As you will know if you read my last post, I was quite sick in January, which gave me lots of time to lie in bed and watch BBC miniseries. I watched the new
Sanditon (if you are a monthly donor to your local PBS station, as I am, you can watch the entire series ahead of the air dates -- I watched the whole thing the weekend episode 1 premiered), which was great but very unlike how Austen would have written it I'm sure. The inconclusive ending (which I gather is more from the hope of having a season 2 than from the fact that it's an unfinished Austen novel) left me wanting a conclusive ending, so I watched the 1995
Pride and Prejudice (which I have seen so many times I can recite it, though I hadn't watched it for several years). I think it was after this that I watched
North and South, though I subsequently watched
Daniel Deronda and the 2009
Emma (with Jonny Lee Miller as Mr. Knightly, which I found very disconcerting), and then eventually I watched
North and South again because I realized it was really what I was craving. I had watched it years ago and remembered liking it, but didn't remember much else. For quite some time, I would say that I had been consciously
not watching
North and South because I have had the book for years and I always thought I should read the book while the series was distant in my memory before watching the series again. My need for endless hours of period romance broke my will, but after watching the series twice in as many weeks, I decided maybe it was actually time to read the book. I'm still not sure whether this was a mistake.
This post made me think it was probably better to have watched and developed an affection for the miniseries first, because going the other way always highlights the deficiencies that must come from cutting down a book for adaptation. I will say I fully agree with the author's point 3 and partly agree with her point 4. She is also 100% correct in saying that Mrs. Thornton is wonderful in the series - Sinéad Cusack was perfect and I heard her voice every time Mrs. Thornton spoke in the book, and Richard Armitage is also great as Mr. Thornton. I don't really agree with her gripes about the portrayal of Margaret; I found the Margaret in the book occasionally trying and written against her own type, if that's possible. It's been a while since I've read a novel from this era, but some of the tropes around women attributed to Margaret -- her quickness to cry, tire -- even fainting once, and especially her self-reproach for her supposed sin (of lying for a good reason), seemed to contradict her self-possession and mastery of her emotions that is described throughout the book. I appreciated the de-Victorianization of Margaret in the miniseries, even while it may not be faithful to the book. I also found some of the religious sentiment in the book a bit heavy-handed, which again reminds me I'm out of practice in reading 19th Century literature, though the point of Margaret's father having lost his faith in the church was quite interesting in the book, and much better explained there than in the mini-series. These complaints aside, I did enjoy the book and I'm looking forward to rewatching
North and South for the third time this year quite soon.
This post made me think it was probably better to have watched and developed an affection for the miniseries first, because going the other way always highlights the deficiencies that must come from cutting down a book for adaptation. I will say I fully agree with the author's point 3 and partly agree with her point 4. She is also 100% correct in saying that Mrs. Thornton is wonderful in the series - Sinéad Cusack was perfect and I heard her voice every time Mrs. Thornton spoke in the book, and Richard Armitage is also great as Mr. Thornton. I don't really agree with her gripes about the portrayal of Margaret; I found the Margaret in the book occasionally trying and written against her own type, if that's possible. It's been a while since I've read a novel from this era, but some of the tropes around women attributed to Margaret -- her quickness to cry, tire -- even fainting once, and especially her self-reproach for her supposed sin (of lying for a good reason), seemed to contradict her self-possession and mastery of her emotions that is described throughout the book. I appreciated the de-Victorianization of Margaret in the miniseries, even while it may not be faithful to the book. I also found some of the religious sentiment in the book a bit heavy-handed, which again reminds me I'm out of practice in reading 19th Century literature, though the point of Margaret's father having lost his faith in the church was quite interesting in the book, and much better explained there than in the mini-series. These complaints aside, I did enjoy the book and I'm looking forward to rewatching North and South for the third time this year quite soon.