Jane Austen

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Lore & Background

Jane Austen entered popular culture early in the nineteenth century. The first illustrated editions of her novels appeared in 1833, introducing her characters to a broader visual audience. Stage dramatizations followed in the late Victorian period, beginning in 1895, when Austen's novels were adapted for theatrical performance with increasing frequency. The early twentieth century saw her work enter still newer media: professional theatre adaptations appeared from 1901 onward, while the first television version of a Jane Austen story was broadcast in 1938 by the BBC. Film adaptations emerged soon after, most notably the 1940 Hollywood production of Pride and Prejudice, which helped introduce Austen to international cinema audiences. By the 1980s, Austen's reputation underwent a significant critical reassessment. While she had often been viewed primarily as a writer concerned with manners, marriage, and morality, scholars increasingly recognised her as a perceptive critic of class, gender, and social hierarchy in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This shift in scholarly understanding helped fuel a renewed wave of adaptations at the end of the twentieth century. One of the most notable modern retellings is Clueless (1995), Amy Heckerling's contemporary adaptation of Emma, set in modern-day Beverly Hills. The film became a cultural phenomenon, leading to the creation of a television series and establishing a template for later modernisations.

Reader's Guide

Issues in film adaptations of Austen's work have been widely discussed by scholars. In 2005, British scholar Robert Irvine wrote that filmmakers eschewed Austen's narrator, rendering a true adaptation impossible. Austen's use of free indirect discourse, where the thoughts of the characters were summarized by the narrator, was generally not followed in the films. Many Austen scholars dislike Ang Lee's 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility because the absence of a narrator 'glorifies the romantic conventions that Austen deflates'. Conversely, many Austen scholars approve of Clueless, as the character of Cher Horowitz narrates several scenes, seen as the closest approximation of Austen's style in cinema. Irvine commented that because cinema and literature are different media, the best way of resolving this problem is for filmmakers to concentrate on the visuality of film. A recurring image in Austen films is that of women gazing through a window to the outside world, or walking in the countryside. Critic Julianne Pidduck argued the former symbolizes repression and a woman's lot in Regency England, while the latter symbolizes freedom. Critic Mary Favret praised Roger Mitchell's 1995 adaptation of Persuasion for using a wandering camera to capture Anne Elliot's unexpressed romantic-sexual feelings even when Anne remained still and silent. Irvine noted that film adaptations often use the physicality of actors to show sexual desires that Austen only hinted at, calling a 'particularly notorious' example the scene from Andrew Davies' 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice where Mr. Darcy (Colin Firth) dives into a pond and emerges with wet clothes clinging to his body before a clearly interested Miss Bennet (Jennifer Ehle). The emphasis on physicality has divided critics: Rebecca Dickson complained that 'strong and self-sufficient Elinor' of Sense and Sensibility became 'a girl woman with unexpressed emotions who must learn to demonstrate them' in the Ang Lee film, while Penny Gay praised the film for portraying 'the characters' experiences as bodies'. Cheryl Nixon defended Darcy's plunge as necessary to show the viewer that he was capable of depths of emotional and physical passion that the novel only implied. Another issue concerns gender and feminism. Some critics, such as Devoney Looser, have argued that by portraying strong women and emphasising sisterhood, Austen films become feminist films. Other critics such as Kristen Samuelian and Shannon Wooden have argued that Austen films are 'post-feminist' films. Wooden also argued that Clueless, Sense and Sensibility, and Persuasion all use food imagery where fasting is a form of female protest, but in contrast to the books they 'juxtapose food with representations or discussions of physical beauty, making a very late twentieth-century connection between not eating and feminine social and sexual success'. Critics like Martine Vioret have noted Austen films tended 'to cater to female desires and to the female gaze' by their focus on the bodies of actors dressed in close-fitting breeches. Irvine described the Austen films as a fantasy for women, with Mr. Darcy displaying an 'absolute and unconditioned male need for a woman'. Another issue is the relation to English and British national identity. In Britain, the Austen films are seen as part of the 'heritage industry'. Irvine observed that the buildings selected for preservation tended to be estates, castles and manor houses associated with the elite. Prior to 1995, television adaptations tended to be produced cheaply, but the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice was an expensive production filmed on location in the English countryside with Lyme Park playing Pemberly that was a great ratings success, setting the benchmark for subsequent productions. Afterwards, it became more common for Austen films to be visually sumptuous, expensive productions while the National Trust billed Lyme Park as the centrepiece of the 'Pemberley Trail' for Janeites.

Did You Know?

• The first illustrated editions of Jane Austen's novels appeared in 1833.
• The first television version of a Jane Austen story was broadcast in 1938 by the BBC.
• The 1940 Hollywood production of Pride and Prejudice helped introduce Austen to international cinema audiences.
• Clueless (1995), Amy Heckerling's contemporary adaptation of Emma set in Beverly Hills, became a cultural phenomenon and led to a television series.
• The National Trust billed Lyme Park as the centrepiece of the 'Pemberley Trail' for Janeites after the 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation.