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I know…. but here’s a thought.  If we view the novel as a love story (as the PBS version did) then we see but one side of the book. If we wish to see it as a saga of the country values in collision with the city values of the day, if we wish to see it as a story about healing, then we have a different story altogether.

In a scene that was not in the PBS broadcast Dr Grant, the parson, and his wife both tell the Crawfords that if they stay in Mansfield they (the worldly Crawfords) will benefit: “We will heal you” declares Mrs Grant, and she doesn’t mean they have the flu.  We recall that Fanny has to ride regularly in order to keep her health, that Tom falls very sick from his mad junkettings, and that Mr Rushworth is all set to ‘improve’ his estate by hacking down an ancient avenue of oaks (a symbol of England if ever there was one) where ‘improve’ was a word often used to refer to physical health.

Fanny, the least energetic one of the bunch, is a person who is kept healthy by moderate riding, who listens and seeks to discuss (usually with Edmund) when no one else seems to be listening to anyone else, who has a sense of right and decorum that is not upset by others.  She is the one who cures Edmund of his fascination for Mary; she refuses the brain-sick attentions of Henry; she nurses Tom to health; she is the indipensible keeper of Lady Bertram’s well-being. 

Moderation ensures health, it seems. To say that delicate Fanny Price is a symbol of England is to be heavy-handed.  She’s not.  She’s a person, yet her situation is richly suggestive of certain social awarenesses in the country,which none but she seems to embody so concisely. Healing comes in many forms, some of them surprisingly undramatic and yet curiously effective.

I was preparing for my presentation at the Watertown Arts Center, and set myself to find some images on the web that would illustrate the archetypes easily.  This provided opportunities for thought, since photographs are taken from life and so reflect particular human situations first and any archetypal content second.  So this was an altogether interesting challenge.

In the case of the Monarch it was easy to find pictures of royal pairs, all of whom looked so much more dignified than one had any right to expect. And to contrast them with the Homecoming Kings and Queens of various colleges was… thought provoking.  Then there was the image of Elvis ‘the King’ and ‘Duke’ Ellington to make me smile at our need to elect royalty.

Most interesting, though, was the series of pictures of tyrants that popped up: Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot.  These figures never appeared with any consort.  In fact most of them had no wife in evidence at all, although historically there were mistresses aplenty lurking in the shadowy background.  The point jumped out at me. The King without the moderating and civilizing influence of the feminine principle, without a queen who is held in esteem and therefore appears beside the king - such a king becomes merely a tyrant of the most brutal kind. The male energy cut off from female moderating compassion leads to destruction only.

It’s there in our culture, in all those pictures of male leaders without women.

We need the balance in our world, and we need it now.  Think of that when you vote.

I’m relieved the blog is back. Let’s hope it stays back as the alterations to the site are set in motion.

My disappointment in Mansfield Park may seem like some sort of writerly nit-picking, and the last thing I wish is to scorn a piece of film-making that was, certainly, respectful, if rather dull.  So I re-read the book and recalled why it is such an extraordinary piece of work, and why it would be so hard to render as film. Part of the achievement of the book is how Austen takes us inside characters in the unearthly way that only she can: to read Edmund as he discusses with Fanny the various shortcomings of Mary Crawford, a series of converstaions that draw them very close, and then watch as he starts to find excuses for the bewitching Mary - these are things that don’t always translate into film. For Austen it’s not just about being able to know what is right, it’s about being able to stay true and act on what’s right.

Manners, for Austen, are not the same as morals - but they are indicators of the underlying morality of the person concerned.  And in such things people do not really get away with disguising themselves.

I can’t leave Mansfield Park alone just now.

One of the things the recent PBS version did include (I prefer not to dwell upon how much vital material it left out) was to include the episode of Fanny’s amber cross and the chains she has for it.  The cross came from her brother.  Edmund offers her a chain for it, and Henry Crawford does too.  Which should she choose?  Fortunately in the book Henry’s chain is too large to go through the loop, so it has to be Edmund’s.  And so Fanny wears the cross to the ball (which was excised from this version).  The symbolism is hard to miss.  The brother who loves her offers a gift that reflects religious principle. Edmund, like a brother to her, offers the supporting chain.  She wears it round her neck and thus keeps both men close to her heart on a public occasion.  Henry’s chain doesn’t have to be refused; it simply doesn’t fit – perhaps because it is too bulky and showy – just as he isn’t a good fit for the family.  Elegant, isn’t it?  And it’s also based in Jane Austen’s own experience because her brother Charles sent her and her sister small crosses from the various ports he called at in the Mediterranean.

In Jane Austen’s version of the tale we have a Fanny who is sickly, and somewhat immobile - and this is part of her purpose.  While everyone else is rushing about she remains, still, moral, upholding values that others seek to subvert.  She resolutely holds out against the acting - not just because Sir Thomas would object but because she sees it is dangerous for people to ‘play’ at emotions on the pretence that it is ‘theatrical’.  Given the play-acting on and off the stage we cannot help but agree.  And she’s right as we discover.

This posting is on a temporary blog - since I’ve mislaid my actual blog in the attempted upgrade of the site.  I’m not sure how that happened.  I know that if one goes to H2o town (if you google Allanhunter.net and click not on the first listings but the h20 ones) you’ll find all blog entries thus far. So the data is not lost. How they got the blog there I’ve no idea.  Who ‘they’ are, I have also no idea.

However - PBS offered us their version of what is probably Austen’s most complex and subtle novel, and they turned it into something very one dimensional.  In fact I was bored. The actress who played Fanny Price - it’s a measure of how unappealingly she played the role that I can’t recall her name and can’t be bothered to find out - gave us no inner tension, no sense of beleaguered moral purpose and I wondered why I watched at all.  She simply scowled. The clincher for me was that all the ‘dramatic’ moments were signalled to the viewers by the greater volume of stirring music.  But stirring music is not a replacement for excellent acting or good direction.

I could complain about the liberties taken with the book - Fanny doesn’t get sent back to her family at all, and so she suffers in no conceivable way for her failure to accept Henry Crawford - but the main violation is that we are allowed to hear the Crawfords speak in private.  We therefore know their motivations.  Most of the book is predicated upon us NOT knowing their motivations and thus being as lost as everyone but Fanny seems to be.  That lets all the tension out.

The result is a program that has all the subtlety of a sit com, in which our prejudices must always be readily fuelled and easy identification of characters is essential.

A novel of tension and real drama it this reduced to a rather suburban romance.  What do I mean by this?  Consider the Bertram family. One daughter runs off in an adulterous affair.  The other elopes with the worthless Mr. Yates (hardly mentioned in this production); the heir is a dissipated wretch, and Edmund, the one good one of the bunch, nearly gets seduced from both his calling as a clergyman and the person who really should marry him.  Edmund and Mary Crawford are a recipe for misery. The question that lurks behind all this is basic to Austen - who is going to inherit the estate?  Who will look after the hundreds of laborers and tenants such an enterprise requires?  If the Bertrams don’t pay attention they’ll ruin more than themselves.

The triumph, of course, is that Fanny saves the day simply by being herself.  In the war between vicious, indulgent London and the impoverished Prices at Portsmouth we’ll notice that the two ‘bad’ Bertram girls are replaced by the two ‘good’ Price girls.  It’s a metaphor of the need to look after traditional values that Jane Austen held so dear.

Last night I caught a Sandra Bullock movie from way back - if you know it you’ll recall that she saves a man from being run over by a train (he’s been knocked unconscious and later is in a coma) tells the hospital staff she’s his fiancee in order to check on him, and then has to deal with the family who think she really is his fiancee.  Which would be easy if it weren’t for the good-looking brother….

I was fascinated at how the Hollywood writers managed to keep the right admissions from being made that would have set the situation straight but killed the plot.  It was done with great skill and at times I could almost forgive the thin story line and the contrived events.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Yet …. I can’t help applying the six stages and shaking my head.  Sandra Bullock, in this movie, actually is an Orphan, and a lonely one at that (if you believe that anyone as beautiful as she would be lonely for more than seven seconds then you’ll love this plot). Moreover she falls in love with the family of the comatose man, who have no trouble in just adopting her (Orphan wish fulfillment at its best).  In fact she’s so desperate to be adopted that she almost marries the wrong guy.  Surely, she does tell the truth to everyone, and that takes courage, yet one can’t help feeling that her confessional speech and her quick scampering off to her apartment afterwards represent something that is less than full Warrior-Lover achievement.

Attractive as the movie is it’s really about Orphans who fall in love because they need each other.  The truly interesting story might have been to see how these two grow in stature after they’re married, but that wasn’t available for us.

Most of the world is populated with Orphans, and so this was a perfect recipe for a feel good movie.  But it wasn’t art.

And I think we do have a right to make that sort of judgment call.  Folk legends and fairy tales function in ways the movies mimic, and many of them truly are deeply revealing about the psyche.  For example, in Cinderella every gesture of hers has significance, signalling to the audience that she’s a certain sort of person. She goes to the prince’s ball three times (because courage is never a once-off action) and each time she leaves at midnight, the point of change from one day to the next, because she is herself at a point of change. The significance is pretty clear.  In this movie we have repeated references to people slipping and falling, so when the couple ‘fall’ for each other it’s when they slip on some ice - which allows for some close clinging that makes for good amusing viewing.  Yet the symbolism, to me, suggests only that we have here two people who cannot yet stand on their own feet and so need each other as props.  A beautiful evocation of Orphan love.

There’s nothing wrong with Orphan love.  I just feel that our culture would be better served if we were to see there’s more than that available.

Right now my life is filled with things that I haven’t done before and, of course, whenever we begin things we are, temporarily at least, right back in Innocent stage.  So it’s always good to observe just how we are at that point, and who we are in relation to the new task. 

Not all of what I’ve observed about myself is entirely pleasing. 

As an Innocent to a task (setting up a better computer system, for example, where I am really am about as well informed as a new born) I tend to go into a private mental space of concentration and rather slow-moving deliberation.  Some people just plug things in and go wild.  Others invite friends in and make a party of it.  Me - I go inside myself.  It’s not so much fearful as skeptical.  But it does mean that I move slowly and outsiders tend to want to rush in and tell me what to do.  I want to take the time and do it my own way.

This has operated as a template in my existence for most of my life, I suspect, and it still does.  Every time we face something new it can be a real eye-opener as to what it tells us about life patterns and thinking patterns, and so we can learn from it.  Perhaps I was shoved into thigs as a small child and I’ve taken a road of resistence as a result. Knowing what I know about my infancy that would seem to be an accurate description of what I cannot recall having lived through.

And so I have another clue in the detective story of my life…

Oedipus has been called the first detective in literature.  He’s more properly the first memoirist, I think.  When Oedipus sets out to discover why plagues have descended upon Thebes he doesn’t know that he will uncover his own crimes - crimes that he didn’t seem to know he’d committed - or that they’d be so ghastly.  Killing the king his father and marrying his own mother rank right up there with the worst sorts of asaults one can do to oneself, let alone others.

Although his case may be extreme, to some extent his trajectory is exactly what all memoirists must undergo. For almost everyone has been offended against by circumstances, sometimes grievously, and it’s up to each of us to discover what those offenses were and whether or not we are implicated in covering up any of that information.  For that is what we all do.  We forget so we can protect ourselves.

The way is perilous, of course, and it aways leads us through the six stages.  When we realize we have a story that needs to be told we are, truly, Orphans who set out on a Pilgrimage towards truth.  It’s the wrestling with what we find that takes us to Warrior-Lover stage.  Many people give up.  Those who maintain the struggle find themselves moving into a different relationship with their own past.  No longer intent on proving anything, they just want the truth, the insights, to emerge… and that’s what the Monarch wants.  There is no condemnation, but there is understanding and a rejection of what is evil.

Sophocles needed two plays to get Oedipus to a place of peace (Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus) which probably is the most eloquent testimony to the hard work required.  Yet he does get there.  He makes the final transition when he stops blaming others and accepts that he sinned because he didn’t try, earlier, to work out just what it was that was going on in his birth circumstances.  He ran away, and paid the price. He surrounded himself with delusions of success, and they were not substantial.  For he always knew he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother which is why he fled his adoptive parents.  And when he does kill a man and marry a woman he doesn’t inquire as to the circumstances.  Why?  Because the pay off was too good - he got to be a king.

So - what are the things that stop us, honestly, looking at what we need to look at? What are the illusions we prefer to the truth? And why do we prefer the comforts of the delusions, rather than noting what Oedipus does finally achieve, when he becomes a Magician?

That’s what the memoirist asks, too.

I’ve been crossing my wires, so to speak, with the blog.  Sometimes people write a response to a post which then turns up on my email.  When I answer from the email the reply goes straight to the person and does not appear on the blog at all.  I do apologise for this since it must seem as if I’m not even registering some of your emails - all of which are thoughtful and insight filled.

The system was originally supposed to send a message to the writer AND put the same message on the blog.  Something didn’t quite work out with that.

It’s a minor thing, but since my aim is for my life to be less compartmentalized and more open it’s an annoyance. If the six archetypes have taught me anything it’s that anyone can split themselves into fragments, and ultimately that comes at a heavy price.  The man or woman who is a Monarch at work and a bullying Orphan at home is an extreme example of this failure to integrate and be whole.  I’ve no intention of being one person for the blog and a completely different person for the other aspects of my life.

Well, it’s something to aspire to.

The Nine Month Memoirists were snowed out last week, so thanks to the kind offices of Mary Lou and Kate we set ourselves up yester-night in Kate’s Mystery Book Shop in Cambridge.  Not only was it a blissfully comfortable setting (books floor to ceiling, everywhere) but it seemed fitting, since as memoirists we are all detectives of our own pasts, and of not a few crimes, too, some of which were perpetrated on and around us.

I was honored by being placed in the armchair, the same one that had been used by countless authors who have read at Kate’s over the years, and names like Robert Parker and Sarah Paretsky were bandied around, which added a certain mystique to things. Actually, it was really hard for me to remain in that chair since the quality of writing that was shared was more than enough to knock me sideways out of it.  Each writer moved us all, and interestingly for me was that each person apologised for tearing up, for needing to take a moment to breathe in a poignant section.  Why was that?  Did all those stacks of books intimidate us? Yet when I looked around each time I noticed that the pauses were not just necessary for the reader but for the rest of us listeners too, to remove an unexpected drop or two from the eyes.  Not that it was all gloom, you understand.  Far from it, in at least two cases the tears were those of hilarity.

I could have stayed there all night listening to these wonderful writers spin their words around me, and taking the occasional slice of absurdly splendid chocolate cake as supplied by the ever-thoughful Mary Lou.  I didn’t want our class to end.  I want to know what these writers are going to produce next.  I want to be there, watching the treasures emerge from the depths and into the light of our day.  But that privilege will go to the next group leader.

It’s humbling to work with those who show such courage and who write from the heart, and do it so well.  “Thank you” couldn’t begin to describe it.