British TV Goes for a Shock Treatment of Austen’s Work

A provocative project for a TV version of Jane Austen’s work is described by British columnist Roy Hattersley in the Guardian, a copy of which has been sent to me by my Cambridge correspondent, Jim Moore.

Miss Austen, of course, was the early 19th-Century British novelist whose work is still widely read and admired; a local chapter of the Jane Austen Society meets annually at the Huntington Library to read, discuss and hear learned lectures on her life and work.

Quoting the Daily Mail, whose veracity he accepts only for the sake of argument, Mr. Hattersley discloses that “a new television adaptation of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ will feature sex scenes and a full frontal view of the darkly handsome hero, Mr. Darcy.”

Anyone familiar with Austen’s work knows that the conquest of eligible men by virginal young women is her prevailing theme; but of course the idea of these romances being portrayed in explicit “sex scenes” and male nudity is unthinkable.

Screenwriter Andrew Davies, who intends to release Jane Austen’s hidden passion, is quoted as saying, “There is a lot of pent-up sexuality in Jane Austen’s work, and I have let it out.”

Re-examining “Pride and Prejudice,” Hattersley concedes that there are previously undiscovered sexual references. For example, when Mrs. Gardiner is advising Elizabeth Bennet on her affairs with men: “You must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we expect you to use it.”

Hattersley suggests that the word fancy in that context means “sexual desire” and that the it in “use it,” refers to a contraceptive product widely advertised on public posters.

“How fortunate we are,” Hattersley allows, “that Andrew Davies has, by liberating us from the old restrictions, allowed our imagination to run wild.”

However, Hattersley disdains Davies’ attempt to interpret Austen as a modern romance novelist. He recalls a scene in “Emma” in which Mr. Knightley almost kisses Emma’s hand but at the last moment lets go. “He could of course have jumped on her and torn her clothes off,” Hattersley says.

He notes that Austen herself was not unfamiliar with the rituals of courtship. “She was constantly courted . . . and would undoubtedly have married a young man from Sidmouth had he not died.”

He concludes: “Since that is the way that Jane Austen chose to write and since that is the basis for her genius, there can be no reason--except literary perversity--for painting in lurid colours what she preferred to draw in pastel shades.”

I’m not too sure. I wouldn’t mind seeing a sexually explicit “Pride and Prejudice” with all the well-disciplined passions of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy allowed to escape on the screen.

Surely passions were unleashed in Austen’s work, if only offstage. One can only imagine the passionate embraces between Elizabeth’s sister Lydia and her lover, the improvident Mr. Wickham, when they eloped and lived together out of wedlock. In the Davies version, Lydia may become the central character.

Even in the reserved lovemaking of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, throughout which not even a kiss is exchanged, we may read between the lines. Darcy is less a man than I think him if, somewhere along the line, he did not sweep Elizabeth into his arms and kiss her passionately, in the manner of modern TV kisses.

In the romantic ending, when Elizabeth and Darcy are walking alone (walking is the only time they are ever alone) she makes it plain that she no longer considers him vain, snobbish and cruel, and he assures her that his previously spurned offer of marriage is still valid.

For some reason, Austen abandons dialogue at this point. She writes: “The happiness which this reply produced was such as he had probably never felt before, and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Elizabeth been able to encounter his eyes she might have seen how well the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over his face became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.”

Surely this is the moment for the big kiss. But no, the dialogue goes on, each lover speaking in Austen’s perfect sentences, each adorned with appropriate subordinate clauses and other literary diversions.

Although the matter was not explicitly discussed during that extended conversation, Elizabeth later confides to her sister Jane that she is engaged.

Thus, “Pride and Prejudice” is brought to its happy ending without any explicit sex, and without, you can rest assured, any frontal exposure of Mr. Darcy.

I’m keeping an open mind toward Mr. Davies’ revisions. I’d like to see Mel Gibson and Kim Basinger in it.