A feature of television at Christmas is a congestion of times past for the landed gentry who live in fine country houses and this year was no exception with Emma and Mansfield Park, a Downton Abbey Christmas special and from Time to Time. I also include the Dickens Great Expectations.
I have been less of a Jane Austin fan than the Bronte sisters as her portrayals of the superficiality between the landed gentry leave me cold. Mansfield Park and Emma is the same story told with different principal characters in the sense that a man and a woman become close friends over a period of time and only later appreciate that they also wish to become adult lovers and because they are friends there is confidence that their love could be long lasting if not happy ever after.
I have not read Emma the 1815 comedy of manners among the genteel of Georgian Regency England and therefore have been guided by others about the authenticity and effectiveness of the 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role and Ewan McGregor and Greta Scacchi among the cast. A year before there had been a USA set version called Clueless and last year an India film called Aisha. The television productions have been more faithful to the original intentions with versions in 1948, a six part BBC serial in 1960 with another in 1972 and a four part version in 2009. In the same year as the Paltrow the BBC produced a single session film with Kate Beckinsale which should be the one to compare. By coincidence this film featured on ITV in the afternoon so my decision to watch the second part of the Harry Potter finale and then write about the series proved justified in more ways than I had anticipated. The Americans, NBC and CBS have produced three TV versions in addition and there have been seven stage productions, including three musical versions.
Emma is an intelligent young women stuck in a world where she has too little to do other than gossip and match make about which she no talent. She is only twenty one so allowances are made for her youthful silliness.
I am not sure if we learn when her mother died but with the marriages of her sister and her governess she lives alone in the country house with her father who leads his own life and therefore leaves Emma (Woodhouse) to enjoy the country walks, the picnics and dancing with her permitted circle of contemporaries. She enjoys the company of her father’s friend George Knightly unmarried and in his late thirties whose younger brother has married Emma’s older sister. They have five young children and prefer nuclear family life but indulges his wife’s enthusiasm for vacations and visitations. Something which she shares with her young sister who one predicts will follow in similar fashion.
Having decided that she is a good match maker Emma sets her sights on finding a husband for her friend Harriet Smith who is illegitimate, and raised locally and not part of the set until introduced by Emma. When a local farmer and his sister take an interest in Harriet, Emma does all she can to prevent a relationship developing and insists that the girl rejects the offer of marriage from Robert Martin and friendship of his sister because she believes the girl could do so much better.
She targets the new young Vicar Philip Elton but he first sets his sights on Emma and when Emma rejects him, he quickly marries another young woman from out of town called Augusta because of her income of £10000 a year. The woman but lacks the genteel qualities of her new circle and is written as pretentious and boastful and likes to have her own way. She struck me as very suitable for her husband who in the tradition of the Church of England is an ambitious man with only the trappings of Christianity lacking religious sincerity.
There are two other principal characters. The first Frank Churchill, the son by his previous marriage of Mr Weston who has married Emma’s governess of sixteen years and who acted as a substitute mother to Emma, exercising good influence but limited to having been a servant in the household. Frank has taken the name of the husband of Mr Weston’s sister who raised the boy has their own after the premature death of his mother. He was raised in Richmond in Yorkshire but becomes an immediate hit when he visits except for George who becomes jealous when Frank sets his sights on Emma. He appears to be good in his judgement when Frank returns briefly to London for the purpose of getting a haircut.
The other principal character is Jane Fairfax who has been raised by her grandmother and a spinster aunt to be a spirited and sensible young woman of musical and social talents but because she is without fortune to make an appropriate marriage she appears destined to become a governess. She and Frank Churchill became acquainted while holiday in Dorset and where he executed a rescue of the young woman when out on a boat trip which ended in heavy winds and high seas.
Frank arranges a dance at the local Inn at which Mr Elton declines to dance with Harriet Smith who has to sit and watch the others enjoys themselves. Mr Knightley steps in. When Emma and Harriet are walking to her home one day they are accosted by gypsies in one version for their purses and by begging children in another. Harriet who falls to the ground is rescued by Frank Churchill and Emma gets her wires crossed and believes the girl has become infatuated with Frank who appears to be taking an interest in her when in fact she is taken with George Knightley.
There is a strawberry picking tea party at the home of Mr Knightly who owns the great house and estate in the areas. Mrs Elton says he should have asked her to organise the event but he puts her down saying that this will be the responsibility of his wife when he finds her but he remains in control until he does. I was struck by the volume of perfect strawberries on show in the British film version which does not reflect the size of the beds in the kitchen garden where they picks those they plan to take home.
There is a significant difference between the two films in the scale of the picnic to Box Hill which remains an important visitor attraction to this day and which I visited as a child in an extended family outing by bus. I revisited a few years ago and it is possible to park the car at the top of the Hill In the British version film the party includes footman, cooks and maids in their uniforms who transport screens and comfortable chairs as well as setting a table with a full buffet style meal displayed. The Paltrow version the picnic is modest by comparison.
This is a pivotal event because Emma humiliates the spinster aunt of Miss Fairfax and is severely reprimanded by George who is disgusted and disappointed her behaviour and she is suitable chastened and remorseful. However the crunch event is when the news arrives that with the death of his aunt, Frank Churchill has announced that he and Miss Fairfax are engaged. They were secretly engaged after meeting during the Dorset holiday but could not disclose further because of the anticipated disapproval of the aunt. With her death the relationship can be acknowledged. Because Mr Knightly had made his carriage available to Miss Fairfax her grand mother and aunt for a musical evening, Emma had thought he was interested in the young woman at one point and that it was George who had provided the sister with a piano for Miss Fairfax who is considered an excellent pianist and singer could play. In fact it was Frank Churchill who arranged the delivery on his supposed mission for a haircut in London. George returns home and visits Emma as soon as he learns of Frank’s deception. The scene leads the two disclosing their long term affection for each other. Meanwhile Harriet had regained contact with the farmer Martin and his sisters and they are also to be married. The film ends with a joint wedding.
Apart from her attractive facial features and body it is difficult to see what George sees in Emma It can be argued that at least Emma does not spend all her time seeking a partner or pursuing a fortune. However she must be condemned for the attachment to class and belief in her superiority over others. She contributes nothing to humanity. Miss Paltrow is excellent without a trace of an American accent and I preferred her version to that of Kate Beckinsale. Mark String is excellent as Knightly and Bernard Hepton as Emma’s father in the latter.
While the basic story of Mansfield Park is the same there is much more substance to the characters with an awareness of the true nature of slavery and the lives of the majority. Fanny Price is the second eldest of nine children whose father spends his time drinking and in an opium haze after being pensioned on half pay as a naval Lieutenant because of disability. While Fanny’s mother has accepted her fate she plots a better life for her daughter and arranges with one of her two sisters that Fanny should be raised at Mansfield Park where their other sister has married the owner. Like Fanny’s mother Lady Bartram (Lindsay Duncan) has retreated from life into her role as a dutiful housewife and it is the third sister, a widow and former wife of the Church of England vicar who comes to greet Fanny some two hours after she has been dropped off at the main entrance of the Mansfield Park in the early hours after the long coach ride from Portsmouth.
Fanny is to be brought up in the main household with four first cousins. The eldest when an adult accompanies his father on a visit to their wealth making plantation in Antigua. The elder brother disapproves of the use of slaves and as drawn the stark reality much to the horror and disgust of his father. He returns early from the trip and then is brought home from London by drinking friends when his money runs out. He is then struck down with fever and nearly dies.
Meanwhile the second son who has been a close companion of Fanny since she arrived in the household has been betrothed to someone appropriate according to his parents. She is Mary Crawford who when the older brother takes ill contemplates the advantages that his death will mean that that her future husband becomes the heir and inherits the estate. She is similar to Mrs Elton in several ways. She has a brother who appears intelligent and superficially charming and at first takes an interest in one of the two daughters of Sir Thomas and Lady Bartram. He also reminds of Frank Churchill. This ends the relationship.
Maria is the eldest daughter of the Bartram’s who is pursued by Mr Rushworth who has £12000 a year but who is also a boring young man. She prefers the brother of Mary Crawford who something of a romantic womaniser. She runs off with Crawford soon after her marriage, gains a divorce but Crawford fails to marry her.
Julia is the youngest daughter who also fancies Crawford but is pursued by Tom Yates, a drinking partner of the eldest son. He and Julia run off together.
For a time Henry Crawford also took an interest in Fanny which Sir Thomas considers to be a good match. Fanny is not interested and when Sir Thomas gives her an ultimatum of marriage or return to her family she chooses the latter. In the novel she is between eighteen and nineteen years. She is pursued by Crawford when she returns to Portsmouth who in the film pays a young man to bring an entertainment of fireworks and a host of white doves to outside her home. When he befriends the family and appears to accept their comparatively low lifestyle Fanny warms to him and briefly consents to a marriage which she quickly withdraws. He goes off in a huff and quickly transfers his affections.
With the two daughters away from home and Lady Bartram wrapped him in her own world it is Edmund who is sent by Sir Thomas to ask Fanny to return when Tom becomes dangerously ill and it is she who nurses the older son much to the gratitude of Sir Thomas and Edmund.
The essential difference between Fanny and Emma and Edmund and Mr Knightly is that neither are natural social creatures preferring to spend their time reading and in good conversation. Fortunately for both they come to realise their adult affection as well as teenage friendship and shared interests. Before leaving home Fanny had developed a close relationship with a younger sister who shows some of the same qualities as her older sister. Their friendship is renewed when she returns home and in due course she joins Fanny and her husband at the Park.
According to my research there is a significant difference between character of Fanny in the original text and the film. There is acceptance of slavery and their family lifestyle in the book which is made into an issue in the film. In the book Fanny is shy and timid where as in the film she is single minded and self confident. She is physical weak and often tired in the text but an extrovert and outspoken in the film What the film version also attempts to do is to suggest that Mansfield Park is autobiographical Jane Austin in that Fanny spends a great deal of time writing from childhood and using scare family funds for paper when she returns home.
In the book she finds Crawford’s attention unwelcome and far from returning for as a punishment goes to escape his attentions. There are various other changes some work but others distort to an extent to arouse hostility from fans of the writer. I like the film version.
And now for something of a very different- A 2011 three part adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations. In my view there had been nothing until now to compare with 1946 film which has John Mills as Pip the young man and Alec Guiness as his friend Pocket. Jean Simmons played Estella the younger and Valerie Hobson as Miss Haversham with Finlay Curry and Bernard Miles also featuring.
In the present BBC production Ray Winston as one of his better roles as Abel Magwitch and David Suchet is Jaggers. The story has become well known as a consequence of the films and TV production although the original text merits the reading. I possess a family edition in the Heron Great Works series but I must confess not to have read but I am placing with the other volumes for reading during 2012. We encounter Pip as a young boy in the care of his married elder sister who husband Joe a blacksmith treats the child as his own.
The various films and series all open with the Pip encountering an escaped convict in chains, Abel Magwitch and he frightens Pip into getting a tool to release him from his enchainment. Pip also brings the man a slice of home made pie. Pip also encounters a man with a scar on his face who is another escapee. Magwitch is captured with the file and pie and the authorities assume that the file has been stolen from the forge which is returned causing great concern to the sister but Joe appears more understanding the situation and Magwitch is struck by their kindness in leaving him the food. The event is pivotal to the story as is the next development.
Pip has an uncle who delivers supplies by trade including to the local great house where the lady of the house is looking for a local young boy to keep her adopted daughter company. Pip is suggested and while his sister sees this as a great opportunity for family advancement her husband is unsure. Pip enjoys the visits despite the strangeness of Miss Haversham, a comparatively young woman who lives as a recluse where the dinning room is laid out for a wedding breakfast from years before. The young adopted girl Estella is unkind to Pip who she regards as inferior until an event which changes their relationship. Relatives of Miss Haversham call with their son but are refused access to Miss Haversham. They are incensed when the find Pip is allowed into the house and upper floors. He is told to immediately leave by Miss Haversham who cannot cope with his visit because of the situation and when he leaves he encountered the son of the visitors who behaves like Estella, the daughter towards Pip but in this instance Pip defends himself and strikes the young man down. This delights Estella because he has made something happen.
When sometime later Pip and his step father are summoned to Hall the sister believes they are going to be rewarded and made up. However Miss Haversham has a different idea and offers to pay for Pip to be indentured as an apprentice Blacksmith. She arrange the formal document with the help of the family layer Jaggers who is another character who is play a key role in the story.
While they are at the Hall the sister humiliates the hired help at the forge and he batters her to near death so she is rendered into a vegetable state for the rest of her life. The hired help makes it plain to Pip that he is answerable to him rather than directly through his step father. Having been given a taste of the life of genteel classes Pip is disappointed by his fate.
Seven years later Pip, now a young man, is summoned back to the Hall and introduced to Estelle now a beautiful young woman who is about to go to Paris to a finishing school before going into society in London to have her pick of eligible young men for marriage. Estelle tells Pip never to come back to the House again although there is an evident attraction between the two. Because Pip has completed his apprenticeship Joe tells the hired help his services are no longer required because the Forge cannot sustain three adult workers. This further antagonises the help who determines to get his revenge.
There is then an event which is to shape Pip’s destiny. Jaggers arrives to say that a secret benefactor wishes to enable Pip to have the life of a gentleman in London society. He will be given a weekly allowance which he will collect once a week from the Solicitor and then if he follows his instructions and guidance he will inherit a fortune when he comes of age (twenty one years). He can make no enquiries about his benefactor but Pip immediately assumes this is Miss Haversham and that the intention is that he should become the partner for Estella. He visits the Hall and the lady says nothing to dissuade him from the notion although she does not confirm his assumption. Pip sets off for London in new clothes acquired with money given by Jaggers to set himself up on arrival.
In the second episode Pip is provided with a guide for becoming a gentleman in the form of Herbert Pocket who Harry encountered at the Hall as the obnoxious relative of Estella. He is a much changed individual in having sacrificed his income and inheritance for life with the young woman he loves. He has to find work in order to marry and for this he needs some capital but in he meantime he is undertaking services for Jaggers which includes helping to become a gentleman. While his influence is positive and he acts responsibly, Pip in his anxiety to be able to impress Miss Haversham and Estella begins to spend way above his means thus gaining the disapproval of Jaggers. The first casualty is his relationship with his step father who has to visit after months of not hearing anything. Joe realises that Pip has become ashamed of his former life and is pretending that he has always been a gentleman.
Pip explains to Pocket his love for Estella and then finds that his friend far from being impressed is alarmed. Pocket explains that Miss Haversham was jilted by her fiancée who turned out to be an adventuring con artist disappearing after she has settled some money on him. Pip ignores the advice to have nothing more to do with mother and daughter and accepts an invitation to return to the Hall to find that Estella has returned from Paris and Miss Haversham wants him to accompany his adopted daughter to London for the social season and finding a husband. Pip thinks that this is an invitation for him to begin a relationship with Estella.
Pip has become a self centred waster of his fortune incurring great debts in anticipation of the fortune he expects to inherit from Miss Haversham. When his sister dies he visits briefly just for the service as there is a dance to attend with Estella that evening.
One day at the office of Jaggers he arrives early and meets one of the other gentlemen looked after by the lawyer. This man is a member of the landed gentry and quickly establishes a relationship with Pip who does not realise that Bentley Drummle is using him and soon admits his disregard for someone without a proper background. He first learns the reality when is taken to an upper class brothel. He tries to warn Drummle off taking an interest in Estella when the two meet at a Ball. Pip remains convinced that his affection is reciprocate after he and Estella have shared a kiss although she later dismisses this as using him to gain practice as was the purpose of the original invitation to Haversham Hall all those years before. When she announces that she is to marry Drummle she explains to Pip she has a cold heart and has been brought up to bring unhappiness to men. This was the aim of her upbringing; taking revenge on men for what happened to her adopted mother.
There is one good streak left in Pip that he arranges a career for his friend Pocket with the help of Jaggers Chief Clerk, promising to pay the balance of fee required of £500. As a consequence Pocket is able to marry and the wedding is a cause for celebration.
Pip then discovers the truth that it was Magwitch who is the benefactor when the man comes to his room with a vast quantity of money, his inheritance. He is horrified believing that the funds are the proceeds of crime. He refuses the inheritance and with the allowance stopped his debtors mount their demands. He goes to see Miss Haversham and persuades her to give him the funds required to pay off the debt incurred in securing a career for Pocket, He agrees never to return and Miss Haversham finding that Estella is returning all her unintentionally sets fire to her self as she burns the letters.
Pip has discovered the truth about Estella and Magwitch. Magwitch was married and his wife was wronged by an individual who in fact is the man who wronged Miss Haversham. His wife had attacked the man giving him a scar and he is also the individual who has escaped from prison with Magwitch. He had not been caught and had made a good living for himself in London society as a gambler. Magwitch had taken the blame for his wife’s action in order to save her and his daughter from transportation to the prisons of Australia. Magwitch believed his child and wife had since died and he had made his fortune from sheep at the end of his sentence. Although he was a free man and the money honestly earned there was a stipulation that he should never return to London on pain of the gallows. Pip discovers the maid servant of Jaggers is the former wife of Magwitch and that their daughter is Estella given to Miss Haversham.
Pip with the help of Pocket before he and his wife leave England to take up a posting abroad with his firm and Wemmick the Chief Clerk Pip helps to hide Magwitch who now has a price on his head placed by the man who wronged Haversham’s and Magwitch’s. The plan is for Magwitch to return to Australia, taking ship once he has left the waters of Thames within the London boundary. However in London Pip is being followed by the former assistant to his step father, the man who effectively murdered his sister. His first intention is to kill Pip but he then learns of the connection between Pip and Magwitch and claims the reward once he had obtained the details of the plan. Pip plans to accompany Magwitch to Australia but the plan is thwarted when instead of reaching the London barrier bell they find their adversary with the authorities waiting. In the fight that follows the enemy dies but Magwitch is injured, captured and taken to prison to await the hangman’s nose. He dies from his injuries before with Pip telling him that his daughter lived and became a beautiful young woman and that she will be loved for ever by Pip.
Back in his room he is attacked by the step father’s former assistant who reveals that he also severely injured the sister. Pip manages to overcome the man who off screen is then taken into custody.
When Pip confronting Miss Haversham her dress catches fire and she dies from her injuries. Pip returns to the home of his step father and apologises for his behaviour. In the film when returning from his job as an estate manager or clerk of some king he meets his uncle who says he is no longer on hard times because Estella has returned to the Hall a widow. Earlier we learn that he husband died from a riding accident for which she thanks his horse! He returns to Hall for a reunion.
Dickens had two endings for his work. In the first the two meet in the a street in London, admitting that because of the suffering experienced during her marriage she had learned to undo the cold heart created by her adopted mother. The final edition of the published work they meet in the ruins of the Hall. However there is to be no life happy ever after for them. They meet and they part as friend but at peace which each other and the world.
I had also hoped to write about Time to Time a 2009 British film which is an adaptation of the Children’s novel The Chimney of Green Knowe. I saw the opening on the morning of my Christmas trip but left for lunch and the return journey hoping to see the rest on the ITV player. Alas it is not included. A thirteen year old boy is sent to the care of his Grandmother at the family country house when his father is declared missing in action during World War II and his mother determines to go to London to try and find news and establish a new life for herself and her son if he does not return. The family have been estranged because his father had married someone who was not approved and Vice Versa.
The film had Maggie Smith as the grand mother and also Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey which is not surprising given that they are both cast into key roles in the series by the Director of the film Julian Fellows who created Downton Abbey. The boy encounters ghosts when exploring the house and finding his way blocked by a wall to the wing previously destroyed by fire. The grandmother is matter of fact about the ghosts and the boys is able to travel into past times thus earning the family history and its secrets.
There was a two hour Christmas special at Downton Abbey in which some issues are resolved while others are left open for the next series.
The main developments are that the truth about why Lady Mary is marrying Sir Richard Carlyle comes to the attention of her father who although disappointed tells her not to marry and that he and the family will support her, suggesting that she goes to stay with a relative in the USA and find someone to love and marry there. She also tells the truth the Matthew who under pressure from his mother and the Dowager comes to terms with his guilt about the death of his fiancée and is therefore able to start afresh with Mary, despite the threat from Carlisle that he will expose the family and its scandals.
The second nice development is that Daisy, the kitchen maid eventually goes to see her husband’s father at his farm. He explains that William was not an only child but that all his brothers and a sister had died so after childbirth as had his wife. Daisy is still wracked with the guilt of having married William on his death bed when she did not love him. She visits after cook plays around with a Weegee board used to communicate with the dead and pretends it is William telling her to visit his father. She accepts that she was regarded as special by William and the offer of the father to treat her as a daughter. More and more she has become more than a kitchen maid and is encouraged by a visitor to the household to leave and better herself. The father in law advises her to tell of her complaint to cook and ask to be promoted to an assistant. The cooks is agreeable to this subject to the funds being available.`
The third nice development is that the youngest daughter who married the Irish revolutionary chauffer Branson has become pregnant and the Earl agrees to invite the couple to stay at the Abbey.
However there is no such good news for Sir Robert’s former valet who was taken off to prison accused of the murder of his wife. He is convicted and sentenced to death. Sir Robert uses his connection to have the sentences commuted to life and then promises to continue work to establish a miscarriage of justice. Mrs Bates has planned to leave the Abbey and go to London because of the publicity anticipate as part of the threat from Carlyle. With the reprieve she withdraws her resignation.
The manipulating Thomas is thwarted in his effort to become his Lordship’s Valet to replace Bates and under the continuing influence of O’Brien kidnaps Sir Robert’s dog and locks him a woodland shed aiming to find the animal and get into the good books. The plan misfires and he is unable to get to the animal when the search is called off because of other developments. When he goes out in the morning he finds the shed opened and animal not there. He falls and in a dishevelled state returns to find his Lordship out walking with the animal which was found by a couple of villagers who had claimed the reward. However his Lordship is impressed that Thomas had gone out looking and had had come to some grief in the effort thus signalling that he may well get his wish to function as the valet until the future of Bates is settled.
The events are set at Christmas with the traditional shoot on Boxing Day. This is an event still taking place in country house to this day. The Duke of Edinburgh had organised and planned to lead the Boxing Day family shoot at Sandringham until his was hospitalised for an operation to relieve a blocked artery.
I have been less of a Jane Austin fan than the Bronte sisters as her portrayals of the superficiality between the landed gentry leave me cold. Mansfield Park and Emma is the same story told with different principal characters in the sense that a man and a woman become close friends over a period of time and only later appreciate that they also wish to become adult lovers and because they are friends there is confidence that their love could be long lasting if not happy ever after.
I have not read Emma the 1815 comedy of manners among the genteel of Georgian Regency England and therefore have been guided by others about the authenticity and effectiveness of the 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow in the title role and Ewan McGregor and Greta Scacchi among the cast. A year before there had been a USA set version called Clueless and last year an India film called Aisha. The television productions have been more faithful to the original intentions with versions in 1948, a six part BBC serial in 1960 with another in 1972 and a four part version in 2009. In the same year as the Paltrow the BBC produced a single session film with Kate Beckinsale which should be the one to compare. By coincidence this film featured on ITV in the afternoon so my decision to watch the second part of the Harry Potter finale and then write about the series proved justified in more ways than I had anticipated. The Americans, NBC and CBS have produced three TV versions in addition and there have been seven stage productions, including three musical versions.
Emma is an intelligent young women stuck in a world where she has too little to do other than gossip and match make about which she no talent. She is only twenty one so allowances are made for her youthful silliness.
I am not sure if we learn when her mother died but with the marriages of her sister and her governess she lives alone in the country house with her father who leads his own life and therefore leaves Emma (Woodhouse) to enjoy the country walks, the picnics and dancing with her permitted circle of contemporaries. She enjoys the company of her father’s friend George Knightly unmarried and in his late thirties whose younger brother has married Emma’s older sister. They have five young children and prefer nuclear family life but indulges his wife’s enthusiasm for vacations and visitations. Something which she shares with her young sister who one predicts will follow in similar fashion.
Having decided that she is a good match maker Emma sets her sights on finding a husband for her friend Harriet Smith who is illegitimate, and raised locally and not part of the set until introduced by Emma. When a local farmer and his sister take an interest in Harriet, Emma does all she can to prevent a relationship developing and insists that the girl rejects the offer of marriage from Robert Martin and friendship of his sister because she believes the girl could do so much better.
She targets the new young Vicar Philip Elton but he first sets his sights on Emma and when Emma rejects him, he quickly marries another young woman from out of town called Augusta because of her income of £10000 a year. The woman but lacks the genteel qualities of her new circle and is written as pretentious and boastful and likes to have her own way. She struck me as very suitable for her husband who in the tradition of the Church of England is an ambitious man with only the trappings of Christianity lacking religious sincerity.
There are two other principal characters. The first Frank Churchill, the son by his previous marriage of Mr Weston who has married Emma’s governess of sixteen years and who acted as a substitute mother to Emma, exercising good influence but limited to having been a servant in the household. Frank has taken the name of the husband of Mr Weston’s sister who raised the boy has their own after the premature death of his mother. He was raised in Richmond in Yorkshire but becomes an immediate hit when he visits except for George who becomes jealous when Frank sets his sights on Emma. He appears to be good in his judgement when Frank returns briefly to London for the purpose of getting a haircut.
The other principal character is Jane Fairfax who has been raised by her grandmother and a spinster aunt to be a spirited and sensible young woman of musical and social talents but because she is without fortune to make an appropriate marriage she appears destined to become a governess. She and Frank Churchill became acquainted while holiday in Dorset and where he executed a rescue of the young woman when out on a boat trip which ended in heavy winds and high seas.
Frank arranges a dance at the local Inn at which Mr Elton declines to dance with Harriet Smith who has to sit and watch the others enjoys themselves. Mr Knightley steps in. When Emma and Harriet are walking to her home one day they are accosted by gypsies in one version for their purses and by begging children in another. Harriet who falls to the ground is rescued by Frank Churchill and Emma gets her wires crossed and believes the girl has become infatuated with Frank who appears to be taking an interest in her when in fact she is taken with George Knightley.
There is a strawberry picking tea party at the home of Mr Knightly who owns the great house and estate in the areas. Mrs Elton says he should have asked her to organise the event but he puts her down saying that this will be the responsibility of his wife when he finds her but he remains in control until he does. I was struck by the volume of perfect strawberries on show in the British film version which does not reflect the size of the beds in the kitchen garden where they picks those they plan to take home.
There is a significant difference between the two films in the scale of the picnic to Box Hill which remains an important visitor attraction to this day and which I visited as a child in an extended family outing by bus. I revisited a few years ago and it is possible to park the car at the top of the Hill In the British version film the party includes footman, cooks and maids in their uniforms who transport screens and comfortable chairs as well as setting a table with a full buffet style meal displayed. The Paltrow version the picnic is modest by comparison.
This is a pivotal event because Emma humiliates the spinster aunt of Miss Fairfax and is severely reprimanded by George who is disgusted and disappointed her behaviour and she is suitable chastened and remorseful. However the crunch event is when the news arrives that with the death of his aunt, Frank Churchill has announced that he and Miss Fairfax are engaged. They were secretly engaged after meeting during the Dorset holiday but could not disclose further because of the anticipated disapproval of the aunt. With her death the relationship can be acknowledged. Because Mr Knightly had made his carriage available to Miss Fairfax her grand mother and aunt for a musical evening, Emma had thought he was interested in the young woman at one point and that it was George who had provided the sister with a piano for Miss Fairfax who is considered an excellent pianist and singer could play. In fact it was Frank Churchill who arranged the delivery on his supposed mission for a haircut in London. George returns home and visits Emma as soon as he learns of Frank’s deception. The scene leads the two disclosing their long term affection for each other. Meanwhile Harriet had regained contact with the farmer Martin and his sisters and they are also to be married. The film ends with a joint wedding.
Apart from her attractive facial features and body it is difficult to see what George sees in Emma It can be argued that at least Emma does not spend all her time seeking a partner or pursuing a fortune. However she must be condemned for the attachment to class and belief in her superiority over others. She contributes nothing to humanity. Miss Paltrow is excellent without a trace of an American accent and I preferred her version to that of Kate Beckinsale. Mark String is excellent as Knightly and Bernard Hepton as Emma’s father in the latter.
While the basic story of Mansfield Park is the same there is much more substance to the characters with an awareness of the true nature of slavery and the lives of the majority. Fanny Price is the second eldest of nine children whose father spends his time drinking and in an opium haze after being pensioned on half pay as a naval Lieutenant because of disability. While Fanny’s mother has accepted her fate she plots a better life for her daughter and arranges with one of her two sisters that Fanny should be raised at Mansfield Park where their other sister has married the owner. Like Fanny’s mother Lady Bartram (Lindsay Duncan) has retreated from life into her role as a dutiful housewife and it is the third sister, a widow and former wife of the Church of England vicar who comes to greet Fanny some two hours after she has been dropped off at the main entrance of the Mansfield Park in the early hours after the long coach ride from Portsmouth.
Fanny is to be brought up in the main household with four first cousins. The eldest when an adult accompanies his father on a visit to their wealth making plantation in Antigua. The elder brother disapproves of the use of slaves and as drawn the stark reality much to the horror and disgust of his father. He returns early from the trip and then is brought home from London by drinking friends when his money runs out. He is then struck down with fever and nearly dies.
Meanwhile the second son who has been a close companion of Fanny since she arrived in the household has been betrothed to someone appropriate according to his parents. She is Mary Crawford who when the older brother takes ill contemplates the advantages that his death will mean that that her future husband becomes the heir and inherits the estate. She is similar to Mrs Elton in several ways. She has a brother who appears intelligent and superficially charming and at first takes an interest in one of the two daughters of Sir Thomas and Lady Bartram. He also reminds of Frank Churchill. This ends the relationship.
Maria is the eldest daughter of the Bartram’s who is pursued by Mr Rushworth who has £12000 a year but who is also a boring young man. She prefers the brother of Mary Crawford who something of a romantic womaniser. She runs off with Crawford soon after her marriage, gains a divorce but Crawford fails to marry her.
Julia is the youngest daughter who also fancies Crawford but is pursued by Tom Yates, a drinking partner of the eldest son. He and Julia run off together.
For a time Henry Crawford also took an interest in Fanny which Sir Thomas considers to be a good match. Fanny is not interested and when Sir Thomas gives her an ultimatum of marriage or return to her family she chooses the latter. In the novel she is between eighteen and nineteen years. She is pursued by Crawford when she returns to Portsmouth who in the film pays a young man to bring an entertainment of fireworks and a host of white doves to outside her home. When he befriends the family and appears to accept their comparatively low lifestyle Fanny warms to him and briefly consents to a marriage which she quickly withdraws. He goes off in a huff and quickly transfers his affections.
With the two daughters away from home and Lady Bartram wrapped him in her own world it is Edmund who is sent by Sir Thomas to ask Fanny to return when Tom becomes dangerously ill and it is she who nurses the older son much to the gratitude of Sir Thomas and Edmund.
The essential difference between Fanny and Emma and Edmund and Mr Knightly is that neither are natural social creatures preferring to spend their time reading and in good conversation. Fortunately for both they come to realise their adult affection as well as teenage friendship and shared interests. Before leaving home Fanny had developed a close relationship with a younger sister who shows some of the same qualities as her older sister. Their friendship is renewed when she returns home and in due course she joins Fanny and her husband at the Park.
According to my research there is a significant difference between character of Fanny in the original text and the film. There is acceptance of slavery and their family lifestyle in the book which is made into an issue in the film. In the book Fanny is shy and timid where as in the film she is single minded and self confident. She is physical weak and often tired in the text but an extrovert and outspoken in the film What the film version also attempts to do is to suggest that Mansfield Park is autobiographical Jane Austin in that Fanny spends a great deal of time writing from childhood and using scare family funds for paper when she returns home.
In the book she finds Crawford’s attention unwelcome and far from returning for as a punishment goes to escape his attentions. There are various other changes some work but others distort to an extent to arouse hostility from fans of the writer. I like the film version.
And now for something of a very different- A 2011 three part adaptation of Charles Dickens Great Expectations. In my view there had been nothing until now to compare with 1946 film which has John Mills as Pip the young man and Alec Guiness as his friend Pocket. Jean Simmons played Estella the younger and Valerie Hobson as Miss Haversham with Finlay Curry and Bernard Miles also featuring.
In the present BBC production Ray Winston as one of his better roles as Abel Magwitch and David Suchet is Jaggers. The story has become well known as a consequence of the films and TV production although the original text merits the reading. I possess a family edition in the Heron Great Works series but I must confess not to have read but I am placing with the other volumes for reading during 2012. We encounter Pip as a young boy in the care of his married elder sister who husband Joe a blacksmith treats the child as his own.
The various films and series all open with the Pip encountering an escaped convict in chains, Abel Magwitch and he frightens Pip into getting a tool to release him from his enchainment. Pip also brings the man a slice of home made pie. Pip also encounters a man with a scar on his face who is another escapee. Magwitch is captured with the file and pie and the authorities assume that the file has been stolen from the forge which is returned causing great concern to the sister but Joe appears more understanding the situation and Magwitch is struck by their kindness in leaving him the food. The event is pivotal to the story as is the next development.
Pip has an uncle who delivers supplies by trade including to the local great house where the lady of the house is looking for a local young boy to keep her adopted daughter company. Pip is suggested and while his sister sees this as a great opportunity for family advancement her husband is unsure. Pip enjoys the visits despite the strangeness of Miss Haversham, a comparatively young woman who lives as a recluse where the dinning room is laid out for a wedding breakfast from years before. The young adopted girl Estella is unkind to Pip who she regards as inferior until an event which changes their relationship. Relatives of Miss Haversham call with their son but are refused access to Miss Haversham. They are incensed when the find Pip is allowed into the house and upper floors. He is told to immediately leave by Miss Haversham who cannot cope with his visit because of the situation and when he leaves he encountered the son of the visitors who behaves like Estella, the daughter towards Pip but in this instance Pip defends himself and strikes the young man down. This delights Estella because he has made something happen.
When sometime later Pip and his step father are summoned to Hall the sister believes they are going to be rewarded and made up. However Miss Haversham has a different idea and offers to pay for Pip to be indentured as an apprentice Blacksmith. She arrange the formal document with the help of the family layer Jaggers who is another character who is play a key role in the story.
While they are at the Hall the sister humiliates the hired help at the forge and he batters her to near death so she is rendered into a vegetable state for the rest of her life. The hired help makes it plain to Pip that he is answerable to him rather than directly through his step father. Having been given a taste of the life of genteel classes Pip is disappointed by his fate.
Seven years later Pip, now a young man, is summoned back to the Hall and introduced to Estelle now a beautiful young woman who is about to go to Paris to a finishing school before going into society in London to have her pick of eligible young men for marriage. Estelle tells Pip never to come back to the House again although there is an evident attraction between the two. Because Pip has completed his apprenticeship Joe tells the hired help his services are no longer required because the Forge cannot sustain three adult workers. This further antagonises the help who determines to get his revenge.
There is then an event which is to shape Pip’s destiny. Jaggers arrives to say that a secret benefactor wishes to enable Pip to have the life of a gentleman in London society. He will be given a weekly allowance which he will collect once a week from the Solicitor and then if he follows his instructions and guidance he will inherit a fortune when he comes of age (twenty one years). He can make no enquiries about his benefactor but Pip immediately assumes this is Miss Haversham and that the intention is that he should become the partner for Estella. He visits the Hall and the lady says nothing to dissuade him from the notion although she does not confirm his assumption. Pip sets off for London in new clothes acquired with money given by Jaggers to set himself up on arrival.
In the second episode Pip is provided with a guide for becoming a gentleman in the form of Herbert Pocket who Harry encountered at the Hall as the obnoxious relative of Estella. He is a much changed individual in having sacrificed his income and inheritance for life with the young woman he loves. He has to find work in order to marry and for this he needs some capital but in he meantime he is undertaking services for Jaggers which includes helping to become a gentleman. While his influence is positive and he acts responsibly, Pip in his anxiety to be able to impress Miss Haversham and Estella begins to spend way above his means thus gaining the disapproval of Jaggers. The first casualty is his relationship with his step father who has to visit after months of not hearing anything. Joe realises that Pip has become ashamed of his former life and is pretending that he has always been a gentleman.
Pip explains to Pocket his love for Estella and then finds that his friend far from being impressed is alarmed. Pocket explains that Miss Haversham was jilted by her fiancée who turned out to be an adventuring con artist disappearing after she has settled some money on him. Pip ignores the advice to have nothing more to do with mother and daughter and accepts an invitation to return to the Hall to find that Estella has returned from Paris and Miss Haversham wants him to accompany his adopted daughter to London for the social season and finding a husband. Pip thinks that this is an invitation for him to begin a relationship with Estella.
Pip has become a self centred waster of his fortune incurring great debts in anticipation of the fortune he expects to inherit from Miss Haversham. When his sister dies he visits briefly just for the service as there is a dance to attend with Estella that evening.
One day at the office of Jaggers he arrives early and meets one of the other gentlemen looked after by the lawyer. This man is a member of the landed gentry and quickly establishes a relationship with Pip who does not realise that Bentley Drummle is using him and soon admits his disregard for someone without a proper background. He first learns the reality when is taken to an upper class brothel. He tries to warn Drummle off taking an interest in Estella when the two meet at a Ball. Pip remains convinced that his affection is reciprocate after he and Estella have shared a kiss although she later dismisses this as using him to gain practice as was the purpose of the original invitation to Haversham Hall all those years before. When she announces that she is to marry Drummle she explains to Pip she has a cold heart and has been brought up to bring unhappiness to men. This was the aim of her upbringing; taking revenge on men for what happened to her adopted mother.
There is one good streak left in Pip that he arranges a career for his friend Pocket with the help of Jaggers Chief Clerk, promising to pay the balance of fee required of £500. As a consequence Pocket is able to marry and the wedding is a cause for celebration.
Pip then discovers the truth that it was Magwitch who is the benefactor when the man comes to his room with a vast quantity of money, his inheritance. He is horrified believing that the funds are the proceeds of crime. He refuses the inheritance and with the allowance stopped his debtors mount their demands. He goes to see Miss Haversham and persuades her to give him the funds required to pay off the debt incurred in securing a career for Pocket, He agrees never to return and Miss Haversham finding that Estella is returning all her unintentionally sets fire to her self as she burns the letters.
Pip has discovered the truth about Estella and Magwitch. Magwitch was married and his wife was wronged by an individual who in fact is the man who wronged Miss Haversham. His wife had attacked the man giving him a scar and he is also the individual who has escaped from prison with Magwitch. He had not been caught and had made a good living for himself in London society as a gambler. Magwitch had taken the blame for his wife’s action in order to save her and his daughter from transportation to the prisons of Australia. Magwitch believed his child and wife had since died and he had made his fortune from sheep at the end of his sentence. Although he was a free man and the money honestly earned there was a stipulation that he should never return to London on pain of the gallows. Pip discovers the maid servant of Jaggers is the former wife of Magwitch and that their daughter is Estella given to Miss Haversham.
Pip with the help of Pocket before he and his wife leave England to take up a posting abroad with his firm and Wemmick the Chief Clerk Pip helps to hide Magwitch who now has a price on his head placed by the man who wronged Haversham’s and Magwitch’s. The plan is for Magwitch to return to Australia, taking ship once he has left the waters of Thames within the London boundary. However in London Pip is being followed by the former assistant to his step father, the man who effectively murdered his sister. His first intention is to kill Pip but he then learns of the connection between Pip and Magwitch and claims the reward once he had obtained the details of the plan. Pip plans to accompany Magwitch to Australia but the plan is thwarted when instead of reaching the London barrier bell they find their adversary with the authorities waiting. In the fight that follows the enemy dies but Magwitch is injured, captured and taken to prison to await the hangman’s nose. He dies from his injuries before with Pip telling him that his daughter lived and became a beautiful young woman and that she will be loved for ever by Pip.
Back in his room he is attacked by the step father’s former assistant who reveals that he also severely injured the sister. Pip manages to overcome the man who off screen is then taken into custody.
When Pip confronting Miss Haversham her dress catches fire and she dies from her injuries. Pip returns to the home of his step father and apologises for his behaviour. In the film when returning from his job as an estate manager or clerk of some king he meets his uncle who says he is no longer on hard times because Estella has returned to the Hall a widow. Earlier we learn that he husband died from a riding accident for which she thanks his horse! He returns to Hall for a reunion.
Dickens had two endings for his work. In the first the two meet in the a street in London, admitting that because of the suffering experienced during her marriage she had learned to undo the cold heart created by her adopted mother. The final edition of the published work they meet in the ruins of the Hall. However there is to be no life happy ever after for them. They meet and they part as friend but at peace which each other and the world.
I had also hoped to write about Time to Time a 2009 British film which is an adaptation of the Children’s novel The Chimney of Green Knowe. I saw the opening on the morning of my Christmas trip but left for lunch and the return journey hoping to see the rest on the ITV player. Alas it is not included. A thirteen year old boy is sent to the care of his Grandmother at the family country house when his father is declared missing in action during World War II and his mother determines to go to London to try and find news and establish a new life for herself and her son if he does not return. The family have been estranged because his father had married someone who was not approved and Vice Versa.
The film had Maggie Smith as the grand mother and also Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey which is not surprising given that they are both cast into key roles in the series by the Director of the film Julian Fellows who created Downton Abbey. The boy encounters ghosts when exploring the house and finding his way blocked by a wall to the wing previously destroyed by fire. The grandmother is matter of fact about the ghosts and the boys is able to travel into past times thus earning the family history and its secrets.
There was a two hour Christmas special at Downton Abbey in which some issues are resolved while others are left open for the next series.
The main developments are that the truth about why Lady Mary is marrying Sir Richard Carlyle comes to the attention of her father who although disappointed tells her not to marry and that he and the family will support her, suggesting that she goes to stay with a relative in the USA and find someone to love and marry there. She also tells the truth the Matthew who under pressure from his mother and the Dowager comes to terms with his guilt about the death of his fiancée and is therefore able to start afresh with Mary, despite the threat from Carlisle that he will expose the family and its scandals.
The second nice development is that Daisy, the kitchen maid eventually goes to see her husband’s father at his farm. He explains that William was not an only child but that all his brothers and a sister had died so after childbirth as had his wife. Daisy is still wracked with the guilt of having married William on his death bed when she did not love him. She visits after cook plays around with a Weegee board used to communicate with the dead and pretends it is William telling her to visit his father. She accepts that she was regarded as special by William and the offer of the father to treat her as a daughter. More and more she has become more than a kitchen maid and is encouraged by a visitor to the household to leave and better herself. The father in law advises her to tell of her complaint to cook and ask to be promoted to an assistant. The cooks is agreeable to this subject to the funds being available.`
The third nice development is that the youngest daughter who married the Irish revolutionary chauffer Branson has become pregnant and the Earl agrees to invite the couple to stay at the Abbey.
However there is no such good news for Sir Robert’s former valet who was taken off to prison accused of the murder of his wife. He is convicted and sentenced to death. Sir Robert uses his connection to have the sentences commuted to life and then promises to continue work to establish a miscarriage of justice. Mrs Bates has planned to leave the Abbey and go to London because of the publicity anticipate as part of the threat from Carlyle. With the reprieve she withdraws her resignation.
The manipulating Thomas is thwarted in his effort to become his Lordship’s Valet to replace Bates and under the continuing influence of O’Brien kidnaps Sir Robert’s dog and locks him a woodland shed aiming to find the animal and get into the good books. The plan misfires and he is unable to get to the animal when the search is called off because of other developments. When he goes out in the morning he finds the shed opened and animal not there. He falls and in a dishevelled state returns to find his Lordship out walking with the animal which was found by a couple of villagers who had claimed the reward. However his Lordship is impressed that Thomas had gone out looking and had had come to some grief in the effort thus signalling that he may well get his wish to function as the valet until the future of Bates is settled.
The events are set at Christmas with the traditional shoot on Boxing Day. This is an event still taking place in country house to this day. The Duke of Edinburgh had organised and planned to lead the Boxing Day family shoot at Sandringham until his was hospitalised for an operation to relieve a blocked artery.
