I love Austen Week (tag)

With Valentine’s Day coming up, Hamlette at Hamlette’s Soliloquy is running an ‘I love Austen’ week. She’s posed a few question about Jane Austen’s work. Here are my answers…

 

 

1. Which did you experience first, a Jane Austen book or a movie based on one? I read Pride and Prejudice, as recommended by my English teacher, Miss Harbot.

 

2. What is your favourite Austen book? Northanger Abbey. I love it because it’s a little more quirky than the others, and it’s set in Bath, one of my favourite English cities.

 

3. Favourite heroine?  Why do you like her best? I always feel most sympathetic towards Anne in Persuasion. She has great integrity.

 

4. Favourite hero?  Why do you like him best? I think it has to be George Knightley in Emma because he’s honest, compassionate, tolerant and has a sense of humour.

 

5. Do you have a favourite film adaptation of Austen’s work? That’s a toughie! British TV adaptations are always so good. I’ve watched the 2007 version of Persuasion with Sally Hawkins and Rupert Penry-Jones, several times.

 

6. Have your Austen tastes changed over the years? Probably but I couldn’t define how.

 

7. Do you have any cool Austen-themed things (mugs, t-shirts, etc)?  No, but I live in the same county as Chawton, where Jane Austen lived. Does that count? 

   

 

8. If you could ask Jane Austen one question, what would you ask her? What other books and characters did you have in your brain, fighting to be given life?
   

 

9. Imagine someone is making a new film of any Jane Austen story you choose, and you get to cast the leads.  What story do you want filmed, and who would you choose to act in it? I’d love to see a really good film version of Northanger Abbey, as the rest have been done. I’d like to see George Blagden (currently playing Louis XIV in BBC version of Versailles) as Henry Tilney. But, at the time of writing, I don’t know who I would cast as Catherine Morland…I’ll give it some thought.

   

 

10. Share up to five favourite Jane Austen quotations!

 

If a book is well written, I always find it too short.

 

It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.

 

Mr Bennet to his daughter:

“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”

 

Henry and Catherine in Northanger Abbey:

“I do not understand you.”
“Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly well.”
“Me? Yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.”
“Bravo! – an excellent satire on modern language.”