Lazy Sunday with Pride and Prejudice

I should be grading book reviews from my children’s lit class (Walk two moons by Sharon Creech—overall my students liked this book better than the first two historical novels, Crispin by Avi and The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman). It’s actually quite good: a young girl’s journey across the US to, of all places, Pocatello with her grandparents. On the journey she tells the story of her friend, Phoebe, whose mother has taken off without explanation to her grandparents all the while coming to terms with the loss of her own mother…

I should be reading the chapter on fairy tales and a couple of short sections on archetypal and structure theories and writing up a quiz…

I should be reading Angle of Repose, my wife’s book club pick for this Friday—I’m unbelievably only on page 60…

Instead we are finishing up Pride and Prejudice (the 2005 Joe Wright version); it’s my 9 year old daughter’s second viewing this weekend. I like it “well enough I suppose;” certainly better than the mini series version from the 80s I watched when I was taking British lit at BYU. I have a surreal memory of watching the film with a fellow student. He lived close by so we watched it at his house. He was quite odd, very formal in his manner and speech, strange pauses and gestures. I don’t think he had many friends and since we were in the same class and in the same student ward, he had gotten quite excited about us watching it at his home. I didn’t feel I could decline, an appropriate response given what we were viewing. It was the longest three hours imaginable, forever leaving a sad piteous feeling conflating the event and the movie. Maybe now I have an alternate memory when thinking of P and P.

Misc movie observations:

5 year old son keeps saying “Mister Darcy” in an English accent.

Are we sure Mr. Darcy is all that shit? (he is agonizingly reserved—surely great subtle acting, but I can’t fully embrace the reserved-working-behind-the-scenes-generous character Austen creates.)

“You have bewitched me body and soul” is a great line but why is her face so made-up in this scene? She looks positively silly. And, as my wife observes, “we get nothing after all that” i.e. no kiss, only noses touching as my daughter adds.

Why did they choose skin colored pants for Darcy in the last scene? He looks like he’s in a nightty of some sort with no bottoms. But I guess we at last get our kiss.