Austen Day

 So, 250 years ago today, Jane Austen was born.

We remember reading Northanger Abbey for O Level. We spent more time in the exam writing about her than the other two writers combined (Shakespeare and Tennyson, since you ask).

For A level, Mansfield Park and Emma.

For our degree Everybloodything. And 'Regulated Hatred' and Locke, Barbara Hardy and Marilyn Butler.  And everything else relevant...

BBC Radio 4 was in full celebration mode today, from Woman's Hour to Front Row and all points in between. Radio 4 presenters in crinolines and strange voices.  Versions of the books, and some brilliant discussions.

I think this was my favourite.

Emma in Greenwich

So, last night we went to see Emma at Greenwich PictureHouse. 

The film was a light piece of froth - tonally, I thought very different from the book.  My test scenes are those when Isabella and Mr John Knightly visit Mr Woodhouse and Emma.  These correspond to the astonishing and groundbreaking chapters 11 and 12 of Emma. 

The detailed subtlety and behaviours described by Austen were replaced by broad activities, and much of the nuance was - quite often - lost.  This was particularly true in the case of the character of Isabella, which was clumsily depicted, I thought.

That being said, Emma, Harriet and Knightly, and Mrs Elton, were pretty good.  But the character most like the novel Was Mr Weston (LeStrange from Sherlock!).  And that being said, the scenes on Box Hill were excruciatingly well done, I thought.

We may have had a rather odd viewing, however.  As there were problems with the air conditioning in screen 5, and it was freezing!  As cold - if not more so - as the wintry weather outside.  They provided some (thin) blankets and pillows, and we kept our coats on.  But, every so often a blanket would slip down and I would feel chilly.

So when Bill Nighy as Mr Woodhouse asked if anyone else could feel a chill draught, someone in the audience said 'I can!' - and there was a sympathetic laugh from all around them.

Odd that the character we most sympathised with was the valetudinarian Mr W.

Box Hill

So on Sunday, the only reasonably bright day of the late May bank holiday, we went to Box Hill.  We had been thinking of it anyway, and then it was mentioned in Outnumbered - synchronicity, we had to go. 

As people have been discovering for centuries, there were marvellous views from the top - admittedly overlooking Dorking...

I tried to construct a panorama with some freebie software - it didn't come out too badly, although it is hard to see from this image...

Box Hill is named after the Box trees that grow on it, altough I have to admit we didn't knowingly spot any.  The Hill is part of the North Downs, cut away on the South side by the river Mole - the steep fall makes the views so good.

The wood on the top of the Hill does contain many different trees.  We saw oak, beeches, silver birches, and many others...

  

We also saw many of the well-known sites.  This is the grave of Major Peter Labellière.  Wikipedia says: He was buried (on July 11, 1800) head downwards, and according to some sources he reasoned for this by saying "the world is topsy turvy, and I'll be the right way in the end"; other sources indicate that he merely wished to emulate the example of St. Peter, who was apocryphally (in the Acts of Peter) crucified upside-down.

This is the old fort, again according to Wikipedia: This was built in the late 1890s as one of a number of forts (known as the London Defence Positions) built to protect London from invasion from continental Europe.  Also, according to the same article, bats nest there.

After the fort we stopped briefly at the new visitor centre to eat our sandwiches.  Very nice, typical NT establishment. 

The family grew slightly irritated when I insisted on reading chapter 43 of Emma - for the obvious reasons - but honestly, only a very little of it out loud.  So some of us juggled instead.

The roads were full of cyclists - I guess the Hill is an interesting sort of challenge, and not too car-bound. 

Every so often we would turn a corner and be surprised once again by the view...

The woods were darker and cooler - and fullof birdsong.  Here is one of the perpetrators...

We cam across this fantastic old Yew tree (one of many).

I like the skinny tallness of this tree, with so few branches at such dizzying heights...

And this one for its drama...

The trees were also aswarm with these caterpillars, hanging from silk and landing in hair, clothes, etc.

Why the green fuse?

I pushed the Dylan Thomas (see last post) at the blog a week ago - but to be published later (days after I'd chosen it)

And well before I'd properly thought about Emma.

I assumed since it was just a novel, I'd read it quite speedily. But no, I could not skim it. In fact, I could not keep up with the series on the Beeb.

Both the Thomas poem and the novel are challenging, and return slow reading, but they are truly not the same. The poem inverts sentences, uses elliptical constructions, the poet challenges the reader to work out what he means. Austen by comparison says what she means, but knows you are not likely to read it.

We all know that complex poems require slow careful readings, which we give them, and try to weigh the words and tease the sense out from them.

At the same time we race through novels, skimming the sense; we organise our understanding of them through plot and character.

Emma is decidedly not a poem; it is a true - and in a somewhat secondary and trivial way avant-guarde - novel. But it argues that the same reading habits that are appropriate for a dense poem are required here, in this prose.

Or demanded, for a true reading.

So, spending 20 minutes working out exactly what the start of Thomas's poem means is a mere fraction of what Austen demands in Emma.

Most readers don't notice, or give up, and fall back on the more comforting stories: Pride and...,, Sense and....

Truthfully; if you don't get Emma, you are reading too quickly.

Chapter 11

So taking my cue from D.W. Harding I read the next chapter of Emma - chapter 11 - quite carefully.

In the Penguin edition it is 5 & 1/2 pages long.

It took me three hours.

And I'm going to have to go back and look at it again. This stuff is really complicated.