Austenprose – A Jane Austen Blog

Emma is a story of youth – youth cocksure, silly, vulnerable, lighthearted, and, on the whole, well meaning. Stella Gibbons on Emma, (1964)

These are Stella Gibbons’ opening lines to her introduction to Jane Austen’s novel Emma, which is included in my 1964 copy published by Heritage Press, New York. How intriguing that the author of one of my favorite novels, Cold Comfort Farm, had by happy chance, also admired Jane Austen and chose to write about Emma, whose heroine shares similarities with her own Flora Poste. Here is a reference to Austen in Chapter 2.

‘I think it’s degrading of you, Flora,’ cried her friend at breakfast. ‘Do you truly mean that you don’t ever want to work at anything? ‘

Her friend replied after some thought: ‘Well, when I am 53 or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion, but with a modern setting, of course. For the next 30 years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, ‘Collecting material’. No one can object to that. Besides, so I shall be.’

Mrs Smiling drank some coffee in silent disapproval.

‘If you ask me,’ continued Flora, ‘I think I have much in common with Miss Austen. She liked everything to be tidy and pleasant and comfortable about her, and so do I. You see, Mary’ – and here Flora began to grow earnest and to wave one finger about – ‘unless everything is tidy and pleasant and comfortable all about one, people cannot even begin to enjoy life. I cannot endure messes.’ Cold Comfort Farm, p 20 (1932 reprint, Penguin Classics, 1977

Flora is a young, educated 19 year old, recently orphaned, and an aspiring author in pursuit of material for her first novel. She connects with her country cousins the Starkadders, who are a bit rustic to say the least. Like Emma Woodhouse, she is single-minded about her convictions that her ideas are correct and proceeds to go about improving her cousin’s lives in an attempt to solve their troubles to her satisfaction.

I love serendipity, and was further amused to discover that when Cold Comfort Farm was adapted for the screen in 1995, a young Kate Beckinsale was cast as Stella Gibbons’ heroine Flora, and the following year as Emma Woodhouse in screenwriter Andrew Davies adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. This is quite an accomplishment for a budding actress, and two plum roles that share similarities in character that must have been an easy transference for her.

Set your watches and mark your calendars for Sunday, March 23^rd at 9:00 pm for the Masterpiece Classic presentation on PBS of the adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Emma, staring Kate Beckinsale as the faulty, irrepressible matchmaker Emma Woodhouse, and Mark Strong as the patient Mr. Knightley, the only man in the Highbury community who can love her anyway.