda likes to read about the times, but does not understand the underlying mechanisms of what she reads about.

jadrianne

03-13-2010, 09:18 AM

and also I don't know leaves me almost speechless is realted to the plot:
two shocking things:

1) to hit a man in his groins in the middle of a high society was so easy tolerated back then? I don't think so!And to have Mr Darcy on your side? No way!

2) when Amanda tells Bingley that she is a lesbian? I mean really when Tomas Hardy's Tess ( years later after after P& P was published) raised scandal only because a poor woman( not the member of a high society) had an illegitimate child, we should believe that a man like Bingley accepts so easy that a woman he likes is lesbian? And if in the original novel he confesses his love for Jane to Mr. Darcy why should'n he confess now to Mr Darcy of his disscution with Amanda?What would Mr Darcy say if he heard such a thing in those days?

To conclude : I'm not blaming anyone , but the script has too much modernism in itself ; Amanda is too shoking for a conservative society in my opinion and when you are too shocking the society ignores you !

Newcomer-2

03-13-2010, 10:13 AM

jadrianne,

You are correct, for a woman to hit a man in the groin, especially in public, was unthinkable. But that is the whole point – Amanda neither knows, nor understands propriety.
Her use of the excuse of lesbianism, falls into the same category. Plot-wise it is justified as it illuminates Carolline Bingly's character in the latter episode and it is one of the important stylistic differences with the original.
This is what I meant that Lost in Austen illuminates Pride and Prejudice.

kiki1982

03-13-2010, 10:20 AM

Nono.

Of course kneeing a man in his groin is revolting (even now!) and she got escorted to the door by Darcy. But, that is the perverse nature of Regency times, when she proves to have a certain (fictive) acquaintance, Amanda is accepted. One can behave despicably, but when one has an acquaintance, one is important and part of that society. Lady Catherine is horrible, cheats at cards, but she has acquaintances. What she does and how honorable she is, are less important. The kicking of Collins is not merely a fun moment (because let's face it, he deserved it, the pr*ck he is in Lost in Austen; less laughable than 1995, but more disgusting), but it tells a lot about modern people: Amanda kicks Collins in the groin because he said that it would be an abomination for her to socialise with Darcy (or something in that sense) because her fortune is one got from a father who is/was a fishmonger. Instead of being mean with words, like Collins here and Elizabeth in the original when she rejects Darcy's invitation for a dance, Amanda does not gracefully offend Collins, no, she deals with it in a very modern way: with aggression. Our society has become too physical and that is also a part of what runs through the series, in all possible ways. Also sex and kissing (the same evning).

The lesbian thing:

I don't think people ever spoke about that. It did not exist. Well, it did exist, but it was considered not to exist or maybe a bit on the side. I think an illegitimate child was definitely more shocking. If it was at all taken seriously, love between two women, I think it was rarely spoken about. Certainly not in a physical way. But, even in the 17th century there were men who had relationships with other men because they were gay. Physical too. Everyone knew, yet they married, had children (not all of them), and just went about their own business. Notably Monsieur (Louis XIV brother) was gay, had a boyfriend Mr de Saint-Aignan and a wife. So, either, if Bingley told Darcy, they did not take it seriously and saw it as a mere fancy (not something disgusting) or, if Bingley did not tell Darcy, he just kept it to himself and found it strange as he looks puzzled in the series and replies: 'You mean there are really ladies who steer their pond the Cambridge end?' (referring to the yearly rowing contest in Henley)

It is only actually in the Victorian period that all sexuality became disgusting, even adultery. In Regency times, as long as there was an heir certinly of ones husband, one could sleep around as much as one liked, though in a discrete manner. You were not allowed to disgrace your husband at a ball for example, snogging outside, but having a lover, no problem. Even having children as a logicl consequence was not an issue.

But I think one needs to see that series as an extension of Austen's satire and not as an absolute interpretation of Pride and Prejudice.

jadrianne

03-13-2010, 10:56 AM

kiki1982

03-13-2010, 04:43 PM

you think that you can behave despicably if you have acquaintences,but there are some unwritten rules of the society. Surely one can act as Lady Catherine, but she was a member of the high society.Amanda is not .So.....

Lady Catherine's behaviour surely is rude but not obscene !

Now regarding what you've mentioned regarding the second issue:yes men could do whatever they pleased since the beginning of time without being judged too harshly ! But a woman and especially a young lady that wants to marry a man such as Darcy or Bingley would have been seen as outcast having said and did what Amanda said and did !

I don't think you understood what I was trying to get at. Lost in Austen is not an adaptation, it is a take on it, and in that, it carries the satire of Austen much further.

Kicking someone in the balls is not obscene, it is just aggressive. It is not done, but other than that, we would not find it obscee even now. Obscene would be that she woul touch him up. At any rate, she did not want to marry anyone in that circle, not even Darcy, because she wants to get back o modern England. So she did not really care what she did.

If she was outcast after that ball, practically, she gets back into it because of her message from de Cerisay. That was probably also a powerful point of Andrews as it does not matter what one does, but it matters what one is. That fact has also been illustrated in other works of Austen.

jadrianne

03-13-2010, 05:02 PM

Niamh

03-13-2010, 06:04 PM

I would like to remind members that this site is an english speaking site. Any posts not in english that close a thread off from discussion from other members will be deleted. Please bring your discussion to PM.
Also personalised comments jibed at other members will not be accepted.

kiki1982

03-14-2010, 07:04 AM

she should have done a thing like that only if Mr.Collins would have tried to rape her .

But he didn't .And he is A CLERGYMAN !

How can you hit a clergyman and be treated with respect in the Austen era?

Hmm.

Austen I think would have found it very funny, because, although kicking in the balls wasn't done, Mr Collins was irritable, disgustingly arrogant and convinced of his own rightness. Maybe a modern woman like Amanda wouldn't have gone that far (me neither), but actually I think it was very comical and the public was waiting for it, because at that point he was being on the verge of thoat-grapplingly mean. Continually squeezing himself through his trouser-pocket must also not have helped... ;)

No, I think you are right in the sense that it is a little improbable, but, on the other hand, it is no adaptation and I think even Austen was laughing her head off at that point.

Mind you, they did not actually accept what Amanda had done because she was instantly escorted off the premices by Darcy. I think utter amazement was the word. What happened was not even disgusting, because they had never seeanything like it. We see it as a totally disgusting possibilit, kicking a man in the balls, but probably, they did not even know one could do it. Therefore, like the lesbian thing, it is difficult for them to understand just how offensive something like that is. Only Darcy keeps it together. Bingley is puzzled. But, at the same time, all of them, apart from Darcy, are hypnotised by this free person (the noble savage of Rousseau) who does things unthinkable and does not seem to care about what people think. Highly entertaining, of course, for Mr Bennet, but difficult to understand for the rest, why they are fascinated by her. Initially Darcy seems not penetrable, but he will soon see that is not true. He will soon see that he is as weak as the rest, as in the original.

jadrianne

03-16-2010, 03:45 PM

Part 3 and 4?

kiki1982

03-16-2010, 05:59 PM

Episode three starts with a problem for Amanda: as Mrs Bennet has now had enough of Miss Price, angry at her (why?) when Jane has finally married Collins (yes, Jane has married Collins!), she has asked her to leave. But where must Amanda go? Back home! She tries to break the door open this time with a pickaxe, but even then the door does not want to budge. She needs to stay in Regency England, her need is not yet clear to her. So Amanda, back in her modern day outfit roams through town and whom can she meet but Wickham who ‘see[s] the world the same way’ (episode 2): no care for society and the ways of it, without buttresses, a man on his own two feet (what’s in a pair?). He decides to educate Amanda a little and goes to buy her a dress so she can make up with Jane, who is naturally unhappy about her marriage to Collins and the problem with Bingley. Wickham hands her the ‘acquaintance’ of Marie de Cerisay. A seemingly fake person whom no-one seems to know, but who all would like to know because someone seems to know her. Without acquaintances it was impossible to live in that world, unlike in our society now, so Amanda needs to invent herself a buttress. The significance of the word will be explained at the appropriate time.

The name ‘de Cerisay’, or ‘Serisée’ as it was pronounced, can have connections with three things. Firstly, there is at least one person known to be called ‘Marie de Cerisay’ - apart from many other people undoubtedly not rich enough to be considered and to be registered - and she was the only daughter of a baron in late 15th century France. That is where her information stops though. In itself that is of course a laughable matter, because the acquaintance is an acquaintance who is already dead for 300 years at the point the story plays, but there seems to be more in the ‘cerisé’ (which could mean something like ‘cherried’ in French)-department. there seems to be a possible connection with Rousseau again. In his Confessions (1782) he wrote about the ‘Idylle des cerises’ (‘Idylle of the cheries’):

‘Après le dîner […] nous allâmes achever notre dessert avec des cerises. Je montais sur l’arbre, et je leur en jetais des bouquets dont elles me rendaient des noyaux à travers les branches. Une fois Melle Gallay, avançant son tablier et reculant la tête se présentait si bien, et je visais si juste, que je lui fis tomber un bouquet dans le sein; et de rire. Je me disais en moi-même : Que mes lèvres ne sont-elles des cerises ! Comme je les leur jetterais ainsi de bon cœur…’

‘After dinner […] we went to complete our desert with cherries. I climbed into the tree and I threw little bunches down to them [other people] of which they handed me single cherries through the branches. Once, when Mlle Gallay held her apron out and turned her head away, she presented herself so well, and I aimed so well, that I let a bunch fall into her bosoms; laughter. I said to myself: ‘That my lips were cherries! How I would like to throw them at them…’’

It is not unthinkable that Andrews, taking up Rousseau, also came across this, and decided to allude to this quite ‘naughty’ thought of his… If ‘de Cerisay’ indeed refers to the cherries of Rousseau, then there is another link to the idyllic fantasy-world. Also the game of courtship rather than the more down-to-earth behaviour partners display nowadays and what Amanda does when she kisses Bingley in the first episode. Courtship in the Regency and any time prior to sex before marriage was allowed, was not so straightforward. In fact it is quite shocking that people in the Regency in particular were not even allowed to talk privately (without chaperone) to any member of the other sex apart from their marriage partners and close family! But they were allowed to do more subtle and imaginative things in order to win the heart of their beloved. The idyllic idea we have now of Victorian and earlier love-making: games, little secret letters, songs, roundabout conversing, etc, we have only because we have another idea of it all. We like each other, we try each other out (Amanda who kisses Bingley). The Idylle of the Cherries seems indeed idyllic, but in the end, it was normal back then. We have lost the romantic touch a little bit, thus we perceive something different to what it actually was. Amanda, and surely all women who are in love with Darcy, are enchanted by him and other romantic heroes because they are so subtle in their courtship. They are not like men nowadays (even a bouquet of flowers is considered romantic). However, for Bingley and Darcy, that is normality, and for Austen too. Not really the courtship is the great driving power behind all of her work, it is rather the values and personalities of certain people that are the subject of her scrutiny. However, modern women get obsessed by the courtship in her novels, and as a result make her world more idyllic than it was, as Rousseau made his cherry-picking of a more idyllic nature than it really was, fancying his lips the cherries on the bosoms of Mlle Gallay… Dirty man. Life is what you make it, and here, Austen’s world is what Amanda makes it: something that is idyllic, but not real. She will later realise it the hard way. Still, Rousseau’s text is sweet in itself.

Thirdly, the name of the acquaintance can have a connection to the village Cerisé in France. It is in a region of Normandy where there are a lot of monuments dating back to the Iron and Bronze Ages. Thus also, in connection with Rousseau, an indication to skills we have forfeited, as Bingley puts it in the last episode. There is evidence that we had them, but we have gone the other way because our society has gone the other way; we think they will not be approved, or they are ‘old-fashioned’. We miss those times and are intrigued by them (otherwise we would not study the hills and grave monuments), but dismiss them as something from the past. We admire them, but we have moved on, we have it better, whereas possibly, we could learn something from them. Only people’s skills in making things with the bare minimum they had, should make us think about what we do with all our accomplishments, whether we do not use them too little; whether they are, after all, not pretty useless... Surely, that was part of the end of this series where Elizabeth is there with all her appliances and concerned about her ecological footprint. On a more direct note, we once had the skill to be romantic, but now perceive it as something from the past, or at least half the population. Though we can do it when we want, we do not practice it anymore as a normality. When the need was no longer there, we relinquished everything altogether. However, maybe it is because women have rejected men too much that they do not get it anymore.

Making up with Jane will bring Amanda in the neighbourhood of Rosings Park, the mansion of Darcy’s aunt, where Amanda will naturally encounter Darcy again. She does make up with Jane, and is duly invited to dine at Rosings like Lizzie, as she has ‘a message to deliver from Marie de Cerisay’ in Paris to Lady Catherine. The invented acquaintance proves more important than Amanda’s fortune in trade or Darcy’s dislike… Then follows a very interesting conversation where Darcy does not seem to know who the de Cersisays are and Lady Catherine informs him in public about the duck pond and the crocodiles (although it is puzzling how the ducks would be able to survive next to the crocodiles)… The family they are speaking of is certainly totally non-existent (hence the challenge of Mr Darcy where actually the ‘château’ of the de Cesrisays is, in an attempt to expose Amanda), but as Lady Catherine is desperate not to disappoint the rest of her audience, she makes out to know them and makes up a story about a duck pond instead of looking ridiculous herself like Darcy at this point. Darcy is out to ridicule Amanda, but she has now obviously, with the help of unpolished Wickham, acquired the right manner of introducing herself and the right façade, as indicated by the fan in front of her face. It is then that the significance of the buttresses is explained. We see Caroline Bingley playing the piano and singing, but it is more important to see what she is singing as it is a Lied by Mozart:

Lied der Freiheit/Lied on Freedom (1785)

Wer unter eines Mädchens Hand
Sich als ein Sklave schmiegt,
Und, von der Liebe festgebannt,
In schnöden Fesseln liegt:
Weh dem! Der ist ein armer Wicht,
Er kennt die gold’ne Freiheit nicht.

Wer sich um Fürstengunst und Rang
Mit saurem Schweiß bemüht,
Und, eingespannt, sein Leben lang,
Am Pflug des Staates zieht:
Weh dem! Der ist ein armer Wicht,
er kennt die gold’ne Freiheit nicht.

Wer um ein schimmerndes Metall
Dem bösen Mannon dient,
Und seiner vollen Säcke Zahl
Nur zu vermehren sinnt:
Weh dem! Der ist ein armer Wicht,
Er kennt die gold’ne Freiheit nicht.

Doch wer dies alles leicht entbehrt,
Wonach der Thor nur strebt,
Und froh bei seinem eignen Herd
Nur sich, nicht Andern lebt:
Der ist’s allein der sagen kann,
Wohl mir! Ich bin ein freier Mann.

He who under a girl’s hand
nestles himself as a slave
And, who, fixed by love,
lies in disdainful chains:
Alas! He is a poor wretch,
He does not know golden Freedom

He who for king’s favour and rank
labours with sour sweat
and his whole life long, fixedly,
pulls state’s plough:
Alas! He is a poor wretch,
He does not know golden Freedom

He who, for glittering metal,
serves the wicked Mammon
and only seeks
to increase the amount of his full bags
Alas! He is a poor wretch,
He does not know golden Freedom.

But he who can easily do without it all
for which only Thor strives,
and can sit happily by his own hearth
living only for himself and not others:
he it is alone who can say,
Good on me! I am a free man.

It is interesting that we hear Caroline end the first verse (Weh dem! Der ist ein armer Wicht./ Er kennt die gold’ne Freiheit nicht.) as if introducing the theme of restraint and freedom, after which we hear her start the second verse about ‘king’s favour and rank’. The third verse about money she skips, as money is not really there for Darcy’s class to be increased as they already have more than enough of it. At any rate, they are not really avaricious people, but rather amazingly rich, so they do not need to worry about getting more of it. That verse would have been inappropriate for the characters. Society and the characters’ problems, though, are mainly about marrying people of the same fortune and so status, not for love. And why? Because that is what one does. Not more than that. When Caroline starts the last verse, Darcy (appropriately) starts to speak about people out of society which repel him. When Caroline starts on the two last verses: Der ist’s allein der sagen kann/ Wohl mir! Ich bin ein freier Mann, Amanda starts about the buttresses. Mr Collins had intimated that ‘Lady Catherine’s buttresses [were] the talk of the county‘. Buttresses are architectural features that mainly occur in buildings in order to divert the wait of the roof from the walls that would be forced apart, and which consequently would make the building collapse. We mainly know them of great gothic churches where flying buttresses are quite prominent. In the meantime, we humans have mastered the art of building without them, but Lady Catherine must be living in a place which is still heavily supported by handsome ones. The image of the buttress is very powerful to Darcy and the rest’s problems: they cannot exist in society without other people who support them. Amanda is nothing, yet stands alone in her own world), until she turns out to have an acquaintance in Marie de Cerisay, a mighty buttress. Bingley cannot exist without Darcy and through that makes the mistake of leaving Jane to Collins. It is odd that Amanda is still able to find her way in society despite kicking Collins in the balls. We now, would consider this person as one not really nice, but what matters most at Rosings is her acquaintance, not her politeness or any more pleasant trait, as Lady Catherine later displays in her audacity at the card game.

While the two last verses of Mozart’s Lied are being sung, Darcy loses his temper and tells Amanda in a fit of rage that ’[he] know[s] what buttresses are’. It is puzzling that he loses his temper, but we can easily see what Andrews meant with the explanation above in the back of our heads. Indeed, Darcy, like the rest, is a house with buttresses: he is unable to stand on his own, he is unable to have an occupation because ‘[he] must be seen to be unoccupied’, he needs to be supported by the others in society to be in society. In other words, probably also figuratively, Lady Catherine’s buttresses might be the talk of the county as she is a reference in society, and her acquaintance is to be sought by everyone… Is it this what Darcy gets when he loses his temper? and is it that which fascinates the rest in Amanda? Her lack of understanding of society which renders her free to do and say what she wants (kicking Collins in the balls for saying that her society is revolting) without herself being aware of it in the least. It is admirable that she can do that, Bingley does not have the strength for it (episode 2). Darcy seems to realise his own inability to do what he wants, his own weakness, an idea which he abhors; that he indeed is not a free man, despite professing it to be a ‘free society’ in which Jane was not forced to marry Collins; . that he is too much ruled by this society and that that compelled him to make his friend Bingley unhappy (who is now drinking heavily) and that society no doubt approved of a marriage between Jane and Collins, despite the unpleasantness of Mr Collins himself.

It is also at this time that Mr Bennet decides to sleep in his library out of protest against Jane’s marriage. When Mrs Bennet says she will take Lydia ‘to observe [Jane and Collins’s] happy marriage’ at Rosings, he yells that ‘[he] will prance Lady Catherine’s drawing room naked’ if she can find one happy marriage there. And that is indeed what the case is: people who care too much about peripheral things will not be able to choose their partners rightly and according to their own tastes. Darcy is doomed to be unhappy, until he finally gives In to himself and leaves society for what it is. But is then the advice of Amanda’s mother to marry Michael not a little easy: no drugs, job and not beating you up equals good marriage. That almost recalls Mrs Bennet who wants one of her daughters to marry Collins because otherwise she will be destitute once Mr Bennet has died… The argument is material whereas material things will not make one spiritually happy. However, there might be more in Mr Bennet’s anger: the first verse of Caroline’s song is about men who have themselves ruled by love, lowering themselves as slaves for their wives. In the second episode, Mr Bennet intimates to Amanda that he was married because of beauty. She asks him not to let Jane marry Collins, but he says that ‘as far as [he] ha[s] anything to say in [his] household’ he will do his best to prevent a marriage between Jane and Collins and have his daughters marry for love. Needless to say that he has nothing at all to say in his household as the marriage takes place anyway. In other words, the poor man is indeed ruled by his wife, and cannot even oppose a marriage he disapproves of, or does not have the will-power to say ‘no’. And it is probably the anger at himself that he projects on his wife, escaping into his library. The influence of ‘the noble savage’ Amanda on this Regency society of Pride and Prejudice symbolised in Mr Bingley’s sneeze at the ball in Meryton is now taking grip: all characters are starting to wonder about their own will and needs, and foremost why they do what others want and not what they want themselves. It seems that only one man keeps it together: Darcy. However, he also seems penetrable as indicated by his passionate reaction on the imagery of buttresses…

And then: the third dialogue between Darcy and Amanda. A dialogue of desperation from his side, it seems. He comes to Mr Collins’s house to have a talk with Amanda (like the original man and Firth’s Darcys came for their first proposal). It is there for the first time that he nearly gives in to his feelings (he nearly decides to kiss her). As Colin Firth’s Darcy, he has come to the house in total emotional chaos, and does not know half what he is doing or is going to do. Firth’s Darcy and the original Mr Darcy indeed came with a plan, but they were still not through with their contempt for Elizabeth’s connections who were ‘so decidedly below [their] own’. Cowan’s Darcy does not come at all with the plan of asking for Amanda’s hand in marriage despite what we all expect but comes, ironically, to ask her why he is in love with her, why he could possibly be in love with a savage like her, unpolished by society. It is that what puzzles him, and it is that what is ‘dementing’ him: his own self that he has no longer under control. It is the real him that Amanda could not get at, and that he did not believe he had. Amanda, like him, still protests against her heart that is secretly in love with Darcy (as all women are), but that does not want to be. Both are in denial still. But, as Austen said in the original: ‘[They are] in the middle of it before [they] kn[o]w [they have] begun.’

Amanda has now totally left the door to her modern world alone, as she cannot get to it in the Bennets’ house and she is about to accept her role In the story, and her own nature, as will Darcy. First, though, she will make out not to be as savage as he thought… She is slowly being polished (as Rousseau’s noble savage) by this mechanism of Regency England; she is slowly mastering the art of getting out of embarrassing situations gracefully. The most funny moment regarding this, is at the dinner table where she is silently thinking nasty things about Caroline Bingley (who is playing the nasty woman again), but she suddenly thinks aloud and shouts ‘bumface’. This was obviously not meant to happen and quickly she thinks up a card game that ‘Lady Catherine might know by the name Humpty Dumpty’.
Whether Humpty Dumpty of the well-known nursery rhyme has anything to do with this, is the question. The nursery rhyme does say that it was impossible to put Humpty Dumpty back together again after his fall, but the question is whether that is not too hazy a connection as to the change all characters in Lost in Austen go through. However, the nursery rhyme is very well known and it would be strange if a reference were put to the rhyme without any meaning. At any rate, there does not seem to be any well-known card game with that name so we could argue that the change the characters, including Amanda, will undergo is something irrevocable, as it is in the original work. The card game itself could also be seen as an evocation of the process.

During the game, Bingley, who is in emotional turmoil and who has started drinking heavily, bets his watch (a family heirloom) with a nave. Amanda, hesitating whether she should actually claim the watch as she has a higher card in her hand, cannot take a decision as ruthless Lady Catherine rips the king out of her hand and claims the watch for her. There, Amanda is faced with a dilemma: she can either take the watch and disgrace Bingley; she can opt for not taking the watch, but that is also disgracing Bingley (the watch would not be good enough); she can take it and hand it back to him afterwards, but that would also be an insult. She takes a split-second decision and impresses Darcy with her ‘practice-game’, which essentially restores the watch to Bingley (without any disgrace) who doesn’t bet it again. In addition, Collins humours Lady Catherine and lets her win despite having a card that seems high enough to beat hers… Lady Catherine cheats, looking into other people’s cards, as she is definitely looking into Amanda’s and Mrs Bennet reproaches her afterwards for it in episode 4. But as she is high up in society, Lady Catherine does that without having direct reproaches come her way, because that would be offending a mighty buttress…

During the same game Lady Catherine warns Amanda for wanting Darcy. Amanda answers she does not want him, but ‘what [she] want[s] frightens [her] to death. That is why [she] fail[s] to comprehend [her]self.’ (Lady Catherine) And that is indeed what is going on in both Darcy and Amanda’s heads: they are scared of what they want and do not have the strength to step out of their normality; they do not have the strength to throw off their buttresses and to stand alone and take their own decision. That is why they both deny what they want to themselves, why they do not comprehend their own wishes and are continuously wondering at their own feelings. There is a lot of irony in this, as Amanda thinks she is free (though doubting whether she should accept Michael) , Darcy professes to live in ‘a free society’ and both tend to think of each other as free: Darcy because Amanda is unpolished, Amanda because Darcy has a lot of money and can choose whom he likes, though both are ruled by the images rooted in them from childhood, as the first sentence of Austen’s work indicates. The practice of the game in itself could be seen also in this light: as Bingley bets the watch, Amanda is worried, because she can claim it, but does not want to, she does not want the rest to think ill of her; Darcy refrains from playing because ‘[he] does not play games’; Lady Catherine does what she likes whatever it is; Mr Collins can clearly win, but does not give his cards at the right time so he loses, not to offend Lady Catherine. That is the problem: Mr Darcy does not want to play at all, does not want to take part in anything, as he does not want to take part in the change that is happening, he holds on to his credo that ‘any locomotion is a manifestation of ill-breeding’, ‘[he is] born thus’ so needs to stay thus; Amanda does want to, but somehow holds back, so is hesitant to throw her king, instead foregoes any gains she might get from it because she thinks it is not appropriate for her; Mr Collins also can but knowingly chooses not to because he depends on Lady Catherine; Lady Catherine decides in other people’s places, she clearly sees what the problem is as her original character; Mr Bingley shows a lot of courage, but is held back by the refusal of others. When Amanda restores the watch to Bingley, she has had it, but rejects it, and that is exactly what she does with Pride and Prejudice: she has had it, but rejects it as something of the past (the old watch, a thing we no longer use), it was only ‘practice’, it wasn’t real. Bingley needs to hold onto it, because ‘it [is] his father’s’. Amanda will have to face the novel and what it awakens in her, although she is scared. Bingley, on the other hand, has embraced change, but is recalled. He will later embrace it rather than walk away full of disillusion. In rejecting Lady Catherine’s decision and making it something different, Amanda foregoes the watch, but also takes her own decision and that is impressive to Darcy. Though he does not want to take part, he is observing, as he is observing the change taking place. He is impressed by it.

It is also at this point that for the first time Bingley reproaches Darcy for thrashing his happiness and Jane’s. After this reproach from his own friend, Darcy admits being wrong about obstructing Jane and Bingley’s relationship and invites Amanda to Pemberley together with Mrs Bennet and Lydia. He is slowly getting to himself, but it will still take a lot of effort. As in Austen’s original and the 1995 adaptation, Amanda gazes at Pemberley in wonder. Unlike Lady Catherine’s mansion, which has a dark inside, and obviously a quite early outside too as it has buttresses, Darcy’s Pemberley stands on its own in a beautiful valley, a modern late 18th - early 19th century building. But… with very much tended gardens with little buxus hedges and straight lines. It is ‘a free society’ indeed, but it needs to be polished, it needs to be within the lines. The nature of the Pemberley grounds is cultivated nature, it is not yet totally wild, like the woods further away. As in both the 1995 adaptation and the original, this could also be seen as a foreshadowing of what Darcy is now: a man who stands on his own, a man who knows what he wants, but still with scruples. As in the original and in 1995, there needs to happen something shocking to make Darcy think.

It is at Pemberley that he will finally seem to yield to his feelings and where Amanda will also understand why ‘[her] need open[ed] the door’ as she meets him looking over a large (cultivated) lake in contrast to the natural pond Firth’s Darcy swum in.

Apart from having fun lines as: ‘The entire world will hate [Amanda if Darcy marries her]’ and the famous shirt scene (which we were al waiting for), the dialogue also carries a lot of symbolism in it. Although Darcy still finds the ‘incarnations of [Amanda’s] character disagreeable’, he does not seem to mind anymore because he has long enough ‘laboured in the service of propriety’. As it seems, this force, which is ironically symbolised in the ‘post-modern’ pond-scene done for Amanda, is not only taking place in the minds of her and Darcy, but also in Mrs Bennet who is crying in the garden at both her and Jane’s marriage. Although she still professes that ‘we have to endure our lives’, she is already aware of it that neither her own marriage is a good one, nor Jane’s, although they were made ‘in service of propriety’. At the same time, Bingley is totally through with Darcy and is so angry with him he hits him regretting it afterwards. As Mrs Bennet was angry with Amanda, Mr Bennet with his wife, Darcy with Amanda, we might presume that Bingley’s anger with Darcy stems from the same problem: his own failure to stand on his own two feet and to decide for himself. That is at least what he intimated in episode 2: ‘It is not that I am especially weak, but that my friend is strong. He construes truly where others falter. I am a falterer, I rely on his construction.’ Had Bingley not trusted Darcy so much, and looked for himself, he had married Jane. Therefore he now blames the wrong man, in an attempt not to have to blame himself. Mr Bennet blames his wife for Jane’s marriage, where he is the one who had to give his consent. The characters are free to choose, yet no-one does. Why? Because they are concerned with what others will think.

However, the shirt scene does not have that much significance and only occurs because since 1995, it is a female fantasy (which maybe Cowan satisfies better than Firth. Excuse us). It is as if Amanda fails to understand the significance of it in Davies’s version (the washing motif). As Cowan’s Darcy does not go voluntarily into the pond, unlike Firth’s Darcy, but does it because Amanda asks him and then says: ‘Is this agreeable?’ we might presume that he is not ready to do just that; we are tempted to think that Amanda has made it her fantasy and that she wants to satisfy that instead of tending to the man Darcy himself. That is In fact a problem of the modern female audience: Darcy has become an icon of manhood, and Firth with it (despite his own inclination), but iconic as Darcy may be, he is not real. He has changed into ‘the man with the wet shirt’, ‘Is this agreeable’ being rather a question from the real Darcy to the public than Cowan’s Darcy to Amanda. The female public has made itself an ideal fantasy-man which they will never get, but which they dream of and it is 1995 Darcy, even more so than Austen’s Darcy. It is also a difference between the original of Austen and Davies’s version: Davies makes his character more serious than Austen’s work and therefore Darcy’s change more dramatic, more in a Goethe type of way. Through this, the romantic image of Austen is enhanced and the sex appeal of the wet shirt is exaggerated where Davies just meant to make a ‘fun scene’. From there the ‘weird post-modern moment’ which has identified Darcy as the man in the wet shirt. As we are now in the post-postmodern era, Amanda can look back and nuance that view, which the series does equally with the whole of Austen’s novel.

Clouds gather in the sky as ‘smirking, conniving bumface’ Caroline attempts to break Darcy’s engagement by advising him to get to know Amanda a little better. When it comes to maidenhood, of course, Amanda cannot beat Caroline. The latter not only accomplishes her purpose (breaking up Darcy’s engagement Amanda), but Andrews also puts in the very essence of Amanda’s need: ‘Every time I’ve fallen for a man, I’ve closed my eyes and it’s been you! … I have a past, but every instant in it contains you! Everything I am belongs to you.’ Indeed, she has always been wanting Darcy, not another, like all women actually might not be in want of exactly Darcy, but of all the things Darcy is: a gentleman, polite, sensitive, good-looking (or at least we presume he was in Austen’s mind. There is no description of him),… ; or maybe rather the fantasy-Darcy that women have made themselves. Every time a woman falls for a man, she hopes it will be Darcy, yet Darcy In this case is not so positive as will be seen later. Even the guy himself is not Darcy! Naturally not, as Darcy is a figure that is one-dimensional; a figure that can never be wrong (‘But you’d never listen to gossip, would you? I love you for that.’), never be negative. Maybe not in Austen’s work, but he has become that through time.

Sadly, that section also highlights the fact that society has only been so much thrown away. Ok, Darcy does not mind Amanda’s unpolishedness, but not a maid, that is not… not possible. That idea has been rooted so deeply in him, that he cannot marry her. Despite the fact that we might presume that Amanda is more disappointed and sad than Darcy, he intimates that it costs him everything, as it does to Amanda. And indeed, it does cost him a great deal. Like Firth’s character, Cowan’s Darcy gives up a great love for his principles, but can that be? Firth’s Darcy took a plunge to clean himself of his prejudices; Cowan’s Darcy has already taken a plunge, surely, or has he? As his original version, Cowan’s Darcy has partly yielded to his feelings: he loves Amanda/Elizabeth and so be it, he will marry her, despite her unpolishedness/low connections, but there is still their pride to be conquered for both Darcys (maybe not regarding low connections and brother-in-law called Wickham, definitely regarding Amanda’s maidenhood). So, although Cowan’s Darcy took a plunge, it was not really one, and this first proposal stands on the same level as the first proposal in Collins’s house in both Pride and Prejudice the book and the 1995 adaptation. Darcy partly yields but not totally. There is still work to be done. Like she does not see the significance of the pond within a cleansing theme, Amanda also doesn’t see the significance of maidenhood, and rather finds honesty important (as a modern woman). So she tells her husband-to-be that she has had boyfriends. After all, in 21st century England and the world in most cases it does not matter if a girl is not a virgin when she marries. It is worse for partners not to know anything about one another. Amanda finds love in itself more important. For Darcy, though, it is not only that. Would it be a coincidence that at that point, he is looking over the tended gardens with the hedges and cultivated lines instead of over the woods as in the end? Or is this a weird post-postmodern moment where suddenly our superficial views are compromised?
Amanda now loses it totally and tears up her copy of Pride and Prejudice, her guide, throws the pages in the air and prepares to leave. She has given in to herself that she loves Darcy (‘I love him! I love Fitzwilliam Darcy! I love him!’), has discovered that a more traditional life suits her also well, but being rejected for such a reason goes too far. She has a point, but at the same time, she thought that Darcy was not going to mind her non-virginity, while that was not true. She might be more disappointed with herself for not thinking of that. She as a modern woman is obsessed with romance, but when a part of that crops up, she hypocritically gets angry at it. It is possibly only the idea that attracts her, and not the reality of it, or maybe it is the reality that hits her in the face (like Bingley who made Darcy feel reality earlier). The pond that transformed Darcy was unfortunately not a natural one, it was a cultivated one, with stone rims; it was a man-made one, not even tended by nature. Thus Darcy’s change was also a fabricated one, and by extension his whole character might be man-made. Would it be that what she understands at that point? Still, the reality of it all will produce a funny shock, but therefore not an improbable one.

At this point Caroline intimates that she is also a lesbian and that everyone expects her to marry Darcy (‘including God’) and that she will do that, but that the physical society of men does not excite her. She has heard of Amanda’s ‘secret’… SPOILER! This is not the only surprising twist from Andrews’s doing. Georgiana was also not seduced by Wickham! On the contrary, Georgiana’s nurse fell in love with him and arranged to meet him regularly. An action for which Georgiana served as cover. Every time her nurse had her back turned, Georgiana offered herself to Wickham, but he didn’t want to have any of it. To take revenge on him, Georgiana told her brother, Darcy, that Wickham had ‘ravished’ her (in other words, had sex with her). Obviously, Darcy cannot see that in his vision of society (would the classification of her beads have anything to do with that? ‘The first principle being size, the second principle being colour[…]’), which classes women as certainly not equal and would straight away blame the man for doing something like ravishing. That a woman would offer herself to a man is totally unthinkable. However, there might be something in that for our society as well. With feminism, slowly but surely a man can actually rape a woman. Even as close as 50 years ago, a woman was considered as offering herself if a man had sex with her (this view still exists in certain countries). Rape was difficult to prove. Now, it is still difficult to prove apart from in extreme cases, but judges are more inclined to believe that the woman was raped instead of the man who claims that he was invited. It is not a bad thing that women can now actually be allowed to state that they were raped and not be ashamed of it or disbelieved, but it should not go that far as to be automatically detrimental for the male party who is not even believed when he tells his version of events. There are also the female parties that can lie in court. Yet, no-one seems to really believe a man if he actually addresses that point (though it may also be a lie). The contrast between the head-strong Georgiana here and the Georgiana who is believed by Darcy to be a weak little sister is great, but therefore not impossible. It is only because we presume what Darcy says in the novel to be true, that it is actually true. SPOILERS OVER In Regency society it was also unthinkable that there were women who were lesbians, yet statistically there must have been… But more on that later… SPOILERS At the same time, Georgiana is not cast off if Wickham keeps his mouth shut and that is what happens… As such, he suffers his honour and status to be reduced because he protects Georgiana… It is a surprising twist of Andrews but therefore not impossible and it certainly also addresses the issue that Georgiana can have lied to her brother. It certainly makes modern viewers think. While Wickham’s original character was just out for the money of Georgiana, here his crime is a little worse, but it reverses the negative thoughts that everybody has about Wickham and certainly makes modern viewers consider that maybe not all girls tell the truth in court. SPOILERS OVER

When Darcy finds the copy of Pride and Prejudice in his fountain, he is disgusted to find himself and all kinds of ‘improbable’ things that happen in it. He now confuses Amanda with Austen, who she is definitely not. However, that might be an indication of Andrews towards the imaginative nature of the work and what Amanda makes it. Both women have observed people, and both women have made their own version of it. If we consider Darcy who discovers the book in his fountain as the real man (which he ‘is’ in this case, as in the pond scene too), then it is not surprising that he is astonished by what is actually in the book… If there was a man like Darcy walking around once (and there are indications there was) and other people and events that occur in the novel, then Austen made them her own undoubtedly and added some fantasy to it. Amanda observes the novel, has seen probably various adaptations, has read books on it as all Janeites do and made her favourite book her own, disregarding the reality of it.

Darcy turns out not to be the Darcy from the novel, but a complex man with views and his own problems. He wanted to marry Amanda, yet he decides not to, because she is not a maid. If he hadn’t known and Amanda wouldn’t have told him, he hadn’t even noticed it in all probability. He decides to discourage Bingley’s affection for Jane because she has no money and because he thinks her indifferent. It is confusing for him to have to do away with everything he has learned that is proper and so he goes forward in spurts and then goes back in his steps… Amanda sums his problem up in a very powerful way: ‘You’re so incandescent with integrity that you misjudge everyone. You misjudge me.’ Incandescent can also refer to being unbelievably angry, incandescent meaning shining with light. Indeed, Darcy desperately wants to shine with integrity, even to the point of being angry with himself, but does not understand that integrity can sometimes mean not to stay true to others, but rather trust oneself. And that is also what Amanda needs to do. But could it be that at this point, with the big argument between Darcy and Amanda, Pride and Prejudice has been cleaned of its romantic gloss and has been made realer, even realer than its original? It would seem so as the novel is swimming in its own pond, is rejected by one of its most memorable figures and Amanda has thrown it away, ripped pages out of it.
At least Amanda’s struggle is now over and she understands what the matter was with her: she has loved Darcy from the start and needs to find a man like that; needs to embrace those values. At the same time, though, she needs to be realistic about such a man. Darcy is not Darcy. She must follow her standards, but not expect the ideal as that does not exist.

This is where episode 3 concludes: Wickham redeemed, Caroline a lesbian, Bingley drunk, Georgiana a head-strong girl, Amanda and Darcy engaged and single again, Jane and Collins still married…

jadrianne

03-17-2010, 11:49 AM

it is very hard for a XX th century girl to convince a gentleman such as Mr Darcy that virginity doesn't count!

Jireh8

08-04-2013, 11:10 PM

I have watched the Lost in Austen mini-series and was browsing for more information and came across this site. I thoroughly enjoyed Kiki's reviews and though its several years later wondered what happened to part 4?

Perhaps continued on another thread? If so and someone would kindly post a link? Thanks!

kiki1982

08-05-2013, 09:40 AM

Yes, I can't remember why I didn't put it on here anymore, but I put it on my blog:

http://pointsofview-cricket.blogspot.de/2009/06/lost-in-austen-analysis-44.html

I hope you enjoy it.