Is Mr Knightley a Mr Perfection meant to mild Emma's imperfections? Is he too perfect to be true? I personally like him very much for his temper and for his wisdom, for his kindness and his generousity. Impossible to find a Mr Knightley in real life? Well, who cares? We can find one each time we leaf through Jane Austen's Emma. Isn't this the reason why we love reading so much? Isn't it because we can find "recovery, escape and consolation"? And, especially, a Mr Knightley, a Mr Darcy, a Captain Wentworth ....
4 days to go. Next Saturday afternoon , I will be discussing Emma at our reading club's 5th meeting. The more I read it, the more I like it. I know most readers prefer Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility, but I also know many critics generally regard Emma as Austen's most carefully crafted or skillfully written novel. So I do not feel lonely in my sympathy for Miss Woodhouse and her story, though I'm not a scholar or a critic. (Go on reading at MY JA BOOK CLUB)
Have you heard of a web comedy based on Jane Austen fan fiction? Sex and The Austen Girl. Two episodes have already been posted. Have a look at my blogspost presenting the series HERE.
The blogosphere, or at least many of the blogs I regularly follow, are full of reviews, slides and beautiful pictures of BBC Emma 2009. It's too great a temptation to me, I can't resist. I must confess. Just like Mr Knightley's, my secret, too, must come out in the end.
I've longed to see it and wished it so thoroughly that a good little fairy has made my dream come true! Did she have a magic wand? Maybe.
So...I saw the four episodes, enjoyed the crescendo of emotions and came, at last, to such a gratifying finale ... you can't imagine what joy it gave me. I'd had mixed feelings half-way down, I mean, after the first two episodes but , the third one, with the incandescent ball scene, and the last one with its touching - incredibly still touching, despite my having read the novel several times and having watched all the adaptations available in English - finale have knocked my doubts out.
While I immediately loved or liked, Romola Garai as Emma, Michael Gambon as Mr Woodhouse, Tamsin Greig as Miss Bates, I had an awkward sensation at recognizing My Mr Knightley in Jonny Lee Miller, My Frank Churchill in Rupert Evans and My Jane Fairfax in Laura Pyper. My greatest perplexity was just Mr Knightley. But, do you know what happens when love is not at first sight ...You suddenly start seeing an old friend as beautiful, generous, extraordinary and see him/her as if it was the first time? Something like what happens to Emma. Something like that happened to me. And little by little I came to appreciate JLM's Knightley. Much, indeed. He won my resistence with his mild, tender, benevolent George Knightley. Was it one of Sandy Welch's liberties from Austen? Wasn't Jane's Mr Knightley a surly old friend, ready to scold and reprimand young Emma? Might be, but I decided I wanted to look for clues in the text. And here's George Knightley in Jane Austen's words:
Excerpt 1.
Emma: “What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and nieces. As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different; but with regard to these children, I observe we never disagree.”
Mr. Knightley: “If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and women, and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings with them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might always think alike.”
Emma: “To be sure—our discordancies must always arise from my being in the wrong.”
Mr. Knightley: “Yes,” said he, smiling—”and reason good. I was sixteen years old when you were born.”
Emma: “A material difference then,” she replied—”and no doubt you were much my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal nearer?”
Mr. Knightley: “Yes—a good deal nearer.”
Emma: “But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we think differently.”
Mr. Knightley: “I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years’ experience, and by not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear Emma, let us be friends and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now.” ( from Chapter 7)
Excerpt 2.
“My dearest Emma,” said he, “for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour’s conversation, my dearest, most beloved Emma—tell me at once. Say ‘No,’ if it is to be said.”—She could really say nothing.—”You are silent,” he cried, with great animation; “absolutely silent! at present I ask no more.”
Emma was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling.
“I cannot make speeches, Emma:”—he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.—”If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.—You hear nothing but truth from me.—I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.—Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest Emma, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover.—But you understand me.—Yes, you see, you understand my feelings—and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.”
Isn't he loving, caring, gentle? Just like JLM's George Knightley.
Have you noticed? The script for the proposal in 2009 adaptation was not so distant from the original text and Romola and Jonny delivered their lines with such deep involvement: she was wonderfully good , from fear to desperation, from hope to joy to heaven. And he... he was so anxious he could hardly breathe, so nervous and agitated he could hardly move, so uncertain of her response that he looked so pale and his eyes seemed wet with tears (especially when he said "I cannot make speeches.. .if I loved you less, I might have been able to talk about it more...")
Last summer, while on holiday, I had a long watching marathon with all the Emma adaptations I have in my DVD collection: 1972, 2006 ITV and 2006 the movie. I wrote and posted about it ( for my EVERYTHING AUSTEN CHALLENGE) and added the clips of the three different proposal scenes. I , then, asked : Which is your favourite one? Who's your favourite Mr Knightley? If you don't remember, CLICK HERE , read and watch. But before deciding how to answer, have a look at THIS CLIP from Emma 2009...
Now, tell me... Which is your favourite scene? Who's your favourite Knightley?
If you haven't changed your mind, never mind. I DID.
"Less foreign languages, less subjects, less lessons" . What is it? It is not the manifesto of a students' protest but the "revolutionary" reform of High School which our Ministry of Education is planning to enact by the next school year! Help! It's a nightmare. They want to "improve" the quality of Italians' education by reducing the number of lessons per week, by reducing the number of subjects they study, by reducing their English or French lessons, by drastically reducing the study of Latin. Apart from totally disagreeing with the absurd philosophy of cutting & reducing to improve (what?!?), I'm really and selfishly worried for myself. I'm even desperate.I'll try to explain what is going to happen to me. I'll have less lessons to give each class but more classes = I'll have to teach how to understand written and spoken English, how to write and speak in English, the grammar of the English language and maybe even some literature in only two 45-50 - minute lessons a week. Then, instead of 6 classes (more than 120 students) I'll have 9 (more than 160) and I'll have to correct their written homework and classwork! And all this for the same miserable wage? And what about the facts that Italians are among the worst in Europe at foreign languages? They will be even worse, who cares?
I'm furious. I want to move somewhere else. If I could, I'd go on self -exile ... anywhere else. I'm really ashamed of what is happening in my country. I'm not only thinking about our education system, of course.
As you can understand, after reading about the future horrible changes expecting me, I needed to read something totally different. I tried to concentrate on my beautiful "Wives and Daughters" but went on thinking about school and couldn't concentrate. So I started surfing the Net and reading my favourite blogs and discovered:
1. A new picture of Richard Armitage as Lucas North (below )
2. A new article about upcoming series 8 of Spooks
3. BBC finally officially announcing the date for ep.1 series 8 of Spooks: 4th November!
Am I feeling better? Not so much but I do love and appreciate all these things (and people since RA is a person - a very kind talented handsome man - and Judy is a great bloggy mate of mine) and they help me go on . They are the "who" and "what" that help me to survive the everyday "inferno". Do you know? My philosophy. Calvino's words. I really need them tonight:
"The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno,are not inferno, then make them endure,give them space."
BBC PRESS OFFICE has just released EMMA 2009Press Pack with lots of details about the latest adaptation of Jane Austen' s novel (1816) which is part of Autumn 2009 Programme.
Adapted by BAFTA-winning writer Sandy Welch (Our Mutual Friend, Jane Eyre, North And South) this humorous and perceptive serial from BBC Drama Production provides a rich insight into one of Austen's most complex characters. This adaptation of Jane Austen's comic masterpiece Emma is described as fresh and witty.
Read the introduction HERE, Michael Gambon (Mr Woodhouse) on EMMA 2009 HERE and Romola Garai about her role HERE.
Eagerly waiting to see the new BBC EMMA 2009 with Romola Garay and Jonny Lee Miller (sob! Why not Richard Armitage?!?), I’ve been re-reading parts of the novel and comparing the different film versions of it: I saw for the first time
1. BBC Emma (1972)
2. ITV Emma (1996)
then I re-watched the film starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam (1996).
This “Emma marathon” was my second task for the EVERYTHING AUSTEN CHALLENGE.
First of all, let's have a look at the atmosphere of the new EMMA. Here's the official BBC trailer.
Now let’s go back to my overdose of Emma. Let’s see…The oldest version, Bbc 1972, is the nearest to the original text but the ITV adaptation is the one I liked best, though I didn’t mind the film with Gwyneth Paltrow at all. For a more deatailed and technical review of all the adaptations there’s a very good blog HERE. What I want to propose to you now is a comparison between the 3 different final proposals. Watch the three clips and decide which is your favourite one. I’m in a crisis ‘cause I can’t choose between Mark Strong’s and Jeremy Northam’s versions of the scene. Which Mr Knightley do you prefer?
