Part of the problem

I was just reading through some of the comments on this one, and had to laugh when I came across one person's declaration: "I am a big fan of Jane Austen novels, even though I haven't read any of them."

Are you kidding me? How can you be a fan of something you don't know anything about? Seeing the movies is one thing (and there are some great Jane Austen movies, such as Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, Persuasion with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds, and Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson, etc.) But even those great movies don't touch on some of the greatest parts of the books. Jane Austen had a sense of humor and an eye for character that can't be appreciated without reading her words. You can't claim to be a true fan if you don't take the time to read what SHE wrote.

Of course, this person is probably all of thirteen or fourteen years old, so perhaps I should lighten up on that score, but this is the best time to send a girl on the correct Jane Austen path. : ) Feel free to enjoy whichever movies you like, but don't mistake them for the real deal.

Needless to say, that person gave this version of MP a very positive review. I wasn't nearly so fond of it myself.

It is kind of amusing that this person's sentiment sounds so much like something Lady Catherine says in Pride and Prejudice: "If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient..." And yes, you can find that in the movie version too, though the wording is slightly different.

There are two ways to look at it, I guess. One point of view is that the movie is to be enjoyed in its own right, a separate entity from the book, which is actually a valid point - but that leaves room for a lot of misinterpretation of what Jane Austen intended and was all about, which is a shame. But this person said they were a fan of Jane Austen's novels. Quite a different claim.

The book version of Mansfield Park has a number of subtle plays on language and situation, including double entendres, metaphors and puns. Granted, at first Fanny and Edmund make you wish you could reach in and knock their heads together, or at least that Edmund might fall off the edge of a page to leave Fanny free to find someone more deserving of her, but there are lots of other great characters throughout.

Mansfield Park is the hardest of Jane Austen's novels to interpret on screen for a modern audience, but it's not impossible, and whenever people give the excuse that it's difficult mostly due to condensing a novel into a two-hour movie, they should think about the hundreds of other movies that have done it successfully. Maybe it would be better off as a miniseries, like the '95 P&P, but however it's done, it should at least hold to the flavor of the book. It doesn't have to be an exact rendition. Even Clueless was a fairly faithful adaptation of Emma in that particular sense, though of course it's a very different situation and time than the novel. (I got so tired of the lack of decent interpretations that I did write my own screenplay - I have an M.A. in English - and it's really not bad. Hopefully someday I will get the chance to share it with the world.)

Anyway, I couldn't leave that statement alone. Now I will duck below my computer desk to await the barrage of return comments defending that person's post.