ITV’s new Jane Austen adaptation, Sanditon, made a splash at the seaside this week. While the female characters used a bathing machine to change into long red Handmaid’s Tale-style smocks before taking to the waters, the men stripped off and plunged in. ITV stopped short of showing anything frontal, but more refined viewers may have found themselves reaching for the smelling salts as naked male rumps filled the screen. Bottoms in Austen! Whatever next? Let’s hope there were some smelling salts left, for next was a scene that hinted at a handjob.
Anne Reid, who plays Lady Denham on the show, expressed dismay (with tongue in cheek): “It’s the times we live in,” she told the Radio Times: “There are a lot of naked males around and I think it’s unnecessary.” The screenwriter Andrew Davies, who also wrote the hugely influential 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, said that his wife wanted him to show more male nudity to balance out the ubiquitous female nudity on TV: “I thought it looked so beautiful,” he said.
The unfinished novel on which Sanditon is based was written in 1817. By then, spas such as Bath obliged male patrons to wear a bathing garment. But there was no such provision at the seaside, in rivers or in lakes, where men would simply disrobe. When Davies had Mr Darcy (Colin Firth) dip in a pond in Pride and Prejudice – a television moment that did more to bring Austen’s work to a new generation than any school curriculum – it was absurd that he failed to remove his shirt and breeches. As Andrea Richards of the Jane Austen Society of Melbourne noted: “In the interests of historical accuracy, we should have seen much more of Colin Firth – his wet shirt scene should have been a nude scene.”
Eric Chaline, the author of Strokes of Genius: A History of Swimming, has noted that “possibly the first reference to practical male swimwear in Europe” was in a German gymnastics guide published in 1793, which recommended “linen drawers, reaching halfway down the thigh”. These did not immediately catch on, although swimming trunks became popular in the 20th century. Only in the 1860s did British men routinely begin to wear bathing suits of any kind. Although some women probably swam naked in Austen’s time, too, flannel chemises or elaborate bathing dresses were considered appropriate and were often provided along with rentable bathing machines.
It is a mistake to project our modern prudishness back on to the past: to assume that, because some social customs appear more conservative than ours, everything must have been. Austen was a contemporary of artists Thomas Rowlandson and JMW Turner, some of whose works are still considered shockingly licentious. Her world was not as buttoned-up as we might imagine. Of course, the naked bottoms in Sanditon are there because ITV wants you to watch the show – but there is no reason to presume that Austen herself would have raised an eyebrow.
And that handjob? Admittedly, it is a bit of an advance on the intimate scene of two characters “closely engaged in gentle conversation” Austen describes. Still, if you prefer that, you can always read the book.
