i read sense and sensibility a few weeks ago. i always loved the emma thompson adaptation but struggled with the novel. this time was different.
i realized the novel hardly takes itself seriously. the point is 100% to make fun of teenagers by marianne's terrible behavior. how fun!
emma thompson did an ah mazing job with the screenplay, because there is hardly any dialogue in the first 3rd of the novel. well done.
i also skimmed through the criticism in my norton edition (hoity toity voice). there was essay that was a blast from the past: "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl." oh literary theory. basically Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick says that marianne is autoerotic (addicted to masturbation) and that elinor is in love with her. but not in those words. she says it in these words:
"It is the naming of a man, the absent Willoughby, that both marks this as an unmistakably sexual scene, and by the same gesture seems to displace its "sexuality" from the depicted bedroom space of same-sex tenderness, secrecy, longing, and frustration. Is this, then, a hetero- or a homoerotic novel? No doubt it must be said to be both, if love is vectored toward an object and Elinor's here flies toward Marianne, Marianne's in turn toward Willoughby. But what, if love is defined only by its gender of object-choice, are we to make of Marianne's terrible isolation in this scene; of her unstanchable emission, convulsive and intransitive?"
anyone read that whole paragraph? i have no problem with writing that kind of b.s. i did it for my entire educational career. i like writing critical papers. but i hope no one expects me to believe the above, or worse, to think about it while reading, or to live by it. even just the wordy phrase "no doubt it must be said to be both" makes me wish i was dead.
i guess i don't like most theory. i guess i'm an author's intent kind of girl. what do y'all think?
2 comments:
Ha ha! I love the theory! Does it even make sense? Is "vectored" even a verb? I remember reading some other Sedgwick articles in my MA program and banging my head against a wall. (I thought maybe it took me 8 hours to read 10 pages because I was incredibly hung over, but now I think it might just have been the dense writing.)
I don't like most theory because it's so poorly written. I'm pretty sure none of it needs to be that complex or dense to get the point across. You did a great summary in one sentence. The best theory, I think, is entirely readable. The best criticism is clear headed and well argued. And there is some out there. It's just not this.
I mostly just like to read. Analysis is fun, and sometimes a fun game. But the story is the thing.
A-M yes! reading theory for class is just the worst!
but i agree, sometimes a fun game, when not forced... when permitted to skim...
Post a Comment