Women’s friendships and the Gothic in Davies Northanger Abbey film

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve just watched for what feels like an umpteenth time (though I am not at all as yet tired of it) the 2007 Granada Northanger Abbey, screenplay Andrew Davies, directed by Jon Jones, produced by Keith Thompson. I’m seeking to understand how pairs of women are used in the film. Is there a contrapuntal story here?

Happy eager faces of Mrs Allen (Sylvestre Le Tousel) and Catherine (Felicity Jones) upon arrival

Well, I’ve been taught once again that you don’t begin to know a film unless you go super-slowly through it, shot by shot, and line by line.  What I discovered is first that this film has a larger proportion of scenes of paired women in any of Davies’s Austen movies — I admit I’ve not yet finished Davies 1999 Wives and Daughters out of Gaskell or properly studied his 2007 Fanny Hill out of Cleland. Perhaps these have as many or more, especially if we include the in W&D step-mother and mother-daughter scenes and those of Mrs Hamley with Molly, Lady Harriet with Molly and in Fanny Hill madame-and-sex worker scenes.  At any rate the NA 94 minute movie has at least 22 scenes of female friendship! at least among the explicitly Austen films he made it’s the most dominated by the theme of female friendship.  If one adds Catherine and Mrs Allen (at least 4) and Catherine and her mother (one alone), there are 27.

Second it is the only of Davies’s films where he sets up two competing pairs of friends, so that we have two contrapuntal stories beyond the five main heterosexual romance stories (Henry and Catherine; John Thorpe and Catherine; James Morland and Isabella; Frederick Tilney and Isabella; Eleanor and Edward [the unnamed suitor from Austen’s last page is given a name and even a presence). At the same time Isabella and Catherine’s friendship is gradually replaced by Catherine’s friendship with Eleanor Tilney; and there are scenes where the three presences are aware of one another and felt interacting. Davies also replaces Henry with Eleanor in key scenes from Austen and Part 7 (at Northanger Abbey while Henry is gone to Woodston) they are almost continuously the central plot-design.

By contrast, in the 6 hour P&P I counted some 17 scenes between Jane and Elizabeth; Elizabeth and Charlotte have six all alone scenes, which for meaning and emotional temperature are perhaps more interesting and at least as important as those between Jane and Elizabeth, but still just six. In the 3 hour S&S I counted 23 scenes between Elinor and Marianne; there are four full scenes of Elinor and her mother, one of Marianne and the mother; one each of Elinor, Marianne and the mother with Margaret.  In the 94 minute Emma, 13 scenes between Emma and Harriet, 3 or 4 between Mrs Weston and Emma (depending if you insist the women be alone) and two between Jane Fairfax and Emma. (Do not laugh at my attempts to count; it is so easy to mis-see a film, to remember it awry, that one can only begin to grasp them if you literally count shots and sequences of shots, and take careful notes on their arrangement.) And in none of these are the friendships interrelated — though they could have been in an Emma.  For example, in the McGrath 1996 Emma, Mrs Weston remains Emma’s closest friends, with scenes of friendship between them added, and scenes of advice replacing some between Emma and Mr Knightley. In the 2009 Emma Sandy Welch does make moves to try to form an implicit friendship through silent scenes and gestures between Emma and Jane; this needs more study before I can say more. In the more literally faithful the 1972 and Davies’s 1996 Emma Jane Fairfax does not replace Harriet and Mrs Weston separates herself from Emma as Mr Weston’s wife.

That the theme of female friendship is important in Austen’s book is picked up in Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise. Ruby has to integrate herself into the community by getting a job; she is hired by Mildred Chambers (Dorothy Lyman) who eventually tells Ruby she hired her because saw herself in Ruby: The older woman becomes the younger one’s mentor and friend, eventually herself partly dependent on Ruby. Mrs Chambers runs a tourist souvenir and clothing store whose downscale nature does not deter people from buying sprees.

Ruby is also befriended by an African-American teenage girl who works in the store, Rochelle Bridges (Allison Dean): Rochelle is also taking a business course in a local college and looks forward to marriage. They eat together, go dancing, walk on the beach, share past memories, dreams and hopes. Rochelle functions like Eleanor Tilney in a number of the conversations, including one where she gives Ruby money when Ruby desperately needs it. A memorable moment occurs when they speak of “how to survive with your soul intact.” We get a continuum of young women who make different choices in life. Ruby helps and is helped by Debrah Ann (Betsy Douds), a high-school drop-out dependent on the two young men she lives with. They occasionally beat her, and when Ruby lets Betsy stay the night in her apartment, Betsy sees Ruby’s picture of Ruby’s grandmother and says one of her problems is as a child she had no mother or grandmother to be with her. Ruby is physically helped by the stronger older women who work at the laundromat, and cheered by a Southern Asian young woman who lives near Ruby and is presented as proud and contented to be doing menial housework as a member of a tightly-knit family of immigrants.

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So in the 2007 NA by Davies:  what themes emerge from this thicket of female friendship; how do they comment on or affect the main heterosexual romance stories? and how do they shape or reflect upon the gothic as reveled in and critiqued in the film? I noticed another repeating pattern:  Davies adds nightmare-reverie dream sequences, bookish scenes (where a voice-over indicates a character reading), and waking scenes in the morning to contrast with, and occasionally undermine his nightmare reveries

Group friend scenes (two Thorpes, and James) remind me of group scenes in Bridget: they lead Bridget astray.

One theme is that in real life many men abrasive, rude, coarse, lying; Henry is the ideal between this ugly reality and what Davies presents as innocent girls’ misguided fancies about sex. Theme of kindness and courtesy and simple truth matter (the Thorpes and the bad gothic characters are rude coercive say anything). Probably consonant with Austen

By bringing Edward on stage in country walk scene changes whole shape of scene; a second walk by Northanger (Pt 5, Scene 11) with Eleanor holding back makes a parallel. Makes it much tighter; shows Henry and Eleanor’s mutual support. Again consonant but also making Henry much less awkward figure than in the book, prepares for his virtuous rebellion (Ch 30, last 3 paragraphs).

Where it’s not consonant is paradoxically a dismissal of the gothic, the trivializing of it at the same time as there’s no deflation. A motif is General at top of stairs like some ominous all powerful Dracula. The sexy quotations from the Monk combined with Henry — we may be expected to intuit that Catherine has some less than virtuous impulses when it comes to sex; this is confirmed by Eleanor smiling over Catherine’s ashamed avowals of her dreams. This one using the Monk is the most daring sex scene in all the Austen movies and gotten away with under cover of Monk.  This is unlike Austen who is on the side of repression in this novel. The sympathy for Isabella who went to straight sex is Davies’s extrapolation and not consonant if understandable.

I have listed of the gothic scenes in the comments to the blog. I have limited the list of women’s friendship scenes to Catherine and Isabella and Catherine and Eleanor Tilney. I don’t include Catherine and Mrs Allen or Catherine and her mother at the close because while these are changed from Austen (Mrs Allen is made into an affectionate well-meaning if occasionally mindless woman rather than a dull-nit who is there to provide suggestive jokes) they do not seem to me to have an original meaning beyond boistering the idealism and good feeling of Catherine’s home life.

An interesting motif is Isabella and Catherine scenes are shot in parallel with girls seen as standing close, walking close, intertwined arms, and from the waist up, while Eleanor and Catherine are seen in their full bodies and again and again walking in wood and forest and by stream.

I love casual glimpses of worlds beyond, often suggestive of sex life of adults carried on through privacy one can get in the streets and no where else

Catherine looking out window, wants to know what are their stories but Mr Allen remains stoutly uninterested in anyone not eager or content to sit by a fire.  A different time of life is what Catherine and the people outside have. (Pt 1, Scene 7) Throughout Mr Allen kind, patient, sensible, looking out for Catherine as best he can, no need for too much given milieu

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The grid:

Part 1; Northanger Abbey,
Scene 6:  first happy encounter of Isabella with her fiance’s sister.  Isabella comes on strong and Catherine presents fresh happy innocent face
Scene 7:  Two girls talking gothics. Curiously vacuous talk from Isabella; insinuating about sex as if it’s all fun and games; seen through books. Again insinuating talk without actual content.

Scene 8:  tracking shots combine of them in pump room, Isabella bad-mouthing Tilneys (Catherine asserts against this what she intuitively knows to be so: "surely you are mistaken Mr Tilney could not have been kinder or more gentleman like"), quoting her brother, chasing after young men. Include gnomic presentation of theme from hypocrite Isabella: "appearances deceive …"
Scene 11: first encounter with Eleanor, and (as opposed to book) Catherine assumes it’s a girlfriend, relieved to find a sister; "Catherine: I"m very happy to meet you Miss Tilney. Eleanor: And I you . Henry has told me so much about you/ this melts into the two in a tete-a-tete. As with Isabella meeting through brothers.

Scene 12: Catherine and Eleanor becoming acquainted, feels like there was a cut of another scene Strong contrast in amount of simple emotional truth and facts gotten in.  "Our mother is dead." "More than anything" Catherine "likes long walks" but cannot persuade Isabella who finds long walks boring. "Yes I can see that she might."

Part 3: Deceived

Scene 4:  Catherine and Isabella in bed over Udolpho; false, flattery used to substitute for confidence; to Catherine’s real discomfort and vexation over her failure to meet the Tilneys, Isabella offers lies about John finding her prettiest, liking her best; switches to have far have you gotten ..; titillating reference to black veil says what Davies thinks of it and then she can read The Monk; repetition of cant: John "spoke of it as really horrid". Horrid shocking thing in the world; lines from Udolpho suggest Davies never read it. Carey Mulligan’s posture is continually hovering over Catherine and insinuating whispers and it seems to work; seducing scenes quite different from any in P&P, S&S, Emma. Does not like traditional female or male Gothic, but does not see as much harm as what it’s used for

Part 4: The Next Dance
Scene 4: Kneeling scene of Isabella confessing her love — curiously vacuous. Her conversation lacks content, is filled with cant assertions or specific kinds of lies intended to be manipulative
Scene 6: Isabella and Catherine bid adieu to young men, brothers and Isabella voices what is probably a genuine worry if tone and ecstatic euphoric adoring specifics of words are insincere: she has no fortune and were the position reversed her mother would not permit it..Catherine listens intently throughout and reacts as if the words have meaning, thus taken aback at Isabella’s assertions if she had millions she would choose only James

Scene 7: Isabella and Catherine entering assembly, very short, how she is not going to dance and seeking out Charles Hodge. Catherine listening as if Isabella is truthful and for real; at end Catherine smiling happily at Isabella’s loyalty

Scene 9: Carriage ride back, Isabella is transparent ("He is the eldest son you know … the heir … not that that weighs anything with me …") and probably thinks Catherine a hypocrite and pretending not to understand her When Isabella says "John will say anything that comes into his head .. I hardly ever take any notice of him," Catherine: "how does one know what to believe .."

Part 5: The Invitation
Scene 1: Catherine (sour expression left over from what she saw in Isabella) with Eleanor walking in same wood supposed in Bath.

Generous assessment of Eleanor, identifying with Isabella, assuming sincerity. Beautiful moment with Henry just ahead. Eleanor lives with her loss, Henry depressed to the side.

Eleanor. I can well understand how she feels … but at least she can marry the man she loves not everyone is so fortunate.
Catherine: I suppose not. How sad that is,
Eleanor is remembering herself. Yes. It is. But how many couples marry without love?
Catherine: I believed my mother and father love each other even more than they love us. And they love us very much. When I was a little girl I used to think it was like that for everyone, but it was only when I started to read novels that I realized it was not.
Eleanor: I shouldn’t have thought one would have to read novels to find that out. I think you had quite a dangerous upbringing.
Catherine: Dangerous how?
Eleanor: Well it is as Henry says you’ve been brought up to believe [we see Henry ahead now] that everyone is as pure in heart as you are.
Catherine: I … I do not think I’m very pure in heart.
Eleanor: Really, why?
Catherine (whispering): I have the most terrible dreams sometimes [we are to recall previous one of Isabella in power of Captain Tilney] — Eleanor smiles. She does not ratchet up the experience and oh and ah, her face turns slightly away to hide. They laugh
Henry: What is the joke?
Eleanor: Nothing that concerns you …"

This is a good dialogue with a content suggestive of rich debates like in Emma, also P&P and S&S. Dialogues of Isabella and Catherine have this strangeness. Generous assessment of Eleanor, identifying with Isabella, assuming sincerity

Scene 3: Isabella and Catherine hard upon General’s invitation Isabella utters "Northanger Abbey." (Threading Isabella and Catherine scenes into Eleanor and Catherine ones now.) Very disturbing behavior in several ways: — trying to pressure Catherine over John, pretending not to understand her and then drops it because Frederick comes and who cares? she is as dismissive of Catherine as General Tilney was of John Thorpe and Frederick of Isabella: a characteristic of badness is dismissing people without compunction. This is scene where they part in film. In book we get Catherine’s protest to Henry and his reassurance and a final cosy apparently happy scene in Pulteney Street where the two friends bid warm adieu.

Scene 10: Eleanor and Catherine now in Catherine’s room at Northanger. Eleanor under great strain. Candle. Make as little alteration to your dress as possible.

Part 6: The Race
Scene 2: Catherine and Eleanor in the favorite walk; loves it now; how Eleanor misses her mother, how she was not there when mother died, the determination to show her picture..

Eleanor: This was my mother’s favorite lace. I used to walk so often here with her though I never loved it then as I have loved it since.
Catherine: Her death must have been a great affliction.
Eleanor: A great and increasing one.
Catherine: What was she like? Did she look like you?
Eleanor: I wish I could show you her portrait. It hangs in her private chamber.
Catherine; I suppose you were with her to the last?
Eleanor: No. I was from home when she died. Her illness was sudden and short and before I arrived it was all over.
Catherine: So you didn’t see her body.
Eleanor: No. I wish I could have done. Perhaps it would help me to think of her at peace.
Catherie: Yes. I should like to see her room if you are willing to show me.
Eleanor: We never go there. Tis my father’s wish.
Catherine: But to see her picture.
Eleanor. Yes. Why should not not see it?

Scene 3: later that night they climb the stairs. Scary music, hollow sounds of feet as they go up, high pitched music, faces meeting. Suddenly the general right there: why is he there in that part of the house. General: there is nothing to interest Miss Morland in this apart of the house.I am surprised at you, Eleanor. Here the same scene is gothic and women’s friendship. (this and above combine two different passages, one from NA, 2:7 or Ch 22, pp 156-57 and also p. 162; it must be admitted that throughout this sequence Austen is undercutting and making fun of Catherine at the same time as she leaves us to see Miss Tilney’s unhappiness and the general’s peremptoriness. Davies omits these kinds of frequent debunking interjections (combined with comments like Mr Allen said such characters were overdrawn).

Scene 4: Catherine writing Isabella is communing with her so another scene which the above “bled into”. Wholly invented letter so Catherine can express terrible suspicions she has as a result of previous two scenes. We are told that Isabella has written which implies Catherine has but we are shown no letter until James’s announces end of engagement. Several motifs brought together: letter writing, reverie, window, landscape, voice over. … “Oh, Isabella I fear that this house holds a terrible secret relating to the death of Mrs Tilney. (Now it’s Eleanor’s voice in lieu of Mrs Allen’s from down below): Catherine! … voice over resumes; … I cannot write more … send me your news …

Part 7: The letter(s)

Eleanor’s consternation

Scene 2: Eleanor walks up with brother James’s letter: In book Henry has not left and they visit Woodston (note without Eleanor) and this occurs afterward; the talk is between Henry and Catherine over her brother and Isabella; while in Davies’s movie Henry leaves and Catherine’s talk is with Eleanor from woman-centered point of view with no chance to talk to Henry again until after ejection.

While specific bits of language are taken over, the feel of this is quite different. The changes are interesting and perhaps that too will help me with my chapter: to compare subtle changes to see how he has altered these relationships too. I did not do that enough in the S&S. Here the emotional temperature is quite different.

Now to compare changes between Davies and Austen texts and then between S&S and other S&S bringing in Pivcevic and Alexander will do for the two chapters.

Eleanor. “Look Catherine” (coming over, we watch her walk, she is happy with news but then she catches sight of her friend’s face and becomes upset herself (are we supposed to feel that Catherine is overdoing the upset and has reacted too strongly — it’s an index of her fine nature that she’s done so but is self-flagellation). Catherine turns away. In this way Davies critiques Austen. Several shots of Walker as Eleanor coming over.

It is a long sequence of the two girls, Catherine’s walk, then Eleanor, then the talk, then the letter, overvoice with flashbacks, and then more talk. Eleanor’s smile goes utterly. “Oh whatever is the matter?
Cath: I cannot tell you. Please don’t make me. I’ve been so wickedly foolish and your brother knows of it and now he will hate me and so will you when he tells you.”
Elean: “Oh my dear Catherine, I am quite sure that nothing you could do could make me hate you or Henry either.”
Cath: I saw his face. I know he will never ever respect me again.
Elean. Oh! come come perhaps it’s not as bad as you think (rubs her) look here, is a a letter for you.
Cath: It could be from Isabella. Oh no it is my brother’s handwriting. (They are looking down at letter as Catherine unfolds it.)

Overvoice with flashbacks running: James and Isabella at the dance, Tilney stalking and she pretending not to be alluring him with all her might which she is. “Dear Catherine, I think it my duty to tell you that everything sis over is at an end between Miss thorpe and me. I shall not enter into particulars. I am ashamed to think for how long I bore it. Dear Catherine, I hope your visit to Northanger may be over before Captain Tilney makes his engagement known.

Elean (puzzled): Captain Tilney .. Frederick …
Cath: Yes it’s just what I feared. Oh poor poor James he loved her so much.
Elean: But Frederick … and they are engaged?
Cath: Yes
Elean. No I cannot believe that.
Cath: Look here (reads aloud) Dearest Catherine beware how you give your heart.
Elean: My dear Catherine I am sorry for your brother sorry that anyone you love should be unhappy, but my surprise would be greater at Frederick’s marrying her than at any other part of the story
Cath: why do you say that?
Elean. “What are Miss Thorpe’s connections? What is her fortune? Are they a wealthy family” (it is we are told by narrator Eleanor who does ask these questions, even if only Henry’s words are dramatized)
Cath: “No not very. I don’t believe Isabella has any fortune at all. YOu think your father will forbid the match.
Elean. “I doubt if the matter will reach his ear at all. (mouth stretches)
Cath: “Why? whatever do you mean?”
Elean. “Catherine your friend has dealt badly with your brother but I fear she is far too out of her depths with mine”

So we get important flashbacks of Tilney leading Isabella through brothel, going in, she waks and loud laughter in next room, and he stands by fireplace, she rouses herself, on her elbow: “And are we engaged?” He hears, walks over, “Make yourself decent Miss Thorpe. I must return you to your friends before you are missed.”

Flash within flash, and now it’s Isabella to Catherine, and a voice over of Isabella

“My dearest Catherine thank God we leave this vile place tomorrow since you went away I have no pleasure in it and everybody one cares for is gone (now we see her writing the letter on her bed). I am quite uneasy about your dear brother and am fearful of some misunderstanding. You will write to him and set everything right. He is the only man I ever did or could love (mother taking something, and Isabella snatches it back) and I know you will convince him of it …

Scene 6: a new day, new outfits and Catherine answers letter: “I most certainly shan’t.” Catherine now holding this letter.

Elean. “So Frederick is safe from her. I cannot say I am surprised.
Cath: Can’t you? I am very. I wish I’d never known her.
Elean. “It will soon be as if you never had.
Cath: “There is one thing I can’t understand. What is Captain Tilney been about all this time. Why should he pay her such attentions and then fly off himself?”
Elean: “He has his vanity as well as Miss Thorpe and he is accustomed to having his way [this accustomed to having his way is added and it is specifically sexual in connotation) though I am surprised he should have stooped to such an easy conquest.”
Cath: “Really. hen I am sorry for Isabella”

Elean. “I am sure she will be over it soon enough.
Cathering looks perturbed and sorry for Isabella.
Elean. “I hope I do not need to tell yu that his brother is a very different character. Henry has the best and truest heart in the world.
They smile together.

Then crashing dark carriage.

Scene 9: It is a shortened version of the scene in the book (2:13, or Ch 28). Differences are that Catherine attributes the General’s crazed animosity (unlike Austen where Catherine must leave before the General gets up; he demands she be ejected that night) to Henry telling about what suspected, Eleanor then tells a little truth: “You are wrong. I know my father’s reasons. They do him no credit.” Eleanor in extreme distress throughout, harrowed. Fear for journey, provides money. Catherine insists “journey’s nothing,” disgrace all, she deserves this going home in disgrace. Ratcheting it up to make it occur at night and makes the next scene of Eleanor climbing the stairwell (in white) classic gothic one) dissolves into

Scene 10: two girls at bottom of stairwell, Eleanor heard: “Catherine I implore you … please … Eleanor’s climb up to terrifying man – real implication of sex. Catherine’s eyes look up, she is a bit relieved it’s not her and walks out

the denouement centers on the heterosexual romances.

Looking over the gothic scenes in the comments I am most impressed that if I had not defined the gothic so literally, by the end of the film, the girls’ scenes could be defined as gothic (the flashback of Isabella’s memory of being taken through the brothel and the aftermath; Eleanor and Catherine’s conversation in Catherine’s bedroom, later that next at the foot of the stairs).

I’m also impressed that the tendency of all the add-on scenes is to validate male sexuality when it is controlled by humane moral values. If I were to bring this together with the women’s friendship scenes in P&P and S&S and Emma, it would in some sense become an ideal that we find in Mark Darcy in both Bridget Jones Diary films.

Ellen