MAGNOLIA

Welty note adds nuance to Austen film screening

Sherry Lucas
The Clarion-Ledger

The Jane Austen Film Series at Eudora Welty House and Garden continues Friday with a screening of "Pride & Prejudice," adapted from the Austen novel in which Welty herself found a literary kinship.

Mary Alice Welty White is pictured here with a note from her aunt Eudora Welty. Welty typed the two-page note to help with an essay comparing/contrasting her own "Delta Wedding" with Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice.
The note came in a hand-addressed envelope from the Algonquin Hotel, one of Eudora Welty’s favorite places to stay, her niece Mary Alice Welty White said.

Her niece, Mary Alice Welty White, has it in writing.

The 2005 film "Pride & Prejudice, starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen will be screened Friday outdoors in the Eudora Welty Garden (or across the street at Belhaven University, in case of rain). There's a brief program at 7 p.m., film at dark (around 7:30 p.m.)

White was a senior at Murrah High, with a term paper to write. The assignment: Compare a British author with an American author — or maybe it was a Mississippi author. White didn't recall exactly which. She did recall her English teacher's nudge. "She kept strongly suggesting that I use Eudora," but White was hesitant.

"She kept encouraging me. And finally she said, 'Mary Alice, not one other person can go to the original source. And you can.'" So she did. White decided to compare "Pride and Prejudice" to Welty's "Delta Wedding" and asked her famous aunt to write her thoughts. They're typed on a pair of 5-by-7 legal notepad sheets, likenesses and differences outlined with keen observation and delight. Those came tucked in an Algonquin Hotel envelope with a handwritten note signed "Dodo," her niece's affectionate nickname for her.

"I've kept them all these years. And of course, I used it as the conclusion to my term paper." She got an A, "but I"m not so sure whether it was for me or for Eudora!

"Fortunately I don't have a clue where the paper is. I held onto the more important literary work." Welty had pointed out the both novels were self-contained small worlds, limited to the domestic scene, centered on the family and feminine in style and approach. "Neither (I hope) is sentimental. Instead, both are (I hope) observant and written with an eye and ear as sharp as possible," she'd written. Under differences she remarked on the "sparkling vitality" of Austen's novel and said, more than the works' centuries and countries apart  "... there is the question of her genius which separates her from any American lady novelist now alive (I think) (and most people surely think)."

RELATED: Jane Austen film series to screen at Welty House

Jackson's literary legend was a big fan of Austen, as her essay "The Radiance of Jane Austen" showed. At Welty's Massey lectures at Harvard (which resulted in "One Writer's Beginnings") professor David Donald quoted from that essay, about Austen's formidable intelligence and genius in originality and comedy, and introduced Welty as "our own Jane Austen," said White, who has an original, uncut version of the lectures.

After a Jackson talk by scholar Carolyn J. Brown noting some things "Delta Wedding" and "Pride and Prejudice" had in common, White wanted to show Brown the Welty note she'd never before shared. Brown, a biographer of Welty and state coordinator for the Jane Austen Society of North America with a love of both writers, remarked on the "weird and funny" coincidence to see some of the same things in Welty's typed words that she'd gone over in her talk.

"This was real proof ... that she did not only love Jane Austen, but that one novel of hers does echo the novels of Jane Austen." Brown has since published two essays, in Persuasions and in the Eudora Welty Review, on the topic. She wrote, "Both novelists have a keen sense of the satire, and neither needed marriage, children, or extensive travel to be shrewd observers of human behavior."

RELATED: Want more Jane Austen? Join the club

Brown linked the enduring popularity of "Pride and Prejudice" to its fairy tale roots, made infinitely more interesting by Austen's independent heroine Elizabeth Bennett, the comedy of its characters and critique of society and class that was funny rather than harsh. The novel's been ripe fodder for adaptations; lush visuals are a high point of this 2005 film.

The Eudora Welty House and Garden and JASNA-MS are partnering with Crossroads Film Society in the Jane Austen Film Series. It's free of charge thanks to grants from the Mississippi Humanities Council and JASNA. The final film in the series, "Bride and Prejudice," will be shown Oct. 14.

Contact Sherry Lucas at slucas@gannett.com or 601-961-7283. Follow @SherryLucas1 on Twitter.

If you go

What: "Pride & Prejudice

When: Garden opens at 6:30 p.m. with a short program at 7 p.m. and film showing at dark, around 7:30 p.m.

Where: Eudora Welty House and Garden, 1119 Pinehurst St, Jackson (across the street at Belhaven University, in case of rain)

Cost: Free

Contact: www.mdah.ms.gov/welty/