Table Of ContentIrony and Idyll
COSTERUS NEW SERIES 203
Series Editors:
C.C. Barfoot, László Sándor Chardonnens
and Theo D’haen
Irony and Idyll
Jane Austenʼs Pride and Prejudice and
Mansfield Park on Screen
Marie N. Sørbø
Amsterdam-New York, NY 2014
Cover image: Pride and Prejudice 1995 production shot; courtesy of BBC
Photo Library.
Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
“ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for
documents - Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3846-2
E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1089-8
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014
Printed in the Netherlands
CONTENTS
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Responses to Austen’s Novels 1
PART I: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
Chapter One
The Novel: Austen’s Ironic Voice 15
Chapter Two
The Novel: Courtship Couched in Irony 47
Chapter Three
The 1940 Film: Old England Invoked 79
Chapter Four
The 1980 Miniseries: Faithful to the Feminist Perspective? 103
Chapter Five
The 1995 Miniseries: Faithful to the Female Audience 129
Chapter Six
The 2005 Film: Everybody Loves the Bennet Family 165
PART II: MANSFIELD PARK
Chapter Seven
The Novel: Class and Patriarchy Undermined 199
Chapter Eight
The Novel: Marriage as a Game of Speculation 231
Chapter Nine
The 1983 Miniseries: The Beauty of Tradition 265
Chapter Ten
The 1999 Film: Aiming for Austen’s Voice 295
Chapter Eleven
The 1999 Film: The Targets of Irony – Racism,
Sexism and Class 317
Chapter Twelve
The 2007 TV Film: “Some Much Needed Sizzle” 347
Conclusion
The Voice of Irony and the Urge for Idyll 367
Filmography 381
Bibliography 385
Index 395
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page 77: The theatre programme for a London production of Helen
Jerome’s 1935 play (All Over Press).
Page 78: A 1940 cinema poster illustrates the connection between
novel and film (MPTV Images).
Page 100: A dance scene from the 1940 Pride and Prejudice (All
Over Press).
Page 101: Shopping in Meryton; from the opening scenes of the 1940
Pride and Prejudice (All Over Press).
Page 102: Elizabeth reading Darcy’s letter in the 1980 Pride and
Prejudice (BBC Photo Library).
Page 127: Elizabeth Garvie as Elizabeth Bennet and David Rintoul as
Mr Darcy in the 1980 Pride and Prejudice (BBC Photo Library).
Page 128: Benjamin Whitrow as Mr Bennet in the 1995 Pride and
Prejudice (BBC Photo Library).
Page 163: The surprise meeting at Pemberley; Jennifer Ehle as
Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr Darcy (BBC Photo Library).
Page 164: The 2005 version of the Bennet women (All Over Press).
Page 263: The lady of leisure with pug: Angela Pleasance as Lady
Bertram in the 1983 Mansfield Park (BBC Photo Library).
Page 264: Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny Price and Nicholas Farrell as
Edmund Bertram in the final scene of the 1983 Mansfield Park (BBC
Photo Library).
Page 294: Fanny Price (Frances O’Connor) gazes at us in the 1999
Mansfield Park (All Over Press).
Page 316: Harold Pinter’s stern version of Sir Thomas bullies Fanny
Price (Frances O’Connor) in the 1999 Mansfield Park (All Over
Press).
Page 345: Proposal by water in the 1999 Mansfield Park (All Over
Press).
Page 346: The 2007 Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram, embodied by
Billie Piper and Blake Ritson (All Over Press).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
“It is impossible, indeed, to write a book on Jane Austen: you must
not write treatises on miniatures” an 1890 reviewer stated,1 an opinion
not at all shared by scholars in the century and more that followed,
who have produced hundreds of books between them. Nor were they
discouraged by Henry Austen’s assumption in 1817, in the very first
piece written about her, that there is not much to say about Jane
Austen: “Short and easy will be the task of the mere biographer.”2 The
present day academic and popular Austen industry presents a striking
historical irony, which the author must have appreciated could she
have witnessed it.
My own contribution to the pile originated as a doctoral thesis
completed in 2008.3 The present book is a condensed version, with an
entirely new and much shorter Introduction, some parts heavily
revised and all updated.
I would like to thank my colleagues in the English department at
Volda University College, Norway, for their friendliness and support.
I am still very much indebted to Professor Jakob Lothe at The
University of Oslo for his encouraging feedback during the original
project period. The comments of Professor Emeritus Bjørn Tysdahl
and Professor Juan Christian Pellicer of The University of Oslo, Dr
Gillian Dow of the University of Southampton, and Dr Anthony
Mandal of Cardiff University proved invaluable; as did the
thoroughness and keen eye of my editor at Rodopi, Dr Cedric Barfoot.
I am not least grateful to my husband and children for their patience.
1 Quoted in Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage, 1870-1940, ed. B.C. Southam,
London and New York, 1987, II, 193.
2 Henry Austen, “Biographical Notice of the Author (1818)”, in A Memoir of Jane
Austen and Other Family Recollections, ed. Kathryn Sutherland, Oxford, 2002, 137.
3 Marie Nedregotten Sørbø, Jane Austen’s Irony as Received in Film Adaptations,
Acta Humaniora no. 377, Oslo: Unipub, 2008.
INTRODUCTION
RESPONSES TO AUSTEN’S NOVELS
Today people tend to be rather enthusiastic about Jane Austen, if they
care about her at all. I often get responses like: “Oh, I love Jane
Austen, she is wonderful, I’ve just watched Pride and Prejudice
again, for the fifth time.” This does not necessarily mean that they
have not read her, although some admit to just planning to read her.
This is one of the benefits of the films: luring new readers into a two-
hundred-year-old authorship. Many of these eager lovers of Austen
are eager readers as well as viewers, but nevertheless the films tend to
come first to mind when her name is mentioned.
The films have become a palimpsest: a text that is superimposed on
an older one. They overwrite the old story on the same piece of
parchment, so that the original is just barely discernible in between the
lines or perhaps crossing them. (Sometimes the film intends to turn the
story on its head; sometimes it tries to follow it line by line.) For all of
her novels there is more than one such over-text (we could call it), or
hypertext (others have called it1), for some of them there are four or
six versions, one on top of the other. And I quite agree with those who
suggest that this is a fascinating study: how do these texts relate to
each other and to the story first inscribed on the parchment by Austen?
I am particularly interested in seeing how that familiar trademark
of her writing: her ironic narrative tone is received by the film-makers.
And closely related to this: how the targets of her subtle ironic attacks
are treated in films, are they also ironized on the screen? For instance,
these targets may include mothers and fathers: do the films criticize or
1 Genette borrows the image of the palimpsest when summing up his theory of
intertextuality, hypertext being one of his subcategories (Gérard Genette, Palimpsests:
Literature in the Second Degree, Lincoln, NB, and London, 1997, 398-99). Robert
Stam found the idea of the hypertext useful for film’s relationship to novel (Robert
Stam and Alessandra Raengo, Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and
Practice of Film Adaptation, Oxford, 2005, 27-31).
