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Last week we asked readers to share: What’s your favorite Jane Austen-related adaptation? Or, if you prefer: What’s your least favorite? What film versions of the novels fill you with joy, or wonder, or ire? What TV shows or web series do you find compelling and true to Austen’s insights?
And: You all came through! We got several votes of enthusiasm for books like Amanda Grange’s novel Mr. Darcy’s Diary and Jo Baker’s novel Longbourn, movies like Austenland, TV shows like Lost in Austen, and web series like Jane Austen’s Fight Club (for the simple but important reason that, as Lynn Gray, of Harstene Island, Washington, explains, “it’s outrageously funny”).
We also got many, many votes for Clueless, Amy Heckerling’s 1995 adaptation of Emma. Which, as Cassie Myers of Stanford, California, explained, “captures the emotions and wit of the books, the actors are fantastic, and it reminds me why her stories are so universal.”
Or, as Tana, from Denver, put it in explaining her enthusiasm for the story of Cher Horowitz, Beverly Hills resident:
I’m not a Jane Austen fan at all—I found her novels tiring and the endless obsession with class and marriage boring (admittedly, this was as a teen. I haven’t yet revisited, and have a sneaking suspicion I’d find Pride and Prejudice tolerable today). All of that said, Clueless is fun! It was released when I was 10, and was bright and shiny enough to enthrall those of us not yet in the race for soulmates. Cher and Dionne’s “Whatever” (and Amber’s associated hand gesture) didn’t just pass through our vocabulary but entrenched itself. We wanted their closets and their cell phones.
As I got older, it’s retained that charm and added new layers, as we look back at the early careers of some of our current favorite actors. Jeremy Sisto is awful and perfect as Elton, and I can’t think of or hear The Cranberries without thinking of him. Paul Rudd is every guy you meet at a liberal arts college. Breckin Meyer!! And Brittany Murphy, beautiful, charming, hummingbird Brittany Murphy, whose Tai is so resonant and so funny that every time she’s on screen I’m laughing and crying—because she reminds me of what we lost when Murphy died. Donald Faison is luminescent. And Alicia Silverstone got Cher.
I remember the movie being marketed as the zany adventures of a ditzy blonde and her narcissistic rich LA friends—and it’s definitely that but it’s so much more. There is a wellspring of good laughs and good vibes—and some of the finest men collected in one place onscreen. Altogether, I think this is my favorite because it doesn’t feel like Austen—it isn’t taxing or laborious, but its moral and vision are strong.
We also get several votes for Sense and Sensibility, Ang Lee’s 1995 feature-film adaptation of the novel of the same name. Anvita Budhraja, of Mumbai, beautifully summed up its appeal:
Central to a lot of Austen novels is the fear of losing a home—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and even Persuasion to an extent, base their narratives on this fear. But it is only in Sense and Sensibility that this fear actually becomes a reality. While Elizabeth Bennet can joke about Mr Collins and Mrs Bennet can wail about the entail, Marianne, Elinor, and their mother actually go through it. The novel begins with a death (itself a rare occurrence in an Austen novel)—a death that realizes the specter of loss of home for the Dashwood women. In that way, Sense and Sensibility is a novel based on grief and loss. And Emma Thompson’s adaption brings that sorrow so beautifully and tangibly to the screen. From Marianne’s choice of piano songs, to Margaret’s indignant “It’s not my atlas anymore!” to the poignant scene where Elinor bids farewell to their servants—the movie makes the loss real in a way that other novels and adaptations of Austen’s never do.
One doesn’t think of Austen as a novelist who dwelt on loss—most of her novels are sparkling with wit and satire, and movie adaptions of them are fun and upbeat. But Emma Thompson’s adaptation is sorrowfully gentle. There are no acerbic comebacks from the likes of Lizzy Bennet, or no drama of blind misunderstanding from the likes of Emma Woodhouse. Even in the lightest of scenes like Edward Ferrars fencing with Margaret or Willoughby enjoying a picnic with the Dashwood women, there is a pervading sense of pain and distress. I love this adaptation for how gentle, how real, and how palpably sad it is. Finally, even as the denouement occurs with a marriage ceremony itself so staid and tender, we see Willoughby look at the celebrations from a distance, and even in this happiest of times, there is a pervading sense of loss and melancholy. For these additions to Austen’s superior novel, I love Emma Thompson’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.
There was also a contingent of readers sharing their love of the web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. That was in part because, as Yaneth Gonzalez, from Texas, put it, “It kept true to the story while being a modern retelling.” But as Rajul, from New Jersey, explained, it was also because the series celebrated the extent to which the classic work of literature could also be a lot of fun:
I watched the web series when I was about 14. At that point, I had attempted to read Pride and Prejudice before, in middle school, but found the language stuffy and difficult to read, and the story too slow to hold my interest. The web series, however, was wonderful. It made the important part of the novel, the story, accessible and fun. I understood the way the characters behaved and the way they spoke to each other, and fell in love with the story.
There were also, in all this, some controversies. The 2005 feature-film version of Pride and Prejudice was loved by some—for its romance, for its realism—and detested by others. (“So many reasons!” Adrienne, from Canada, explained of her distaste for the film. “Poor casting (Keira Knightley is too good-looking, Matthew Macfadyen is not good looking enough), awful dialogue, incorrect vocabulary, portraying Darcy as simply being misunderstood.”)
But the most controversial adaptation of all, according to our respondents, is that other Pride and Prejudice: the 1995 miniseries, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, that first aired on the BBC. “My favorite Jane Austen adaptation,” Cinthia, from Mexico, wrote, “is of course the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice miniseries. Nothing can top it.”
Ronnie R., from Plainsboro, New Jersey, pointed to one particular moment that makes the movie memorable:
There is a scene in which Mr. Collins (David Bamber) stands with Lizzie Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) and waves sycophantically to Charlotte Lucas (Lucy Scott). The manner in which Bamber waved in that moment, along with his voice and facial expression, encapsulates the lighthearted comedy of Jane Austen’s works.
So many adaptations focus on the serious, dramatic, romantic moments and miss the scenes of blithe, flippant, sometimes sardonic humor that Austen writes so well. The BBC miniseries does well with balancing the drama with the comedy and really conveying Austen’s voice.
But this Pride and Prejudice, too, was controversial. Here’s Mary, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida:
The only version of Pride and Prejudice worth watching is the early 1980s BBC production starring Elizabeth Garvie (THE Eliza Bennet) and David Rintoul. Mostly videotaped on simple sets, this film is by the most faithful to Austen’s novel. Unlike the abominable 1995 Andrew Davies extravaganza, the 1980s adaptation retains the subtlety of Austen’s satire as well as Austen’s brilliant language.
What makes the 1995 Andrew Davies film so awful is its utter lack of subtlety (Austen would have gleefully mocked its unsophisticated dialogue and acting), its shameless pandering to an audience that has never read a word of Jane Austen, and its elevation of spectacle over satire. This film helped the create the “Austenmania” that has had the perverse effect of dulling Jane Austen’s literary reputation rather than burnishing it.
Or, as Amy Patterson, from Chardon, Ohio, elaborated:
Andrew Davies took a clever satiric commentary on romance and turned it into a bosom-heaving Brontë-esque telenovela. By stripping away the satire he undid all of Austen’s cleverness. I won’t argue with the visuals (especially not with the Firth eye candy) but it falls flat when so much of the plot has been dumbed down and pre-chewed for an audience he underestimated. Also disturbed by the depictions of Mrs. Bennet as a shrieking panic machine and Mr. Collins as a slimy creep—both characterizations that have now become part of the modern Austen lexicon.
On the whole, though, there was a lot Austen love from readers: evidence of her stories and her insights and her words reaching out, across 200 years of history, to touch people’s lives in ways you might expect—and ways you might not. This was how Joel Emmett, of Utah, explained his enthusiasm for Clueless: “I know a 75-year-old cowboy/folk painter who says it’s his favorite film, and has watched it countless times. He watches rodeo and Clueless—nothing else.”
“The first rule of Fight Club is: One never mentions Fight Club. No corsets, no hat pins—and no crying.”
That’s Lizzie Bennet, dictating to her fellow fighters the rules that govern an improbable collective: Jane Austen’s Fight Club. The club, portrayed in a viral YouTube video first posted in 2012, features a collection of Jane Austen’s most notable heroines (Lizzie, Fanny, Emma, Elinor, Marianne) slapping each other, hitting each other, kicking each other, swinging off trees, flipping their way over well-manicured lawns, and in general acting like a bunch of punch-drunk characters in a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Except … lady characters. Feminist characters. Characters who, despite being boosted of breast and empired of waist, can totally fend for themselves. “You’re very clever, aren’t you?” an anonymous man asks Lizzie. “How’s that going for you, being clever?”
Lizzie smiles a knowing smile. “Splendidly,” she replies.
Jane Austen’s Fight Club is essentially, as HuffPostsummed it up after its launch, Pride and Prejudice and Punches. It is purposely absurd. It is also undeniably brilliant. It resonates—the original video currently has more than 1.5 million views on YouTube—in large part because it captures something essentially and enduringly true about the worlds Austen’s books portray with such sharp specificity: the belligerence that underscores all the daintiness. The eat-or-be-eaten quality of the early 19th-century marriage market. The Darwinian forces lurking within the most innocent meal, or country ball, or “turn about the room.” Women, in Austen’s novels, are often sisters and friends who truly love each other; they are also cruelly cast as each others’ competitors by a society that values women primarily for their willingness to become wives.
Jane Austen’s Fight Club translates that, cleverly, to a world that congratulates itself for having progressed beyond such reductive views. And it isn’t the only recent work to have done that. The video joined a teeming field of films and TV shows and writings and web videos, from the cheeky to the serious, that have sought to situate Austen’s stories and themes within the drawing rooms of contemporary life.
There was, in 1995, Clueless, which located the story of Emma within Beverly Hills’s Bronson Alcott High School. There was the short-lived TV show that followed it. There was, in 2001, Bridget Jones’s Diary, based on Helen Fielding’s newspaper column, which adapted the themes of Pride and Prejudice to the dating culture of early 21st-century England. There was, in 2004, Bride and Prejudice, a Bollywood-inflected take on the Austen novel’s marriage plot. There was The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the Emmy-winning, multi-platform series that imagined Pride and Prejudice’s heroine as a grad student—still living at home, still prone to romantic (mis)adventures. There was Austenland, Keri Russell’s 2013 comedy about the misadventures of a woman who spends her vacation at a Pride and Prejudice-themed fantasy camp. There was 2016’s Eligible, the novelist Curtis Sittenfeld’s “modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice.” And there was also, in 2016, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which offered a feature-film take on some of the themes Jane Austen’s Fight Club had explored: fighting, feminism, the hermetically sealed universe of life in Regency England.
Those have come, of course, in addition to the many straight-ahead adaptations of Austen that have sprung up in recent years: multiple versions of Pride and Prejudice, Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, and the recent Love and Friendship, based on the novella Lady Susan.
With all those—and many others—in mind, we’d love to know: What are your favorite Austen adaptations? You could make a very good case, I think, that Gossip Girl, with its Edith Whartonian antecedents, could also be read, given its omniscient narrator, its stifling setting, and its obsession with class, as a very loose Austen spinoff. Or you could stan for 2007’s Becoming Jane, the gauzy Austen biopic starring Anne Hathaway. Or for Death Comes to Pemberley—the novel or the miniseries. Or for one of the many musical productions—Pride and Prejudice, Austen’s Pride, Austen—that have been performed in recent years. Or for 1914’s Old Friends and New Fancies: An Imaginary Sequel to the Novels of Jane Austen, which found the author Sybil G. Brinton writing fan fiction before that genre had a name.
Or you could, of course, argue for the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, the miniseries that introduced Austen to a new generation of fans, and that, via a brooding dive into a murky pond, catapulted Colin Firth to his current fame.
Whatever your favorite, we’d love to hear about it. (Or, for that matter, if there’s an Austen adaptation that especially rubs you the wrong way, we’d love to hear about that, as well!) We’ll be talking more about revisions of Austen as part of our celebration of her life and legacy next week, and, as part of that, we’re looking for your nominations. In this form, please share some of your favorite/least favorite tributes to Austen. We’ll discuss them in more detail in an upcoming thread.
