Warning: Long Post

I gather from the feedback I have received that about my previous article that people have been unable to appreciate a few ideas that I sometimes take for granted. What follows is an elaboration on the ideas from philosophy, economics and other fields that have informed my critique of Saarang. I hope this helps clear the air about my arguments.

The article is divided into several sections, each detailing one specific idea. They are more or less independent of each other. Readers from outside IITM might find the context missing. My apologies.

On why Saarang can’t be about having fun:

People derive amusement from different sources. Fun, in the common sense of the word, is something that gives pleasure without requiring too much brain activity. That everybody deserves his share of fun is obvious. It is less obvious that others, particularly taxpayers, should bear the burden of providing opportunities for having fun to students. Nor is it obvious that a purely recreational activity should be subsidized by affording the organizers the required real estate free of charge.

There are two possibilities here. One is that Saarang be considered an institute activity. If this is to be the case, then it has to have educational value, otherwise there can be no case for spending taxpayers’ money on it (or for giving free facilities). The festival should aim to promote a value system that makes the students better human beings.

My article assumes that it ought to be so, but I am not against the alternative, which is a privately organized festival that leases the institute property at market for the duration of the festival. Privately organized or not, however, it will have to abide by the rules, esp. those regarding solid and noise pollution. I suspect, however, that in order to meet increasing costs, the organizers will have to increase sponsorship, and that they will not be able to juggle conflicting pressures from the institute and the sponsors.

I have no more to say about the possibility of privatizing Saarang. In any case, privatizing Saarang (arguably) leaves open the need for an alternate student organization to provide value education to students. It is this organization that I wish to talk about.

On Recreation vs. Culture:

Many people claim that though Saarang may not pay for the real estate, this does not amount to a subsidy because the institute does not make any other use of the land and students are supposed to have the freedom to use it. That is of course false. The whole estate of IITM, one might argue, is being used for the overall purpose of education. This does include providing some resources for accommodation and recreation to students. However, to characterize the use of these resources as a freedom would be laughable.

How much recreation is required? Aren’t the umpteen facilities provided within the hostels sufficient? Should the institute also subsidize (by giving free facilities) a mega-bash?

It is my belief that while on one hand sufficient recreational facilities exist (especially if we are to compare with the facilities provided to students in other government colleges); on the other hand the recreational aspect of Saarang interferes with the value education component of Saarang. The alleged value-neutrality of the recreational aspects of Saarang and the value-centrality of the core activities don’t, in my opinion, go hand-in-hand – and it is always value-neutrality that wins.

On value systems:

What do I mean by a value system? What are the value systems that make us better human beings? Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to this question, and I don’t think even the institute has a concise list of values that it wants students to imbibe.

By values, I am referring to qualities like honesty, hard work, smartness and so on. No one is expected to posses these qualities all the time – that is what makes a person human. Nor is there any rational explanation to why one set of qualities ought to be preferred over another.

One might ask whether the institute is qualified to make value judgments for all its students, and I will agree that it is in fact a little presumptuous on the part of the institute. If, however, we were to choose to be value-neutral, then the raison d'être for Saarang ceases to exist.

On popular vote vs. decentralization

As a votary of decentralization, I have often thought about this: till what level do we decentralize? At the highest level of decentralization, we could declare all individuals sovereign and we wouldn't need a nation-state. But this sounds ridiculous. And yet, we allow humans sovereignty over their own body (to a large extent).

The answer I can up with is this: when there is some common property, we need some sort of 'leadership'. For example, a lake is the property of the adjoining village. The ownership of the lake should rightly reside in the panchayat of the village.

What is the common resource in the IITM cultural scene? Not the money, for it is just incidental. It belongs to no one inside the hierarchy. The resource is the opportunity to use this money and conduct different events. This resource, I argue, should reside in those who actually take part in this activity.

In the metaphor I used, what would you expect if the state govt. were to control the lake? Typically, the state would hand it over to a company like Coca-Cola so the lake could be sucked dry.

The state govt. is elected, just as our cul-secs are. But because the power distribution does not reflect the ownership structure, we see all kinds of perverse decisions.

Minarchism is decentralization:

If decentralization were such a good thing, why do we see so little of it in our daily lives? Why are Panchayats literally at the mercy of state governments, who are in their turn at the mercy of the central government via the planning commission?

The answer is simple. Power. Men often like to accumulate it, and a number of anarchist philosophers have proposed that governments are always self-serving, i.e. they always hoard power, making government bigger than it needs to be.

Let’s look at a simple example. Soc-secs in our hostels buy crackers for everyone on Diwali using a common fund paid for by students. Is this necessary? Can the task of collecting money for and buying the crackers be delegated to individual wings? What will happen if it is left to the individual?

One might argue that since buying in bulk costs less, it makes economic sense to make it a common activity. But even if we were to leave the matter to the individual, the rational IITian will voluntarily form a group to avail a discount.

Common activities have to be organized with common resources. It is only the arrogance of power that lets a man usurp individual resources and organize in common what ought to be activities of the individual. The idea might seem sound on paper, but in reality a ‘common’ activity always promotes one man over another. Kite flying on Pongal day favors the North Indian over the South Indian. Bursting crackers on Diwali favors the moronic sound-and-pollution-lover over the conscious environmentalist.

More worrisome is the fact that this sort of policy encourages certain activities for no valid reason. For e.g., a person who is more or less indifferent to crackers would think that since he is anyways paying for the crackers and since the crackers are going to be burst in either case, it might as well be he who bursts them. But when many such people turn up to burst the crackers, the activity seems to be more popular than it would normally be – leading to greater budgetary allowance made for crackers the next year, in the end leading to more pollution than we would have otherwise created. The same is the case with the petroleum subsidy offered by the central government; it only ends up promoting consumerism.

This accumulation of power is not due to the evilness of the ‘leader’ alone. It is also because of the desire of the majority to rob the minority. Both are equally culpable.

Those who find this kind of organized looting acceptable tell me that I am somewhat of an anti-social; whereas most men are social beings and hence the policy is right, often tell me. I find it odd that the very person who is robbing me of my money is accusing me of being anti-social. On the other hand, since I have generously contributed for something I never enjoy, I believe I have been really considerate to the others. What I have not been is weak – others in my place would have fallen for the trap that such a policy creates.

How does all this apply to Saarang? The cul-secs act upon two impulses: the desire of the majority to rob the minority of their share in the cultural space, and their own desires to accumulate power in their own hands. The result is a monstrous creation called Saarang that satisfies many of the illegitimate needs of some while leaving others greatly dissatisfied. It establishes a throttling monopoly over the cultural space by claiming to represent the cultural needs of all. The situation is ripe for some decentralization.

On leadership and corporations:

I did mention how our leadership structure resembles that of corporations and why that is a bad thing for our cultural scene. I did not get into the reasons for this resemblance for fear of getting off the track.

I would venture to say that it is the demand for leadership qualities amongst students from corporations that led to the system being like this. Since we have from time immemorial been trying to adapt education to the needs of industry, perhaps the student organization too was modeled based on the needs of industry, rather than the needs of the student body.

Leadership, in my vocabulary, is a dirty word. In the corporate sense, it is about exploiting one’s juniors and squeezing as much work as you can out of them. In the governmental sense, a leader is a person who appeases the majority while looting the minority, in the process accumulating power to him. An evil leader is one who is able to sway the masses against everyone’s interests, so he gets more power, or more money, or both. A good democracy has leaders who do least harm, but they never do any good.

A good leader is no leader at all. He is a mere caretaker of the common resources of his electorate, which he administers in a utilitarian way.

I therefore submit that dropping the posts of cultural secretaries will be a great improvement.

On sponsors’ events:

I have no objection to sponsorship per se, though I have often pointed out that sponsorship is as much about sharing the stage as about sharing the spotlight: sometimes you just don’t want to be sharing the stage with some people, or corporations. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Chemplast and Dow Chemicals come immediately to my mind as corporations with whom IITM should maintain no relations.

Sponsors’ events are about sharing the spotlight – and we must be concerned about how they use their visibility. For the sponsors’ content is the content of Saarang. When their events are aimed at promoting the exact opposite of the values Saarang is being held to instill amongst students, we obviously have a problem. It’s akin to allowing a competitor to sell his own wares in a sale organized by you. It reduces the efficiency of Saarang in achieving its objectives.

Sponsors encourage students to act mindlessly, exhorting them to make a loud noise, asking them to do silly things on stage and so on. Sometimes they cross the lines of decency by giving these activities a sexual flavor. All these (I assume) are anti-values from the institute’s perspective.

It appears that sponsors do sign MoUs about the sponsors’ events, but there is no enforcement. The organizers can either enforce the norms or do away with sponsors’ events altogether.

On Saarang and the environment:

There are two immediate concerns – waste and noise pollution. The amount of waste collected during each day of Saarang is more than double the waste that the population produces during peacetime. Almost all the waste from Saarang is plastic waste. The catering stalls at Saarang always use plastic or Styrofoam plates, with the honorable exception of the IVil stall. Neither the stalls, nor the consumers segregate the waste. As a result, almost all of it has to go to the dump yard – there being no possibility of recycling.

There are legal compliance issues regarding loudspeaker use in Saarang. A Supreme Court judgment (http://esamskriti.com/rc_noise_poll_2.htm) limits loudspeaker use till 10 pm in public spaces, whereas the Pro-shows as a rule extend till 10-30 pm. The dB levels are a source of concern. In fact, being a protected forest, IIT should be more stringent regarding loudspeaker use than civil regulators.

I am also deeply troubled by the practice of clearing the undergrowth of places classified as forest zones. The undergrowth, as any ecologist will tell you, forms a crucial link in a forest ecosystem. While clearing a few square meters may not seem drastic, when repeated all over the campus, might cause the virtual desertification of a forest.

On the economics of scale:

Even when we are talking about just one product, efficiency when plotted w.r.t output reduces after reaching a maximum. When we are talking of multiple activities, which don’t necessarily go well together, there is no reason to believe pinning all activities together creates synergy.

I talk of synergy at two levels. On one level, the kind of participation depends on the kind of crowd the combination of events attracts.

At a higher level, each activity requires a different ambience, while Saarang provides one standard ambience. This standardization is the flip side of all mergers. Sometimes, this is not for the best.

I do not mean to say that all events can be organized separately. Some clubs would much rather organize their activities in a group along with like-minded clubs rather than going solo. This is a choice that ought to be left open.

Examples of activities going solo and yet being popular are numerous – GF&KR, IITM Bridge Open, The Open Quiz and so on. These are a result of people sitting down and thinking what is best for their activity. I contend that people involved in other activities should do the same, and that the institute should provide the organizational structure that encourages them do so.

On Professionalism:

The trend of people making careers out of sponsorship, PR, hospitality etc. is a most distressing one. At the face of it, it appears that this trend promotes efficiency with which these services are provided and hence is beneficial.

But this reductionism helps in no way to teach the student about organization. The philosophy that could be imbibed is lost on the student when he is told just to follow instructions. This ensures that he or she will never be anything but a perpetrator of status quo.

One of the advantages of having separate societies is that different kind of ‘leaders’ will be elected. I foresee that more people will be elected because they gain the respect of their community, for whatever reason, than because they are good at putting a few things in place. One might also see more group activities that go beyond competitions – this will result in greater churning of ideas.

On the ability of the institute to regulate the clubs:

I share the popular distrust towards professors. As a group, they are a set of arbitrary, illiberal and sadistic people. What will they do if they are given so much power?

Will they distribute resources fairly, or will they indulge in favoritism?

Do they have it in them to propose a value system for the institute to promote and to measure each activity in terms of its efficacy in promoting that value system? Why is it that at the moment, this crucial part is left to the cultural secretary?

But whatever be the case, if they screw this up, it is theirs to screw up. There can be little doubt that the regulatory authority has to be the institute. There the top-down structure is in fact justified.

Some sort of minimalism?

People often ask me, what is my problem is such-and-such thing happens and that hurts nobody. But my mind militates against anything that is purposeless. For more the consumption, more the exploitation of nature. I might come across as someone who frowns upon fun because of some kind of Victorian morality, but in fact it is the unwarranted consumption I frown upon, and it is that consumerism I wish governments and educational institutions will stop incentivizing.

On the logistics:

I did not write the previous article with the expectation that it will change the mindset immediately. On the ground, change is always gradual. As such, given all the nonsensical things that keep happening in the world (like the Narmada Dam, river interlinking, free television sets by TN Govt., I can think of thousand such things) Saarang is just a drop in the ocean.

If there has to be such a structural change, there has to be support for it. This is the unfortunate truth. I think this support can be built by going through a few intermediate steps. First, we establish clubs, but let Saarang continue as usual. The clubs function independent of the cul-secs. Then we make Saarang a purely recreational festival, leaving all the cultural activities to be conducted by the clubs. As a final step, we may or may not scrap Saarang.

Posted by KRC. | Permalink |  0 Comments | Buzz It! | Links to this post

Saarang is the IIT Madras cul-fest, and readers from outside IITM might find the context missing. Please bear with me.

Any critique of Saarang must begin with a discussion of the stated and unstated objectives of Saarang. In my perception, they are – promotion of a culture of intellectualism amongst students, giving students a break from academics by providing opportunities for other (equally intellectual) activities, letting students manage their own affairs and educating students about the cultural heritage of the world.

What it ought not to be about – giving students an opportunity to have fun, restoring the gender ratio of the institute for a few days and getting famous people to come to the institute. Of course, students have a right to have fun, and boys have a right to ogle at girls (or boys, or both) – but not at institute expense.

I do not contest that standards in many events are very high. But overall, it will not be an overstatement to say that Saarang primarily attempts to achieve the latter set of objectives rather than the former. In doing so, it also causes a lot of collateral damage to human eardrums, animal habitats and the general serenity of the campus. By all objective criteria, Saarang deserves to be replaced by a better alternative. And yet it makes two claims that make it impregnable – financial independence and popular approval.

Financial independence is a myth that can be easily repudiated. Saarang could not afford a tenth of the facilities made available to it from the institute if it were to pay the market rates for these facilities. The myth of financial independence has been very carefully created, amongst other reasons, to avoid accountability under the RTI. But reality is clearly different, and we all know that.

Saarang does not enjoy across the board approval, as some of the smail messages show. But even if it did, I would consider this popularity irrelevant. Essentially, since Saarang happens inside IITM and is sponsored by IITM, it follows that Saarang (or any alternative to it) has to be designed to achieve the legitimate objectives of cultural education and not the juvenile wishes of the students. While students are expected to manage the events, what constitutes culture cannot be decided by popular vote.

Vinay ‘Caesar’ Shankar recently wrote in the Hindu that our leadership structure resembles that of a large corporation, with the secretary as the CEO. This comment is very illuminating, for it symbolizes everything that is wrong about our leadership structure and consequently about Saarang.

The top-down hierarchical structure is preferred in corporations for a reason – the ownership of resources is concentrated at the top. In a Governance model, ownership is concentrated at the bottom (amongst citizens and communities), and hence a decentralized system with a bottom-up hierarchy is preferable.

Saarang is essentially an organization of self-governance instituted to achieve definite goals. It is neither a corporation that is owned by those at the top of the pyramid, nor is it the rule of the mob where anything can be justified by popular approval.

However, when power is concentrated in the hands of two secretaries chosen by popular vote, they automatically choose to exercise it in a manner that brings them maximum popularity. A large festival is much more endearing but as Saarang proves, it is not very efficient.

The corporatization of Saarang has been two-fold; on one hand, it is being increasingly being sold off to corporations, on the other hand, it is beginning to resemble a corporation itself (in terms of its organization). The similarities are stark – the disregard for law, which Saarang glaringly exposes year after year when it contemptuously disregards the Supreme Court’s restrictions on loudspeaker use and the exploitation of resources such as institute transport facilities and animal habitats, just to name a few. This irresponsible behaviour is consistently seen in all big organizations; smaller organizations simply don’t have the wherewithal to inflict that sort of damage.

Large festivals also need big money, for which concessions have to be made. This definitely does not hurt the interests of those who run Saarang, but it hurts the cause for which Saarang was envisioned. Sponsors don’t encourage intellectualism; they encourage animal behaviour.

All of this can be traced back to concentration of power in the hands of two persons. But I do not blame the student body alone for this state of affairs. Our Dean might profess great unhappiness that sponsors had the temerity to hold kissing contests during Saarang, but it is the institute’s failure to spend enough on cultural activities that has driven the student body to seek corporate funding. If the institute were to spend on culture half of what it spends on sports, we wouldn’t have to sell our souls.

Another misconception is that all activities have to happen simultaneously in order to achieve good outside participation. We know that this is not true by experience. We have Open Quiz, which is conducted independent of Saarang and there is no dearth of outside participation. Wherever there is quality, participation is always high.

As an alternative, I propose that the institute invites students to form clubs for various extracurricular activities. We already have Speaking Club, Music Club, IVil, Reflections and some others, but we could have many more. Based on the nature of the activity, the institute could provide some allowance, with the club getting the rest from memberships, donations and sponsorships.

There is, in fact, no need for a Cultural Secretary. Instead, we will have autonomous clubs, organized democratically, doing their best to promote their activity. Every now and then a few of them may team up to have a small festival and invite outside participants, but a majority of the activities will be aimed at the students of the institute. For e.g. we might have a music festival that organizes competitions for different genres of music or something along the lines of Bharat Utsav etc.

I believe my model will succeed because it identifies the interest groups that are likely to achieve the aforementioned goals, and places the power in their hands. A committee of professors will decide the quantum of institute sponsorship and regulation of activities, and the deliberations of this committee will be made public and open to criticism.

Of course, we will lose out on the big money, the big names and the publicity that come along with Saarang. But we won’t need the money, so it won’t hurt. Pro-shows will cease to exist as we know them, but there will be concerts, hopefully by people who have a something more substantial to offer than a larger-than-life image.

These reductions might seem too severe to some of us. My claim is that despite these reductions, or perhaps because of them, the objectives of having a cultural festival will be better served by not having one. Small, in my opinion, is not just beautiful; it is also efficient.

Posted by KRC. | Permalink |  9 Comments | Buzz It! | Links to this post

****Only for people who have actually read Jane Austen - and I think that in an ideal world that would be everybody****

Becoming Jane (2007) is a period movie that gives a fictionalized account of Jane Austen’s early days. James McAvoy shines as Tom Lefroy, while Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen and Maggie Smith as Lady Gresham pitch in strongly to keep every minute of the movie absorbing.

Jane Austen, is the youngest daughter of a clergyman in Hampshire who is being courted by the somewhat dimwitted heir of Lady Gresham, Mr. Wisley. Enter Lefroy, a young Irishman, and Jane finds herself drawn to this man of little independent fortune. She is confronted with two choices, security or love, and the movie is about the choices she makes.

Some critics have commented that the screenplay was original. Original it certainly was not, for not only have a number of dialogues and situations been lifted from Pride and Prejudice, in many scenes the backgrounds, costumes and the decorations too have been chosen to remind viewers of the cinematic versions of the books ^[1]. This is perhaps to hint at similarities between P&P and Austen’s life, but I feel that the hints were made a little to obvious.

For example, Lady Gresham’s house is just like Rosings Park of the movie P&P (the one with Keira Knightley) while the two balls are exact replicas of assembly at Meryton and the ball at Netherfields. I have seen my share of movies from that period, and I assure you that this is not just a coincidence. Right from the music onwards, everything in the scenes I mentioned is the same.

While situations and dialogues have been taken from P&P and adopted into the movie, I am made to believe that the director has been faithful when it comes to characters and the plot. Any similarity is to be attributed to Jane drawing upon her experiences when writing her books. What follows is an analysis of Jane Austen’s books in the light of Jane Austen’s own life, as depicted by the movie.

Most people interpret Darcy to be based on Lefroy. I believe that Austen picks up parts of Wisley and parts of Lefroy and combines them together to make a perfect man, the perfect triumphant marriage for Elizabeth Bennet that Jane Austen could not achieve. Consider this, it is obvious that Lady Catherine de Bourgh was modeled on Lady Gresham, and Wisley is Lady Gresham’s nephew.

It is true that Lefroy’s initial behaviour towards Jane Austen is haughty, just like Darcy’s behaviour towards Lizzy. But Austen changes her mind about not just Lefroy, but towards the end, also about Wisley. It is in Wisley that she sees the perfect gentleman.

Also, there are too many signs of Wickham in Lefroy. His loose morals, his charming nature, lack of independent fortune, his engagement to another woman, everything points him to be the model for Wickham.

But Lefroy’s influence in P&P is indubitable, as is Wisley’s. I think the line in P&P that reveals the most is this.

Perhaps this mismanagement was deliberate. Perhaps Austen took all the good qualities of Lefroy, his knowledge and experience in the world (and I don’t mean that in a naughty way) and put it in a Mr. Wisley, the gentleman, to create the perfect Mr. Darcy. And perhaps she took all of Lefroy’s bad qualities, the lack of principles, the lack of constancy and the lack of fortune and dumped them on Mr. Wickham, only leaving him some charm to recommend himself.

There are traces of Wisley vs. Lefroy in the other Austen novels too. She pits Knightley against Churchill in Emma, Edmund against Crawford in Mansfield Park and Brandon against Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility ^[2]. And in each of these books, it is the less charming man that wins. Perhaps for nearly twenty years after the incidents of 1796, she harbored regret for not being able to love Wisley.

Of course, Northanger Abbey is clearly a comic version of Judge Langlois’ house in London. Northanger Abbey was written in 1798, and it seems she had by then come to see the events of 1796 in a comic light. She not only makes fun of Mrs. Radcliffe and Judge Langlois (General Tilney?) but also herself as the young girl in trepidation.

Persuasion was written in 1816, just a year before her death, and after the meeting with Lefroy and his eldest daughter. Perhaps by this time she was having regrets about having let Lefroy go, rather than pining for the loss of the dull Mr. Wisley. Her life is coming to a close without her having experienced much in terms of passion. Lefroy too has seen success, and it is obvious that in retrospect their parting was not for the best. It is in these circumstances that she writes her last book, about reuniting lovers forced to separate by circumstances. In this book, Lefroy as Wentworth has no competition. His lack of constancy is forgiven, and in her imagination all is well again.

It is in Persuasion that we most clearly see the eternal romantic in Jane Austen. She draws upon her experiences when she met an older Tom Lefroy, but removes all the circumstances that prevent a reunion. Instead, she creates a new set of circumstances to make this reunion the most blissful one. She rediscovers the perturbing effects of seeing a lover after being parted for a while, of difficulties in trying to communicate by glances, of the inadequacy of words. The cynicism of Northanger Abbey and the sermonizing of Mansfield Park give way to pure passion, just as in Pride and Prejudice.

In Becoming Jane, she comments on passion –

In Pride and Prejudice, she retains her passion but creates the perfect man who would be worthy of it. But in Persuasion, she shows herself to be reconciled to the weaknesses of the male sex.

The earlier books are essentially critical of the sort of passion that blinds a person to his/her lover’s follies. Pride and Prejudice recommends passion only when the men in question are flawless (I do not Darcy’s haughtiness a flaw in the moral sense). She clearly does not disapprove of marriage in the absence of burning passion. There is no evidence that Marianne’s love for Brandon ever came close to her obsession with Willoughby. Nor is there evidence of Edmund ever doting on Fanny the way he doted on Mary Crawford.

But in Persuasion, passion stages a comeback. Flaws and weaknesses are quickly forgiven, standards are lowered and men who would have met their ruin under Jane Austen’s pen earlier go on to lead happy and satisfied lives.

I believe Persuasion is a repudiation of Austen’s earlier works. For she says, referring to Lady Russell –

I am not saying that she did not err in her advice. It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides; and for myself, I certainly never should, in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice.

So you see, Lady Russell is the old Jane Austen! And Anne Elliot is the new Jane Austen, the one with a renewed belief in passion, even if it is directed at imperfect men.

On my part, the lesson I take home is that both passion and poverty are real. Mrs. Austen may say that money is indispensable, but so is passion. That is the lesson we must learn from Jane Austen. What is not real though, is the idea of the perfect man or the perfect woman.

Many people criticize Austen by saying that she wrote solely about marriage. And yet, in her times, a woman’s life depended to a large extent on who her husband was. Does it not follow that any commentary on the state of women in her times should deal mainly with marriage and the choices regarding marriage that women of her century had?

* * *

PS: This analysis is based purely on Becoming Jane and I hope they haven't invented too many details. I have not read any other scholarly articles on this topic and therefore I might be repeating what has already been said and accepted, or what has already been repudiated. There is so much scholarship on Jane Austen that I can’t possibly have said anything new. I still undertook this amateur effort because it gave me pleasure while I was at it.

I am aware of the fact that my conclusions are somewhat simplistic and have been arrived at without sufficient basis. My only excuse is that there is much fun to be obtained by guesswork that can’t be had by poring over mundane letters regarding pigs and poultry.

^[1] I do not know how much the movie borrows from cinematic adaptations of the other books. I see no great resemblance to Sense and Sensibility or to the TV adaptation of P&P and I have not seen the other movies.

It is true that there is a dose of realism, unlike some other period movies. There are boxing scenes, scenes with prostitutes and gypsies and so on. But I see this merely as a continuation of what the new Pride and Prejudice started.

^[2] The first draft of Sense and Sensibility was written before or during Lefroy’s visit to Hampshire. But the final draft was prepared a good fifteen years later, and by all available accounts Austen had to rewrite a large part of Elinor and Marianne to make it print-worthy as Sense and Sensibility. I therefore believe it would not be wrong to claim that Lefroy and Wisley did influence the heroes of this novel.

Posted by KRC. | Permalink |  0 Comments | Buzz It! | Links to this post