Save us from the Austen romantic comedy. Give me the dark side of 19th century life any day | Rhiannon Lucy Coslett
nNews that Andrew Davies – the man behind The nation’s beloved Pride and Prejudice Adaptation – Plots Emma Jane Austen’s death in childbirth It sparked gasps from the crowd At the Cliveden Literary Festival last weekend. Davies plans to explore the dark undercurrents of Austen’s work in adaptations of Emma and Mansfield Park and the unfinished novel The Watsons, and while his ideas may shock those fans clinging to Austen as an author of romantic comedies, I couldn’t be happier.
I’ve always loved historical dramas, especially literary adaptations of them. But a few years ago, Austin fatigue hit me. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen at least three Emmas and three Pride and Prejudice, and I’ve read each of their novels at least three times. There are so many other stories in the world, so many waiting to be discovered and modified. Unless there was some new spin or interpretation offered, I simply stopped caring.
As such, I enjoyed Sanditon – what a joy it brought to life for Austen’s West Indian heiress. But Emma with Anya Taylor-Joy bored me, to say the least Convince Netflix (“Now we are worse than before; we are friends”), the sooner the better.
If the comments of Times readers are to be taken into account, audiences will be outraged at how “woke” Davies’s amendments will be when they reach our screens, especially in their approach to slavery. Austen makes passing references to slavery at Emma and Mansfield Park; In the end it is clear that this is where the Bertram family made their money. So why aren’t scenes showing this shown? Why not show Sir Thomas and Tom brutally crushing a slave revolt on their plantation in Antigua? Modern readers would likely have concluded that this was the purpose of their journey in the novel. The moment when Fanny, the novel’s heroine, brings up the subject of slavery and is met with complete silence by her cousins may seem subtle to us—but to her nineteenth-century readers, it may be the opposite.
As for death in childbirth, I can’t be the only Austen fan who has always wondered what happens to her heroines after the “happy ending.” Austen herself knew women who died this way, as did many others. There’s a reason why a wedding is a good place to stop, as anyone in the 19th century would have understood. It’s not that Austen is purging and beautifying, it’s that contemporary readers—and many screenwriters—do. Think about how extreme it felt when Joe Wright opted for more clay and a bunch of farm animals in his more realistic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. This shocked viewers at the time, yet what he created in his portrayal is Longbourne, who appears lively and real. Making certain aspects of Austen’s works tangible – or even filling in some of the unspoken – is not necessarily an attempt to shock, but about providing an environment that feels real. Everything doesn’t have to feel so polite. Dramas from the era, such as House of Guinness, with its depiction of childbirth and its depiction of the horrific legacy of the Great Hunger inflicted on Ireland at the hands of the English, really raised the stakes.
I have always embraced darkness in literature. Technically being what the internet calls a “Brontë girl,” I grew up fascinated by the Red Room in Jane Eyre, and by the madness of Bertha Mason, before falling in love with Wuthering Heights when I was fourteen. But when it comes to dark topics, is there such a thing as too much? The Brontë girls rebelled Emerald Fennell’s upcoming Wuthering Heights novel The adaptation, which not only features a white Heathcliff and appears to have put the actors in costumes from the “wrong” period, but according to test audiences, begins with a scene in which a nun gropes the penis of a recently executed man. You find yourself wondering if that’s even necessary, when the source material is already pretty messed up. For example, Heathcliff hangs a puppy and recovers Cathy’s body. Wuthering Heights is notoriously difficult to adapt to, but I loved Andrea Arnold Social realist film 2011.
Interestingly, there was a debate at the Cheltenham Literary Festival a few years ago under the immortal title ‘Heathcliff versus Darcy: who’s the bigger fool?’ I think the jury is still out. Heathcliff may have killed a dog, but until we know how Darcy makes his money, it’s all just a game for him. One of the speakers, Dolly Alderton, described Darcy as “an arrogant, optimistic, sassy person who, as my fellow Millennials say, needs a check on his privilege.” (Will its Netflix adaptation reflect this? Now that would be new.)
I’m wary of purists – as all creative people should be. If anything, I’m often in favor of going further, as screenwriters and directors of historical dramas embody the dark undercurrents of much nineteenth-century literature. Andrew Davies’ talk of exploring, for example, Frank Churchill’s “psychopathic” hold over Jane Fairfax in Emma is to be welcomed. As for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, it looks so terrible, I’ll be right there at the cinema doors the minute they open.
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Rhiannon Lucy Coslett is a columnist for The Guardian
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