02.21.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:05 am by janeaustenfilm
Mary-Carolyn here with a few thoughts on the BBC mini-series Mansfield Park, but alas, there were few things I noticed the article I read hadn’t already pointed out (I suppose that’s what you get for reading a critical article before watching the film). However, I did notice a few interesting things. I was surprised by the use of an unstable camera in the carriage as Fanny comes with Mrs. Norris to Mansfield. I’ve noticed its fairly uncharacteristic of BBC adaptations to do anything but have a still, panning camera; but, I think this choice is wonderful as it gives the viewer the sense early on in the program that Fanny’s life at Mansfield will be anything but stable and encouraging. I also found that the film rather downplayed Julia’s indiscretions, focusing much more on Maria. For example, in following Maria and Julia in a carriage ride where they discuss Mr. Crawford, Maria is placed in much greater darkness than Julia. Likewise, when the family goes to visit Mr. Rushworth’s, Julia has greater difficulty getting through the gate, implying that she has greater difficulty abandoning her duty and morals than Julia. During one scene I wished I had a better knowledge of statues and mythology (and knew how to take screen caps!) as Julia is standing by the fireplace, which is flanked by two stone figures, and stands in the exact shape of the figure she is in front of. While she is in the background, she is in the middle of the screen and in full focus. But I don’t know who the figure is and if it has any bearing on the film’s plot.
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02.19.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:58 pm by janeaustenfilm
In her essay, “Clueless in the Neo-Colonial World Order,” Gayle Wald argues that Amy Heckerling’s 1995 film analyzes how national citizenship is defined in relation to third and first worlds. Wald writes that Clueless “situates the subjectivity of its protagonist at the intersection of competing narratives of gender itself; for while it represents Cher as a ‘First World’ girl who deploys her cluelessness in order to ‘innocently’ access power, it also suggests that such cluelessness stands in the way of her ‘successful’ gendering according to the demands of the marriage plot” (Wald 219). Furthermore, Wald argues that Cher’s gender identity is based on consumership, a First World characteristic which uses the poverty of the Third World as its other. Thus, Cher’s character is based on a neo-colonial world order which justifies consumership–while simultaneously shunning it–as something intrinsic to the female gender and American identity.
Wald writes that Clueless explores “the role of cinematic representation in the construction of national and cultural citizenship, as well as…the gender, race and class dimensions of the national narratives produced by a contemporary Hollywood film…addressed to an audience of adolescent and pre-adolescent US girls” (Wald 218). To support her claims, Wald analyzes Cher’s ‘Haiti’ speech, which takes place early in the film, as an example of how Cher is constructed as an All-American First World girl through hospitality and consumership. Cher’s speech is juxtaposed with the American national anthem in background which marks her character as a good, innocent All-American girl. Wald argues that this makes Cher appealing to both adolescent girls and their parents; Cher is a devoted, obedient teenager who is both stylish and attractive to the opposite sex. Wald writes that “the speech not only serves to establish how gender is produced in and through ideologies of nationhood and national identity, but how narratives of national identity may be framed within the context of (or even serve as the rationale for) ideologies of domestic female virtue” (222).
While Cher is presented as a model daughter in her Haiti speech, she is also established as clueless. Thus, Heckerling imbues Emma Woodhouse’s loveable characteristics into
Cher. While audiences of teenagers, parents and critics alike love Cher, they are wary of her denseness, but view it as a slight character flaw rather than immoral. Additionally, Heckerling constructs Cher’s identity by using third world citizens, such as Haitians and the maid, Lucy, as an other. Indeed, Wald writes that “her’s performance of domestic virtue is inextricable from her role as a consumer of domestic labour, and from her obliviousness to the discrepancy between her parable and the problems that Haitians and Haitian immigrants actually face. As viewers might be led to surmise…the only way that ‘real’ immigrants attended her father’s fiftieth birthday party were as labourers in the kitchen” (223).
Audiences believe that because Cher is so innocent and All-American, she would include anyone if she only realized that her behaviors were exclusive. Wald writes thatCher’s speech works to
“ingratiate Cher to the viewing audience, pairing her cluelessness about US-Haitian relations with the audience’s affection for her as a liberal advocate of the sort of democratic values associated with national symbols such as the Statue of Liberty; it legitimates gendered domestic virtue as both a principle of international diplomacy and the means by which she can win the approval of her father and then later Josh; and it establishes altruism (gift-giving) and communitarianism as the logical paradigms of First World-Third World relations, and by analogy of the gendered relations with the ‘domestic’ (that is, the national/public and home/private) spheres” (223).
Heckerling appropriates Emma’s good-natured cluelessness to the social systems around her and fits them into a commentary on American social systems, both inside and outside the
First World. By fitting Cher’s feminine gendering into a romantic plot, Heckerling comments on the demands of First World femininity; however, Heckerling simultaneously asserts that consumership for the sake of the Third World, or the other, is good by using Josh as a reward for a clued-in
Cher.
Wald also briefly discusses Cher’s Jewishness in relation to the All-American (WASP) girl and the All-American self-made man. Wald writes that “Heckerling’s translation of Emma into a Jewish-American ‘princess’ complements the film’s re-visioning of national identity in terms of specifically ‘American’ narratives of the upward economic mobility of immigrants” (226). While
Cher’s gender and national identity is constructed in the relation to the Third World, her character is still historically apart of a minority, which makes an even more explicit All-American statement.
I really liked this article for Wald’s comments on All-Americanism and identity construction; I would definitely use it for my paper. However, I think that it was a little confusing in certain areas. Wald writes a couple pages on how she will set up her argument, and what her essay will cover, and then spends a couple pages actually supporting her ideas. This was both redundant and confusing. Also, I think a basic definition of neo-colonial at the start of the essay would have helped instead of paragraphs devoted to how both critics and teenage girls loved Clueless.
by: Leah
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02.15.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:54 pm by janeaustenfilm
I found this article very interesting, but, from what little I’ve seen of the BBC Mansfield Park, I think she trumps up a lot of what’s there. I don’t think the film could possibly live up to the expectations this article raised. Also, for an article that claims to discuss the different ways and style of adaptation the two films use, Fergus examines only one version. Also, her definitions of purist and neo-purist play little direct part in the article. However, Fergus raises an interesting idea when she speculates that another Mansfield Park adaptation would best be presented as a modernized version, especially after reading somewhat mixed reviews of the idea and success of updating an Austen novel in a manner similar to that used in Clueless.
Fergus briefly discusses the way Rozema handles voice, but her focus is clearly on the Giles adaptation. For Fergus, the 1999 Mansfield Park is a “postmodern pastiche…[employing] the postmodern view of adaptation as intervention” (70). Surprisingly, Fergus has no objections to Rozema’s decision to allow Fanny to directly address the camera; in fact, he finds it similar to Austen’s use of narrators. He does, however, criticize the film for its Gothic elements, particularly in the portrayal of Sir Thomas Bertram, as well as the stronger character the film gives Fanny. As a result, a central part of the story, Edmund and Fanny’s relationship is weakened since Fanny hardly needs anyone to shape and teach her.
In contrast to Rozema’s version, Fergus believes the 1983 mini-series uses a voice much more in keeping with Austen’s, and establishes it primarily through six different narrative and visual tools. The first is that the film finds “a visual equivalent for significant words or phrases” (73). This is seen particularly in the way the film makes clear the characterization of Lady Bertram as “captivating” in the novel’s opening lines. Lady Bertram takes a prominent position in the film’s opening, and is portrayed as “both beautiful and static” (73) as the camera zooms in on her as she lounges on her sofa. While Mansfield Park at times seems to revolve around Lady Bertram, her words and opinions are given no real regard. Rather, her “sofa visually represents not simply her inertia but her lack of agency”(74-75).
Next, Fergus cites Giles’s ability to “properly” assign the novel’s narration to other characters. She particularly notices a scene in which Lady Bertram tells Fanny what is considered an acceptable match, Henry Crawford, as apposed to rather poor and degrading match made by Lady Bertram’s sister, Mrs. Price.
Fergus also observes the effective use of voice over in the BBC version. As the film opens, the picture show to the viewer of Fanny as she journeys alone and afraid is in stark contrast to Mrs. Norris’s voice-over as she praises “her own generosity and her management of Fanny’s destiny” (76). Fanny’s letters to William are also delivered in voice-overs, allowing Fanny to have a voice of her own. These two uses often place the film’s visual and oral elements in ironic juxtaposition. The ambiguity of the film’s closing line and image, however, is even more iron. Here, Fanny states her “happiness” at her marriage to Edmund and how they will be under the care and guidance of Mansfield Park, yet the viewer knows the patronage of the Bertram’s has not given successful marriages to their own children. This statement is made more ironic by the image that accompanies it: “Fanny carrying her own pug to a bench outdoors, then sitting with pug at her feed and Edmund by her side” (77).
Fourthly, Fergus discusses Austen’s use of “character narrative” in her novels, a technique where the narrator’s speech dissolves into first person, making it much easier for an adaptor to assign to a speaker.
Next, Fergus looks at the way Giles’s mini-series visually expresses the narrator’s irony. Fergus looks in depth at Mansfield’s impromptu dance, which “emphasize[s] murky sexuality and people’s selfish blindness to what is before them” (81). This is particularly evident in the interactions between Tom and Mrs. Norris. Tom, who criticizes Mrs. Norris for asking him to play cards whine he cannot refuse, does the same thing when he asks Fanny if she wants to dance while he begins to read the paper, leaving her no choice but to refuse. Throughout the dance, “Mrs. Norris views the visible sexuality…in terms of marriages, Tom, in terms of folly and illicit amours. The comedy in the sequence arises largely from their mutual blindness” (82). Here, Fergus states her claim that the BBC mini-series is “neo-purist,” using “visual equivalents for significant words, phrases, and themes in the novels” (84).
Finally, Fergus reveals the sixth essential element in a successful adaptation and translation of Austen’s narrative voice – voice effects, or the proper casting of characters. Fergus believes Giles’s casting is “nearly perfect,” and defends the actors in their character and stylistic choices (84). Fergus concludes by making it clear that she believes Rozema’s version has been reduced to a romance between Edmund and Fanny, while Giles’s adaptation includes romance but focuses overall on character. She closes with an interesting idea, that the best approach to another Mansfield Park adaptation would be to modernize the characters and plot similarly to Amy Heckerling’s Clueless.
Jan Fergus’s article “Two Mansfield Parks: purist and postmodern” looks at two film adaptations of the novel Mansfield Park: Patricia Rozema’s version, released in 1999, and the 1983 BBC mini-series, directed by David Giles. While Rozema’s version was widely accepted by audiences and critics alike, Giles’s version was never shown in the United States, and even in Brittan, its reception was poor. Despite this, Fergus believes the BBC mini-series presents the most successful adaptation in dealing with “the central problem of filming Austen: the problem of finding an equivalent for the narrative voice” (70).
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02.14.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:42 am by janeaustenfilm
In his article “Emma, Cher, and the Maze of Unknowing,” David Kelly sets out to examine why Austen’s novel was not formally listed among the source material for Amy Heckerling’s film. This sets up the way Kelly looks at the film itself,“ an ironic play between two opposing principles: on one hand, an awareness of and attribution of authority, and on the other hand an ignorance of and indifference to it” (3). In other words, it explores the difference between who’s clued in and who’s clueless. Kelly first looks at Cher’s interaction with her wardrobe. Do the clothes shape her, or does she shape the clothes? Kelly concludes that “they are stripped of that original meaning while being invested with a new sense, invented by Cher, which establishes and projects for her a public persona of glamour and individuality” (4). This theme is seen, not only in Cher and Dionne’s names, but in Murray’s language, and they are all something that functions in their current lives. However, Cher “understands the world only as something she fashions…as its egoistic center, she doesn’t realize how small this world is, but we do as we watch her attempts at fashioning a world in which she is totally clued in, colliding with another world in which she hasn’t got a clue” (6).
Kelly then looks at comic moments in the film that require the view to have an external cultural knowledge. Here, Kelly posits a theory that the “film’s silence on its debt to Austen…by not signaling that it is a contemporary adaptation of Emma, [it] requires us as readers to make the imaginative connection” (7). In this way, Kelly interprets the film as a satire, noting the wit Heckerling displays throughout the film, particularly when she adds Cher’s own voice to the film, allowing her to fashion herself. That Cher is given her own voice while Emma is not, signifies to Kelly that Emma must be “taken in hand,” (12) something Cher will never allow to happen to her. For Kelly, “the text can function satirically only by virtue of us bringing to moral and cultural frames of reference which Cher not only does not share but in face in personally and socially incapable of conceiving” (9). Kelly also examines “clue” as a thread, one that “ought to bring other cultural understandings to bear in the reading of this narrative” (9), such as Theseus’s thread he unwound and followed back out the labyrinth. This moves Kelly to a discussion of metaphorical labyrinths in Clueless, most notable Cher’s “maze of personal relationships” (9), seen particularly in her interactions with Christian. Another labyrinth, the Los Angeles freeway, plays both a role as both a metaphorical and tangible maze. These labyrinths single to Cher “the narrowness of the world in which she can operate effectively, the narrowness of that social space in which she in clued in” (11).
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:20 am by janeaustenfilm
David Monaghan’s article “Emma and the art of Adaptation” examines the three most recent films based on Jane Austen’s Emma; the ITV/A&E version directed by Diarmuid Lawrence and written by Andrew Davies, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, and the Miramax version directed by Douglas McGrath. Monaghan has singled out these film versions as the three post-1990 films that, unlike the pre-1990 BBC versions aren’t “unwilling to rethink Austen’s novels in visual terms,” but are works of art in their own right (197).
Monaghan first examines the ITV/A&E mini-series, released in 1996. Monaghan, while criticizing the BBC mini-series for its failure to render Austen’s ideas in a cleaver, unique visual manner, praises Lawrence and Davies for their ability to create visual images that “render the kind of philosophical abstraction – in this case a Burkeian view of the social contract” (200). While the mini-series stays true to many of Austen’s plot lines and period authenticity was a series concern for the filmmakers, Davies and Lawrence pin-point and highlight what they see as the Austen’s major themes. By portraying the connection between courtship and dancing in a visual way, Monaghan believes Davies and Lawrence are able to “persuade the viewer that…[Emma] has the intelligence and moral capacity to overcome her debilitating ‘blindness’ and achieve the kind of maturity that is claimed for her at the end of the film” (202). Even though they show “work-worn and discontented villagers,” Monaghan stipulates Lawrence and Davies still understand and aim to portray the way Austen was aligned with 19th century England’s gentry. Monaghan then moves into a discussion of the film’s opening four scenes, focusing on the opening chicken raid scene which features “a rapidly edited montage of shots taken from a range of distances and angles…and ends with a close up a sleepy and bemused looking Emma peering out of her bedroom window”(205). This emphasizes the Woodhouses lack of motion, and helps develop the film’s visual style communicates what Lawrence and Davies wish to point out as a major theme – “the moribund character of the gentry” (206). Monaghan points out the film’s use of color to set the mood in its mise-en-scene, coordinating the colors of the character’s clothes with the seasons. Monaghan briefly touches on the scene at Box Hill where the characters sit under a tree, seemingly under its shaded and protective branches. However, the characters are separated into two groups by the tree’s trunk; “the Eltons stand to the far left of the frame while Emma, Frank, Jane and Harriet are grouped together to the right…in what is actually a rather modest metaphor for the multiple conflicts that plague the visit to Box Hill” (210).
Monaghan then discusses Clueless, written and directed by Amy Heckerling. He first examines why Auten’s Emma ought to be considered as the film’s primary frame work, citing the character overlaps and many similar, yet updated, plot points. Monaghan says of the film, “not is Heckerling correct to label her film a comedy of manners but she shares Austen’s awareness of the possibilities inherent within the genre for a subtle but unobtrusive exploration of important social/cultural issues” (215). However, Monaghan also names the MTV music video and the high school movie as other genres Heckerling is particularly indebted to. While Monaghan praises Heckerling for the creative way she works with Austen’s Emma, he criticizes her for flaunting the polite codes portrayed in Austen’s novels. For example, performance, rather than being negative as it is in Austen’s Emma, is a part of daily life in Clueless. For Monaghan, the “self-aggrandizing cliques…are the only type of collectivity possible in a society dominated by considerations of personal style,” is in direct opposition to the idea of nuances of class in Austen (217). However, in both cases, the reason for class distinction is economic. Monaghan simply does believe in Cher’s capability to change by the end of the film, chalking up the idea that she inherited a “good soul” from her mother to “pure Hollywood fantasy” (219). And yet, with the inclusion of Cher’s intervention by the end of the film, it is clear to the view that this is merely a stage in her life, not its conclusion.
Next, Monaghan looks at Miramax’s Emma, which is praises for its visual style, but claims that “fidelity to even the surface of Emma is by no means always a priority with [director] McGrath” (220). In contrast to the carefully planned and scene changing of seasons in Emma and the ITV/A&E versions, seasons are almost entirely missing from this version. Monaghan criticizes McGrath, not for staying from Austen’s text, but for failing to actively engage with it as well as its insistence to remove Emma from the “claustrophobic enclosure that helps so much in Austen’s novel…to explain her irresponsible behavior” (222). Monaghan also criticizes McGrath for the inconsistency of his tone, often turning broadly comic, and for permeating the film with the feeling that what the view is watching is a fairy tale, not an example of reality. Monagahn posits that Clueless was, in addition to Austen’s novel, used heavily as a source text for the film.
Monaghan concludes his article by stating that there’s “ no single approach to the problem of adapting a written text for the visual medium of film” (225). He summarizes by saying that “if the ITV/A&E Emma is the kind of film Austen might have made during her actual lifetime, Clueless is, perhaps, the film she would have made has she been alive today” (225).
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02.05.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:46 pm by janeaustenfilm
Here’s what I was able to find on the possible new Sense and Sensibility mini-series. It’s not much, but its interesting.
Jane Austen Festival
Producing organizations: WGBH and various co-producers. Presented by Masterpiece Theatre. Distributor: WGBH. Episodes: 3 productions 1 x 90-120, 1 production 2 x 120. Status: production. Major funders: PBS, CPB. Executive producer: Rebecca Eaton. Contact: Andrea Flores, andrea_floresatwgbh.org; 617-300-2561.
New adaptations of four Austen novels—Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion—will be scheduled over the course of the 2007-08 Masterpiece Theatre season to create a programming event.
Several new nuggets of information can be gleaned from this tidbit. We know that the three ITV films are all 90-120 minute productions shown as a single episode, so that means that S&S07, as long suspected, will be two 2-hour episodes, like the recent production of JANE EYRE.
Also, please note that it is scheduled “over the course of the 2007-2008 season,” which means that the films might not air one after the other–they might be scattered throughout the Masterpiece Theatre season. Or maybe not. But we should be prepared for that eventuality.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:20 pm by janeaustenfilm
I (Mary-Carolyn) recently created an ELS web-blog for my Film, Text and Culture class, and enjoyed it so much that I thought it was a necessity for my small-group independent study on Jane Austen in film. Leah agreed with me, thinking this would be a great place to share ideas, post article summaries, and talk about film clips or stills since all of these things are pretty easy to post using WordPress. We’ve been talking this week about Sense and Sensibility, and Leah and I recently watched the opening scene of the 1981 BBC mini-series. Because this is really our first foray into film studies and criticism, we watched this scene with no sound and tried to focus on what the camera was doing rather than on the dialogue and plot. We noticed a few things we thought were particularly interesting, especially the fact that we were able to identify characters without hearing their names. Mrs. Dashwood is, obviously, older than the other two girls, but we thought the pairing of Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood alluded the character’s shared personalities. We also were able to see Marianne’s passionate character based on her body movement (and kudos to the girl who plays Marianne, best acting in the whole movie). Elinor’s composed features and the fact that the light coming into the carriage framed her, clued us in. We also especially appreciated Marianne and Elinor balancing on a sea-saw during the opening credits, showing the attentive movie-goer what the novel cleverly hints at, that the girls, together, have a balanced character, but separately, they are two extremes.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7:19 pm by janeaustenfilm
In her essay “Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility as a Gateway to Austen’s Novel,: M. Casey Diana recounts her experience with her Introduction to Fiction (English 103) course at the University of Illinois. In an effort to determine if “we are doing them [students] a disservice by allowing them access to film, especially before they have had a chance to experience the literary text” (140). Diana divided her class into two groups; one group would watch the movie and then read the novel, and the other would read the novel and then watch the movie. Afterwards, students “took a comprehension quiz, wrote a 250-word essay, and filled out a questionnaire designed to ascertain which medium…engaged them more” (140). Reviewing the results of the questionnaires, Diana determined that “students who viewed the film followed the plot far more closely, had a deeper involvement with and readily differentiated between characters, and remembered a great amount of detail than did the readers” (141). Diana goes on to discuss why the students who watched the film first “yearn[ed] to expand upon the delight the movie induced” (145). Diana determined there were three reasons for students enjoyment of a story 180 years old and what they would have enjoyed about the story had they lived in the time period: “strong identification with characters, a longing to return to a simpler era, and a desire for love and romance” (145). Diana concludes noting that she believes this adaptation of Sense and Sensibility “provides a gateway to a positive reading experience” (147) and hopes it will encourage more students to pursue a study of Austen.
While I found Diana’s essay interesting, I believe she neglected to note students previous exposure to Austen novels or novels of the same period. Also, as an introductory course in English, there were probably many students who did not desire to study literature in any form and would thus have preferred the film. While Diana placed students who had previously seen the film into the group that watched the film first, she didn’t factor in the number of times they had seen the film into how well the film group remembered setting and plot details. Other than that, I found Diana’s conclusions interesting, but not particularly pertinent to our study of film adaptations of Austen’s work.
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02.04.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:39 pm by janeaustenfilm
Samuelian, Kristin Flieger. “‘Piracy Is Our Only Option’: Postfeminist Intervention in Sense and Sensibility.” pp. 148-58. Troost, Linda (ed. and introd.)Sayre Greenfield. Jane Austen in Hollywood. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1998. 202.
In her article, “Piracy Is Our Only Option: Postfeminist Intervention in Sense and Sensibility,” Kristen Flieger Samuelian argues that Emma Thompson’s film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is untrue to Jane Austen’s novel of the same name. This is because, as Samuelian writes, Thompson’s 1995 version “is more in line with postfeminism and effectively erases the implicit feminism of Austen’s novel” (Samuelian 148). Instead of keeping with Austen’s infamous implicit wit and satire on her contemporary social conditions, Thompson decides to explicitly reference late twentieth-century postfeminist social concerns which stress that women can be both married and autonomous simultaneously. The end result, according to Samuelian, is an artistic statement on women and their society entirely disparate from Austen’s.
Samuelian argues that Thompson explicitly references feminism in her adaptation by using dialogue; for example, Elinor tells Edward that she has no power in creating her future (Samuelian 148). In doing so, Thompson destroys the subtleness with which Austen stresses the powerlessness of women through plot. Samuelian writes that “Thompson injects what appears to be an explicit feminist rhetoric into the work of an author more often celebrated for the implicitness of her critiques of the customs and institutions that support patriarchy” (Samuelian 148).
Samuelian argues that Thompson does this overtly through Margaret’s character (who the 1981 BBC version omits) (Samuelian 149). In her tree-house to protest Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood coming to Norland, Margaret seems to innocently misunderstand social custom. In an effort to clarify to Margaret why they must leave Norland, Elinor tells Margaret that it is the law that their brother and his wife must take the house. However, according to Samuelian, Thompson is mistaken, as “custom is redefined as law” (Samuelian 156). In her most pivotal example in her argument against Thompson’s adaptation, Samuelian writes that
Explicit protest is most thoroughly articulated in the film through the youngest Dashwood sister, Margaret. Transformed by Thompson from a plot device to an integral character, Margaret serves both to voice reasonable dissent and to exhort unpalatable truths from the mouths of her more restrained and practical-minded elders…Elinor’s closing emphasis on “law” simplifies to the point of obliterating the complicated history of the disposition of the Norland estate given in the first two pages of Austen’s novel (Samuelian 149).
Furthermore, Thompson uses Margaret to make both Edward and Col. Brandon more attractive, as they easily play with the eleven-year-old.
Indeed, in his dialogue with Margaret in Thompson’s version, Edward ascertains that Margaret wishes to be a pirate, a vocation which both the modern audience and actors know is impossible. Samuelian argues that Thompson’s reference to piracy in the dialogue between Edward and Elinor in her adaptation is a way to explain to modern audiences that Edward is sympathetic to Elinor’s plight (Samuelian 150). Samuelian writes that “piracy—the appropriation and adaptation for profit of Austen’s courtship novel—is for Thompson a way of deflecting what is unanswerable in the eighteenth-century ideology the novel depicts” (Samuelian 150).
Instead, Samuelian explicitly interposes late 20th century postfeminism in Austen’s story. In Thompson’s version, Elinor marries a handsome Edward in a Pastoral setting. Samuelian argues that Thompson imbues in both Edward and Brandon the very characteristics which Austen portrays as dangerous in
Willoughby (Samuelian 152). In doing so, Thompson again destroys Austen’s implicit feminist critique of her contemporary society.
Because I read Samuelian’s article before I watched Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility for this project, I was very aware of the acute ways in which Thompson has appropriated Austen’s eighteenth-century narrative and transformed it into that of the twentieth-century. I am not sure if this is indeed a bad thing, as I think Samuelian argues. Thompson adapted Austen’s novel for a late twentieth-century audience—why is it so terrible that this adaptation should differ from the original eighteenth-century narrative? However, I do think that because Austen’s novel still appeals to modern audiences, implicitness and all, Thompson should have been more aware of what has drawn readers to the story for centuries.
I might use this article for my paper, as I am interested in studying how Austen’s novels are transformed in the age of film, and how modern political concerns are imbued in these films.
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