22 Monday Mar 2021
Posted in Books
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In light of Women’s History Month, I’m pleased to share my review of a beautiful new book by Jasmine A. Stirling that is sure to delight the hearts …
Book Review and Giveaway for A Most Clever Girl by Jasmine A. Stirling
20 Monday Jan 2020
Posted in Masterpiece, PBS, Television
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PBS/BBC’s Masterpiece drama Sanditon just hasn’t grabbed me. Based on an unfinished Jane Austen novel, it actually seems like a phlegmatic version of one of Austen’s masterpieces. The cast features Charlotte, a bright heroine who to me seems like a cross between Lizzy Bennett and her drab sister Mary with a mix of her friend Lydia. There’s an arrogant hero, who I expect will change after learning from the heroine. There’s a strict, rich widow and a fop or two. The only new character is a woman from Antigua who’s Black. There’s a possible injection of orignality, but like the others this character doesn’t do much for me.
The story starts with a couple getting stranded by Charlotte’s house and when this real estate developer invites Charlotte to his seaside development for an unknown period of time, her parents agree even though Charlotte’s father is wary of the wild ways of seaside villages. I couldn’t believe that even if it was the norm to let your young daughter go off with strangers, that this father wouldn’t have. Of course, money’s a big issue and the developer’s out of cash and his business is in peril.
The woman from Antigua, though an heiress, is treated with prejudice by all the social set she encounters. Her family has died and she’s under the supervision on her guardian, but she has a fierce desire to return home.
All in all, I think the story is predictable and I miss Austen’s perfect wit. To me the show doesn’t measure up to Poldark, Victoria, Mr. Selfridge, or The Paradise. I wish they’d add a season to either of those shows than mess around with an unfinished Austen novel.
19 Thursday Jul 2012
Posted in Television
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Anglophile, Crawley, Downton Abbey, England, Fee tail, inheritance, Jane Austen, land, Peerage, period drama, To Kill a Mockingbird
So much of the drama of Downton Abbey rests on the entail. If you’ve read Jane Austen or To Kill a Mockingbird, you’ve heard about these mysterious legal arrangements. Last night at the local library, I learned for once and for all what an entail is and what their history was.
Any Downton Abbey fan knows that Lord Grantham can’t leave his estate to his daughter because of the entail. It must go to the oldest male heir and that heir died on the Titanic. A distant cousin, Matthew will inherit the massive house, all its furnishings and grounds. That information can suffice, but as we’ve go to wait till January for our next Downton Abbey fix and since the library had a historian speak on Downton Abbey background, and since I’m geeky enough to dash off to such an event, I can now illuminate this entail business.
Get out some No Doze and here we go!
Way back when in England everyone who helped out the powerful got parcels of land and the poor could work as farm hands and use the commons for pastures. The problem that soon surfaced was that as the father died all the sons would get a divided parcel of land. Well, that would mean in a few generations people would be living on like one acre. That’s no good. Land meant wealth, power and status.
So when the Normans invaded they were bright enough to be careful that the parcels of land they confiscated and doled out remained intact. So land was passed down by primogenator, i.e. to the eldest living son. This method gave the British aristocracy a lot of power. In fact, by the 18th century the aristocracy in England had more power than the monarch. (That wasn’t the case in France so I guess they did things differently over there.)
Women’s property and money was subsumed by the husband upon marriage.
According to LexisNexis, an entail means:
To settle property upon a person with limitations in respect of the succession. Precisely, to create an estate in tail, that is, a fee tail, in conveying or devising real property. To involve, e. g., the trial of a law suit “involves” much preparation.
But we figured that. Entails made this even more secure, power more consolidated. The land the nobles got in the Henry’s era weren’t all that big compared to what the Crawleys have. Why?
Small fields and forests got taken by a few families
Because of the Privatization and Enclosure Acts, which began in the 1600s, allowed people to petition Parliament to consolidate plots disenfranchising small farmers. Before you knew it 4 million acres in Britain were owned by 12 individuals (Ye Olde 1%). Enclosures allowed the rich to become richer. They also made farming more efficient for a time. Yet the small farmer sure got squeezed out.
Common Recovery document
An entail could be “smashed” as Violet periodically urges and even by Jane Austen’s time they were becoming unpopular. One way to break an entail was this loop hole – when the legal son turned 21 he could turn the property over to fee simple (i.e. owning a land with a deed) that way the new owner could do with it as he pleased, will it to anyone, split it up, sell off parts.
There was also something called a Common Recovery whereby an owner could break an entail by creating this legal mess whereby the landowner transfers the land to an agent or lawyer and then some bogus chap John Doe, Richard Row, Moses Mill or such seems to take the land and sell it all so the owner can do what he wants with it. It’s all quite confusing and I have no idea why the owner could sell to an agent but not to someone else, but then these property laws are all about power and injustice when you start reading through some of these articles.
The Fines and Recoveries Act of 1833 put an end to this charade and allowed that a lease could trump and entail.
So it seems that Robert Crawley could have signed away his entail at age 21, but if he was a serious sort who liked tradition, he wouldn’t have felt the need to. Most 21 year olds probably figure they’ll have at least one son. He still could . . . we’ll have to see what happens in January.
Commoners try to keep the commons
05 Saturday May 2012
Posted in Books, Film, Television
In April my book club read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice again. Rereading it is like reliving a delightful vacation. The characters and events become more vivid this time ’round.
This time when I read it, I was more aware of Lydia’s selfishness and cluelessness. (I’ve gotten that before, but this time it rang louder.) I think watching so many current movies, set in any era, I’ve subconsiously bought into our era’s feeling that “oh, it’s okay to impetuous.” Though Austen’s writings aren’t overtly religious, her message is clear that Lydia’s going to have a rough life and that foolish decisions don’t just turn out okay. Our society seems to have lost that notion. (Yep, I guess that observation shows why I’m so at home in Austen’s world.) I also read with a keen view to seeing when Darcy falls for Lizzy and vice versa as that was a question I’d read in a list of discussion questions.
I do wonder how it was that Darcy’s love wasn’t crushed after Lizzy refused him and wounded his pride so. Yes, he changed her view of him with his letter, but he didn’t know that. I’ve seen the series with Colin Firthand the film with Matthew MacFayden and like them both. The BBC production with Firth is longer and can cover every scene in the book, while the film left things out. I am fine with any traditional adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Just spare me anything with zombies.
My heart always goes out to Charlotte. I just could not have made that choice. I don’t have or even want to have the patience to marry for security. She was practical and no one made her marry Collins. After reading about book club member Cortney’s footnotes in her annotated version, I went over to my library’s website and did some research. I found an interesting short article that hypothesized that Lady Catherine’s social standing wasn’t what she presented or that at least at one point in life her ideas about class weren’t what they are during the novel.
Rosings, as Austen says, is a modern—that is, Georgian—building, and its glazing came at Sir Lewis de Bourgh’s expense. It was not uncommon for the daughters of nobility, like Lady Catherine, the daughter of an earl, to marry wealthier men of lower social rank but higher economic standing. In fact, her late sister, Lady Anne Darcy, did just this: she married Darcy’s father, who came from the “honorable [. . .] though untitled” (394) family that owned Pemberley, which is obviously not a “modern” building, as its library holdings are “the work of many generations” (41). The wealthy commoner husband certainly gained prestige by marrying a wife who retained her paternal courtesy title, as Ladies Catherine and Anne did.
When Lady Catherine visits Elizabeth to command her not to marry Darcy, she states that both the Darcys and the de Bourghs are “ancient” families (394).4 But is Lady Catherine’s veracity to be trusted? In her angry hysteria at this moment, she also insists that her nephew, Darcy, and her daughter, Anne, “are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses” (394). Yet Darcy himself neither believes this promise nor chooses his life’s mate with regard for any such promise. Moreover, the convivially chatty, even gossipy, Colonel Fitzwilliam never mentions any intention of his cousins to marry. Indeed, when the Colonel tells Elizabeth that Darcy is procrastinating on their departure from Rosings, he has no idea why and never surmises that it has anything to do with a potential de Bourgh–Darcy marriage. Even if the de Bourghs are an “ancient,” extremely wealthy family, as Lady Catherine insists, Austen suggests that they did not have a great country house until Sir Lewis de Bourgh built Rosings. Not only does the narrator undercut Lady Catherine’s pride by giving her a “modern-built house,” rather than a distinguished older house, but the man who paid for the house’s original glazing and the man who brags about its costs do, too.
RAY, JOAN KLINGEL. “Pride and Prejudice: The Tale Told by Lady Catherine’s House.” Explicator 2008: 66. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 2 May 2012.
I do wonder what happens to these characters after the story’s end. I haven’t read any of the modern sequels expecting that none would meet my expectations. Has anyone else read any of them? Any recommendations?
C. E. Brock illustration for the 1895 edition of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
31 Wednesday Aug 2011
Posted in Television
I’m not that sure I’ve read Jane Austen‘s novel Persuasion. I recall Bridget read it, but if I did, it was long ago.
I saw this BBC adaptation on Netflix and thought, “Why not?” and I’m glad I did. Persuasion is simpler than Austen’s other works like Pride and Prejudice or Mansfield Park. There are some minor storylines, but we don’t get invested in them as we do in Austen’s other books.
In Persuasion, Anne Elliot is surprised when her former fiancé Mr. Wentworth re-enters her life eight years after she turned him down. Her father’s squandered his fortune and must lease his grand home. His tenants turn out to be Mr. Wentworth’s sister and brother-in-law.
She has not gotten over him and he still feels the sting of rejection. Anne rejected Wentworth due to the persuasion of her relatives who believed he was too poor for her. Now he’s returned after acquiring a fortune for his success in the navy.
This book lacks a confidante for the heroine and doesn’t have as much wit as one finds in say Sense and Sensibility or Emma or P&P. The father is a self-absorbed fop, but he doesn’t ever face the consequences he seemed to deserve.
Yet I was drawn into the story wondering how the couple would get together. Austen wrote while suffering with the illness that eventually killed her. (Experts can’t agree on what it was.) Thus this book wasn’t revised as carefully as her other books.
While I did like the story it was hard to understand why Wentworth was so smitten with Anne, why he couldn’t forget her. She wasn’t especially beautiful and because she isn’t shown amongst friends we don’t see her wit or spark. She’s a good, dutiful young woman with a churlish family. In real life such women don’t usually catch the eye, let alone spark an enduring love in a handsome young man, I’m not complaining just letting you know this is escapism, not reality.
It’s a short film at just about 90 minutes so you don’t have much time to wish for more characters or dialog. The film moves along at a clip.
Meet Cute 