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Jane Austen certainly knew the notion of the Six Archetypes thoroughly, so I was eager to see what the PBS series would give us in its new version of her first major novel.

The opening scene of seduction made me fear the worst, although from that point on I was considerably reassured by the way the drama was handled. I’m not sure why the unlacing of bodice and stays was put before us in this way, since we won’t be able to ‘place’ the event in the novel until near the end, when its shock value will be diminished. I’m aware that most people will know the plot pretty well so the dastardly deed will hardly be a complete surprise - and yet…

This production so far is an excellent one. The Dashwood girls seem at first rather colorless, but they soon begin to differentiate and grow upon us, as if their Orphan-like exile to Devon has allowed them to become more of who they essentially are, perhaps for the first time. Marianne is convincing as the 16 and 17 year old romantic in a way that was never quite the case when Kate Winslet took the part - she always seemed more knowing than the teenager we saw in this production.

This version also seems to be staying close to the text, which is such a relief to those of us who have favorite moments. It does, however, take us inside various characters’ minds in a way that Jane Austen limits in her novel - I’ll be interested to see whether this shifting viewpoint is a blessing or not. One plot-liberty that worked well was to have Marianne and Willoughby walk through his soon-to-be-inherited house, alone, unchaperoned, and the sexual tension that washed over the scene was truly dangerous. One sensed that Willoughby could, truly, make a formidable seducer.

It’s an important scene because in it, Willoughby tempts Marianne with his future residence, offering the Orphan a home, and yet he is, himself, not yet entitled to inherit so he is an Orphan in his own right, really. And so is Edward Ferrars. All these Orphans - and not all of them will be up to the task of becoming Pilgrims. Willoughby, in seducing little Orphan Liza, is barely rising above his own woundedness. He seeks to do something similar to Marianne - he’s a predator of habit, even if his intentions to her are a little more honorable. But it will be Brandon who will be able to recognize that she will have learned and grown from her mis-step, that Orphans need to make mistakes…

It should be interesting to see how things unfold.

Last night I had the great pleasure of presenting the ideas of “Stories We Need To Know” at Watertown public library in one of their large, delightful conference rooms there. And what lovely people I had to speak with, too! I’d been in the marbled halls of Wheelock College the previous night speaking with The Boston Area Chapter of The Association for Psychological Type and the surroundings there were august indeed, so I’m beginning to like the feel of these generous meeting rooms. Better yet is the people I’ve been privileged to meet on both these occasions. I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive or a better set of folks.

What is most gratifying, though, is to address a room of comparative strangers (although I was thrilled to see a few friends there as well, to whom eternal thanks) and to notice that the idea of the six archetypes makes perfect sense to them - or at least to most of them. This happens whether I’m talking with therapists, with management consultants, Human Resources professionals, teachers, writers or readers. Some of them draw elegant parallels with Eric Erickson, Keegan, Bloom’s taxonomy, and other sets of theories I struggle to memorize and read up about later. Almost all seem to be very excited about it, too.

And that’s the most important thing. If people gain some wisdom and insight as a result of this book then there’s a good chance they can take it into the larger world and help to make it a place of understanding rather than conflict.

I couldn’t ask for more.

Thank you, thank you all.

This morning’s Globe, page F1, brought Alex Beam’s column in which he shares some of my questions about this mini-series. In fact he says “I don’t trust the work any more” and calls McCullough’s work “feel-good history”.

Beam directs us to Boston1775.blogspot.com as a source for uncovering specific historical inaccuracies in the series, inaccuracies that can be shown because the TV show goes directly against what Adams recorded in his own diaries and in his autobiography. Such as, he wasn’t there in the immediate aftermath of the Boston massacre - the episode that starts the TV series…. and so on….

There are a distressing number of these.

It’s the old struggle between conveying the spirit of history, making it ’sexy’ enough to interest us, and conveying the actuality. Like the boundaries of memoir and the novel, recently (and the whole new genre of fabricated-memoir) we find ourselves on a slippery slope. This is lofty territory, so here’s an example: I can appreciate uncle Arthur’s hilarious rendition of what happened at Ben’s wedding. I was there. And I enjoy Arthur’s account far more than I enjoy my vaguely pleasant memory of what happened, aided with photos, first person accounts from those I trust, and so on. But Arthur’s fictional version makes me laugh! Fortunately I know the difference between fact and fun. Most people watching ‘John Adams’ will not be in that situation. Many will accept as true what is merely ‘feel-good’.

What’s wrong with that, one may say? No one’s hurt by it.

So here’s a not very feel-good ‘fact’ for you about the American revolution from an Englishman. It may shock your preconceptions.

Britain finally surrendered to ‘the Colonies’ because they found the war too expensive. India was much more profitable, after all, and one could actually rely on native troops there, for the most part. Little was required in the way of occupying troops. King George got out of America because it didn’t pay and it cost too many lives too far from home. He foresaw decades of internecine strife ahead. He was right. The US blundered towards the hell of a civil war, although it took a while to get there, but the seeds of that war were already thriving in 1775. One might say the British got out just in time. They may have been sad to go, but politically it was a very wise choice. America didn’t ‘win’ the Revolutionary War, it simply set the stage for an even more ghastly time of bloodshed between 1860 and 1865. The British used that as an opportunity to get very wealthy selling weapons to the North (mostly) and were very happy about that role.

This is a point of view that will certainly have some people I know re-thinking their ‘history’.

Somehow this all reminds me of Iraq. Expensive war, far away, huge expense, civil unrest certain for decades ahead. But that’s another issue.

So here’s a plea to the makers of multi-million dollar mini-series events that are wildly popular and significantly inaccurate: Don’t do it. Don’t give us this sugar-coated confection, this cup-of-tea-by-the-fire on a cozy Sunday afternoon pap. By doing things as you are you are perverting history for your own gain, rendering us all dumber. That is not a kind, nor a loving, thing to do.

I was pleased to see the second episode of this mini series. It’s well done and feels authentic for the most part. I’m also very happy to see that the relationship of John and Abigail is rendered in such a way that one senses the very strong attachment of these two. In terms of the six archetypes (to which I cannot help referring) this is definitely a Warrior-Lover pairing. They work together even when far apart, and her practical wisdom matches his theorizing, balances it, and each fuels the other.

Particularly sensitive, I felt, were the scenes in which the Continental Congress at Philadelphia agonized over their situation as rebels against the crown. There is a real sense that they do not have the wherewithall to make the break possible, and that resistance is going to be very unpleasant in its consequences.

So what is it I feel to be lacking, because something is. Perhaps it is in the very nature of a mini series that it needs each segment to have a narrative arc that will enthrall us, so that all seven mini dramas get stitched together like the original 13 colonies. Inevitably politics has to be simplified, reduced to a few memorable incidents and a few great men. But does this not play into the hands of ‘accepted’ historical thinking that went so spectacularly out of favor some fifty years ago? Is this why I reach the end of each section feeling very little wiser about history?

Howard Zinn comes to mind with his ‘People’s History of The United States’ and how he seeks to counter that imbalance.

I will continue to watch because I hope I will gain some insight into how John Adams became who he was, and because I hope to find out what it was that caused the citizens of the Americas to slip so out of step with their British rulers. I doubt I will see either. The roots of the Revolution are, one suspects, at least as deep as the roots of the Puritans and the Pilgrims, dissenting voices who acknowledged nothing much outside of themselves and their relationship to God. They never saw themselves as ‘colonists’ - a section of the mother country that strove to be like the mother country, and wished for nothing more than to replicate its values. They always saw themselves as ’sons of liberty’ which we could translate by the metaphor of the child who acknowledges its birth parents but has no intention of living by their dictates after reaching the late teen years. King George treated them as ‘colonists’, and by the rules of what he understood that word to mean. But language, like so much else, got distorted somewhere in mid-Atlantic.

So much of who we are as Americans is enshrined in the stories we tell ourselves about our history, so it’s not a casual observation. People will see this series and shape their sense of themselves and of this country as a direct result. And I’m very afraid that this series may simply re-tell the same old cliches.

For all its marvelous production values and skillful film-making I feel we are being sold a seventh grade intellectual product.

Todays’ Boston Globe brought us the information, buried in the inside pages between the Macy’s ads, that the Dalai Lama had offered to resign if the civil unrest about Tibet continued.  It was abundantly clear that the Globe had no idea what this information might mean.

Think about this for a second or two.  Here is a man who says that anything that hurts and kills human beings is inherently wrong, and he will have no part of being an excuse for it. Peace, he says, comes from not fighting, no matter how great the provocations may seem to be.  His own worldly position is nothing, he says by his offer, compared to that.

Since the Globe, like most newspapers, thrives on conflict and dissent, and will manufacture it when necessary, it’s not surprising the reporters didn’t get the point.

Now, imagine if George Bush had responded to 9-11 in the same way as the Dalai Lama. Some response was called for, surely, and ours was a rush to war.  Personally I’d have preferred it if Bush had resigned.

Now, imagine if the woman whose picture appeared in today’s Globe, as she waved a sign that said all people have a God-given right to have guns for self defense - - imagine what she thinks about Tibet. Since her picture was much larger than the one of the Dalai Lama, and she appeared directly opposite the column in which he  was discussed, one can only chuckle at the irony.

Interestingly that dear lady, bless her heart, claimed that ‘All Rights’ come directly from ‘the Creator’ and that self-defense is a ‘basic human right’.  You can see the thinking: All Rights —are from God — the Constitition is about rights—therefore the Constitution is straight from God—the Constitution may (or may not) uphold the right of the citizens to have arms —therefore God wants us to have guns.

The last I checked the Constitution was written by a bunch of career politicians, so this lady might want to check her history books.

Don’t these people have any sense of logic?
It made the Dalai Lama look even more impressive, I have to say.

The New Yorker was not complimentary about this series (they’d seen the first four episodes) so I was prepared for the worst. What I saw was rather pleasant, extremely well acted, and provided a vision of Boston that felt utterly believable rather than being over pixelated or sentimental. It is worth watching, in other words, even if it has some flaws.

One of these flaws is the omissions. We see Adams as he defends the redcoats in the ‘Boston Massacre’, and very gripping it is. Yet I’d have liked to know how Adams became the upright lawyer he was, and I’d have liked to know more about the way the American Revolution was fomented. We come into the action too late, with Americans already upset and rebellious and it is all hung upon the issue of taxes. I suspect there’s more to it than that…

The relationship of John and Abigail possibly represents one of the finest marital pairings of the age, and it is deftly sketched here. Yet because of the demands on a TV program to keep us excited I’ve a feeling we’ll never get to see how it came about.

These may seem to be small complaints, yet they lead to a bigger concern. If ‘history’ is to be seen as the actions of great men, it is therefore reducible to accounts of what these ‘great men’ got up to. That is, essentially, what we seem to be offered, and David McCullough, whose excellent book is the basis of this mini-series, may well be wincing at such a simplistic portrayal of the historical forces that embrace us all.

Think of our own times. For many months anyone who criticized the Iraq war was likely to be attacked by its supporters, branded as ‘unpatriotic’ (there’s that American Patriotism thing again) and all such voices were stifled. Then, who knows how, the general tone of things changed into a very strong anti-war cry. The ridicule that had been aimed at such people is now turned to respectful, even thoughtful, attention. True, the war is still in progress, but the attitudes have changed.

If I were a suspicious person I’d wonder why we need a Patriotic mini-series just now, when the outgoing President is less impressive to a greater portion of Americans than any president in living history. I’d wonder at a series that has Adams talking about God-given rights and then stating these are more important than government, at a time when we have a White House incumbent who is a radical Christian who defies his own government and flouts its laws by signing them with ‘exemptions’ that fit his own use.

But then, I’ve only seen one episode.

Suzanne Strempek Shea sent me word about her newest book, Sundays in America which looks delicious.  The subject matter is about as timely as one could hope for - since it has to do with the way Americans spend their Sundays at prayer - and her writing is so light, so deft, and so absolutely accurate about whatever she is describing that it leaves me smiling and shaking my head.  Smiling, because whatever is expressed beautifully always has that effect on me, and shaking my head because I envy that ability.

Then I have to add that her web site is truly elegant to gaze upon. Take a look: (www.suzannestrempekshea.com/sss/) .  And that’s where the envy comes in again.  I want a site that looks like that!

Envy, of course, isn’t all bad.  Used productively it stirs us to do better than we have so far managed.  That requires some effort, of course, but I see nothing amiss in that.  Well, I can see I’ve been given my orders…

Let’s take a look at ‘Emma’ in this light. Now, pay attention everyone, because I want us to be alert when PBS screens this one.

Emma is an Innocent who has been turned into an Orphan - her governess has just gone off to marry Mr. Weston and so she has lost her mother figure, and her older sister is married and living in London. Like most well-adopted Orphans Emma has no desire to leave her home (her querulous father clings to her, anyway) and she prides herself on being above romance. She prefers to make matches - for Mrs. Weston and for Harriet.

Harriet actually is an Orphan (the illegitimate daughter of no one knows whom), so it’s not surprising that Emma adopts her so easily.

As Emma makes her plans for her friend, and gets them so wrong, she’s forced to reassess the whole question of love including her own supposed untouchability in this arena. Mr Elton’s abrupt rebound marriage to the odious Mrs. Elton is an affront to Emma herself, as well as to Harriet, and the affront is sufficiently public to hurt them both. It is these misunderstandings that cause Emma to ask questions about the nature of love - although she does it in a rather shabby fashion by creating fantasies around Jane Fairfax’s alleged entanglements. The interesting thing here is that Emma’s instinct is right. There is something odd going on with Jane’s love life. But Emma’s guessed in the wrong direction.

Her instincts about Frank Churchill are good too. She likes him, flirts with him, but does not fall in love. Perhaps she picks up subliminally on the sense that he’s already taken. Somehow, though, she knows better than to be ensnared. In this she is the Pilgrim, refusing poor options, but not knowing yet what the right option may be.

When Emma has her outing to Box Hill and is rude to Miss Bates she learns a significant lesson: she is not above anyone. They are all linked together whether or not they like it. So the lesson is not about love of a romantic kind, but rather about love of the kind that loves one’s neighbor as oneself. Mr Knightley takes her to task and she knows she’s done wrong.

When she sees what he has to say - and she does so right away - she has redefined love in a much more helpful way for herself. She sees that she is part of a community that she has to support (and therefore to love) and that Mr. Knightley’s values are worth paying attention to because they are about respect (and therefore about love).

When she knows this, overtly, she becomes a Warrior-Lover, with a clear sense of what matters, and why it’s worth maintaining those values. She goes to Miss Bates with an apology and arrow-root, and knows the mortification of not being received. For once doing the ‘right’ thing is not just about what she’s expected to do but out of a sense of real regard, real feeling.

When she recognizes that Mr Knightley is the man for her, and that she may have ruined her chances, she takes this possibility with courage. Notice how she wants so very much to maintain her good brother-sister friendship with him that she hesitates to rush after him and declare herself, and thus risk losing her contact with him (for what gentleman could remain a friend after a lady had made such a declaration?). She values his sense, and she loves him romantically. Warrior-Lover as she is, she holds herself with courage and does not resort to silly tactics - which is what she did with Harriet (the broken shoe lace, the portrait, etc. designed to pull Mr. Elton in).

When these two Warrior-Lovers admit their love for each other Emma’s next thought is for her father. There’s that sense of responsibility to the community and the family again (for the two seem almost interchangeable) rather than for her own needs.

And when they marry, Emma and Mr Knightley link in a way that their love is also something that spreads into the community in general. Robert Martin is able to marry Harriet (bringing her into his family circle in a way that will be beneficial for them all, and thus ‘adopting’ her), and Emma and her husband do not leave their community to go to London (which is what her sister did). This matters because absentee landlords, living the high life in London, were the bane of rural communities that were left almost leaderless, or, worse still, were bled white by their landlords’ extravagances. Think of the Irish landlords whose activities led, indirectly, to the potato famine crisis - which was less than 40 years later. Jane Austen knew about the Irish practices and how damaging they could be, (remember how she links Jane Fairfax to her Irish connections?) and in this instance she is strangely prophetic.

Mr and Mrs Knightley become, therefore, the Monarch pair of their small corner of England, and living there as they do, they work the necessary magic of social cohesion.

Six archetypes, without too much doubt.

Just to let you know that tomorrow, Wednesday, I’ll be doing two radio interview. The first will be with Dr Valerie Kirkgaard on ‘Waking Up In America’, at 2:45 Eastern time. The program can be found on the web at VoiceAmerica.com, and WakingUpInAmerica.com, and the station is KXAM. I’ll be on with Tony Wilkinson, a fellow Brit, whose book ‘The Lost Art of Being Happy’ is also out now. It promises to be a good conversation and we’re scheduled for an hour.

Then a little later, at 7:35 Eastern, I’m on Santa Fe Public Radio with host Diego Mulligan, on his ‘The Journey Home’ show. That’s on: KSFR 101.7 FM and 90.7 FM.

I’m always excited to get into probing conversations, and both these interviewers are good at that. So lively time is guaranteed for all. Tune in. Feed your soul. How hard can it be to listen to such good stuff?

Profuse thanks to Julie Stiles for finding her way to the broadcasting schedules for PBS (see her ‘comment’ on the previous post for the links). I can only say that things must have improved since I had my stab at trying to find out times and days, and thank goodness they have.

It will be a real pleasure to see ‘Emma’ again, filled as it is with distinctions in class and sensitivity to social distinctions. Those who have criticized Jane Austen as classist seem to me to have missed a major point. Of course class prejudice is horrible - and she depicts that in such figures as Mr and Mrs Elton, who are all about exploiting personal prestige in whatever way they can. Even Frank Churchill knows how to manipulate opinions for his best monetary advantage - and he’s already pretty well up the social ladder. But there’s also something in the novel that I can only think of as class respect. Mr Knightley has it when he knows exactly who his workmen and tenants are. Harriet may be a sweet woman but he sees right away that she’d not suit Mr Elton’s temperament or social climbing aspirations, for instance. Social respect means knowing who some one is, both limitations and virtues, and acknowledging where such a person would be best placed in society. Mr Knightley knows that Robert Martin would be an excellent husband for Harriet, and that the Martin family would be genuinely supportive and loving to her in a way that Mr Elton could never have managed.

Is he just a good judge of character? Yes, and more than that, too. He’s also an emblem of how a society could function well, because there’s only one of him in the whole of Highgate, but he’s enough to make a difference.

Class respect. It’s basic. Emma’s wish that Harriet should ‘marry well’ has nothing to do with her seeing who Harriet really is, and that’s a form of disrespect any of us would wince from. Ask anyone who’s ever been set up on a bad blind date by a well-meaning but clueless friend….