Mansfield Park, the Novel, or Mansfield Park the Film?
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There have been many adaptations of Jane Austens books over the years; all six of her novels have been made into films or television dramas with varying degrees of success, from the classics of Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility, to the funny modern version of Emma in the form of Clueless. In this paper I want to show how director Patricia Rozema has made Austens novel Mansfield Park much more modern, accessible, and, as some claim, radical, by skipping parts of the story that would make the film version drag, and importing events and dialogue that have significance into scenes, often created by Rozema, that are more appealing.
There is always controversy whether a Jane Austen masterpiece can be adequately conveyed through the medium of film. It has been said that seeing a movie or television adaptation of any of Jane Austens works is like hearing a symphony of Mozart played on a harmonica which suggests that the adaptations are cheapened by the filmmakers and sometimes wildly misinterpreted. Andrew Wright says that many adaptations of Austens work are made to entice the demi-literate or those of presumably short attention span. This is the criticism that faced director Patricia Rozema with her film version of Mansfield Park, which states the very start that the film is only loosely based on the film, but also draws inspiration from the early journals and letters of Jane Austen. There are two schools of thought on the adaptation of Jane Austens novels, whether they are beneficial or not. It is clear that Rozemas version of the film makes it more accessible to viewers. M. Casey Diana has experimented on Austen adaptations with her class group:
She divided her students into two groups; one read Sense and Sensibility first and then saw the Thompson/Lee film, the other saw the movie first and then read the bookthe first group had a hard time comprehending (never mind responding on any deeply imaginative level to it), and both groups used the movie as a “gateway” into the book or an explanation afterwards.
The film version certainly gives us a more vivid view of the story, especially in scenes set in Fannys Portsmouth home, where we can see the squalor you end up in when you marry for love. The film is also more poignant on the issues of slavery and abuse of human rights. I am referring to the wailing Fanny hears coming from the slave ship, and the sketchbook that she finds with pictures of the slaves that her uncle has in Antigua. I will go into that in more detail later in this paper.
There is some debate whether the film should be called Patricia Rozemas Mansfield Park, as opposed to Jane Austens, as Derek Elley points out in his review of the film. He claims Rozema:
reinterprets the central character, Fanny Price, as a cross between Austen herself and a tomboyish proto-feminist, throws in some magical realism and gratuitous lesbian frissons to spice up the pot, and too often steps out of its era to adopt a knowing, politically correct, late-20th-century attitude to the society portrayed.
Though all of her books deal with social matters, manners, and small family communities, Mansfield Park is arguably one of Jane Austens duller novels, lacking a truly lovable heroine and breezing over issues that, had she gone into more detail, would have made the book a lot more controversial and readable for 21st century readers.
Rozema has been very liberal with the changes in her film, transforming Fanny from a doormat of a woman who irritates many readers with her timid and pious ways into a spirited young woman whom David Bezanson describes in his review of the film as a sassy, 90s, politically-aware attitude girl who shows up the fatuousness of most of the other characters. Henry Crawford, and the Bertram sisters also get slightly reinvented, portrayed in the film as more endearing (the scenes in which he visits Fanny in Portsmouth) and dim respectively.
One very obvious aspect that makes the film more radical is the presence of far more sexuality than I think Austen would be comfortable with. Mansfield Park is one of Austens more sexually aware novels, however it is very subtle. Our attention is drawn to
the dramatic, nearly Freudian symbolism of the scene where Maria squeezes around the gate at Sotherton and the scene where Fanny puts the amber cross pendant her brother has given her on a chain. Mrs. Prices excessive child-bearing and Marias dalliances also suggest sexuality rather directly for a novel written in the 1810s
Rozema inserts a near-lesbian scene between the naпve Fanny with the sexually predatory Mary Crawford with Edmund watching on, not quite sure what to do. Mary does this to ensure that Edmund will act opposite her in the play, and it is a far more drastic way than Austen had intended-in the novel Edmund takes over because Mary is uncomfortable playing opposite a neighbour she does not know well. Also added in is the scene where Fanny stumbles in on Henry and Maria consummating their affair. This is not in the novel, instead Fanny reads in the paper that a “Mr.C” and a “Mrs.R” have run off together. However using the reasoning that Sex Sells and in the interest of entertainment, Rozema inserts a gratuitous sex scene between the two. In her novel Austen makes it clear that the play that is being rehearsed is immoral, and this is further reinforced in the film where we see Henry and Maria getting rather close in a darkened corner. Rozemas embellishments added some badly needed spice to what is in effect a rather dull story, and perhaps it makes the story more real for viewers, when it is not described in such polite Victorian terms. David Bezanson criticizes Rozemas daring when he reviews the film. He says It was supposed to be 1806, but Mansfield Park the movie has a little too much 1999 in it — naпve social criticism, bathos, and vulgarity.
Another addition of Rozemas is the subtle hint that Fannys father is not all he seems when it comes to the treatment of his daughters. I may be wrong, but after viewing the scene when Fanny returns home to Portsmouth, there is a look exchanged between Fanny and her younger sister Suzy when their father says it will be good to have another girl in the house. There is no such issue raised in the novel, which suggests that Rozema is introducing more modern concerns into her Victorian film.
Another concern that Rozema introduces is the question of slavery. Austen shows some political awareness in the novel by mentioning the slave trade. Austen is rarely political in her novels but