Second Impressions: Becoming Jane
Netflix recently delivered the DVD of Becoming Jane to our mailbox, because I wanted to give it another chance, to see if it offended my aesthetic and feminist sensibilities as much the second time. I wanted to listen to the commentary, to see how aware the filmmakers were of the implications they created (implications I’ve previously railed against here). And, yes, I did want to see James McAvoy again. I think he’s developing into a minor crush of mine. Or maybe it’s just the green velvet coat he wears in this movie.
My conclusions? The same things still irked me, some even more so, after hearing the commentary. However, I don’t think director Julian Jarrold and writer Kevin Hood were intentionally suggesting that a woman needs a man in order to write well; they do pay lip service to Jane Austen’s genius on the commentary. It’s frustrating, though, how unaware they can be of the messages they’re sending. Watching the movie the first time, I was probably most deeply offended by the conversation between Austen and Lefroy about Tom Jones, in which Austen came off sounding like a prude and Lefroy’s claim that Austen’s experience needed to be widened (read: she needed to know more about sexual attraction, possibly by reading “scandalous” novels like Tom Jones, but preferably by first-hand experience) before she could become a better writer was left unchallenged. Imagine my even greater irritation, then, when I learned from the commentary that Hood knew that Austen read Tom Jones before she ever met Lefroy. She read it on her own, which was quite shocking for a young woman of her day, but not something from which she shrank back. In the few references to Lefroy among Austen’s unburned letters, she mentions discussing Tom Jones with Lefroy, but she had already read it. He was not her teacher; he was not responsible for “broadening” her horizons. I don’t at all mind the fictionalizing of Austen’s and Lefroy’s relationship, but I do object to re-inserting old gender stereotypes into a situation where they didn’t actually exist.
Another thing irritated me more the second time around: in the first sequence in which Lefroy listens to Jane read aloud, he is bored and dismisses her writing as “accomplished.” Since we only hear her what she’s written in snippets, we don’t really get any opinion to the contrary. He gets the last word. So is it progress when, in the film’s final scene, we see him applauding and smiling at her reading? Sure, her writing has gotten better, and maybe his taste has improved, too, but it still leaves with him the final verdict, implying that his opinion is the one that really matters. I’m really torn about this scene, because it is really moving when read at the level of personal reconciliation—but the personal is all tied up with issues of gender and writing in Becoming Jane.
I’ve been thinking that part of my reaction to this scene may have to do with lingering anger towards Gilbert Blythe. I refer to the Gilbert Blythe of the Anne of Avonlea TV miniseries, which was a staple of my childhood. He tells Anne, who has been writing “highfaluting mumbojumbo,” to write about “the real people you care about right here in Avonlea.” (Yes, I can quote the movie word for word. Still. It’s embarrassing.) Eventually, she takes his advice, and he turns out to be right, because she gets a book published. He is right about her prior writing; it is silly. But why, why, why, in movies about women writers, does the man who critiques her writing in favor of experience and realism always have to be right? It makes me want to kick things.
Plus, why do they make Jane Austen look like Emily Dickinson in the movie’s final scenes? Was the white dress really necessary? Do we really need to bring every single stereotype about “old maid” women writers into one film?
In spite of my fury at some parts of Becoming Jane—and, as I hope I’ve made clear, that fury is really due to an accumulation of similar messages and not exclusively to this one movie—I do like other parts of it very much. I like that we get to view the economics of marriage from many different viewpoints, both male and female. I like that Mr. Wisely, Jane’s awkward suitor who has been dubbed a “booby,” turns out not to be a booby after all, and yet they still don’t get married.
Most of all, I like the dance scene in which Jane is listlessly going through the figures as Wisely’s partner until, seemingly from nowhere, Tom Lefroy whirls into place as her corner. It may be worth watching the whole movie just for this scene (or, alternately, you can just watch the scene on YouTube). James McAvoy’s “kinetic energy” (I quote one of his costars) and the subtle changes in the music make the moment. In the commentary, Jarrold also pointed out that Lefroy’s character has been absent from the screen for a while, as the focus has shifted to the Austens’ financial troubles, so when he finally swoops into view, the audience feels the delayed gratification as well.
Also, in case you’re as obsessed with the details of period music and dance as I am (which is probably unlikely, but oh well), the music in this scene is not included on the soundtrack. It is Purcell’s tune “The Hole in the Wall.” (Jarrold went on about how choreographer Jane Gibson wanted to use a dance that hadn’t been seen in any of the other Austen movies. Too bad that Gibson herself already used “Hole in the Wall” in the 1996 Emma miniseries–as well as in her choreography for Wives and Daughters. It’s a great tune and a great dance, but let’s not resort to false advertising.) Also, one of my favorite bits of the commentary explained how composer Adrian Johnston went through Austen’s music notebooks and used some of the themes from those songs in the movie’s score. The most obvious example is the use of the tune “The Irishman” in Tom Lefroy’s musical theme. You can listen to a snippet of “The Irishman” here, then hear the same tune repeated in the “Bond Street Airs” track on the Becoming Jane soundtrack. Why yes, I am a nerd.
Add comment March 8th, 2008