This thesis examines the condition of the “Curtain Dress” of Gone With the Wind (GWTW) with the purpose of advising a conservation plan that would allow its exhibit in 2014 as part of the 75th anniversary of the film. The dress has been stored since 1981 in the Harry Ransom Center (HRC) at the University of Texas at Austin as part of the David O. Selznick (DOS) Collection. The project addresses the book, the film, the creation of the dress, and what happened to it after filming was over. A collaborative team was formed including HRC staff, a conservator, and graduate students from the Textiles and Apparel Division at the University of Texas at Austin. The author of this study provided historical context, document analysis, construction evaluation, and fiber testing. A timeline for the book, film, and garment was established; communications from Selznick referencing the dress were analyzed; construction details were photographed and documented for reference; and colorimetry and spectroscopy techniques were used for fiber analysis. / text

The discursive and critical positions of the ‘classic’ nineteenth-century novel, particularly the woman’s novel, in the field of adaptation studies have been dominated by long-standing concerns about textual fidelity and the generic processes of the text-screen transfer. The sociocultural patterns of adaptation criticism have also been largely ensconced in representations of literary women on screen. Taking a decisive twist from tradition, this thesis traces the evolution of representations of masculinity in the malleable characters of Rochester and Heathcliff in film and television adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights between 1939 and 2009. Concepts of masculinity have been a neglected area of enquiry in studies of the ‘classic’ novel on screen. Adaptations of the Brontës’ novels, as well as the adapted novels of other ‘classic’ women authors such as Jane Austen, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell, increasingly foreground male character in traditionally female-oriented narratives or narratives whose primary protagonist is female. This thesis brings together industrial histories, textual frames and sociocultural influences that form the wider contexts of the adaptations to demonstrate how male characterisation and different representations of masculinity are reformulated and foregrounded through three different adaptive histories of the narratives of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. Through the contours of the film and television industries, the application of text and context analysis, and wider sociocultural considerations of each period an understanding of how Rochester and Heathcliff have been transmuted and centralised within the adaptive history of the Brontë novel.