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Are Classics Just Missing The Smut
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Marjorie wrote: "Just read an article called, How Do You Like Your Classic Lit: In a Ball Gown or Lingerie?. The first half of the article is about the reprinting of classics with Penguin’s clothbound covers and h..."
My opinion? Blasphemy! Heresy! Sacrilege! one just can't add smut to books written by authors that disregarded sexuality.
Ohhhh, Friday book porn... ohhhhhh... Ahem, I mean, my - aren't some of those covers lovely?I haven't read any of the official spiced up versions yet, but I've seen the concept work in fan fiction and - provided that they are completely in keeping with the author's voice and seamlessly edited into the story- I don't see why not. It's not as if a "legitimate" publisher would have printed anything even remotely salacious and stayed in business for most of human history, so who knows what changes we would see if Jane Austen or the Bronte's, for example, were publishing in an era that wouldn't have burned then at the stake for writing anything saucier than a waltz scene. It would have been tough enough trying to be published as a female author without the added strike against you of writing about Lizzie & Darcy doing things a well-bred lady of that era wouldn't ever have talked about. Bollywood movies still rarely show more than a fully-clothed kiss, so its not as if we have to imagine a society's Victorian values demanding that art deny some aspect of human existence.
That said... if it's not BRILLIANTLY done I'll promptly scurry back to the original version feeling violated and sobbing about having not defended my literary virtue better. A sexy experiment? Absolutely! A replacement? Eww!
Nice topic Marjorie - the sexytimes vs literary merit debate has come up a lot in VF's history.
I'm quite torn. It's a fascinating thought, but I can't just jump on board for some reason. A part of me says "this could make that crap bearable" but like Pointyears, if it's not done well, I think I'd be quickly tossing it. It would really depend on the book.
Another thing is at least in some of the books the lack of consummation was the defining characteristic of the relationship. I know you don't have to go to full blown sheets flying sex but the sexual repression back in the day was fairly defining of the time, the nations, and it's people in some cases.
Will seeing Classic characters get it on ruin the sexual tension? Even a snatched kiss can change the way two people interact. I dunno.
I also believe that's what FF is for; there is no need to mess up and butcher classics, while we have good smut available ... "Desperate Duchess" or "nine rules to date a rack"...
Mod
My biggest issue with this line of books is that they literally take the original text and insert new scenes into them. Even though the works are long out of copyright, it seems somehow disrespectful to shove sex into the novel just to make a buck.
Not only that, but books are written with the character's personalities in mind. You can't take a young lady from the 1800s who blushes and runs because a man saw her without her gloves on - a highly improper state, I do say - and have her running off to dark curtained corners of balls for clandestine meetings. It just doesn't work.
I honestly can't see a point where Elizabeth and Darcy should have jumped into bed together and a lot of the reviews I've read of the P&P version have said that while the author did a good job fitting the smut to the period it still seemed out of place and didn't fit with the characters, especially since most of their immediate attraction was based on intelligence and not physical attraction.
As a side note, I've just noticed that aside from romance classics, this imprint has even smuttified "A Christmas Carol" as a M/M romance with Marley and Scrooge. Say WHAT?!
@Vicky... Scrooge deserves some lovin' too.
Mod
It just seems like such a stretch. I'm already not a fan of the idea with classic romances, but at least with romances there is already some sort of structure there that could support a romantic relationship.
There is nothing in A Christmas Carol that even remotely hints at a romantic relationship.
Adding sex scenes to a public domain classic work of fiction seems like a pretty desperate strategy on the part of both the hacks (I mean, "writers") and the thieves (I mean "publishers") of such texts.I can see some artistic merit to the concept. It's in the general category of Ai Wei Wei smashing a (possibly) Ming vase or someone painting a toothy grin on a reproduction of The Mona Lisa. However, putting a few scenes into someone else's text smacks more of profit than purpose, and has a lot less merit than satirizing or opposing an artistic statement. It just lacks significance, and really fails to grasp their value in the first place. It's more akin to burning books... and then trying to sell the ashes.
Since 50 Shades has taken slash fanfic mainstream, I think were going to wind up with a lot of writers and publishers trying to cash in on this sort of thing. Personally, I'd rather read something that was original than something so derivative that they couldn't even be bothered to rename the characters.
But we're in the Derivative Period of Post-Post Modernism. People sample someone else's riff, talk over it, and call themselves "musicians." Other people put a logo on a T-shirt and call themselves "designers." People become famous on TV for, essentially, singing karaoke. At least these folks have the decency to wait until the original author is dead to steal their work.
Umm... the rest of the world does realise that 50Shades's success says a lot more about the standards (& desperation) of mainstream publishing than it does about fanfic, right? I've often seen it treated as an object of ridicule in a world in which people routinely produce 100,000 word novels out of fandom love, not profit. Nobody I know who reads a lot of fanfic understands how that thing would get posted in a decent free archive, let alone legitimised in print & soon film. Every time I hear fanfic being derided, I always see a reference to 50Shades...and nothing else. Imagine if every time someone mentioned science fiction novels, Gabriel's Ghost was held up as the only book worth referencing?
The only place I can really see a sex scene making sense in Pride and Prejudice is when thingy doodle runs off with whats his face and they're made to marry.I cannot remember their names at all, but I'm sure you all know who I mean. That girl I always thought was ugly in the BBC version of the book...Uhhhh...
I'm going to put this one down to extreme pregnantitis.
Mod
I feel like a sex scene for that is so useless though. Everything is from Elizabeth's POV, so it really would just be an excuse to put sex in the book. :[
I am kind of curious to see where they made additions, but not enough to buy it and find out, lol.
Vicky wrote: "I can't remember their names either, lol. But I know exactly what you mean!I feel like a sex scene for that is so useless though. Everything is from Elizabeth's POV, so it really would just be an..."
If it helps, Candice and Vicky, their names are Lydia and Wickham...lol
But I have to agree, sex scenes in most classics are a stretch. The publisher tried to make it sound like these authors may have written smut scenes if they weren't oppressed but some of these novels would have been if it wasn't for the oppressed time. It's not just about keeping to the voice of the novel you're trying to change a time period these novels were trying to bring to life. I didn't see A Christmas Carol but I was upset by some of the classics having sex added to them. I know Jane Eyre is considered a romanic novel but I always viewed it as a Gothic fiction and either way I didn't see smut working.
I read Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and I give the author credit for being cleaver and at least he tried to write an alternate world but I wasn't sold on it. I felt outside. I think the original classic was poetry and had depth. These extra scenes, I feel, will just pull me out of the story.
I'm like you Vicky, I'm curious but not enough to buy them.That's why I wondered if anyone has read these rewrites. Are they changing ideas, scenes, ect. in the novel or just adding a few paragraphs of sex?
Marjorie wrote: "Vicky wrote: "I can't remember their names either, lol. But I know exactly what you mean!I feel like a sex scene for that is so useless though. Everything is from Elizabeth's POV, so it really wo..."
AH! That's it! Thank you! It was driving me mental, but not quite mental enough to go and find my copy of the book lol
Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts - excerpt curtosey of http://mitziszereto.com/prideandpreju...At the mention of his youngest daughter’s name, Mr. Bennet shook his head. Although quite pretty, Lydia was a lively headstrong girl prone to a breathiness of speech and a most peculiar fondness for raising up the hems of her gowns to rub her lower half against objects and furnishings and, to the embarrassment of all parties concerned, young officers. Until recently she could be found sliding down banisters at all hours of the day and night, and only his threat of dispatching her to a nunnery finally broke her of the habit. He despaired of Lydia and for any man who would eventually take her as a wife. Neither did he maintain great hopes for the equally frivolous Catherine or the plain and pedantic Mary. That he was partial to his Elizabeth, he made no secret of. “Our daughters have none of them much to recommend them,” replied Mr. Bennet. “They are all silly and ignorant like other girls, but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.”
At this Mrs. Bennet launched into a tirade about her nerves, and Mr. Bennet, having been given sufficient of his wife’s ceaseless chatter about Mr. Bingley’s five thousand a year and which of his daughters should be the first to wed, departed without ceremony to his library.
Mr. Bennet settled himself before his escritoire on which rested a sealed portfolio that had arrived that morning by special post; fortunately, he had managed to collect it before Mrs. Bennet could inquire as to the nature of the dispatch. Breaking the wax seal, he removed a sheet of stiff paper, his breath quickening with anticipation as to what would shortly be revealed to him. He had secured it from a gentleman of his acquaintance in London, who consorted with the city’s more unsavory residents. It was a drawing—indeed, the first of many such drawings due to arrive, providing his contact made good on his promise, and providing that Mr. Bennet likewise made good on his timely payment of the prohibitive fee demanded of him.
The drawing displayed a nubile young woman outfitted in the manner of a horse. Unadorned of attire save for the finely tooled saddle secured to her back, she had been positioned on her haunches, presenting a pleasing rear vista to the artist who had sketched her. What made this vista all the more appealing to Mr. Bennet, however, was the fact that the subject possessed the tail of a horse as well, which had been fitted most cleverly into her hindmost region. As he surveyed the drawing in the light coming through the window, a presence began to make itself known in his breeches. All thoughts of their new neighbor Mr. Bingley and his wife’s determination to make him a son-in-law became a distant memory as Mr. Bennet unbuttoned the flap of his breeches and reached inside, his fingers encountering an object that rose up with a vigor the likes of which he had not experienced since his youth, and he grasped it firmly in his hand, eager to begin his long-neglected journey to pleasure.
Fifty Shades of Mr Darcy: A Parody “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good riding crop must be in want of a pair of bare buttocks to trash.”
“Although he had, from the outset, made it clear what she could expect from a life of sexual slavery at Pemberley, she inexplicably found herself wishing for more. An orgasm, for instance, would be nice.”
“She would never draw admiring glances, she decided, with so many faults; her breasts were too pert, her legs too long and shapely, and her vivid blue eyes too large and limpid. And what man would want her once he knew about her magical vibrating vagina?”
“His lips were sensual and full, his ginger hair - no, wait a minute, let’s call it copper - hung down over grey eyes so alluring they could have been hammered from boulders of solid sex.”
This one you can download for free
Oliver, Twist: a tale of depravityJourney to the Interior of Me
A Hentai of Dorian Gray
couldn't help myself
Mod
The Hidden Lusts version seems RIDICULOUS. I can see people wanting smut between Elizabeth and Darcy, and I can see how, if done well, it would add a dimension to their relationship that Austen herself didn't portray. But Mr. Bennett a collector of pornographic pin-ups that he regularly masturbates to and spends so much money on that he bankrupts the family? That doesn't even make sense. I looked up some reviews for P&P: Hidden Lusts and Mr. Bennett isn't the only gem. Lydia has crazy sex with soldiers. Ok, not such a stretch on that, but she also masturbates in public, seemingly on anything she can find to rub up against. Wickham runs a brothel which Lydia works in after their marriage. Mary stuffs her bodice with apples because her small breasts don't attract suitors, this makes no sense as she seems to have NO interest in men or marriage in the original. Charlotte is a lesbian who is constantly trying to feel up Elizabeth. After meeting Darcy, Elizabeth becomes addicted to shoving anything she can find in her vag to get off.
None of that makes sense within the confines of the P&P story, most of it is totally unecessary and none of it adds to or otherwise supports what P&P is about.
Personally, I prefer romance to sex, the relationship build-up with a good payoff at the end to the characters jumping in bed at their first glance at each other, romance to erotica. So that's probably influencing my thoughts - this seems like the DEFINITION of sex for sex's sake. It would be interesting to see what readers who enjoy the more hardcore erotica think about it.
You do remember that "jane austen's fight club" video on youtube? well that would actually make sense since apparently young women used to fight in backalleys for some quick money (it was practiced till the regency period)
I think that there are probably some classics where a scene could be included which would flow with the overall plot. Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina come to mind. For most of Jane Austen's books it just doesn't work unless the action is continued on after the end of the book. For Pride & Prejudice in particular unless the scene is between Lydia & Wickham, (which would be a very mixed message since the book is set up to show that those are both at the least weak and to be pitied characters), a smut scene would be intrusive and unnecessary. And the scene about Mr. Bennett - ugh!
I would argue that classics *do* have smut. Some of them were quite edgy for their time--I always think of Pamela, which has like...four attempted rape scenes. Having said that, I also think we are misusing the term "classics." There was plenty of non-canonical literature that was PLENTY RACY, let me tell you. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I think this is a pretty silly idea. LIke Gary mentions, it seems like a cash grab rather than anything really experimental or useful.
Vaginal Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Fifty Shades of Mr Darcy: A Parody (other topics)Pride and Prejudice: Hidden Lusts (other topics)
How Do You Like Your Classic Lit: In a Ball Gown or Lingerie?. The first half of the article is about the reprinting of classics with Penguin’s clothbound covers and how most these texts are out of copyright and available in e-book format for free but book buyers are flocking to buy these covers.
But it is the second half of the article I thought was more Vaginal Fantasy. The UK publisher Total-E-Bound (UK's largest publisher of erotic romance fiction) are having writers fill out the classics with the sex scenes that literary history left out.
Was wondering how members feel about this? Have you read these revised classics? What did you think? etc...