Rachel Hennessy's Blog, page 2

How can Esther Summerson be Elizabeth Bennet?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that actors need to work. If you have ever lived with a jobbing thespian you’ll know there is no hesitation when a gig is offered. It is also a truth universally acknowledged that the BBC loves to do adaptations of classic novels and that the ABC relies heavily on filling its older demographic time-slots (Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights) with the re-imagined worlds of Austen, Dickens and Trollope.

The problem for those of us who are not that old, and who are also confined to our homes on these party nights – due, mainly, to the frustrating legal requirement to actually be in the house for our sleeping children – is how many of the same actors crop up in these adaptations, again and again.

Sometimes, I long for the faulty memory of the aged, so I wouldn’t be able to recall that the actor playing Elizabeth Bennet in Death Comes to Pemberley (Anna Maxwell Martin), currently playing on ABC on Friday nights at 8.30pm, was the same one who played Esther Summerson in Dickens’s Bleak House.

 Yes, it’s a First World problem, and we all know actors are supposed to be talented enough to erase the residue of their former roles. But Elizabeth and Esther? How can the same woman possibly embody such different temperaments?

Let’s go back to the original sources. In Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is described as having ‘a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous’. When Darcy first begins to fall in love with her, it is for her ‘easy playfulness’ and her face ‘rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes’.

In Dickens’s Bleak House, Esther describes herself as ‘such a shy little thing that I seldom dared to open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else.’ She is, by everyone’s definition, a mouse of a thing, admired for her stoic composure in the face of tragedy but without any kind of sparkle. She is about as far away from the light, dancing Elizabeth as it is possible to be.

But, of course, Death Comes to Pemberley is, in fact, not Austen’s world. It is PD James’s recreation of the world of Pride and Prejudice, six years after the marriage of Elizabeth and Darcy.

Does the casting imply, then, that Elizabeth has turned into Esther after only six years of wedded bliss to the best of men? Oh, Elizabeth, has your spirit really been so crushed?

While she does not, exactly, have her eyes downcast, Anna Maxwell Martin struggles to make Elizabeth seem truly happy and it is left to a rather dull Georgiana to state the situation of the house, rather than have it shown: ‘You’ve brought such laughter to Pemberley, Elizabeth’. Really? As played by Maxwell Martin, I can’t imagine a single snigger in the place. While Austen did produce a more-Esther-like heroine in her last novel, Persuasion, Anne Elliot is not an older Elizabeth Bennet. Getting older does not have to take away the sparkling wit of youth or give us the flat-footed dourness which Elizabeth has in this version.

And don’t even get me started on the difficulty of adjusting to Matthew Rhys as Darcy, not too long after seeing him as a cold-hearted Russian spy in The Americans.

The fairy-tale marriage between Elizabeth and Darcy envisioned by Austen we know to be just that. The whole point of ending the novel with getting hitched is to block out the realities of life after ‘happily ever after’. In many ways, it is unfair to continue the story, although this hasn’t stopped hundreds from doing so.

Yet in all my imaginings of Elizabeth’s life with Darcy (and most Austen-philes would probably admit to spending some time doing this), the couple never became as grim as they appear in Death Comes to Pemberley. Yes, the plotline centres round a murder, so there isn’t much room for light-hearted banter. Yet the two main characters just don’t gel as the famous couple. Or is this just because the ghosts of their former roles are hanging in the air?

Perhaps one of the reasons the 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was so successful was because both the main actors, Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, were relative unknowns at the time.

When it comes to adaptations, I think the less we have seen of the actor, the better. Then you don’t have to spend your time trying to forget how “Darcy” once shot three Afghan dissidents in the head or “Elizabeth’s” face was covered in smallpox.

Can we get fresh, clean actors for every adaptation? Probably not. Perhaps I’ll have to develop dementia instead.

The Weary Mother/Artist

I have a dream I am standing with a knife in my hand, in front of my two daughters. I am protecting them from something: a threatening man, a presence, a wild beast. It is not clear exactly. All I know is I have become a wild beast myself, the lioness in front of her cubs, unwilling to let anyone, or anything, hurt them. I growl, the knife in my hand, ready to plunge it into flesh, ready to rent apart evil, ready to murder.

I wake up. The 18 month old is lying asleep beside me. In the bunk bed above, I hear the 4 year old turn, readjusting the doona which periodically makes her too hot. My lower back aches. There is a constant, dull pain from lifting – into the high chair, out of the highchair, onto the lap, off of the lap, into the bath, out of the bath – and I roll onto my back, hoping for relief.

I feel a  long way away from the primordial mother of my dream world. I know intimately how the next 2 hours of my life will play out. My daughter will ask “mum, can we wake up now?” and we will begin the ritual of putting on dressing gowns, eating breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth and all the other mundane elements which make up the morning. The 4 year old will ask questions, the 18 month old will laugh and then cry, my husband will stumble into the shower.

Where are the dramatic moments of enacting out the role of parent? Why can no piece of art capture the true tediousness of so much of looking after small children? Because we cannot admit to it? We need the cliche of joy and un-equalled love. Yes, those moments are there but, as my elder sister warned me so many years ago, more of it is just hard work.

As I often do when I’m searching for a feeling of connection, when I feel as if I might be the only one experiencing such negative thoughts, I think of books which might depict the – what shall I call her? – “tired mother”, “weary mother”, “guilty mother”? Ironically, it is a book written by a man which immediately jumps into my head: The Hours by Michael Cunningham. But Mrs Brown is the quintessential woman of the ’40s. She does not have the opportunities available to me, I am not stuck in the suburbs with nothing but parties to plan and her decision to leave her child is one most women could not contemplate.

Where are the characters with babies, with toddlers, with the 4 year olds who get so much into your head, you find yourself calling yourself by their name? I know I am not alone in this strange world of tedium, wonder, weariness and guilt (why can’t I enjoy this more? why can’t I forget about all the other things I’d rather be doing?) Suggestions welcome.

 

Interview on Radio Adelaide

The podcast of my interview on Radio Adelaide is now available on their website:

https://radio.adelaide.edu.au/program/arts-breakfast/

Conducted by the wonderfully supportive Cath Keneally, I think I sound okay for someone who launched her book the night before after being awake since 5am (due to small baby).  I loved Cath’s questions, as it was obvious she really connected with THE HEAVEN I SWALLOWED.

Launched!

So, the second novel, The Heaven I Swallowed (info on the book at this link http://bit.ly/ZzK3kG), has been launched. Author and Professor, Nicholas Jose, gave an amazingly flattering speech (video to come) and I was wonderfully supported by friends and family. The next day I did a radio interview on Radio Adelaide (podcast to come) and tried to talk coherently about the book. Sometimes it is a struggle, as my three-month-old has me up about three times a night.

Already I have received some wonderful feedback from readers of the book, so here’s hoping for the same from reviewers!

 

Promo video for THE HEAVEN I SWALLOWED

http://youtu.be/DAZSxnYv9eU

Launch of my second novel

Launch is all set for Friday 7th June, 2013 from 6pm at the SA Writers’ Centre. RSVP on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/573642402658910/

Back on the horse

It’s been close to two years since I visited my website and I only have one person to blame: my daughter. Not that I do blame her, since she is, in the cliched terms of all parents, ‘a constant joy’, but she hasn’t left me much time or brain to engage with anything creative. I have never imagined myself a super-woman so these past two years, while at times frustrating, have also been a welcome break from the pressure of full-time writing.

But the time has come to get back on the horse. Primarily because my second novel, THE HEAVEN I SWALLOWED, is due to be released in the next month and I have to remind myself of how to speak about it coherently.

This will be a challenge as I’m just about to have another real-life baby (timing!) However, I’m very happy to have this book finally out there.

It is a novel that I struggled with for three years but which is important to me; it draws on the stories of my maternal grandmother and my paternal great-aunt. Two women who, as I say in my acknowledgements, I did not know very well but who I hope might be ‘flattered by the attention’. Let the ride begin (again)…

A Different Journey

I haven’t really become a regular poster/blogger on this website of mine and I guess that is because of 2 things: 1. I often don’t feel I need to contribute my words and thoughts to a world drowning in opinions and 2. much more pragmatically, in the last year I’ve started the journey towards motherhood and life has found a different kind of rhythm.

I am now a week away from my due date and my belly feels as sketched as it can possibly go. These past few weeks, since I finished work, have been challenging: becoming a completely biological creature, as opposed to an intellectual one, has been quite confronting at times. Us women who were brought up in an era that didn’t think much of being in the kitchen and certainly didn’t see ourselves raising hordes of kids find it harder to come to terms with this change in the direction of our lives. I remember writing a list of things “to do” in my life and quite far down the list was the item “have children” and then the word “children” was crossed out and replaced by the words “a child”.

Even though we have now entered the age of a shift back towards the veneration of the mother – to the point where successful women haven’t really made it unless they’ve also had biological children (eg. witness the headline news reaction to Nicole Kidman giving birth, as if her adopted children didn’t really count), I still think women of my ilk – in their 30s with some degree of a career developed – find the shift a bit uncomfortable. Do I really want to go to a morning dedicated to talking about the benefits of reusable nappies? Am I really content spending nights making felt decorations for the bassinet?

It is a strange conundrum because often when I ask myself these questions, I find, deep inside, I can answer with a “yes”. I was very happy when the corner of our bedroom dedicated to the soon-to-be arrival was transformed by a butterfly mobile I had made myself and teddy-bear stickers I spent a day tracking down. Things that, five years ago, I would have rolled my eyes at and seen as a waste of time.

It is a shame really that “educated” women have so often been taught to look down at the basics of life: cooking, cleaning, caring for others. For the majority of my life, the three ‘c’s have been pushed aside for that other big ‘c': the CV. One must always be achieving for the sake of a line on your Curriculum Vitae.

Not to say that career isn’t an important part of one’s life but I am glad to have been given the opportunity to see things a little differently now: to strike out towards a bit more balance.

Emerging Writers’ Festival

So, onto another festival, this time the Emerging Writers’ Festival in Melbourne. Will be on a panel called ‘The Interstate Divide’ on Saturday 30 May at the Town Hall. Have exactly 7 minutes to speak on the differences of writing voices from different states. I guess that is 1 minute per state.

I had a great time in Penola – 8 people rocked up to the workshop – and I think I gave them some okay advice. Tried to make sure that my writing tips were actually exercises I’d done myself when re-drafting, rather than just talking about stuff to fill in the 3 hours. But, now, back to the first draft of book number three…

Penola Coonawarra Arts Festival

I will be appearing at the Penola Coonawarra Arts Festival this weekend (16-17 May). On a panel called “Pathways to Success” which sounds rather arrogant and non-self-deprecating (very un-Australian!) Also running a workshop about “Re-writing Towards Publication”. Have spent many days preparing for it so hope some people book…

Finding it easier to talk about writing – the writing I’ve done, the writing I’m going to do – than actually doing any writing. Am trying to reassure myself that there are all different phases to being a writer: times when you think and digest and debate… yeah, yeah, it is probably procastination really. Oh well, back to re-designing my workshop handouts. They have to look pretty don’t they?