Austen's Novel Mansfield Park example essay topic

There have been many adaptations of Jane Austen's books over the years; all six of her novels have been made into films or television dramas with varying degrees of success, from the classics of Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, to the funny modern version of Emma in the form of Clueless. In this paper I want to show how director Patricia Rozema has made Austen's novel Mansfield Park much more modern, accessible, and, as some claim, radical, by skipping parts of the story that would make the film version drag, and importing events and dialogue that have significance into scenes, often created by Rozema, that are more appealing. There is always controversy whether a Jane Austen masterpiece can be adequately conveyed through the medium of film. It has been said that 'seeing a movie or television adaptation of any of Jane Austen's works is like hearing a symphony of Mozart played on a harmonica' which suggests that the adaptations are cheapened by the filmmakers and sometimes wildly misinterpreted. Andrew Wright says that many adaptations of Austen's work are made to 'entice the demi-literate or those of presumably short attention span. ' This is the criticism that faced director Patricia Rozema with her film version of Mansfield Park, which states the very start that the film is only loosely based on the film, but also draws inspiration from the early journals and letters of Jane Austen.

There are two schools of thought on the adaptation of Jane Austen's novels, whether they are beneficial or not. It is clear that Rozema's version of the film makes it more accessible to viewers. M. Casey Diana has experimented on Austen adaptations with her class group:'s he divided her students into two groups; one read Sense and Sensibility first and then saw the Thompson / Lee film, the other saw the movie first and then read the book... the first group had a hard time comprehending (never mind responding on any deeply imaginative level to it), and both groups used the movie as a 'gateway' into the book or an explanation afterwards. The film version certainly gives us a more vivid view of the story, especially in scenes set in Fanny's Portsmouth home, where we can see the squalor you end up in when you marry for love. The film is also more poignant on the issues of slavery and abuse of human rights.

I am referring to the wailing Fanny hears coming from the slave ship, and the sketchbook that she finds with pictures of the slaves that her uncle has in Antigua. I will go into that in more detail later in this paper. There is some debate whether the film should be called 'Patricia Rozema Mansfield Park', as opposed to Jane Austen's, as Derek Elley points out in his review of the film. He claims Rozema:' reinterprets the central character, Fanny Price, as a cross between Austen herself and a tomboyish proto-feminist, throws in some magical realism and gratuitous lesbian frissons to spice up the pot, and too often steps out of its era to adopt a knowing, politically correct, late-20th-century attitude to the society portrayed...

' Though all of her books deal with social matters, manners, and small family communities, Mansfield Park is arguably one of Jane Austen's duller novels, lacking a truly lovable heroine and breezing over issues that, had she gone into more detail, would have made the book a lot more controversial and readable for 21st century readers. Rozema has been very liberal with the changes in her film, transforming Fanny from a doormat of a woman who irritates many readers with her timid and pious ways into a spirited young woman whom David Bezanson describes in his review of the film as a 'sassy, '90's, politically-aware attitude girl who shows up the fatuousness of most of the other characters'. Henry Crawford, and the Bertram sisters also get slightly reinvented, portrayed in the film as more endearing (the scenes in which he visits Fanny in Portsmouth) and dim respectively. One very obvious aspect that makes the film more radical is the presence of far more sexuality than I think Austen would be comfortable with. Mansfield Park is one of Austen's more sexually aware novels, however it is very subtle. Our attention is drawn to " the dramatic, nearly Freudian symbolism of the scene where Maria squeezes around the gate at Southerton and the scene where Fanny puts the amber cross pendant her brother has given her on a chain.

Mrs. Price's excessive child-bearing and Maria's dalliances also suggest sexuality rather directly for a novel written in the 1810s' Rozema inserts a near-lesbian scene between the na " ive Fanny with the sexually predatory Mary Crawford with Edmund watching on, not quite sure what to do. Mary does this to ensure that Edmund will act opposite her in the play, and it is a far more drastic way than Austen had intended-in the novel Edmund takes over because Mary is uncomfortable playing opposite a neighbour she does not know well. Also added in is the scene where Fanny stumbles in on Henry and Maria 'consummating their affair'. This is not in the novel, instead Fanny reads in the paper that a "Mr. C" and a "Mrs. R" have run off together. However using the reasoning that 'Sex Sells' and in the interest of entertainment, Rozema inserts a gratuitous sex scene between the two. In her novel Austen makes it clear that the play that is being rehearsed is immoral, and this is further reinforced in the film where we see Henry and Maria getting rather close in a darkened corner.

Rozema's embellishments added some badly needed spice to what is in effect a rather dull story, and perhaps it makes the story more real for viewers, when it is not described in such polite Victorian terms. David Bezanson criticizes Rozema's daring when he reviews the film. He says 'It was supposed to be 1806, but Mansfield Park the movie has a little too much 1999 in it -- - na " ive social criticism, bathos, and vulgarity. ' Another addition of Rozema's is the subtle hint that Fanny father is not all he seems when it comes to the treatment of his daughters. I may be wrong, but after viewing the scene when Fanny returns home to Portsmouth, there is a look exchanged between Fanny and her younger sister Suzy when their father says it will be good to have another girl in the house. There is no such issue raised in the novel, which suggests that Rozema is introducing more modern concerns into her Victorian film.

Another concern that Rozema introduces is the question of slavery. Austen shows some political awareness in the novel by mentioning the slave trade. Austen is rarely political in her novels but she must have felt strongly about the abolitionist movement if she was to mention in her novel, however subtly. The novel is set several years after the abolition of slavery in Britain, but as Austen shows by placing Sir Thomas's holding in Antigua, the slave trade wasn't abolished in the Caribbean until the 1830's. Her characters never engage in any kind of heated debate in the novel, though Fanny does ask a question about the slaves on Sir Thomas's return, but as usual Austen's characters deal with the subject in a very passive way.

The questions raised are:' merely parlor conversation and are never hostile, [however] they do remind the reader that it is slave labor that enables the Bertrams' lavish lifestyle. Austen shows an unusual (for her) awareness of current events in her references to these issues, and many have suggested that this book contains a submerged critique of slavery and the economic exploitation of the colonies by the British upper classes. In the film, Rozema feels that the issue needs to be addressed and gives us some shocking visuals in the form of Tom's sketchbook, of depictions of the goings-on in Antigua, which included gang rape, mutilation, lynching, and whippings of the slaves. In the film Fanny 'is transmogrified into a budding abolitionist and feminist, drawing parallels between forcing women to marry for money and the enslavement of Africans.

' The novel shows us that Fanny can emphasise with the slaves, not with regard to the physical tortures they suffered, but with regard to the fact that she can, in effect, be 'sold on' by Sir Thomas to a suitable husband. This is a theme also explored by Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre, when she compares being a governess to being a slave, so it can be regarded as a typically Victorian concern. It is interesting to note that when Sir Thomas speaks of his slaves he mentions that many of them are mulattoes (a person with one white parent and one black parent, often the result of the rape of slave women by white overlords like Sir Thomas), and that the women are well-shaped and well-featured. In the film, Fanny shocks her family by asking a daring question about whether a slave brought to England by Sir Thomas would have to be freed on their arrival.

'One element of Rozema's adaptation that is superior to some of the other adaptations is the dark undercurrent flowing through the film. The Bertram wealth is derived from profits off the slave trade. Sir Thomas and his family think nothing of it, while Fanny abhors the idea. She is visibly shocked when she discovers she is living off those profits' The radical visual and aural effects of Fanny seeing the horrific pictures and hearing the 'darkies' wailing from the cargo ship have a much more lasting effect on the readers consciousness than in the book, where it is no more than a subtle reference. Comedy is obviously valued more in the film than in the book, where characters like Rushworth, Lady Bertram, and Aunt Norris provide light relief in a way that is not terribly apparent in the novel. It is easy to conclude that the film is far more radical than the text, but perhaps that is to be expected.

Society has completely changed since the early 19th century, and perhaps the inclusion of the affair between Maria and Henry Crawford and mention of the abolitionist movement was considered radical for some Victorians tastes. However one has to wonder, would Patricia Rozema's film be considered radical had it not included a sex scene and hints of lesbianism... [Heard on Swedish television's Nattcaf'e, late June '96] Jane Austen's novels: BBC and other Film / Video adaptations web 01 May 2005 Wright, Andrew Jane Austen Adapted Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 30, No. 3, Jane Austen 1775-1975. (Dec., 1975), pp. 421-453. Stable URL: web's 'Emma Thompson's Sense and Sensibility as Gateway to Austen's Novel: A Pedagogical Experiment,' web April 2005 Elley, Derek web review&reviewed = VE 1117752061&cs = 1 Posted: Mon., Aug. 30, 1999, 01 May 2005 Bezanson, David 05/05/04 web 02 May 2005 Martin, Melissa.

Spark Note on Mansfield Park. 2 May. 2005. Bezanson, David 05/05/04 web 02 May 2005 Martin, Melissa. 2 May. 2005.

Romero, C. Antonio Culturekiosque movie reviews NEW YORK, 31 December 1999 - web park. html 01 May 2005.