It's be a year since we started my new book club and I'm beyond thrilled that we're continuing on and everyone is still enjoying themselves. We decided as a group, at the beginning of this new book cycle, to do all of the Jane Austen novels! What more could a book lover want then to have in-depth discussions about Austen's novels! We're doing them in written order, not published, so we can observe and review how she transforms as a writer throughout her life.
We started with the collection of her early writings titled Love and Freindship and Other Youthful Writings which, according to chronology, were done between 1787 and 1794. For the collection we focused mainly on the stories of "Love and Freindship" and "Lady Susan" because they were some of the only fully completed works within the anthology. Both were equally enjoyable reads, but also a bit ridiculous in terms of characters and plots.
We're not rating the Austen novels like we typically do with our book choices because, come on, these are Austen, we already know we love them. We did discuss writing style, genres, formats, themes and storylines. Many of us read the introduction to the Penguin Classics edition (shown above) and really enjoyed the background it provided on her family and early life. Most of it I already knew, but there was also new information that I was glad to soak up.
I noted that much of the early work is quite a bit more grim and gothic than her full published novels. There is more death, seduction, poisonings and capture and imprisonment than I expected, but Elissa noted that this was likely due to Austen's love of the gothic novel when she was an adolescent. She would have endeavored to emulate the genre to the enjoyment of her siblings, but the gothic also appears in the form of Northanger Abbey - a novel about novels.
It can also be seen that her early writings were mainly for the pleasure of her family's consumption. Austen was less cautious about propriety, manners and lewd themes than she was about her published works, obviously never thinking that her 'youthful writings' would ever be published after her death. It it is quite the unique look into her evolution as a writer.
"Love and Freindship" is quite the wild ride of crazy train-wreck after train-wreck and even actually features its own carriage-wreck! The whole thing was very Mean Girls-esque in its execution. The two main female characters in the story were so over the top that it was hard to know what ridiculousness they would get up to next. Overall, it was a light, fun read and not overly long. We weren't able to determine if Austen was being satirical with many of the events and characters, mostly because some of it was so outlandish, but we were thoroughly entertained by the drama.
"Lady Susan" on the other hand was better thought-out and more effect in its story arch. I particularly liked that Lady Susan was not your typical Austen heroine that we know and love from her novels. Susan was manipulative, conniving, social-climbing and some would even say emotionally abusive to her daughter; all traits that are typically reserved for secondary or side characters in Austen's later novels. Elements of "Lady Susan" reminded me of Sense and Sensibility so there was a familiarity there for me even though I'd not read it before. The whole aspect of the deceptive main character and not really knowing who is supposed to be the actual heroine of the story, really kept me engaged. It was fun to see the plot unfold and not know who you were supposed to be rooting for, or who you wanted to come out on top at the end.
We also discussed the letter-style format of the two stories. We agreed that it worked better for "Lady Susan" because the progression of the story was aided well by the switching of the writers of each subsequent letter so you could get a different perspective. It helped move the plot along, unlike in "Love and Freindship" which was just a series of letters from one person recounting their life, so you only go one view. And was that view even truthful? Its questionable considering the absurdity of the contents. History shows that Austen was an avid lover of letter writing and she uses it as a plot device in all over novels, but I noted that as the collection moves through her early years, there are not many pieces that show her transition from the letter-style format to the full-length novels. The closest would be "Catherine, or the Bower" from Volume the Third.
Of course, there are plenty of Austen's other favoured themes sprinkled throughout the anthology as well: elopement, grave illnesses, letter writing, dancing to show affection, money, unsanctioned marriages, etc. etc. There are actually a few pieces, that if read together, are basically the full plot of Sense and Sensibility just without the same character names. That intrigued me and made me giddy all at the same time to see that progression through her work.
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I also of course watched the adaptation. The one thing that REALLY bothered me was that it was explicitly stated that it was based off the "Lady Susan" short story, but why then did they call in Love & Friendship? It makes no sense. Part of me thinks the studio/writers/director/producers did that because it fell more in line with the rest of Austen's titles for her works. Either way, it was a bit distracting because I wanted to then see elements for the L&F short story. Sigh.
Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan was spectacular. She did an amazing job of being likeable but you also just wanted to hate her because she was so conniving. Her and Mrs. Johnson were so catty right from the get go that it just draws you into the whole thing. The actor that plays Sir James Martin was also hilarious! He did a fantastic job of playing the ditzy, dopey, not quite as refined as he should be, gentlemen who is after Lady Susan's daughter. I laughed every time he was on screen. He honestly reminded me of Gilderoy Lockhart from the HP movies.
The film adaptation took some liberties with the plot for the end of the movie that weren't in the story, but I think they worked well. I especially like that it elaborated more on the status of Mr. Manwaring after Susan marries (Not going to who say because SPOILER). Susan still manages to get in her thinly veiled jabs at the other characters right up until the ending. I liked that.
As a period drama is was pretty good; as an adaptation, it left me wanting. I am a stickler for fidelity in adaptations (a fatal flaw, I know) and while this one was pretty faithful to the source, I still found it lacking in character development. There wasn't much to go off of from the story, but if you read between the lines a bit I feel like the writers could have done more with the source material in rounding everyone out a little more. Overall I liked it as a film and it made me laugh, which is always good.
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