Becoming Jane

I have been watching, with some interest, the abounding cattiness on Austenblog about the upcoming movie Becoming Jane, starring Anne Hathaway. Here is a typical entry, made by someone who has seen the movie and hated it. Here are all the entries tagged Becoming Jane.

Of course, Austenblog's entire reason d’être is cattiness (their byline is "One lump of snark or two?") But this has been very interesting to observe. Besides simply disliking Anne Hathaway and bristling at the historical inaccuracies, they hate the assumption which seems to underlie the screenplay: that Jane Austen couldn't have written about love unless she had lived it. There seems to be some need on Hollywood's part to explain a "spinster" writing all these richly emotional books.

As an author, I do have sympathy for their irritation with this point of view--while the degree of the virulence of their loathing fascinates me, and is certainly entertaining to watch.

Day from hell

Terribly busy at work, so I didn't get my exercise in. As I was doing that, I was simultaneously on the phone, trying to deal with some personal stuff that is all erupting at once.

I came home from work, exhausted and fried much more than usual, and Fiona was absolutely hysterical. She had discovered, since getting off the bus this afternoon, that the calendar project she has been working on in her graphic design class had disappeared. She remembered having it on the bus. She has put in three weeks of work on the piece--by hand, not on the computer, of course, and it is due tomorrow, the last night of the quarter. There is no back up copy.

I tried, dammit. We walked the route back to the bus stop again--Fiona had already walked it several times. I called the school district, which directed me to the bus company. They had the driver go out and look through the damn bus. No project. I felt like George Bailey, cross-examining Uncle Billy: "Did you put it in your binder? Did you give it to anybody? Did you put it down somewhere? Do we need to walk the route again? Where is that stupid calendar, Fiona, what did you do with it???" I wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled, because it is clear that she put it down somewhere, mindlessly, and her brain will absolutely not cough up the information of what she did with it, for god's sake, because she wasn't paying attention.

We don't have a phone number for the teacher, and the only e-mail address we have is for the school e-mail address. I had to get her calmed down and off to confirmation, and then to race to the dojo to get Delia there in time for pre-testing, while I was simultaneously on the phone with the bus company. And of course, because I was dealing with all this hysteria, we didn't get to eat dinner beforehand. Pick up the prescription, get gas--I finally had both girls picked up by 7:30.

Fiona is screwed, I suppose and will get a zero for the project. Ugly lesson learned.

I have a splitting headache.