Sage Woman Chronicles

Pride and Prejudice

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?” ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman’s daughter. So far we are equal.” ~ Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

The mini-series, Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle produced in 1995, was my introduction to Jane Austen. Since I was not an English major in college, I was not required to read any of her work, nor had I read any in high school. In fact, I was only vaguely aware of how famous and even controversial her work was. From the first episode, I was hooked on Jane Austen and vowed to read all her work. From the first moments of the series, the story was full of interesting characters, and situations.

The plot is, like most Jane Austen’s stories, about the hazards her main characters face in trying to find suitable husbands when they have little or no dowry to attract wealthy gentlemen. Since gentlewomen had very few options for finding work to support themselves, marriage was the best way to secure a comfortable future. But in each of Austen’s books, and certainly in Pride and Prejudice, the question becomes, “Do I want to marry for love, or for comfort”? Modern audiences and readers might not understand how making a good match was such an important thing for people in Jane’s era. The mini-series helps the audience understand this and other important themes of the story.

One of the first obstacles to Elizabeth, the heroine, and her sisters finding suitable husbands is their relatively lower social status. Even though Mr. Bennet is a gentleman, he’s not a very wealthy one and to Bingley’s sisters, that and the fact that the girl’s mother is the daughter of a trade’s man, makes them ineligible for their brother. Even so, Bingley falls deeply in love with Jane, the eldest of the sisters. Of course, he is advised by his sisters and Darcy, his best friend, to make another, more suitable, (profitable) choice. The ironic thing is that Darcy has fallen for Elizabeth, which he considers to be a flaw in his character.

We know at the beginning when Darcy and Elizabeth clash, that we’re in for an interesting romantic ride. He’s wealthy and proud, though we see as the story goes along, first impressions are not always accurate. Elizabeth is intelligent and witty, while at the same time, she seems to care deeply about her family and friends. She exudes independence, something rather unusual for a woman of her era. She’s a bit prejudiced against Darcy for his pride, and maybe even his wealth. We discover later, it is these qualities that attracts Darcy to her. Elizabeth is not like any other woman he knows. She is not inclined to following the behavior that is strictly enforced by class conventions.

Even though Pride and Prejudice is a romance, there are other elements that I find attractive about the book. Elizabeth has a particularly close relationship with her father. Darcy’s aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, finds this unusual. They meet when Elizabeth is visiting with her best friend Charlotte Lucas who has married her cousin, Mr. Collins, a clergyman Lady Catherine has taken under her controlling wing. Elizabeth says her father needs her at home. Lady Catherine says, “Daughters are nothing to fathers.” But she is wrong about Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet. It seems to me that Elizabeth, of all the family, is the only person Mr. Bennet can be his true self with. I could relate to Elizabeth’s relationship with her father because I had a close relationship with my own father. Mr. Bennet, unlike my father, teases his girls calling them rather silly, “Well, Jane and Elizabeth have some sense,” he says. But, he is, in the end, benevolent to his family. They want for nothing. I also loved him because like my father, he seems to be interested in what goes on with the people of the town, and he’s a great reader. Mr. Bennet is one of my favorite characters in both versions of the story.

Elizabeth also has a close relationship with her sister Jane. And though she loves her other sisters and mother, they can be quite annoying at times. So, in the end, Mr. Bennet, Elizabeth and Jane are a comfort to each other when, Mrs. Bennet, Lydia and Kitty get too silly. Poor Mary, the middle sister, is mostly left to her own devices which, fortunately, she doesn’t seem to mind.

The story takes an interesting turn when the militia comes to town. Not long ago, I read a fascinating book titled: Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly. In the chapter on Pride and Prejudice, she points out that the arrival of the militia is not necessarily a good thing, though Lydia and Kitty don’t seem to understand the dangers to the young women of the town. The representative character in this case is George Wickham, who we discover, grew up with Darcy. Wickham was the son of Darcy’s father’s steward, or may perhaps be Darcy’s half brother, that is unclear. Wickham takes advantage of Darcy’s reluctance to reveal their history and tell’s Elizabeth that Darcy went against his father’s will and denied him the living he was to have. This sets Elizabeth’s mind even more against Darcy. But when Darcy surprises Elizabeth with a proposal of marriage, she tells him she wouldn’t marry him if he were the last man on earth. When he asks her why, one of the charges she brings against him is his treatment of Wickham.

I love that Jane, as the movie, The Jane Austen Book Club points out, allows the gentleman their say. Darcy writes Elizabeth a long letter. It’s a great literary device. We find out more about Darcy and Wickham’s history, but we also begin to see Darcy in a new light. He prevented Wickham from ruining his most beloved sister, Georgiana’s, reputation. He further explains that he did not reveal what Wickham had done not only to protect Georgiana, but in hopes that Wickham might learn from the incident and change. His hopes, of course, are not realized.

It’s through Wickham that we see that many of the militia officers are social climbers, or take the opportunity to “sew their oats” in more ways than one. They are supposed to be defending the country from possible French invasion – the story takes place during the French Revolution – instead, merchant daughters are meddled with, debts go unpaid, gambling and drinking are common past-times. Every community that houses the militia must pick up the pieces once they leave.

Of course, Elizabeth and Darcy, and Jane and Bingley marry in the end. But getting to that point is not an easy journey for either couple, nor does the future promise that sisters will be fully accepted into the highest echelons of society. We get the feeling that social status matters little to the happy couples. It seems to me that in all her books, Jane is more concerned with her characters having loving, stable relationships rather than what society in her time period would consider advantageous matches. Since she never married herself, that might be something she was only able to enjoy through her characters.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. Have a fantastic end to your week.

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards. It’s a historical, time-travel, magical realism, women’s novel, and is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. I you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. To join her email list, click here. She will never sell the names on her list.

Now Voyager – A Relevant Classic

Bette Davis, Paul Henreid in Now Voyager

“Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need other’s approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.” ~ Lao Tzu

“Dr. Jacquith says that tyranny is sometimes expression of the maternal instinct. If that’s a mother’s love, I want no part of it.” ~ Charlotte Vale in Now Voyager

One of the universal issues, in my opinion, that almost every human being must deal with is self-love and acceptance. It’s sad that we’re not taught to love ourselves. But then neither were our parents or theirs before them, so perhaps that situation is not so unexpected after all. Learning to love myself has been one of the most profound things I’ve undertaken in my life. And I’m not finished yet. So, when I first saw the movie, Now Voyager on Turner Classic Movies some years back, I could completely relate to Charlotte, played by Bette Davis, in her quest to not only learn to love herself, but deal with her extremely difficult mother.

Charlotte Vale’s story is nothing new, except that she comes from a old wealthy Boston family. So often we think that the rich have no problems whatsoever. This story shows that’s not always true. Charlotte has had no chance to become independent of her mother’s control or family ridicule, which results in profound self-loathing. At the beginning of the story, she has a nervous breakdown, as it was called in the 1941, and must go to Cascade, a sanitarium to heal from years of emotional abuse.

Dr. Jacquith, played by Claude Rains, the founder of Cascade, is a pioneer in the field of psychiatry. He and his staff give practical advice about how to deal with almost any situation, and with difficult people. In general Charlotte and her fellow patients socialize with each other, so they can see that they are not the only ones in pain. This gives them an opportunity to practice their skills and gives them confidence in being with other people. The book gives more details than the movie about what Charlotte learns and her tentative steps in using the techniques Dr. Jacquith teaches.

Once Charlotte has been pronounced well, her family ally, sister-in-law Lisa, and Dr. Jacquith send her on a long ocean cruise so she can practice her new interpersonal skills. On the voyage, Charlotte meets J. D. Durrance, played by Paul Henreid, a married man who is going to South America (France in the book) on business. They form a friendship and later fall in love, though their demonstrations of love never go past kissing and hugging. J. D., or Jerry as Charlotte calls him, is an honorable man. He has a demanding, shrewish wife and three daughters which puts a great strain on him. The youngest of his daughters, Tina, is showing the same kinds of symptoms Charlotte had before her breakdown. These facts are additional ties that bind Charlotte and Jerry together. When Jerry leaves the ship for his business meetings, he and Charlotte vow never to see each other again, even though they are deeply in love.

When Charlotte gets home after many months of being away from her mother, she is extremely apprehensive. However, Jerry has sent her a corsage of camellias, a nickname he gave her on the voyage. She knows he’s thinking of her and that fact gives her the courage to assert her independence when her mother begins making demands.

After that first evening, Charlotte and her mother form an unspoken truce. Over the next months, Charlotte walks a fine line between open rebellion and compliance to her mother’s demands, until one day when Charlotte breaks under her mother’s belittling. They have an argument and her mother has a heart attack and dies leaving Charlotte a wealthy heiress.

That’s when the story takes an interesting turn. Charlotte, thinking she killed her mother, goes to Cascade, where she finds Tina, Jerry’s daughter. At eleven years old, Tina is in bad shape. She’s thin, sullen, and a loner. Charlotte understands Tina better than anyone at Cascade and undertakes to be her friend. This friendship is beneficial to them both.

Charlotte’s journey is unusual for a story written in the 1940s. Though Charlotte becomes engaged at one point, when that relationship dies a natural death, she says she will remain resolutely single. After meeting Tina she devotes herself to not only helping her, but opening her home to her nieces and nephews. She also donates money to expansion at Cascade where Dr. Jacquith puts her on the board. At the end of the book, there is no indication that she and Jerry will resume their previous romantic relationship. However, Jerry agrees to allow Tina to continue living with Charlotte and the couple make a pact to work together to help her grow into a happy, independent, accomplished woman.

The movie is very much like the book, with few changes. It uses dialogue just as Olive Higgins Prouty wrote it. This is one of those classic stories I feel lots of people can relate to, and even gain some techniques for dealing with some of life’s more difficult situations. I highly recommend it.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting. I appreciate it.

Game Changer – A Wrinkle in Time

“I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,’ a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.” ~ Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time

“What if we are here for a reason. What if we are part of something truly divine.” ~ Dr. Alex Murry, A Wrinkle in Time

What if a book/movie came into being that challenged our long held beliefs about who we really are? How would people feel about it? What would they think? Judging by the user reviews of the movie, A Wrinkle in Time, they’d hate it.

When I first read A Wrinkle in Time many years ago in the late 1980s, I loved it. That book was my introduction to the fantasy genre. I loved the blend of science and spirituality, the journey Meg takes from self-hatred to self-love. I could completely relate to her struggles because I to thought I was unlovable too. But one of my favorite segments in the book and the movie is when Meg gets a glimpse into the inner lives of three important people in her life, a girl who bullies her, her principal who does not understand her, and Calvin, the most popular boy at school. She gets to see that each one has a deep wound to deal with just like she does. That’s when she understands that we all need understanding and compassion.

Since the book was a Newberry Medal winner, I was completely surprised to discover that A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by publishers over thirty times. But then maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, because it’s a story that challenges the way we perceive how the universe works. There are many planes of existence of which we, only using our five senses, are completely unaware. And the idea that our minds and hearts are much more powerful than we have previously believed is a central part of the book. The darkness that exists is inside us and the only way it can be vanquished is to nurture light of love within.

Barry and I went to see the movie version on Easter Sunday. I thought it was the perfect movie for that holiday because to me, Easter is about redemption, forgiveness and love. But when I went to read the user reviews on Internet Movie Database, everyone gave the movie one star rating. The headers told how much they hated the movie. When I read one that said, “I want to gouge out the part of my brain that remembers this movie,” I was so surprised. The movies I wish I could forget are dark, hopeless, humanity is coming to an end type movies, not ones full of hope. Then a lot of recent movies with similar hopeful story lines came crashing into my head.

If self-reflection, healing, and self-love are such horrible topics for a movie, then how do we explain the huge money makers from the last couple of years? Some of them were Doctor Strange, Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, Justice League, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and the biggest blockbuster of 2018 so far is Black Panther. Each one has a situation where darkness threatens to take over the planet or the universe and the solution to interrupt its progress is by finding inner balance and the strength of love. In the case of Doctor Strange, he’s willing to sacrifice himself to trap the dark entity it in a mindless time loop. Eventually the entity realizes the futility of doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result and gives into Doctor Strange’s terms.

Those movies were blockbusters because most of them are action pictures with lots of fighting, and explosions to distract the audience long enough to get the final message across, that it’s only through finding peace within, that we’ll create peace without. Each of the main characters comes to the conclusion that they must deal with their wounds before trying to save the world. Those are the kinds of stories that are most interesting to me.

So what makes A Wrinkle in Time different than the above mentioned movies? I mean the visual effects are stunning and the cast does a good job. Is it just because Oprah’s in it? My theory is that it doesn’t try to trick the audience in any way. We learn pretty early on that in order to save her father, Meg’s going to have to do some deep inner work. That’s a scary prospect for some of us and this may be why some people hated the movie so much. Most of us try to avoid feeling pain using lots of different methods, but as Meg learns, you’ve got to embrace it to lessen it’s power.

I’m convinced that A Wrinkle in Time is going to end up being a beloved classic movie, just like It’s a Wonderful Life is now. When It’s a Wonderful Life came out, it did not get a good reception. But what would Christmas be without Mister Potter and George Bailey? We love to watch George fight against his true calling until that fateful day when his life seems to be falling apart and he gets the chance to see what the world would have been like if he’d never been born. George discovers that the love and compassion he shared with the people of his community was desperately needed. His one seemingly insignificant life sent out so many ripples of hope. And in the end all the good he did comes back to him ten-fold.

The message of both movies is that love is stronger than hate. Dr. Murry tells Meg, “I wanted to touch the whole universe, when I should have kept ahold of your hand.” He got seduced by his curiosity and theories. But Meg’s decision to love herself allows her to save her father, her little brother, Charles Wallace and herself. That’s why I love both the movie and the book of A Wrinkle in Time.

Thanks for reading, liking and commenting.

A Wrinkle in Time

Miss Pettrigrew Lives for a Day

“Not everything comes along just when we want it. There are times when decisions just have to be made, or you certainly will miss out.” ~ Guinevere Pettigrew in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

“I am not an expert on love, I am an expert on the lack of love, Delysia, and that is a fate from which I wish most fervently to save you.” ~ Guinevere Pettigrew in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Every once in a while I want to watch a movie, or read a book that just makes me laugh out loud so I can carry that happy feeling for a long while afterwards. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is certainly that kind of story! But it’s so much more.

Sometimes story gems are discovered by film makers and the result is magic. If you haven’t seen the 2008 movie, which stars Frances McDormand and Amy Adams, you are missing out.

The book by Winifred Watson, has recently been republished by Persephone Classics and I’m so happy it’s in circulation. Persephone Classics has revived and republished several classics written by women. I’ll be looking for other titles from their shelves.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was first published in 1938. The movie is updated a bit with the addition of the beginning of WW II, some of the characters are combined, and events changed, but essentially it is the same story as the book. Much of the dialogue in the movie is exactly as Winifred Watson wrote it.

The story takes place in London. Miss Guinevere Pettigrew is a down on her luck 40ish gentlewoman who has been working, rather unsuccessfully, as a governess for many years. In the movie, we see her get fired from her job by a pompous woman taking sips from a glass of sherry, presumably her daily habit. The butler hands Guinevere her suitcase and basically throws her out without the wages she is owed. At the employment agency she faces a stern woman who is unwilling to recommend her for a new position. She sneaks an employment request card for a social secretary position but must wait until morning to attempt to get the job. In the meantime, she collides with a man who is getting out of jail, her suitcase opens and all her belongings are thrown to the wind. She is so embarrassed she walks away with only the clothes she wearing. From that moment on, Guinevere and the audience barely have time to catch a breath. She spends an uncomfortable night in a train station with no money, or prospects, except for the card in her pocket.

In the morning, she beats a path to the gorgeous flat of Delysia Lafosse an actress and nightclub singer. When Delysia opens the door, Geuinevere is thrown into an unfamiliar world. Delysia asks for her help in getting rid of her overnight male companion because another man, the one who pays for the apartment, is on his way. Feeling out of her depth, Guinevere swallows her misgivings, and plunges in. Next she helps Delysia get rid of the second man as well. Later a third man, Michael, shows up who is, by coincidence, the man who collided with her the day before. In each evermore desperate situation, Guinevere sheds her modesty and high ideals. She rises to the occasion helping not only Delysia, but her friends iron out kinks in their personal lives for which Delysia is eternally grateful.

I could relate to Guinevere because there have been times when I felt like I was too straight laced and unwilling to accept people for who they are. Getting involved in theatre helped me become more accepting. For Guinevere, meeting Delysia, who is almost her total opposite, changes her in the happiest of ways. Guinevere decides that perhaps she has been too rigid and embraces the glamorous life that Delysia and her friends lead if only for a day. She may never get another chance to be on the inside of life, as she describes it in the book.

I can relate to that desire to throw caution to the wind, to embrace life. I’ve even had periods when I’ve done that like the time my husband and I sold our house and took a trip around the world. Those kinds of times are the ones I cherish most.

Interestingly enough, I can also relate to Delysia. She’s much more outgoing than I am, and appears to be scatter brained, but she is open hearted and even perceptive. She sees Guinevere as a person of value who deserves to be treated well. Valuing others is something I strive for in my own life.

As the story progresses, we find out why Delysia welcomes Guinevere into her life so readily. Near the end of the story she says, ”For all the fancy apartments and fashion shows, do you know how close I am to having nothing? Every day I wake up and I think, if I make the wrong move, I could be out on that street with no clothes, no food, no job and no friends.” That’s the moment that Guinevere and Delysia become friends for life. Two seemingly dissimilar women sharing common fears. They understand each other.

This is one of those delightful stories that has a serious theme. We all need to be appreciated and understood. Delysia and Guinevere give that to each other with the result that both get their happy endings.

I recommend both the book and the movie if for no other reason than they are good for a hearty belly laugh. Laughing is good for the digestion and helps you sleep better. And can’t we all use a good laugh from time to time? But I also recommend it because Guinevere is a good example for us all. She lets go of long held beliefs that have kept her from enjoying life. Once she does that, all kinds of new and wonderful possibilities open up for her.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate your likes and comments. Have a delightful weekend.