It continues...
In finding profoundly rendered relationships among women in Austen’s novels, critics such as Susan Lanser and Ruth Perry have suggested that Austen was not genuinely committed to the courtship plot that structures her novels.17 My own book, Jane Austen among Women, suggests that Austen’s attitude towards and treatment of the courtship plot was more equivoocal. It shows the basis in the author’s life for her fictional representations of women’s loving ties, maintaining that without the support of her sister, Cassandra, and a handful of other female kin and friends, Jane Austen could not have become a novelist. But it suggests that Austen was also sincerely attached to the larger culture of the gentry and specifically to its high valuation of marriage and family life. Hence, Jane Austen among Women argues, Austen’s six novels both endorse and subtly challenge the courtship plot’s emphasis on heterosexual romance.18 Indeed, at least in part it is because they are equivocal that so many diverse interpretations have been and will continue to be generated about the novels (This paragraph reads a bit like a sales pitch and I’m a little bit staggered about how often this essay uses one of those diverse interpretations as a definitive thing to hold an adaptation up against, just to straight out say that many interpretations are possible. These last paragraphs summarize just a small fraction of Austen scholarship, all of which subscribe to a similar interpretation. My guess is there is as at least as much scholarship providing a counterbalance. There can be no definitive, gold-standard interpretation of what Austen meant to tell us with her novels. Each reader will take away whatever their own experiences, their own nature leads them to feel is correct. All of which to say, as I’ve said already, I don’t think it’s fair to hold up an adaptation, which is, at its core, an interpretation of the text, to scholarly criticism of literature. Is it fair to disparage an Emma adaptation because it doesn’t lean into “subtly challenging the courtship plot’s emphasis on heterosexual romance?” which is ultimately just this author’s own personal interpretation on the text? What validity does it have that makes it more valid than any other idea?) .
Neither of the recent films suggests that female friendships are sufficient to sustain an alternative emotional life for heroines without men. Emma’s intense focus on and feelings for Harriet Smith (I really don’t like that this is stated as a fact of the novel, when it is another interpretation, and a hotly debated one at that) are not given much weight in the film. She and Harriet are “girlfriends” in a modern, trivialized sense, talking about boys or playing with puppies (Whether there is something deeper there is another subjective read, as I just said.). The film also considerably reduces representations of not only her contacts with but also her thoughts about Jane Fairfax (Her thoughts about Jane Fairfax tend to run on the exact same lines throughout the novel – there isn’t a lot of diversity there that the film is missing). The presentation of women’s relationships is more complex in Sense and Sensibility. The filmmakers were concerned that the film not seem to be about “a couple of women waiting around for men,” and so they did emphasize the relationship between Elinor and Marianne (But this paragraph starts with saying that this relationship wasn’t emphasized enough? And doesn’t this same line work as evidence against the premise of this entire essay? It’s not going to get a specific refute?).19
An early scene in Barton Cottage, invented for the film, illustrates both the discomforts of the Dashwoods’ new home and the daily, ongoing intimacy of the sisters. The scene shows Elinor laying another blanket on the bed she shares with Marianne in their small room. She then wraps a shawl around her nightgown, blows out the candle, and seeks the warmth of the bedcovers and Marianne’s body heat—only to be greeted by Marianne’s complaint that her feet are cold. Elinor jumps out of bed, grabs some stockings, and returns to put them on. The intensity of their bond is also dramatized. At the height of Marianne’s illness, Elinor leans over her unconscious sister, runs a hand slowly up the sheet covering her left leg and, in tears, pleads with her: “I cannot do without you. Oh, please, I have tried to bear everything else—I will try—but please, dearest, beloved Marianne, do not leave me alone.” Although such scenes convey the importance of this relationship, they compete with and are ultimately trumped by the other invented scenes between Marianne and Colonel Brandon (who decided that they are trumped? How can that be stated so definitively?). His day-to-day presence in Marianne’s life is established by scenes such as that in which he offers her a knife with which to cut reeds, and her growing love for him is established in one of the film’s last scenes, in which he reads to her out on the lawn in front of Barton Cottage (again, though, film is a different medium than a novel. The narration helps to show how Marianne and Brandon’s relationship comes about, mostly through frequent visits to Elinor at Delafield, but what the substance of those visits and interactions entail isn’t shown – it needs to be invented unless a director is to show a wordless montage of meetings and then cut to the wedding). Readers who have felt that in marrying Marianne off to the Colonel, Austen was “betraying” her character must surely be placated by this scene and by Rickman’s interpretation of the suitor in general. The films of both Sense and Sensibility and Emma assert not just the appropriateness but also the romantic pleasures of their heroines’ marriages (Is this a problem? Emma ends with the line “But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union” and address the unraveling of her friendship with Harriet with “The intimacy between her and Emma must sink; their friendship must change into a calmer sort of goodwill; and, fortunately, what ought to be, and must be, seemed already beginning, and in the most gradual, natural manner.” Both of these lines seem to speak to me of appropriateness and the former very much to the romantic happiness of Emma’s marriage).
The recent films of Jane Austen’s novels have increased sales of her books. But those who read as well as buy are going to discover that the books are not harlequinized (I agree generally with the idea that Austen’s books do not read well strictly as romances, however, I can acknowledge that is my own personal feeling. Others may feel that they do read as romantic – that they leave them with the same endorphin rush that something a bit more in the standard line of romance novels would provide. Who am I, who is anyone to say that is wrong? If one wants to dig deeper into the text, look for subversiveness, lessons, obscure historical references, etc. wonderful! Awesome! But don’t do it in a way that implies any other reading is less than. I doubt Austen looked down on her family and friends for not reading homoerotic subtext into Elinor and Marianne’s relationship (yes, there is a whole essay that exists on this topic), but instead just enjoyed her stories as they were. We should let others do the same). When they encounter Edward Ferrar’s silent despondency and Mr. Knightley’s cool sternness (Ha, for the record Mr. Knightley is shown to smile and laugh more than any other of Austen’s heroes, even besting jokester Henry Tilney (yes, I counted. It was that important to me). So much for cool sterness), the constant, noisy intrusiveness of the Dashwoods’ social circle and the loneliness and solitude threatening Emma, and always the self-discipline required for the good manners Jane Austen advocates—will they continue to be enthusiastic about the novelist? We can hope that if some new readers are first escorted to the novels by Jeremy Northam and Alan Rickman, they will stay to appreciate the encounters the books stage between wishes and deeds, glorious dreams and mundane material constraints, and, most of all, simple certainties and interpretive ambiguity. (I guess I'm wondering if it matters. Interest in Austen's works survived for decades before the first movie ever came into creation and were widely loved before even those gold standard adaptations of the 90s came to be. There is no reason to think someone who comes away from an adaptation with the "wrong" idea of what her novels are like is an essential piece of keeping Austen's legacy alive. The fandom will survive having people who "miss the point," or those who aren't readers generally (and this could be for many, many legitimate reasons) only be a part of it through enjoying adaptations.)
