Bonnet fatigue?

The Times publishes an interesting article presenting Channel 4's new production City of Vice (in the picture)- an adaptation of Henry Fielding -and somehow connecting the recent articles on the so-called historical drama fatigue with the idea that probably the problem is that we have been stuck in a 19th century loop. From Austen to Dickens, passing by the Brontës and Gaskell.

In 2007 we witnessed a veritable seaside promenade of Eleanors and Annes sashaying across our screens. Dickens and Gaskell were there along with more Jane Austen than you could flutter a fan at. We gorged ourselves on chocolate box images of the 19th century; the urchin children, the cottages with smoking chimneys, the purse-lipped matrons, the girls with corkscrew curls. For decades, TV programmers have been feeding us on the comfort viewing that has come to define our vision of the 19th century. Through the adapter’s skill and the camera’s seductive imagery we’ve come to see our modern lives reflected in the experiences of Ebenezer Scrooge, Lizzie Bennet and Jane Eyre more than Dickens, Austen or Charlotte Brontë surely intended. After some 50 years of intense exposure to the 19th century we no longer view the muddy streets of northern towns or the Bath Assembly Rooms as a Martian terrain. But we should.
Our ancestors were aliens. Aliens in bonnets. Especially the Victorians. The quiet crime of the costume drama has been to slyly convince us that in spite of their indefatigable Christian morality, social crusading zeal, and sense of civic responsibility that the inhabitants of the 19th century shared our modern values more than their predecessors. That somehow, their restrained, conviction-led era was in fact very close to our own.
Oddly, in the 1960s when the BBC started raiding the local library for historic works of literature, this might have held some truth. Memories of rationing and make-do-and-mend were still fresh in the mind; a belief in thrift and community spirit lingered. But times moved on, greed became good and churches were turned into luxury flats but our diet of 19th century viewing persisted. Is it any wonder that by the end of 2007 there were whispers of “bonnet fatigue”.
A growing disaffection with period programming stuck in a Dickens-Austen loop has led the rare, brave network executive to opt for something fresher. Over the past two years, BBC Four has stuck its neck out and served up regular doses of the 18th century, culminating in the success of Fanny Hill, which captured 1.1 million viewers on its first night, the channel’s largest ratings share to date. It may go some way towards proving that, in spite of the homeliness of the 19th century, 21st-century audiences are more likely to recognise life in the Georgian era.
Take London: not unlike today, it was a booming place. The city was expanding in every direction, speculators and investors fuelled a commerce-driven economy. Society revelled in money and its conspicuous display. Church attendance suffered and the flesh trade flourished. Political corruption was rife. The enfranchised, privileged classes were more anxious about preserving their personal property and liberty than they were in righting social wrongs.
This all-too-familiar setting is the backdrop for Channel 4’s new five-part series, City of Vice, a story that dramatises the establishment of London’s first police force, the Bow Street Runners, in 1753. Unlike the historical dramas of late, it’s gritty and unapologetic. Life could be desperately ugly and City of Vice is not coy about depicting this. (Hallie Rubenhold)

Hallie Rubenhold is the historical adviser of City of Vice. In a way, we do agree with what she has to say inasmuch as sometimes these series have been written and broadcast wearing rose-coloured spectacles. However, we don't believe it's the Brontës, Gaskell, Austen or Dickens - writers who shouldn't be lumped together so easily in the first place because they're hugely different - who are at fault here, but rather whoever is in charge of the adaptation in question. The adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South began to show what life was like for common mortals, for instance. But it's also a matter of choice. Gaskell write novels like Mary Barton or Ruth which in the least display - or at least not favourably - 'girls with corkscrew curls'. Dickens's works could also be adapted in a much more grim - and more real - light, yet the adaptors choose not to do so.

What about the Brontës in this context? Jane Eyre is not without its rough bits: Jane's traumatic childhood, the days after Jane flees Thornfield or the secondary - although so relevant - story of Bertha. Wuthering Heights tells the story of a changeling who has grown up God knows how and, rather than being the 'love story' everyone wants it to be, decades after being first published still makes the reader wince in certain passages. Or Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall with a drunken husband and his wife and child. The background of Charlotte's Shirley is the Chartist movement and Charlotte insisted in visiting Bedlam or a prison in one of her visits to London.

The Victorians - which Jane Austen wasn't and the Brontës only belonged to outwardly - weren't at all like us as anyone who actually reads a novel from the period will know. So, again, it's not the original writers who are to blame because they wrote very realistically of what was going on in their time, it's the adaptors who constantly feed the audience's image of this false, inaccurate Victorian period. The Telegraph has an article in a similar vein, enumerating the many adaptations which have come o be made after the hard times the genre went through a couple of years ago yet concludes with the following, which fits perfectly too as a response to The Times article:

In the meantime, this week saw the start of BBC1's Mistresses, a drama in which the latest quartet of thirtysomething women drink wine, talk about blokes and get themselves into a lurid series of romantic scrapes.
One character was a GP who, having helped her terminally-ill married lover to die, was faced with the dilemma of whether or not to sleep with his hunky son. Sure enough, the behaviour of these women soon seemed to fit merely into the category of what's known in the trade as "telly truth": the kind that's validated only by reference to other TV dramas.
If I had to guess, I'd say that most female viewers find the world of Sense and Sensibility much more recognisable. (James Walton)

Categories: In the News, Movies-DVD-TV, Victorian Era