Gina Macdonald and Andrew Macdonald

Timothy Corrigan has argued that the relationship between the two media of film and literature has “a history of ambivalence, confrontation, and mutual dependence,”1 succinctly summing up the range of critical reaction to film productions of Jane Austen novels. The “mutual dependence” is evident: Austen films have brought her novels a far wider readership than she herself could have imagined. Undeniably, at least some viewers experience the films and then turn to the books for a deeper, richer, much more extended experience. Certainly, given modern proclivities, without the film as bait to attract more general readers and to help justify including the novels in school reading lists, Austen’s readership might well be a far more limited, esoteric group than it is today. Perfectly worthy writers of Austen’s time have been far less lucky than she; the enthusiasm for the redoubtable Henry Fielding that followed the wonderful Albert Finney screen version of Tom Jones2 was brief and unsustainable once readers faced up to unfamiliar literary sensibilities and leisurely, extended texts. The story of Robinson Crusoe is made and remade (as in Castaway featuring Tom Hanks),3 but it is safe to predict there will be no boom in Defoe book sales. Generally speaking, Austen is unique among writers of her period for none of her contemporaries transcend the narrow precincts of “classic literature” bookshelves. Modern interest in gender issues, of course, has much to do with this, allowing screenwriters to use her novels as valuable launching pads for filmic vehicles that track changing notions about women’s roles in society, with the virtue of no copyright restrictions. The symbiosis between Jane Austen’s prose fiction and its silver screen versions is a phenomenon worth exploring, for it is unique and rich in messages about current thinking, and not just about gender; the adaptations touch nerves concerning authenticity, social class, and literary sensibility. The “ambivalence” that Corrigan sees in the literature–film relationship is also very true of scholarly attitudes toward the Austen films. One double-edged sword is Austen’s feminism, the very ambiguity of which has attracted some screenwriters: is she or isn’t she? Where does she