02.04.07
“Piracy Is Our Only Option”
Samuelian, Kristin Flieger. “‘Piracy Is Our Only Option’: Postfeminist Intervention in Sense and Sensibility.” pp. 148-58. Troost, Linda (ed. and introd.)Sayre Greenfield. Jane Austen in Hollywood. Lexington, KY: UP of Kentucky, 1998. 202.
In her article, “Piracy Is Our Only Option: Postfeminist Intervention in Sense and Sensibility,” Kristen Flieger Samuelian argues that Emma Thompson’s film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is untrue to Jane Austen’s novel of the same name. This is because, as Samuelian writes, Thompson’s 1995 version “is more in line with postfeminism and effectively erases the implicit feminism of Austen’s novel” (Samuelian 148). Instead of keeping with Austen’s infamous implicit wit and satire on her contemporary social conditions, Thompson decides to explicitly reference late twentieth-century postfeminist social concerns which stress that women can be both married and autonomous simultaneously. The end result, according to Samuelian, is an artistic statement on women and their society entirely disparate from Austen’s.
Samuelian argues that Thompson explicitly references feminism in her adaptation by using dialogue; for example, Elinor tells Edward that she has no power in creating her future (Samuelian 148). In doing so, Thompson destroys the subtleness with which Austen stresses the powerlessness of women through plot. Samuelian writes that “Thompson injects what appears to be an explicit feminist rhetoric into the work of an author more often celebrated for the implicitness of her critiques of the customs and institutions that support patriarchy” (Samuelian 148).
Samuelian argues that Thompson does this overtly through Margaret’s character (who the 1981 BBC version omits) (Samuelian 149). In her tree-house to protest Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood coming to Norland, Margaret seems to innocently misunderstand social custom. In an effort to clarify to Margaret why they must leave Norland, Elinor tells Margaret that it is the law that their brother and his wife must take the house. However, according to Samuelian, Thompson is mistaken, as “custom is redefined as law” (Samuelian 156). In her most pivotal example in her argument against Thompson’s adaptation, Samuelian writes that
Explicit protest is most thoroughly articulated in the film through the youngest Dashwood sister, Margaret. Transformed by Thompson from a plot device to an integral character, Margaret serves both to voice reasonable dissent and to exhort unpalatable truths from the mouths of her more restrained and practical-minded elders…Elinor’s closing emphasis on “law” simplifies to the point of obliterating the complicated history of the disposition of the Norland estate given in the first two pages of Austen’s novel (Samuelian 149).
Furthermore, Thompson uses Margaret to make both Edward and Col. Brandon more attractive, as they easily play with the eleven-year-old.
Indeed, in his dialogue with Margaret in Thompson’s version, Edward ascertains that Margaret wishes to be a pirate, a vocation which both the modern audience and actors know is impossible. Samuelian argues that Thompson’s reference to piracy in the dialogue between Edward and Elinor in her adaptation is a way to explain to modern audiences that Edward is sympathetic to Elinor’s plight (Samuelian 150). Samuelian writes that “piracy—the appropriation and adaptation for profit of Austen’s courtship novel—is for Thompson a way of deflecting what is unanswerable in the eighteenth-century ideology the novel depicts” (Samuelian 150).
Instead, Samuelian explicitly interposes late 20th century postfeminism in Austen’s story. In Thompson’s version, Elinor marries a handsome Edward in a Pastoral setting. Samuelian argues that Thompson imbues in both Edward and Brandon the very characteristics which Austen portrays as dangerous in
Willoughby (Samuelian 152). In doing so, Thompson again destroys Austen’s implicit feminist critique of her contemporary society.
Because I read Samuelian’s article before I watched Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility for this project, I was very aware of the acute ways in which Thompson has appropriated Austen’s eighteenth-century narrative and transformed it into that of the twentieth-century. I am not sure if this is indeed a bad thing, as I think Samuelian argues. Thompson adapted Austen’s novel for a late twentieth-century audience—why is it so terrible that this adaptation should differ from the original eighteenth-century narrative? However, I do think that because Austen’s novel still appeals to modern audiences, implicitness and all, Thompson should have been more aware of what has drawn readers to the story for centuries.
I might use this article for my paper, as I am interested in studying how Austen’s novels are transformed in the age of film, and how modern political concerns are imbued in these films.