Purists unite!

[anghraine]

[reposted from wordpress]

I was just reading some reviews of Patricia Rozema’s version of Mansfield Park and, of course, must vent.

I love the novel Mansfield Park — it’s my favourite Jane Austen novel after Pride and Prejudice, and I admire it more.  So when I finally laid my hands on a copy of the adaptation, I was rather looking forward to a decentish version.

 

The operative word here is adaptation.  An adaptation is not about “the spirit of Jane Austen.”  Who is to say what the spirit of Jane Austen is?  There’s no consensus on whether she was a subversive liberal or essentially conservative.  (Is it so impossible that she might have been liberal on some points, and conservative on others?)  There’s not much consensus on anything.  (Ask any Jane Austen scholar what Elizabeth’s marriage to Darcy represents.  Maybe she’s caving into the establishment, or looking for a more effective father-figure, or being given a custom-tailored reward for her sheer wonderfulness, or, heaven forbid, maybe she just loves and respects him.  What a reason to get married!)  That’s frankly just placating babble.  I suppose you could say that the spirit of Lord of the Rings is that power is bad and corrupts everybody except Aragorn, in which case the movies got it just right.

In my considered opinion, an adaptation ought to leave the characters intact.  My logic goes something like this.

A character behaves in a certain way, in a certain circumstance; without altering the circumstance, the behaviour cannot be fundamentally changed without fundamentally changing the character.

Consider the following events, from the 1995 mini-series of Pride and Prejudice.

Five years before the story opens, George Wickham enters a study, and receives a cheque from Fitzwilliam Darcy – then a very unconvincing twenty-two or twenty-three (Colin Firth was 35ish at the time) – who has just inherited the Pemberley estates and fortune.

He walks out, and flirts with a pretty blonde girl, who we soon discover is Georgiana, Darcy’s kid sister.  Several years later – the summer before Darcy and Elizabeth meet in Meryton – he convinces this girl to elope with him.  She is then fifteen years old.  She must have been ten years old when Wickham began making his first moves on her.

Eww.

Changing the course of Wickham’s courtship of Georgiana (which, however contemptible it is, at least takes place by the time she is legally old enough to be married) substantially alters the characterisation of Wickham.  He’s no longer a petty villain, lazy, not especially clever, and weak; he’s a pedophile.

But it could be argued as a valid interpretation.  After all, we don’t know that Wickham isn’t a pedophile, and he’s nasty enough in general.  Why not?

Let’s jump to another adaption of Pride and Prejudice, this one the 1940 film version.

At the end, we discover that Darcy’s controlling aunt, Lady Catherine de Borg Bourgh, wants him to marry Elizabeth — he needs a woman who can stand up to him.

The mind boggles.  In the novel, we are repeatedly told (including several times by Lady Catherine herself) that Lady Catherine expects Darcy to marry her daughter, Anne.  She is outraged at the suggestion that he might marry elsewhere at all, but particularly to a Miss Bennet.  The weight of the confrontation between Elizabeth and Lady Catherine has taken on epic proportions; by hindsight, it can be (and, alas, has been) described as the clash between the declining nobility and rising bourgeoisie, the barely-acceptable marriage between Elizabeth and Darcy symbolising a compromise between the values of the old aristocracy and the vitality of the new.  Frankly I find the concept rather cloying and overbearing, but I am the sort of person who is always at a loss for words when asked what Jane Austen’s novels are “about.”  But regardless, it is tremendously important that Lady Catherine is myopic, overbearing, and manages to embarrass her proud and clever nephew on her own ground.

Having said that much, back to Mansfield Park.

The supporters said, in effect, ‘don’t listen to the anal-retentive purists who are wailing because it doesn’t slavishly follow the book.’

Drop ’slavishly’ and I think the complaint would be pretty accurate.

Do we know that the Bertrams’ wealth comes from plantations?

No.

Do we know what Fanny said about the slave trade - or why Sir Thomas wished she would keep on saying it?

No.

Did Fanny ever accept Henry Crawford?

No.

Was Lady Bertram on opium?

No.

Was — *sob* — Sir Thomas an Evil Imperialist (TM) who raped his slaves?

No, no, no, and no!

Let’s see… did Fanny write?  Did Fanny happen across Crawford and Maria?  Was Tom deeply disturbed over the source of his family’s income?  Did Fanny’s brother mysteriously die?

No.

And then people were actually insisting that not only did it stay true to the Spirit of Austen, but that it was actually better than the novel because, don’t you know, Fanny was such a drip.

I watch the Pride and Prejudice mini-series and cringe at the smouldering Darcy.  When he says, ‘And yours is wilfully to misunderstand them’ I expect him to smile, not to snap.  ‘He said with a smile’ — that is not open to interpretation.  He should be smiling in his portrait, too.  (I feel like a dictator — smile, cretin, or else!)

I watch Sense and Sensibility and mourn the Elinor/Willoughby scene.  I think it’s hugely important, not just to expose the plot, but for the characterisation of Willoughby — and Elinor.

But somehow, I don’t think I’ll be complaining about either for a long time.  Fanny ought to be an honorary member of the club for Bowdlerised and Marginalised Elves & Co.

ETA:  Anybody who says, ‘Don’t be so nitpicky, slavery and adultery were realities of the time and she just couldn’t write about them’ ought to have their ears boxed. She wrote about Admiral Crawford taking his mistress into his home and forcing his dependent niece out.  She wrote about Wickham and Lydia, Mr Elliot and Mrs Clay, the two Elizas.  She did not, in fact, write about slavery as the source of her affluent men’s incomes because, just maybe, possibly, it wasn’t.