[LINK] "Landscape and Austen"

[rfmcdonald]

jsburbidge has a nice post about the role of landscape in Jane Austen's novels.

Somewhere back near the beginning of time (it sometimes feels like) I took a graduate seminar on Landscape and Literature, with a focus mainly on the 18th Century (although the 19th and 20th centuries did get a look in). It was not as interesting as it might have been -- the professor, Leo Braudy, was not noted for the excitement he generated -- but it did have its points.

I thought of that course again on re-watching the 2005 movie of Price and Prejudice (the one with Keira Knightly). I did so because it seemed to me that at many cases where Austen set a scene indoors, the movie gratuitously set it outdoors (sometimes jettisoning a good line in the process: there was no space for Mr. Bennett's "I have two small favours to request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the present occasion; and secondly, of my room. I shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as may be", as Elizabeth had stormed out of the house to a duckpond). Occasionally a scene which Austen set outside (Darcy delivering his letter to Elizabeth, Lady Catherine delivering her interdiction to Elizabeth) was set inside, for no obvious reason I could see. Sometimes the landscape seemed to invade the indoors: the Bennetts' house seemed to have pigs in the background unpredictably.

These weren't the only arbitrary changes which seemed to be aimed principally at foregrounding the picturesque. Why did the Gardiners go to the Peak District rather than having their planned tour to the Lake District cut short[1]? Why was Darcy's set of miniatures by the fireplace (restrained, in good taste) changed into a sculpture gallery? For that matter, how did Darcy know that by wandering out at the crack of dawn he would find Elizabeth outdoors the morning after Lady Catherine had visited? (In the novel he is in London at the time, but I do not begrudge the simplification to the director of his being at Netherfield and coming over; but as a reasonable man he would have ridden over no earlier than mid-morning, on any reasonable expectation of getting access to Elizabeth. Indeed, he shows as much restraint and decorum in the book as one might expect, coming over with Bingley in the afternoon after his arrival back down from London.)

Given the generally positive critical response to the film, It's beside the point to note that I wasn't impressed. What is more interesting is to consider why such an extensive amount of swapping of locales took place, and why it might have an impact on what is designed into the book.