Word: austenian
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...There are two layers to this sweeping though uneven and too long tale. The first is Meera's Austenian struggle as a caged woman seeking self-realization in a chauvinistic world. Hers is a moving story in theory, as she fights against the reign of her petty tyrant of a father, against Dev's alcoholism and neglect, and later, when Dev dies, against advances from her oily brother-in-law Arya. But she's also an irritating egoist and self-styled tragedienne who blames everyone else for her problems while selfishly, and in one case quite perversely, smothering teenage...
Eloise replies with an Austenian rejoinder: “And Bingley has five thousand pounds a year...
...film, we're ready for the traditional, Austenian happy ending. Rozema has made us want it by putting us through a more turbid, uninhibited version of what is coldly reserved from the novel. Rozema has said that she thinks of Fanny Price as a "test" created by Austen to experiment with the reactions of those around her. Certainly Rozema has made Fanny and Mansfield itself into a test of her own. But can America handle Austen with a little modern spice...
...with the Elliots being hounded by their creditors, their debts so large that they must rent out the family estate, Kellynch Hall. Anne's vain father, Sir Walter Elliot (Corin Redgrave), and her malicious older sister, Elizabeth (Phoebe Nicholls), protest in horror, showing immediately that they lack that prime Austenian virtue, good sense. Only Anne and Lady Russell (Susan Fleetwood), who in the film seems something of an aging bohemian, make the necessary case for relocating to the resort town of Bath, where, as Sir Walter's lawyer tells him, "It is possible to be important at less expense...
...trick is how to walk on water without, as V.N. warned, "descending upright among staring fish." Great novelists are born with the knack. Good journalists must master it. Jane Howard is a good journalist. In fact, she is one of the best of those soft-stepping Austenian observers who seem to glide easily over a situation or a subject without leaving a distorting wake. "My way," she writes, "is to use my intuition as a compass, go where I feel welcome, stay as long as I can manage to, meet whoever is around, help them do what they are doing...
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