Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb, Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment. There he hath made himself to his intent Weak enough, now into our world to come. But O ! for thee, for Him, hath th' inn no room ? Yet lay Him in this stall, and from th' orient, Stars, and wise men will travel to prevent The effects of Herod's jealous general doom. See'st thou, my soul, with thy faith's eye, how He Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie ? Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high, That would have need to be pitied by thee ? Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go, With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.
Yesterday my Mom had a surgery to have a melanoma removed from her leg. I thank God that this was discovered at an early stage, but my year has also been profoundly punctuated by another person's battle with cancer. In September, after a heroic two-year battle, my family's friend and closest-neighbor, Karen, passed away. She left behind a husband, a 15 year-old daughter and a 12 year-old son. Watching this family's struggles has affected me as no other death ever has before.
Yesterday I also watched my favorite film: Wit, starring Emma Thompson. Based on the play by Margaret Edson, this film chronicles Professor Vivian Bearing's experience as a patient undergoing treatment for stage-four advanced metastatic ovarian cancer. (“There is no stage five.”) And, yes, true to it's name it's strangely witty. And I use the term deliberately to imply that the wit of this play is ferociously intelligent and just gets funnier with every rewatch/reread.
I dare anyone to watch this film through to its penultimate scene without tears. The last time I watched it with my mom she remarked, through her tears, on how sad it is. But I was smiling through my tears; to me the conclusion of Wit is an unequivocal victory. To explain why let me lead you back to the play. Because while the HBO film – from casting to music - is “excruciatingly spectacular”, the play's the thing. The play this coruscating adaptation is based on is sometimes known as W;t (with a semicolon replacing the 'i'). This refers to its serious dialog with the metaphysical poetry of John Donne, of which Miss Bearing is a “demanding professor”. The film and play both focus attention on one of Donne's most famous poems, Sonnet X , known as “Death Be Not Proud”. The attention is minute, down to - you guessed it - the punctuation. (Comparing her hospital experience to her literary method, Vivian says, “The attention was flattering. For the first five minutes. Now I know how poems feel.”)
The film retains the perspicacious explication of Sonnet X, but with the ending changed, it's easy to miss the play's foundational, victorious theme. Indeed, even in the play we are required to “read between the lines”, so many have only seen half of the two-part theme. Everyone sees the importance of human kindness and connection that Vivian has lacked and looked for in vain from most health-care professionals. Yet that theme, although a vital part of the play, is one never mentioned in the poems that periodically punctuate the play – The Holy Sonnets. (Although the human connection does play a part in Donne's Meditation XVII from which comes the quote, “No man is an island.”)
But the film's underlying theme, as Margaret Edson has herself stated, is about redemption and grace. But grace isn't something that either John Donne or Vivian Bearing have an easy time accepting.
Speaking of the “salvation anxiety” found in Sonnet IX, a character says, “You know you're a sinner. And there's this promise of salvation, the whole religious thing. But you just can't deal with it... It doesn't stand up to scrutiny. But you can't face life without it either...”
Like Donne, or Adam and Eve in the garden, Vivian Bearing has tried to hide from God by “being extremely smart”. The final scenes show Vivian reduced to a childish state, curled up a ball, hiding under the covers and letting out a wail at the suggestion of hearing Donne recited.
But those familiar with more of Donne's poetry will almost immediately connect the play with a poem which it never mentions: "Hymne to God my God in my Sicknesse". This poem contrasts with the doubt that Donne manifests throughout the Holy Sonnets. In it John Donne is victorious over his “salvation anxiety” and asserts that “death doth touch the resurrection.”
Like this poem, the message of the play is victorious over “seemingly insuperable barriers”. The play, which has seemed to question and reject Donne, ends with a striking visual-metaphor for death touching the resurrection.
The greatest lesson of W;t is an intensely Christian one; in fact, so intensely Christian that it probably makes non-Christians uncomfortable. God uses suffering; He batters, over-throws, and breaks us, bringing us to a state of childish dependency, in order to make us new. And this being made new is not an illusionary renewal of youth as in the end of the film version. It is when God's hand shall “bind up all our scattered leaves, for that Library where every book shall lie open to one another.” The message of Wit may be summarized thus: “Therefore that he may raise, the Lord throws down.”
And to paraphrase E.M. Ashford, the presiding genius of the play, "That is not wit. It is truth."
A favorite scene from the film:
HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS.
SINCE I am coming to that Holy room, Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore, I shall be made Thy music ; as I come I tune the instrument here at the door, And what I must do then, think here before ;
Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown That this is my south-west discovery, Per fretum febris, by these straits to die ;
I joy, that in these straits I see my west ; For, though those currents yield return to none, What shall my west hurt me ? As west and east In all flat maps—and I am one—are one, So death doth touch the resurrection.
Is the Pacific sea my home ? Or are The eastern riches ? Is Jerusalem ? Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar ? All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.
We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place ; Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me ; As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face, May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.
So, in His purple wrapp'd, receive me, Lord ; By these His thorns, give me His other crown ; And as to others' souls I preach'd Thy word, Be this my text, my sermon to mine own, “Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down.”
(Sonnet XIV was the first Donne sonnet I ever fell in love with, before seeing Wit two years ago. After seeing it, I started reading more Donne and soon saw the connection to "Hymne to God my God in my Sicknesse". I highly recommend this essay that explores the connection of these poems to the play and its theme of Christian grace. It's an essay that would have done Donne proud, by John D. Sykes Jr. entitled “Wit, Pride and the Resurrection: Margaret Edson's Play and John Donne's Poetry”.)
I guess I'd heard of Patrick O'Brian before this week, but I'd never even had enough curiosity to wonder who he was. But at my last violin lesson my teacher mentioned the Master and Commander movie, because of it's use of a Bach piece she was about to assign to me. So I ordered it at the library and my family and I watched. Or rather, my dad was glued to the tv set, I kept asking for explanations, and my mom hid her eyes during the violence and the surgery scenes.
If it weren't for the doctor who reminded me a little of Roger Hamley in Wives and Daughters and Tertius Lydgate in Middlemarch, I probably wouldn't even have bothered noting down the name of the author of the original novel. So maybe that was number 253 on the Read Someday list.
But then I was reading the end of The Jane Austen Book Club again and one character claimed some of O'Brian's scenes could be called Austenesque.
And then I was reading the Yahoo! Janeites digest of the day and a member compared the Bertram sisters' professed knowledge of geography to the portrayal of a woman's geographical knowledge in the Jack Aubrey series.
Yeah, I think O'Brian might be moving up higher on the Soon list.
This post starts out as a review of the book A Jane Austen Education and meanders its way into a post honoring the indescribably wonderful woman born December 16th, 1775.
My Thoughts on A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter by William Deresiewicz
I was at first very excited by the premise of this book. Over the summer and fall I've immersed myself in Jane Austen's works and analyses of them. I've come to appreciate Austen's moral judgments as so subtle and strong that they can still help to guide mine today.
I also appreciate seeing a male author loudly raising his voice in praise of the authoress who, to the misinformed mind or the tragically dull elf, is seen as the “grandmother of romance fiction.” (JA Education p 223) Of course Austen has been praised by countless men, but perhaps one more formerly-derisive man's conversion, after the “score of sappy movies and hundred sentimental sequels” [Ibid] will help detractors re-examine their prejudices.
As a memoir, this book will inevitably be accused of smugness. The author's romantic life (or rather unromantic dating and sex-life) and inability to find a permanent partner costs him much anxiety and seems to be the “plot” to which we return at some point in each chapter. (And, yes, I know this is exactly what many people think Austen and other 19th century female authors are all about, but... I don't see enough irony in this book's approach to "the marriage plot".)
Frankly, the Finally-I-Arrived whiff didn't bother me all that much. Certainly, an Austen novel would delineate character better and teach lessons less tritely, but not even Yale professors like Deresiewicz should be expected to compete with Austen.
What ended up bothering me more was the fact that with “modern morals” Deresiewicz ended up looking more like Austen's cads than heroes. And for me, with my conservative Christian upbringing, contemporary morals just can't reconcile with the strength and subtlety of Austen's probity.
For example, Deresiewicz seemed proud of acting as Austen had taught him when he broke off a friendship with an alcoholic friend, after drinking with him and allowing him to drive home in an impaired state.
Dreesiewicz is also open about his many sexual, but intellectually unequal, relationships, which brought to mind... Mr. Eliot in Persuasion!
I was disturbed by the premise of the statement: “How [Austen's] ideas about sex might have changed in a world of reliable birth control, no-fault divorce, and women's economic independence we cannot say. It is certainly by no means clear that she would have denounced the moral standards of today.”
This is a difficult statement to navigate because it's impossible to know what Austen would be like if she grew up in today's moral climate. Personally, I believe that Austen's moral vision was based upon Christianity. In Mansfield Park (in which Edmund gives a speech on religion as the basis of morality) Mary Crawford takes the stance that Deresiewicz seems to believe Austen's: Promiscuity is bad because it is frowned upon by society and therefore jeopardizes one's social standing and happiness. Edmund is shocked by this view, because the problem here is really about the violation of unchangeable principles, not a mere departure from prudence.
(Of course, while believing that modern sexual morals are irreconcilable with Austen's moral vision, I'm aware that Austen herself was no prude, even including a pun about homosexuality in Mansfield Park. Yes, Austen, like Donne, or even Charlotte Bronte, is an author whose attitudes towards sexuality and religion often seem paradoxical and ironic.)
Despite its problems as a memoir, this book contains some excellent insights into Jane Austen's wit and wisdom. It made me love Austen still more, so yes, I would recommend it to the avid Janeite. However, for a subtle examination of Jane Austen's moral philosophy, I'm still laying my hopes on eventually obtaining a copy of Sarah Emsely's Jane Austen's Philosophy of the Virtues.
Well, those were my thoughts on A Jane Austen Education before I read The Jane Austen Book Club. The latter is a charming book: witty, touching and brimming with the color and texture of modern life. But it's the first sentence of the book that reminded me that maybe I needed to be a little less severe in the examination of others' understanding, because "seldom can it happen that something is not a little... mistaken.”.
Karen Joy Fowler's first sentence reminded me that "each of us has a private Austen."
So, who is my private Jane Austen? Well, it's probably clear that she's a Christian. But she's also a woman born with a biting wit that can be devastating and frightening. She's the Augustan rationalist who wrote of the transforming power of love. She's a woman who was very aware of the issues of her time, yet wrote books that teach us about navigating our own time.
Actually, I probably don't fully know “my” Jane Austen yet. This year was my year of becoming a (fanatical) Janeite; I'd fallen in love with Austen four years ago, the summer I was fourteen, but I learned to love Austen this year. I'd already read all the novels (some repeatedly) and could explain why Austen really isn't romantic in the traditional sense, and how she differentiates between static, growing and degenerating characters. But this year I reread five of the novels and read the unfinished works and juvenilia for the first time. And then I devoured scores upon scores of JASNA essays. Over the summer I've lived and breathed Austen and the inevitable result is that I think her so like perfection that I can call her by no other name.
My favorite chapter of A JA Education is the Northanger Abbey one in which Deresiewicz points to Henry and Catherine's discussion of how she has “learned to love a hyacinth.” “The mere habit of learning to love is the thing,” Henry says. (Read some of the chapter here:http://chronicle.com/article/A-Jane-Austen-Education/127269/ )
I don't fully know “my” Jane Austen yet, because the habit of learning to love her is one that will continue to educate and delight me for the rest of my life.
In honor of 236 years of perfection, Jane Austen repeats herslef: “The mere habit of learning to love is the thing.”
