Irony 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).