Girl Detective

I recently saw Mamma Mia! in the theater, and enjoyed it very much. Afterward, I had the nagging sensation that it reminded me of something from Jane Austen. I began to make a list, and this is what I ended up with:

Did I miss any? As always, if you’re in the mood for more Austen goodness, visit the erudite and entertaining Austenblog.

Thanks to Weirleader, whose html might have worked but I couldn’t make it do so, and my tech support G. Grod, who turned this into a readable table. Let me know if it’s not readable enough.

Sadie at Jezebel takes issue with the media’s habit of wondering what Jane Austen would do with modern problems:

This is not to disparage the scope or appeal of Austen’s work, which obviously owes a good measure of its brilliance to the natural universality inherent to all good writing, and all honest portrayal of emotion…but simply to question the weird “Austen is always applicable” notion that seems to have crept into our culture.

Apparently it’s turning into Austen week here at Girl Detective. More to come, I hope.

One of 5yo Drake’s favorite pastimes of late is using the Amarok music player on G. Grod’s computer, and selecting songs for mix CDs. When Drake was invited to a birthday party for a little girl he’s fond of, he wanted to make her a mix CD. G and I nearly fainted from the cuteness. Cute, though, is probably not the right adjective for the songs he picked. Eclectic might work, but “interesting” with inflection is probably more accurate. G. vetted the songs to weed out any inappropriate lyrics, but this still sounds like a pretty racy set: Supervixen? Her mom says the little girl likes it, though, so perhaps we’d better keep an eye on Drake and his progress with the ladies.

1. Borrowed Bride-Old 97s
2. 1234-Feist
3. King of Spain-Moxy Fruvous
4. We Used To Be Friends-The Dandy Warhols
5. Paper Wings-Rise Against
6. Sealion-Feist
7. Wildchild-Fatboy Slim
8. Life Less Frightening-Rise Against
9. Beautiful Day-U2
10. 1999-Prince
11. Supervixen-Garbage
12. Maria-Green Day
13. Poprocks & Coke-Green Day
14. New Sensation-INXS
15. Rollover D.J.-Jet
16. The Remedy (I Won’t Worry)-Jason Mraz
17. New York, New York-Ryan Adams
18. Screaming at the Wailing Wall-Flogging Molly
19. Life Wasted-Pearl Jam
20. Hey Porter-Johnny Cash
21. Storms in Africa, Pt. 2-Enya
22. Collapse (Post-Amerika)-Rise Against

From Jane Austen’s Persuasion:

Anne to her sister Mary: You have had your little boys with you?

Mary: Yes, as long as I could bear their noise; but they are so unmanageable that they do me more harm than good. Little Charles does not mind a word I say, and Walter is growing quite as bad.

Substitute 5yo Drake for Charles, and 2yo Guppy for Walter, and you have a typical day in my house. I grew up with sisters. I did not foresee the noise, opposition, and chaos of boys.

One of my favorite scenes in Persuasion is when Anne is rescued from a disagreeable situation by Captain Wentworth:

[2yo Walter] began to fasten himself upon [Anne], as she knelt, in such a way that…she could not shake him off. She spoke to him, ordered, entreated, and insisted in vain. Once she did contrive to push him away, but the boy had the greater pleasure in getting upon her back again directly.

‘Walter,’ said she, ‘get down this moment. You are extremely troublesome. I am very angry with you.’…

In another moment, however, she found herself in the state of being released from him; someone was taking him from her, though he had bent down her head so much, that his little sturdy hands were unfastened from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne away, before she knew that Captain Wentworth had done it. (Chapter 9)

This scene follows the motif of a knight rescuing a princess from a villain, who in this case is a toddler. I suspect Austen didn’t much like the noise and mess of little boys, either.

From Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (Arden 1995, ed. Lothian and Craik):

Duke.

There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much: they lack retention. (ll. 94-97)

Viola.

We men may say more, swear more, but indeed
Our shows are more than will: for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love. (ll. 117-19)

From Austen’s Persuasion:

Captain Harville:

I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bering most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.

Anne Elliott:

Your feelings may be the strongest, but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.

In Twelfth Night, Viola is a woman dressed as a man, in love with the Duke, who is in love with Olivia, who in turn is in love with Viola’s male persona. Viola’s point is proved later, when the Duke learns that she’s a woman, and immediately appears to forget his “love” for Olivia, and instead declares for Viola.

In Persuasion, however, the love of woman (Anne Elliott) and man (Captain Wentworth) are portrayed as equally enduring. Interestingly, Captain Harville’s sea metaphor can refer both to his and Captain Wentworth’s naval experience, as well as to Twelfth Night’s shipwreck that separated Viola from her twin, Sebastian.

(I heart alliteration; you’ve noticed, no?) In my recent post on Austen’s Persuasion, I included Captain Wentworth’s letter, but wanted to do a few more, since the book is so replete with delicious, often politely nasty, passages.

***

Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any peopel of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way–she was only Anne. (Chapter one)

***

There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feeling so in unison, no countenances so beloved. (Chapter eight)

***

They were actually on the same sofa, for Mrs Musgrove had most readily made room for him; they were divided only by Mrs Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier, indeed. Mrs Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Anne’s slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.

Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain - which taste cannot tolerate - which ridicule will seize. (Chapter eight)

***

I noticed again the pattern in Austen that her main character is the only one in a family with sense. Note, not sensibility, since that is what characterizes Marianne, the flighty sister in Sense and Sensibility. Elinor is that novel’s character with sense. Persuasion’s is Anne; Mansfield Park’s is Fanny Price; Pride and Prejudice’s is Elizabeth Bennet. Austen grants sense to the other sex in Northanger Abbey to Henry Tilney, and in Emma to Mr Knightley. I think it’s clear which character in each novel is the one with which Austen most identifies, no?

As always, for more Austen geekjoy, visit Austenblog. I have a few more Austen-related posts coming, if only I (or my tech support, ahem, husband) can figure out how to do a table in html.

I’ve been wondering (OK, maybe fantasizing is more precise) what it would be like to spend $150K at Sak’s, Barney’s or Neiman’s since the Sarah Palin shopping story broke. Over at Slate, Nina Shen Rastogi does it for me.

Link from The Morning News.

I’ve been reading and watching a lot of tragedies of late (not including the economy and political climate here in the US) so I took a break from the sturm und drang for Jane Austen’s Persuasion. And what a delightful and welcome break it was.

I watched the 1995 adaptation first. When PBS aired the 2007 adaptation earlier this year, many online Janeites expressed their preference for this earlier version, which was televised in the UK, but released in theaters elsewhere in the world. While I liked the PBS adaptation, I agree that it suffers by comparison to this earlier version.

The 1995 version was a bit longer, often an asset in adapting a work of fiction. Additionally, the actors who played the leads of Anne Elliott and Captain Wentworth, Amanda Root and Ciarán Hinds, were the more realistic for looking like real people, perhaps because the film was shot entirely in natural light. The film actors looked old enough for the theme of reclaiming a lost love of youth. The leads in the PBS film were pretty and younger looking; they’d been glammed up–Sally Hawkins in no way looked past her bloom, as Anne is in the book. She was at least as pretty as Rupert Penry-Jones, as Wentworth. Finally, the 1995 film does not needlessly augment the tension at the end, as the PBS version did with its over-the-top scene of Anne running through the streets of Bath, one that was deservedly skewered on YouTube, here. Instead the film wisely let the quiet dignity of its actors, along with one of the most beautiful passages of Austen, convey the emotion:

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in

F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening or never.”

Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from.

Indeed, and it’s passages like this that made re-reading Persuasion a joy. The slim, sometimes grim tale is filled with jewel-bright and razor-sharp prose as it carries the reader to the happy, unsurprising ending for Anne and Captain Wentworth. I often stopped to re-read and marvel at sentences and passages along the way. I didn’t love Persuasion the first time I read it. Reading all the Austen complete novels, though, and reading about Austen, have given me an increased appreciation that made this reading a suitable antidote for the previous tragedies I’d partaken of.

From Bedtime for Frances, by Russell Hoban:

Frances stood by Father’s side of the bed very quietly, right near his head. She was so quiet that she was the quietest thing in the room. She was so quiet that Father woke up all of a sudden, with his eyes wide open. He said, “Umph!”

Replace Frances with 2.5yo Guppy, and Father with me, and you have the scene by my bed at 2:20 this morning. Like Frances, Guppy asked if he could sleep with us. Like Father, I refused and sent him back to bed.

Yet another beautiful book from Eddie Campbell and publisher First Second, The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard is a tale of circus geeks and their adventures. Campbell continues to push the limits of the comics medium, with full-bleed pages, action over text, and conversations with dead people and animals around the page. It’s a bittersweet tale with memorable and literally vivid characters, and suggests circus performers were the precursors to superheroes, as Campbell comments in this interview with Jessa Crispin of Bookslut. Probably not for the graphic-novel novice, but a treat for seasoned comics readers, as comic-geek Jog notes at his blog.

Crime and Punishment is often described as one of the earliest psychological novels. I found the descriptions of Raskolnikov’s state of body and mind interesting in light of recent increased awareness of depression disorders.

Symptoms are from the Mayo Clinic site, on Bipolar Disorder. Quotations from Crime and Punishment are from the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation; I’ve included a few examples from the text. There are many more.

Signs and symptoms of the manic phase of bipolar disorder may include:

* Euphoria
* Extreme optimism
* Inflated self-esteem
* Poor judgment
* Rapid speech
* Racing thoughts
* Aggressive behavior
* Agitation
* Increased physical activity
* Risky behavior
* Spending sprees
* Increased drive to perform or achieve goals
* Increased sexual drive
* Decreased need for sleep
* Tendency to be easily distracted
* Inability to concentrate
* Drug abuse

He had been walking for about six hours (p. 115)

It was as if he were not himself. He was unable to stay still even for a minute, unable to focus his attention on any one subjet; his thoughts leaped over each other; his speech wandered; his hands were trembling slightly. (p. 522)

Signs and symptoms of the depressive phase of bipolar disorder may include:

* Sadness
* Hopelessness
* Suicidal thoughts or behavior
* Anxiety
* Guilt
* Sleep problems
* Appetite problems
* Fatigue
* Loss of interest in daily activities
* Problems concentrating
* Irritability
* Chronic pain without a known cause

A strange time came for Raskolnikov: it was as if fog suddenly fell around him and confined hm in a hopeless and heavy solitude. Recalling this time later, long afterwards, he suspected that his consciousness had sometimes grown dim. (p. 439)

Severe episodes of either mania or depression may result in psychosis, or a detachment from reality. Symptoms of psychosis may include hearing or seeing things that aren’t there (hallucinations) and false but strongly held beliefs (delusions).

In the dark of evening he was jolted back to consciousness by terrible shouting. God, what shouting it was! Never before had he seen or heard such unnatural noises, such howling, screaming, snarling, tears, blows and curses…And then, to his great amazement, he suddenly made out his landlady’s voice…

“No one was beating the landlady,” [Natasya later] said…”No one was here.” (pp. 115-7)

2.5yo Guppy woke at 2 a.m., screaming with rage, in a continuation of a tantrum he’d had before bedtime, when my husband G. Grod thought he’d try to be helpful and remove Guppy’s sock. Guppy, who of course wanted to do it himself, threw a fit and insisted that he wanted me to put the sock back on, but I was at the movies. G. and I stumbled around in the dark, trying to find his socks in the dirty laundry pile, and then I put them on Guppy. At last he was appeased.

But then 5yo Drake, who’d also been awakened by the ruckus from the bunk below, asked me to get him a drink of water. Then Guppy wanted a drink of water. Only then G. and I were allowed to return to bed.

I attended the Orson Welles double feature at the Heights of Citizen Kane and Magnificent Ambersons. Kane impressed, again, on so many levels–the back and forth storytelling, the aging of the characters, the sets, the transitions between scenes. It _is_ a masterpiece, and one that’s also enjoyable to watch.

But that brings me to the second film of the double feature, and Note to Self #502: I don’t like Magnificent Ambersons. I find it boring. Perhaps this makes me an unappreciative cretin; so be it. The sets I found stunning in Kane felt precious and overwrought in Ambersons. The characters, save Agnes Moorhead, felt thin and didn’t interest me. (Moorhead did give a delicious cackle at one point that foreshadowed her later work on Bewitched.) I was fighting to stay awake for the saccharine ending. Yes, as the second in a double feature, my attention and energy are going to be compromised. But nothing in Ambersons, which I think I’ve seen once before, made me want to rally.

And that brings me to Note to Self #503: A Pumpkin Pie Blizzard for the first movie, and buttered popcorn for the second were, indeed, overkill, even though I bought each in size small. As I’ve said before, I thought it wasn’t a good idea, and I did it anyway.

At the Chronicle of Higher Ed, another dis of higher ed, “America’s Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor’s Degree” by Marty Nemco, who argues that for many people, college is a waste of time and money. Further, he says that universities have little accountability to their customers, and should be held to higher standards:

Colleges should be held at least as accountable as tire companies are. When some Firestone tires were believed to be defective, government investigations, combined with news-media scrutiny, led to higher tire-safety standards. Yet year after year, colleges and universities turn out millions of defective products: students who drop out or graduate with far too little benefit for the time and money spent. Not only do colleges escape punishment, but they are rewarded with taxpayer-financed student grants and loans, which allow them to raise their tuitions even more.

Link from Arts & Letters Daily.

I’ve lately read several Shakespeare plays, and Shakespeare-related books. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found several Hamlet parallels in Crime and Punishment, the book for my book group, one I’d thought would be a departure. Like Hamlet, Raskolnikov veers between mania and depression, hesitates over taking action, and contemplates suicide.

***

Crime and Punishment:

To take a false bank note, and where?–to a banking house, where they do know a hawk from a handsaw–no, I’d get flustered.

Hamlet:

I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.

***

Crime and Punishment:

“After all, it’s a way out!” he thought, walking slowly and listlessly along the embankment of the canal. “Anyway, I’ll end it because I want to…Is it a way out, though? But what’s the difference! There’ll really be the end?

Hamlet:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? … To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause…

***

Crime and Punishment:

I noted him, I noted him well.

Hamlet:

I did very well note him.

***

Crime and Punishment:

All in flowers, a girl was lying in it, in [the coffin]…her loose hair…was wet; it was twined with a wreath of roses…The girl was a suicide–by drowning.

Hamlet:

Therewith fantastic garlands did she make…
There, on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook…
but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death…
Drown’d, drown’d.

I am remiss in posting this review of the delightful Terra, which my husband G. Grod and I visited on our recent trip to the Carolinas. G’s mom, aunt and grandmother kindly agreed to wrangle the boys so G. Grod and I could go out to dinner and celebrate our wedding anniversary a few weeks early. There wasn’t a great deal of information about restaurants in South Carolina; Zagat’s had hardly anything. But I found Terra online, and their focuses of local, seasonal and organic ingredients and recipes sounded promising.

Our dinner more than fulfilled that promise. To start, we had the “Quack” Madame, a salad with duck confit and a quail egg, and the Frisee aux Lardon. Both were rich, warm salads that perfectly suited the cool, rainy, early-fall weather. The Quack was especially nice, as the quail egg yolk, when pierced, ran over the salad creating yet another complementary flavor and texture.

For entrees, I had a perfectly prepared NC fish, pan sauteed and served over a sweet pea risotto. G. Grod had a meltingly tender lamb shoulder, and we had the lovely experience of both insisting that we liked our own entree the best.

For dessert, we had white peach pastries and a pecan pie cannily paired with a sweet corn ice cream. The pie was very good, but that ice cream shot it into the stratosphere. And the peach pastries were what Hostess or McDonald’s fruit pies might dream of growing up to be–hot in the middle, crisp and flaky on the outside, and utterly delicious. Our helpful and personable server, Ryan, told us what the secret ingredient in the dough was that made the pastry so perfect. I’ll keep their secret, but will say it’s NOT for vegetarians.

After we’d finished, chef and owner Mike Davis came out to introduce himself, and we talked a bit about the meal, the ingredients, and how we’d found out about Terra.

I know it’s odd to find a SC restaurant reviewed on a Minnesota weblog, but if you’re ever in the Columbia area of the Carolinas, I strongly recommend that you seek out Terra. It’s a lovely restaurant, and we had a lovely meal.

The Mall of America recently updated its theaters, which are now independently operated. They now serve popcorn with real butter, and apparently have a very swank VIP theater. Link from MNSpeak.

Pet peeve: Minnesota is in the US, folks. And here, we spell it “theater.” So drop the pretentious nonsense that makes googling and finding your THEATER harder (I’m lookin’ at you MOA and Parkway) and use the US, not the English, spelling. Sheesh.

The Minneapolis Heights Theater is screening a double feature of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons from Monday October 20 to Wednesday October 22, 2008. You can see one or both for $8. If you go, be sure to get their fabulous popcorn with REAL butter, or a treat from the Dairy Queen next door.

Is it wrong that I think the Pumpkin Pie Blizzard sounds really good? Even I, though, the mistress of overkill, think buttered popcorn and a blizzard is over the top.

Rhyming is a developmental stage for kids. 5yo Drake’s been doing it for about a year, and 2.5 yo Guppy is just starting. He’s a second child, so he hits a lot of milestones earlier than Drake did because of his big brother’s example.

Last week, though, we had a few rhyming incidents that left me less than proud.

Drake, listening to the song “I Like Bugs” on the new Yo Gabba Gabba microphone: I like jugs!

Guppy, after I sang the Thumb-in-the-thumb-hole/Putting-on-your-mittens song: Thumb in the bum hole!

I was thankful I was the only audience. Though it was difficult, I did not laugh. Best not to encourage them in naughty rhyming.

Me to my husband: Hey, it _is_ possible to sneeze and keep my eyes open! (See last week’s Office for why I tried this.)

G.Grod: That’s great, but it would’ve been even better if you’d _covered_ your sneeze.

Me: It was an experiment. Science trumps etiquette.

(But I’ll try to do better next time. Gotta model correct behavior for the kids.)