For us to appreciate Austen's work it needs to be altered. We are only comfortable with it if it mirrors our expectations of it; the picturesque English countryside, elegant males and beautiful women in period clothing, living in impressive stone mansions. We want stories of strong, feminist ladies, who throw the men into raptures with their beauty and their ability to engage in passionate, snappy verbal exchanges. We want the held-back emotions, the intimacy of the near touch, the relief of liberating, emotionally charged confessions of admiration and love. The purpose of this essay is to examine two of Jane Austen's popular novels Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility with their respective latest film adaptations. When Jane Austen is interpreted in modern film her point-of-view is altered into our own. These changes celebrate, not Austen’s social writing, but our modern idea of romance. The themes in her novels are themes that are timeless and they are themes which our modern lives are filled with as well.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2007. / Title from title screen (site viewed Dec. 4, 2007). PDF text: vii, 194 p. ; 9 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3273921. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Thesis (M.A.) English--University of Central Oklahoma, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-99).

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Eric Walker, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 12, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 125 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 125).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 33).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1961. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 33). Also available in print.

Adaptation from literature to film has always been a much criticized enterprise, with fidelity criticism, or an attempt to discredit fidelity criticism, often driving the critical discussion. However, this type of thinking is somewhat limited, becoming circular and going nowhere productive. Instead, taking into account what has come before, this thesis attempts to settle on a method of examination that moves away from fidelity criticism and towards an approach that aligns itself with cultural studies. Adaptations, then, can be seen as products of the historical, cultural, political and general socio-economic framework out of which they emerge, owing perhaps more to their context of production than to their source material. In order to provide a case study that reflects this idea, this paper looks to an author who has been adapted on multiple occasions, Jane Austen, and examines her as a cultural construct. Looking at Austen’s most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice, and using Robert Z. Leonard’s Pride and Prejudice (1940), Cyril Coke’s Jane Austen ‘s Pride and Prejudice (1980), Simon Langton’s Pride and Prejudice (1995), Andrew Black’s Pride and Prejudice: A Latter Day Comedy (2003), Gurinder Chadha’s Bride and Prejudice (2004) and Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (2005), the thesis argues that the appeal of Austen is a result of her cult status and economic viability, and also the malleability of her text, which allows filmmakers to use it in a number of different contexts, while still embodying the source material. / Arts, Faculty of / Theatre and Film, Department of / Graduate

Throughout her novels, Jane Austen exhibits an acute awareness of the problems facing the sensitive, intelligent women of her day in a society which effectively keeps them in a position of inferiority. She exposes their faulty moral training, their inadequate education, their lack of opportunity for independence or any gainful employment, their social and economic dependence on the male and the resulting, inevitable and often defective preparation for marriage around which their youth is centered. Despite her concern for the individual woman, from which tragic implications occasionally emerge, her focus remains on society as a whole, and especially on the problems of male egoism and sentimentalism which block, by the subjugation of women, the evolution of a freer and possibly more creative society. All these social manifestations seem to be manifestations of the comic form as defined by such critics as George Meredith, Henri Bergson, Susanne Langer and particularly Northrop Frye, who specifically outlines the archetypal pattern of comic action. The subjection of women can be seen as the "absurd or irrational law" which Frye contends the action of comedy moves toward breaking; in Bergson's terms, it is an example of something mechanical, automatic and rigid superimposed on living society, which only laughter can remove; in Meredith's, the cause of "the basic insincerity of the relations between the sexes," and a demonstration of the vanity, self-deception and lack of consideration for others, which he considers legitimate targets for the Comic Spirit; in Langer's, a grave threat to "the continuous balance of sheer vitality that belongs to society" and which it is the function of comedy to maintain. Parents and all other members of the society, whether young or old, male or female, who consciously or unconsciously endorse the concept of female inferiority, are identifiable as the obstructing, usurping characters who, in Frye's terms, are in control at the beginning of a comedy. The comic heroine's struggle for self-realization against the obstacles they place in her path—particularly her defective and misdirected education and the traditional pattern of courtship to which they try to force her to conform—constitutes the comic action. The comic resolution is, of course, her eventual victory which enables her to find self-fulfilment in the marriage of her choice. Ever since its emergence as a form from the ancient Greek death-and-resurrection rites, comedy has been a celebration of life, of the absolute value of the group and of the forces through which society is perpetually regenerated. As the comic form has evolved, however, its social and moral implications have widened. Bergson and Meredith believe that comedy, because it works toward removing the anti-social, is "a premise to civilization." Jane Austen's novels reflect this view and demonstrate Frye's parallel contention that the movement of comedy is toward a more ideal society which forms around the redemptive marriage of the hero and heroine and which tends to include rather than reject the obstructing characters. Based on the potential equality of men and women, the new society envisioned at the conclusion of Jane Austen's novels replaces the old, anti-social isolation with a new and vital communication among the members, and thus provides a framework within which men and women can work together, each contributing his special talents toward the public interest. Since this new, ideal society is not only the goal of the comic action but also the only area in which the heroine can find self-realization, it represents the ultimate conjunction of the comic form and the role of the comic heroine to be found in Jane Austen's work. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate