VICTORIAN MIST(ERY): THE MOONSTONE

Mystery stories are not my cup of tea but when it comes to classic fiction, well, it’s different. I love Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes or Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray as well as Agatha Christies’s Poirot or Miss Marple.

I have always read about THE MOONSTONE as the first detective story in English Literature (or in literature in general?) but never actually read the novel. Due to my constant lack of free time and to the thickness of this book I decided ( I perfectly know it is not the same!) to buy the DVD, since I heard two of my favourite Brits where in it: GREG WISE and KEELEY HAWES. I wasn’t disappointed. Not at all . Though I found it rather unbelievable in more than one points. Mysteries are mysteries and often their explanation is not at all convincing… I usually prefer when they aren’t completely solved or unveiled; when you,  reader  or watcher, are asked to contribute your own hypothesis with your own fantasy.

Now… to the point.

This mini-series was aired in 1996 on BBC1 then also in the US for Masterpiece Classics in 1997.

The adaptation stars a remarkable cast of actors and is a faithful adaptation of Wilkie Collins' mystery (1868) in which the disappearance of a cursed diamond sets the background for an absorbing detective story. The Moonstone was originally serialized in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round. The Moonstone and The Woman in White are considered Wilkie Collins' best novels. Besides creating many of the characteristics of detective novels, The Moonstone also represented Collins' social opinions by his treatment of the Indians and the servants in the novel. Collins adapted The Moonstone for the stage during 1877, but the production was performed only two months.

                            
THE PLOT

(Spoilers of course!)

Rachel has just inherited a very precious stone from her uncle and she wears it to her 18th birthday party, but that night it disappears from her room. Suspicion falls on three Indian jugglers who have been near the house; on Rosanna Spearman, a maidservant who begins to act oddly and who then drowns herself in a local quicksand; and on Rachel herself, who also behaves suspiciously and is suddenly furious with Franklin Blake, to whom she has previously appeared to be attracted, when he directs attempts to find it. Despite the efforts of Sergeant Cuff, a renowned detective, the house party ends with the mystery unsolved, and the protagonists disperse.

A year passes by and there are hints that the diamond was removed from the house and may be in a London bank vault, having been pledged as surety to an unscrupulous moneylender. Rachel's mother dies, increasing her grief and isolation, and she rejects a marriage proposal from her cousin Godfrey Ablewhite, a philanthropist who was also present at the birthday dinner.

Finally Franklin Blake returns from travelling abroad and determines to solve the mystery with the help of his faithful butler, Mr Gabriel Betteredge. He first discovers – reading a letter she had left to him before killing herself - that Rosanna Spearman's behaviour was due to her having fallen in love with him. She had found evidence (a paint smear on his nightclothes) that convinced her that he was the thief and concealed it in order to save him, confusing the trail of evidence and throwing suspicion on herself. In despair at her inability to make him acknowledge her despite all she had done for him, she committed suicide, after hiding the smeared gown and the letter.

Now believing that Rachel suspects him of the theft , Franklin plans a meeting to confront her. To his astonishment she tells him she actually saw HIM steal the diamond and has been protecting his reputation at the cost of her own even though she believes him to be a thief and a hypocrite. Now thoroughly bewildered, he continues his investigations and learns that he was secretly given laudanum during the night of the party (it was given to him by the doctor Mr. Candy who wanted revenge on Franklin for criticizing medicine and who wanted to sleep more easily due to quitting smoking); it appears that this, in addition to his anxiety about Rachel and the diamond and other nervous irritations, caused him to take the diamond in a narcotic trance, in order to move it in a safe place. A re-enactment of the evening's events confirms this, but how the stone ended up in a London bank remains a mystery only solved a year after the birthday party when the stone is redeemed.

How did the stone end up in a London bank? Who took it after Franklin first stole it? Let’s try to leave something to be discovered, in case you want to read the book or watch the TV- movie.

Of course, in the end , the mystery IS solved , Rachel marries Franklin, the Moonstone is restored to the place where it should be, in the forehead of the Indian idol from where Rachel’s uncle had stolen it.

SATURDAY NIGHT CLASSIC READING : NORTH AND SOUTH BY ELIZABETH GASKELL

"Big man as he was, he trembled at the idea of what he had to say..."

Today there has been a merry gathering of ladies coming from various parts of the world in London organized by members of  C19 . They celebrated BBC 2004 NORTH & SOUTH's  fifth birthday. It was  in fact first aired  in November 2004. Since I couldn't join them there, I thought I could take part in the celebration dedicating  my Saturday Night Classic Reading to

re-reading and re-watching Gaskell's NORTH AND SOUTH

 This novel is one of my favourite ever and its BBC adaptation is one my best-loved costume dramas. So if you have time, I've prepared this long multimedia posting ...Tomorrow is Sunday, isn't it?

When Margaret Hale arrives in Milton - in the industrial northern district of England - she is so disappointed by the bleak, smoky, noisy, grey atmosphere of the place. Her father has left the Church and decided to uproot his family from Helstone , in the beautiful countryside of the South of England. Margaret is greatly prejudiced against the people from the North and their rather direct, almost wild manners. So she starts idealizing the South.

Mr Bell, one of Mr Hale’s former university mates, suggested them to settle in Milton where he owns a cotton mill run by his tenant, Mr John Thornton. Mr Thornton helps the Hales to find accomodation and becomes Mr Hale’s friend and pupil. He is handsome and smart, self-confident and successful in his job, greatly appreciated in Milton both as an entepreneur and a magistrate.

Margaret instead doesn’t like him at all , she doesn’t hide  her dislike of him and often argues with him when he comes round as one of Mr Hale’s private pupils. He represents everything Margaret despises in the North, especially now that she has started making new acquaintances among the working people and sympathising with their struggle against their masters. She makes friends to the Higgins, Bessy who suffers from an illness caused by her past  work  in a cotton mill, and her father, Nicholas, a strong-willed worker and one of the leaders of the Union.

Mr Thornton is attracted by Margaret’s beauty and by her firmness; her strong personality and her cold detached manners soon win him. She, perhaps, reminds him his mother to whom he has been deeply attached since his father committed suicide in a moment of financial difficulty. Young Thornton, then, had to work hard to pay back his father’s debts and to provide for his mother and sister. He is a self – made man and he is proud of his accession in society.

 But, unfortunately, he is not a gentleman in Margaret’s eyes and she continues siding with the workers. Until one day some of them  organize a riot against Mr Thornton. The workers  have been on strike for about a month to protest against their lowered wages. All the mills in Milton have stopped their activities, the workers’ families are starving, when they heard that Mr Thornton has brought in black – leg workers from Ireland. Their rage  mounts and they are ready to attack the unfortunate Irish hidden at Marlborough Mill.   Margaret is, by chance, visiting the Thorntons just on that day and she finds herself involved.

She prompts Thornton to face the  furious crowd and to defend the poor Irish workers from their violence:

“ Mr Thornton, go down this instant, if you are not a coward. Go down and face them like a man. Save the poor strangers, whom you have decoyed here. Speak to your workmen as if they were human beings. Speak to them kindly. Don’t let the soldiers come in and cut down poor creatures who are driven mad”

(E. Gaskell, North and South, chap. XXII, vol.I).

 But when she realizes she has put him in terrible danger, since some of the boys and men in the crowd have wooden clogs in their hands and  are ready to throw them at him, she puts her arms around Thornton  and makes her body a shield between him and their rage. She takes a blow on her forehead and faints, before the soldiers arrive the workers retreat and run away.

Her action  is completely misinterpreted  by John Thornton who proposes to Margaret the next morning. The girl is even offended by his proposal and rejects him firmly, expressing all her contempt: “Your way of speaking shocks me. It is blasphemous. I cannot help it … but your whole manner offends me . … You seem to fancy that my conduct of yesterday …was a personal act between you and me; and that you may come and thank me for it, instead of perceiving, as a gentleman would … that any woman, worthy of the name of woman, would come forward to shield... a man in danger from the violence of numbers”(E. Gaskell, North and South, chap. XXIV, vol. I)

NOW , TAKE SOME TIME TO WATCH AND LISTEN TO GREG WISE READING THE ENTIRE PROPOSAL SCENE FROM THE BOOK (CLICK ON THE URL BELOW  THE PICTURE ) ;  THEN, IF YOU WANT, YOU CAN COMPARE THE TEXT  WITH THE SAME SCENE IN THE BBC ADAPTATION.

http://www.cartenoire.co.uk/north-and-south

Margaret has got a brother,Frederick, a navy officer who lives in  forced exile since he led a mutiny against a violent unfair captain. He can be hanged as a traitor if caught. Since Mrs Hale’s delicate health and her “low spirits”, have brought her to serious illness, Margaret has written to him, and he risks his life in order to see their dying mother once again. He secretly arrives and as secretly leaves the house at night before the funeral .But he and Margaret are seen that night by Mr Thornton   at the station while departing.  Thornton thinks they are lovers and doubts  Margaret’s honourability since she is out alone with a man at night. Moreover, an old acquaintance of the family recognizes Frederick, the two men fights, young Hale succeeds in leaving Milton safe but … the next morning the man, named Leonard is found dead in the street and. even worse, someone witnessed the whole scene the previous night and told the police.

 A police inspector visits Margaret and asks her if the night of Leonard’s death she was out with a young man, because someone- one of the porters at the station - watched a beautiful young lady with a handsome young man , the same person  saw the  two men fighting  and would swear the lady was Margaret, he is sure. She denies as convincingly as she can: she has to protect her brother. The inpector leaves saying  that the case will be followed by Milton magistrate, John Thornton.

Mr Thornton, though doubting Margaret’s morality and truthfulness, decides there will be no further enquiry due to lack of evidence. Thornton wants to spare his friend, Mr Hale, from any involvement in the case: he has just lost his wife and is so depressed! But he, of course, wants also  to save Margaret from shame. The girl’s reaction is confused and troubled: “

Mr Thornton had seen her close to Outwood station on the fatal Thursday night, and had been told of her denial that she was there. She stood as a liar in his eyes.…Oh, had anyone such just a cause to feel contempt for her? Mr Thornton, above all people, on whom she had looked down from her imaginary heights till now! She suddenly found herself at his feet, and was strangely distressed at her fall.”(E. Gaskell, North and South, vol.II , chap. X)

Margaret’s troubles have not ended, unfortunately. Her father ,too , dies. She is completely alone and has no reason to stay in Milton. Now she has started changing her attitude towards the north and its inhabitants, especially Mr Thornton, she has to leave. She is going to move to London with her aunt, Mrs Shaw, her cousin Edith and her husband Captain Lennox. She also discovers that Mr Bell, her father’s friend who owns Marlborough Mill , wishes  to make her his heiress: she will inherit his patrimony when he dies.

Mr Bell suddenly dies and Margaret becomes rich just when , Mr Thornton, now her tenant, is in great financial difficulties and has to leave his position at Marlborough Mill. When Margaret hears about Thornton’s disgraced situation decides to help him…She meets him in London … she has a business proposition for him : she receives very little interest for the money she has in the bank. She offers him a great sum  he can dispose of to run  Marlborough Mill. He will run the mill for her , she is sure he will give her a much higher interest.

It is the start of a different relationship between them….

 The TV version reflects Gaskell's atmospheres and characterizations but it has taken its liberties from the book, for instance ... the final scene... Margaret and John meet again at a train station, halfway between  Helstone and Milton. It is a really effective, romantic, moving finale but totally different from the ending pages of the novel which take place in Margaret's cousin's house in London. The protagonists  in the book hug in the sitting-room, hidden from indiscreet looks. Instead, quite unbelievable for mid-19th century Victorian England, in the movie the two ...  well ... have a look at this CLIP ....

 

SATURDAY NIGHT CLASSIC READING : PERSUASION

My favourite Austen's is PERSUASION. It is her last novel and the one whose protagonist I most sympathize with. Have a look at the right column of my blog: I AM ANNE ELLIOT. I've never met  a Captain Wentworth, or, better, I've never re-met him after a long separation ... a Wentworth maybe  lost forever  in my past. Perhaps this is why I love this story and each time I'm moved at the two protagonists'  delayed  but intense final gratification and happiness. Tonight, surfing the Net, I've found this video with Greg Wise (do you remember Willoughby 1995?) reading PERSUASION. I listened to him and ...  loved being persuaded by this handsome man!

Do you want to try? Take 15 minutes off,  make a cup of good long coffee, sit ,  relax... and enjoy the reading!

 (CLICK ON THE LINK UNDER THE PICTURE)

http://www.cartenoire.co.uk/persuasion

Excellent reading, wasn't it? Now let's see how this beautiful finale, written by Jane Austen in the last years of her short  life, was interpreted and transformed in  two Tv adaptations , BBC 1995 and ITV 2007.

BBC 1995 PERSUASION ( ending)

ITV 2007 PERSUASION

ENDING PART I

ITV 2007 PERSUASION
ENDING PART II

EVERYTHING SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

One of my tasks for the Everything Austen Challenge, has been rewatching Sense & Sensibility in the two adaptations I have in my DVD collection. I compared the two versions and found them different but equally beautiful, accurate and effective. The 1995 film starring Emma Thomson, Kate Winslet, Hugh Grant, Greg Wise and Alan Rickman was the first I saw and is the one I know best – I’ve seen it so many times! The more recent BBC 2008 three-part series has just renewed my appreciation of this great story with new awesome locations and very good actors: Hattie Morahan, Charity Wakefield, David Morrissey, Dominic Cooper, Dan Stevens, Mark Williams, Janet McTeer , Mark Gatiss.

My ideal cast  

 I want to make it clear first, that I consider the actors I’m not going to mention - just for fun – all very good, I'm only trying to imagine what it would be like if I could have the ones I liked best from the two different casts:

I'd love to see Kate Winslet and Greg Wise as Elinor and Edward, as they would be too mature as Marianne and Willoughby now ; then Charity Wakefield and Dan Stevens as Marianne & Willoughby and, finally, David Morissey as Colonel Brandon . Just a game. Try to do the same. What would your ideal S&S cast be? You could put in new names , if you wish.

As I told you, it is not that I don’t like Hugh Grant ( I loved him in About a boy, Bridget Jones films, Notting Hill, etc.) but simply I didn’t like his Edward Ferrars. Too stiff and clumsy. As for Emma Thomson, she is such a talented actress! Only, maybe, she was … too old an Elinor? She didn’t just fit my ideal Elinor Dashwood? I don’t exactly know why, but I preferred Hattie Morahan as Elinor while re-watching them in these days. Ok. It’s just a game. Thomson’s , Rickman’s & Grant’s fans, please, don’t feel offended because I really “think highly” of them, I do appreciate their talent!

Some reflections on S&S

These are the notes I took while re-watching the two S&S and while leafing , once more, through my favourite parts of the book.

Comedy or tragedy?
- It is meant to be “comedy” with its irony and love stories but it opens rather tragically on the descent to poverty of the Dashwood sisters. Though narrated through JA ‘s light touch, what Elinor, Marianne, Margaret and their mother live, is a real shocking tragedy: Mr Dashwood, their father/husband is dying and he knows his patrimony is due to be inherited by his only son from a previous marriage, John. He knows life will be very hard for his second family, daughters and wife, if John doesn’t help them.

Due to John’s wife’s influence, he won’t help them as much as he could or had to. The girls lose their father and their welfare all at once. They have to live their home and move far in the countryside.

Conformist or rebellious?
 

Jane Austen is usually consider quite a conformist writer: she agrees with the code of good manners and propriety, she accepts social roles and respects rank . But I’m sure she, instead, couldn’t bear so many things of the society she belonged to and she would have protested, if she could, much more openly against all that. What do I mean? For instance, the laws regulating inheritance, which were terribly discriminating toward women. Daughters and wives were victims of social/economic discrimination, they had no rights. Estates were entailed on male heirs, patrimonies were inherited by sons; if a woman, anyhow, owned a patrimony her husband took it over once they got married. Women were forbidden to get a living from a profession: working was considered dishonourable if they were of a good family. I’m sure Jane didn’t easily accept such unequal rules. Can’t you feel her rage beyond her bitter irony?
Romance or social criticism?
 While we live Elinor’s and Marianne’s tormented romances, while we sigh at Elinor’s silent sorrow at watching Edward keep his promise to Lucy Steele , while we deeply feel for Marianne’s sorrowful disappointment at being turned down by her beloved Willoughby, we learn a lot about the restrictive social conventions which certainly made Jane Austen angry and willing to satirize the country gentry and their stiff clichés and good manners.

Willoughby, Brandon or Edward ?

 I love, really love… Willoughby. I had always imagined him just like Wickham in P&P 2005: long blond haired with blue eyes. But I went on loving him also when he got to have Greg Wise’s handsome face and wavy black hair in 1995 or Dominic Cooper’s fresh, saucy look in S&S 2008. Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon, though morally impeccable, are a bit … grey and flat characters if compared to John Willoughby’s vivacity, complexity and roundness. Are you sure JA meant to draw the stereotype of the unscrupulous libertine with him? I’m not that sure. I especially love the final scene in the book – included in 2008 TV series but not in 1995 film – in which Willoughby visits Elinor and tries to apologize, to make his reasons clear, to make her and her sister hate him less. I, just like Elinor, can’t avoid feeling sorry for him. I go on imagining him on his horse, watching down to Marianne’s life from a solitary hill, sad face, sad look, just like handsome Greg Wise at the end of 2005 movie. I know, most of you won’t agree with me but … you know, it’s fatal attraction, you must forgive me .


Marianne or Elinor?
 As for the two sisters, they represent two completely attitudes to life, the two completely different outlooks on life at Jane’s time: classicism (Elinor) and romanticism (Marianne). Though Austen wants us to take Elinor as our model - sensible, reasonable, generous, self-controlled, balanced, great strength and unaltered will-power through hardship – I love, really love, Marianne. Mind you, I’ve never been like her. I’ve always been more like her elder sister , only… I strongly admire this 17-year-old girl’s temper. Austen’s message is an open condemnation of romantic ideals, Marianne is almost killed by her strong disillusionment. Despite all that, I’ve always envied her the beautiful romance she lives with Willoughby – I’m sure she’ll never forget him and will always think of him while devoutly looking after old Colonel Brandon . I’ve always thought Marianne as one of the best heroines I’ve ever met in novels: so full of impetuses , ideals and poetry and, at the same time, so contemptuous of those who can’t abandon themselves totally - like her- to their own feelings and emotions, so excessive both in her love and in her sorrow, so fragile and lively at the same time,

 

S&S greatest fan

To close in the right mood for a wonderful Saturday Night and an even more wonderful Sunday, I need a bit of fun and a bit of RA. You can find both in this hilarious clip.
Geraldine Granger, better known as the Vicar of Dibley, is one of S&S greatest fans! She's there just  re-watching the movie , when someone incredibly charming and very kind knocks at her door ...

THROUGH THE CENTURIES : THE BUCCANEERS (BBC 1995)

My second task in the PERIOD DRAMA CHALLENGE has been completed. I watched the BBC 1995 mini-series THE BUCCANEERS. I’m still working on the category THROUGH THE CENTURIES and I’m going to go back in time month after month. I started with CHARLOTTE GRAY, a movie set in the 20th century, during WWII, so this time I'll take you back to the 19th century: 1873.

I think that to be brief and direct I may just say that watching this mini-series was a delight. But this is not enough for a proper review, isn’t it? However, you must believe me. It is an amazing costume drama. THE BUCCANEERS is the last novel written by Edith Wharton. It was unfinished at the time of her death in 1937, and published in that form in 1938. After careful study of the synopsis and notes, Wharton scholar Marion Mainwaring finished the novel, which was published by Viking Press in 1993. Independently, the same year the BBC hired screenwriter Maggie Wadey to adapt and finish the novel for a television serial adaptation, which was produced by the BBC and American PBS broadcaster WGBH, and As a result the novel has two different endings.
The story opens in Newport , R.I., in the U.S.A. in 1873 and focuses on the life experiences and love affairs of four daughters of new money: Virginia and Annabell (Nan) St. George and their friends Lizzy and Conchita. After the arrival of a British governess who has to take care of the St. George girls, Laura Testvalley, their lives get in touch with British aristocracy, their old-styled stiff manners and narrow – minded way of thinking. One of them, Conchita, gets engaged with Lord Richard who will take her to his home in England but soon gets tired of her when he discovers she is not as rich as he believed. All the girls move to England on a sort of formation journey with their governess...they are going to invade England, as the English invaded their native country long ago: they are the new Buccaneers.
The story follows the buccaneers' rocky lives through marriage, pregnancy, affairs and divorce, focusing particularly on the fate of the youngest, most idealistic girl, Nan St. George, and her governess and mentor, Laura Testvalley. The young women struggle with modernity and tradition, conformity and rebellion. And how do they end up?
Once in England, the American girls begin to conquer the British bachelors. Lizzy sets up the engagement between Virginia St. George and Lord Seadown - much to the chagrin of his passionate mistress Idina Hatton. But Lord Seadown is only intersted in Virginia’s money and she will discover the disappointing terrible reality as soon as they got married. Julius, the Duke of Trevenick, proposes to a confused and love-torn Nan St. George. In fact, she loves Guy Thwarte but he must leave the country for two years to make his fortune and, though in love with her, can’t promise her nothing: “He wants to make his fortune not to marry one”. Lizzie Elmsworth marries the rising MP Hector Robinson. Conchita receives more and disturbing news from her roaming husband, Lord Richard who deserts and neglects her.
My favourite characters are, of course, Nan (Carla Gugino) and Guy (Greg Wise). Their love story is really involving and Nan’s character is so passionate, brave, strong-willed and anti-conformist that you can’t remain indifferent. She accepts the marriage proposal of Julius, Duke of Trevenick and becomes a duchess when she is only eighteen. She has to endure appalling disillusion: no fairy-tales but boredom and dissatisfaction at Trevenick. She will be even raped by her childish selfish husband, will lose her baby, will be forced to accept her golden prison. In the end, however, she will have the courage to pursue freedom and love creating a scandal.

The best moment in the series is when Nan and Guy run away together from a party leaving all their acquaintances speechless and astonished. To comment this scene I'll use Laura's, Nan's governess, words :"When I saw Nan and Guy run away together I needed to scream out loud. I don't know if it was envy or fear. But it was like... it was like to see them take a leap into space."