Have mercy on the Jane Austen fans in your life. They are being subjected to the most exquisite form of torture and it comes from an unlikely source: Rocky Mountain PBS. The venerable Masterpiece Theater is presenting all six of Austen's completed books over 10 consecutive Sundays. Four are new productions, but one, Pride and Prejudice, is the crème de la crème of previous outings.
No matter, they all start at 9pm on Sunday night. Now, I'm not a lightweight, exactly, but I'm no longer a night owl either, and few of these end before 11pm, making for a little less sleep than usual. But is it worth it? Let's just say, if this be the water boarding of literature, I beg for more-please!
With tasteful intros by Gillian Anderson (aka, "Scully"/the truth is out there!), we settle in to watch, usually after all diversions have retired for the night, and are transported to another time, when wit and wisdom triumphed over pride, deception and stupidity.
For those of you who think of Austen's work as little more than two-hundred-year-old chic lit, let me set you straight. Yes, love and marriage are key themes, but for very good reason. Austen wrote in a time when women's fortunes often hung on a marriage "well made". Without good connections, a woman's very survival might depend upon the generosity of more fortunate family members-as Jane herself knew only too well.
And love? Well, that wasn't always part of the bargain, unless you were one of Austen's strong willed heroines, who didn't settle, and stood their ground with a wry eye on the the world they inhabited. No foible, good or bad, goes undetected. For those who take the time to get to know her, Jane Austen reveals herself as an excellent and unerring judge of character, skewering the manners of the day with a delightful wit so sharp it not only has survived the centuries, it still applies.
So far we've seen the new productions of
Persuasion (almost as good at the '95 version with Amanda Root, which was more true to the novel),
Northanger Abbey (an early work inspired by the gothic romances so popular at the time), and
Mansfield Park (with her most complex set of themes, and her least loved heroine, Fanny).
We're now two thirds of the way through A&E's fabulous production of
Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth (sigh...) as Mr. Darcy, and Jennifer Ehle, playing as good a Lizzie as Keira Knightley wasn't.
Indeed, you can't help wondering if Elizabeth Bennet isn't as close as fiction comes to the real Jane Austen.
Yet to come is
Emma (wasn't Gweneth Paltrow born to play this part? But they've chosen Kate Beckinsale's version instead....) and a new production of
Sense and Sensibility (again, what Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant perfected, why try again?) But of course, I'll be watching because the words are still Jane's, and her wisdom only improves with age. (Just cut me some slack on Monday mornings!)