Adapting Austen "for the new generation:" ITV's 2007 Trilogy Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion

Ballinger, Gill

Abstract

This essay compares the female protagonists in the British television network ITV’s 2007 film adaptations of Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park and Persuasion to the original characters in Austen’s novels. Each film strives to create what Penny Gay calls the “double effect” of successful adaptation of remaining broadly faithful to the source text and resonating with the interests of its viewers. The novels and their adaptations are influenced by the varying gender politics of their own periods: in particular, the heroines in the films reflect diverse twenty-first century attitudes to femininity. The ways in which the characteristics of the leading lady diverge from the corresponding fictional heroine’s attributes varies from film to film; this means that Austen’s novels are not always more conservative than adaptations of them.

• Online Publication Date: Nov 12, 2018
• Publication Date: Nov 12, 2018
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Pages: 145-175
• Book Title: After Austen
• ISBN: 9783319958934
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95894-1_8
• Keywords: Austen, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, ITV, 2007, Jones, MacDonald, Shergold, adaptation, gender, femininity
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/857429
• Publisher URL: https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319958934
• Contract Date: Nov 1, 2018