for Oscar in seven categories and Emma nominated for Costume

Design and selected for Music Original Musical or Comedy

Category. Sense and Sensibility brought Emma Thompson an Oscar
for Best Screenplay based on materials previously produced or
published, making her the first woman to be nominated for both
Best Actress and screenwriter in the same year.

It was in 1796 when Jane Austen started writing Pride and

Prejudice in her small house in Chawton, Hampshire. Could she ever
imagine in her wildest dreams that 200 years later her stories would
interest millions of people from all over the world? Could she have
believed that Sense and Sensibility would become the 160th most
popular of all films made between 1900 and 1997? Could we, when
studying Jane Austen in school and/or university, foresee that we
would rush to the cinemas to see the latest Austen film? Hollywood
could...

My reasons for writing this paper are not to discover whether Jane
Austen adaptations are successful or not; but rather to find out why
they have become so popular in a cinematic context dominated by
action films. How could stories from the late 18th and early 19th
centuries find an audience in an era dominated by disaster films?
Jane Austen's popularity can be traced back to the second decade
of the 19th century. Although she started writing in her early
twenties, her first book was published in 1811. At 36, Austen
published Sense and Sensibility on her own expense. She had
thought that sales of the book would not repay the expenses,
therefore she had put aside some of her limited income. However,
Sense and Sensibility not only covered its expenses, but made a
profit of about £150. It was an immediate success; and encouraged
Austen to write further novels. Pride and Prejudice followed in
1814 in three volumes; later the first edition of Mansfield Park,
though it was badly printed and full of mistakes, sold out in six
months.

Perhaps this popularity had a lot to do with her characters, which

appeared down to earth, and recognizable in any society. Sir Walter
Scott praised her for "that exquisite touch which renders ordinary
commonplace things and characters interesting". Even the Prince
Regent became an Austen fan It is often said that he used to keep
a series of her novels in each of his residences.

Austen experienced a decline in popularity in the 50 years

following her death. However, by 1870 her reputation began to
increase once more, chiefly as a result of the work of her niece, J.E.
Austen-Leigh, who published A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870.
The success of that volume was unprecedented: in the preface to
the second edition, Austen-Leigh wrote: "The Memoir of my Aunt,
Jane Austen, has been received with more favour than I had
ventured to expect. The notices taken of it in the periodical press,
as well as letters addressed to me by many with whom I am not
personally acquainted, show that an unabated interest is still taken
in every particular that can be told about her."

In the 1920s the reaction to Romanticism brought a new impetus to

Jane Austen's popularity. Many readers appreciated her for her
sensibility, her balance and her avoidance of wild passion. A proof of
the popularity of Austen's novels at the time can be seen in
Rudyard Kipling's story, called "Janeites", in which he tells about a
group of lieutenants in 1918, trying to make a soldier memorise her
novels.

Nonetheless, there were critics - chiefly in the academic world - who

disliked Austen. In 1928, for instance, H.W.Garrod wrote a book
named Jane Austen:A Depreciation, in which he defined her as
"intolerably sensible". Such reactions did not have much effect on
Austen's popularity. Numerous Jane Austen Societies were formed
throughout the world; her books were endlessly read and reprinted;
some of them were turned into stage plays; whilst Pride and
Prejudice was made into a Hollywood film, directed by Robert
Z.Leonard, with Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and Laurence
Olivier as Mr Darcy, in 1940.

Within half a century, however, Jane Austen's popularity had

soared, chiefly as a result of the Andrew Davies's adapation of Pride
and Prejudice for the BBC. The BBC had dramatised Austen's
novels before - many of them had been turned into serials for the
Sunday tea-time slot, notably Pride and Prejudice in 1980; but this
was a big-budget adaptation, made for prime-time television in
association with the American company the Arts and Entertainment
Network. The last of the six episodes was watched by over ten
million British viewers, almost 40 percent of the total UK television
audience. In the same year, the BBC also screened an adaptation of
Persuasion [which had a limited cinema exposure in London and
other major British cities]. Hollywood also helped to re-establish
Austen's reputation; both Sense and Sensibility and Douglas
McGrath's version of Emma, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, were
released in 1995. Clueless carried the story of Emma and Mr
Knightley to a Los Angeles high school in the 1990s. A year later,
another adaptation of Emma appeared on British television, made
by the independent company Meridian Television, with Kate
Beckinsale in the title role.

The 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice was a real success: so
much so that a scandal broke out in a small town near Exeter
because the last episode could not be broadcast properly. The
people protested, claiming that they were deprived of their rights as
licence-payers to watch the end of the series. A video version of the
series was released before the last episode was even shown and
sold out twice, selling more than 100.000 copies. A companion
edition of the novel was also published and sold out. Darcy and
Elizabeth once again became the best loved characters of the fiction
world.

Although not equalling the success of Pride and Prejudice, the BBC
film of Persuasion performed tolerably well at the box-office,
particularly in the USA. Audiences appeared to respond to the main
plot of the novel, which centres on the conflict between elderly
prudence and the romantic love of two young people. Although it
has been 200 years since Jane Austen started writing Persuasion,
the conflict is still valid today. Looking around, many 19 year-old
girls can still be seen fighting their parents for the "perfect man", or
simply giving in to their desires. The thoughts of Lady Russell in
Persuasion could just as well be uttered now:

Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth,

beauty and mind, to throw herself away at
nineteen; involve herself at nineteen with a
young man, who had nothing but himself to
recommend him, and no hopes of attaining
affluence, but in the chances of a most
uncertain profession, and no connexions, to
secure even his farther rise in that
profession; would be indeed a throwing
away which she grieved to think of.

The thoughts of Lady Russell on Anne's wish to marry Captain

Wentworth is the typical small town reaction a well-bred 19 year old
girl in Turkey in 1998 would obtain from her superiors, if she should
wish to marry a musician, for instance.
As in all Jane Austen stories, the lovers come together in the end.
The end gives the readers, or the audience nowadays, hope. "It's a
Cinderella story" says director Roger Michell, "It's boy meets girl.
Girl loses boy. Boy finds girl." Reviewing the film on its American
release in 1995, the film critic Laura Miller quoted from Persuasion:
"Everything united in him; good understanding, correct opinions,
knowledge of the world and a warm heart". Miller added:

Thus Jane Austen defines an excellent man

in her last novel Persuasion, and dares us to
find his equal in our own public and private
spheres: Bill Clinton? Ross Perot? Brad Pitt?
Kurt Cobain? Perhaps the yearning for such
an individual inspires the current wave of
Austen novels committed to celluloid.
At the end of 1995 came the film version of Sense and Sensibility.
The film created a great interest in the book. The novel, published in
America by Signet Books, made it to the top ten in the Publisher's
Weekly lists. The producer of the film Lindsay Doran had felt even
before the film had been made, that it would be a success, as she
stressed in an interview:

The issues in it are still completely fresh. Do

you marry the cad or do you marry the nice
guy? Do you go after that dangerous guy
who makes you feel so great or do you say
'That's not going to do me any good,' and
line up with the guy who's appreciative and
loving and solid and will always be there for
you and will never make you feel the way
the cad makes you feel. It doesn't stop when
you're 19. This is a problem for women all of
their lives, and to a certain degree a
problem for men.

Convinced that this project had life in it, she started to look for the
perfect scriptwriter and the perfect director. She found her ideal
writer in Emma Thompson, who had apparently been reading
Austen since she was nine years old. Thompson worked on the
script for four years, until she did not know any more which
sentences were hers and which were Austen's. Emma Thompson
says that Jane Austen's works survive because she wrote about
subjects that would never lose their importance. "Women still fall in
love with the wrong guy, she says, "they still get jilted, they're still
looking for people to marry".

The person chosen to direct Sense and Sensibility was the

Taiwanese director, Ang Lee. The theme of traditional family verses
the new generation was familiar to him, particularly as he had
worked on The Wedding Banquet, described as the most popular
film in Taiwanese history. When it was first announced that Lee was
to direct Sense and Sensibility, all translated copies of the novel
were sold out in Taiwan. After reading the first few pages of the
script Lee found many links between the two societies, British and
Taiwanese. "I found a moral bond with my own traditions, disguised
under interesting traditions and dresses. Both societies have a
tendency to reach the balance between harmony and the
opposites," says the director.' Lee had another word on why Jane
Austen is still popular today: "Austen tells us how much we have
to suffer in order to find real love and truth as well as the pain of
growing up. These conflicts in one way or another determine our
lives. This is a universal issue."
Having won the top award of the Writers Guild of America with her
Sense and Sensibility adaptation, Emma Thompson says, "I think
they [film audiences] have misconceptions about Austen in the
same way they have misconceptions about Shakespeare that they
won't be able to understand ... But one of the things I like about her
books most is that her characters are people that we recognise
now."

The diary Emma Thompson kept while making Sense and Sensibility
has been published in book form, both in Britain and America, along
with her script. The film received many BAFTA Awards, as wall as
seven Oscar nominations and an Oscar for best adaptation. The box
office gross revenue was $134.1 million worldwide.

On August 12, 1996, Austen's own favourite character Emma

appeared on screen. She was "faultless in spite of all her faults" as
Knightley described her in the book. People adored her. Although
the author was British, the places were British, nearly all the actors
were British, Emma turned out to be a most American movie. It was
definitely Austen's happiest comedy and as Lisa Scbwarzbaum
states in her article "the one best suited to the American way of
quality drama".

Emma was a small budget film, costing not much more than $6
million - eventually it made $37,800,000 worldwide, the 67th most
popular film of 1996. The project itself, as well as the film, was
something that excited director Douglas McGrath even before he
had started the film. On February 12, 1994 he wrote in his diary:

Today my parents called in panic: Emma

Thompson is doing Emma! It was my turn to
panic then, I called my agent in L.A. Dave
whom I never saw in panic since I first met
him, [he] told me only three words: Sense
and Sensibility. The three correct words."

Emma succeeded in being adored by all movie audiences; the

heroine, as portrayed by Gwyneth Paltrow, was good natured, well-
meaning, snob. Jane Austen's character Emma also provided the
inspiration for Amy Heckerling's Clueless; not surprisingly, the story
fitted the 1990s California Valley Girl environment perfectly.
Heckerling wanted to write a comedy of manners, and needed a
story that could happen to any girl. Then she thought of Jane
Austen and how much she had enjoyed reading Emma at school
when she was a teenager. There is a rich girl in the story, who
thinks she understands everything, but she is absorbed so much in
her own world, that she can not see at all what others can observe
clearly. So Heckerling created an idealized dream world based on
Emma.
Clueless appeared on screen on July 19, 1995. The box office gross
revenue in the first week was $20 million. Emma herself had
changed into a popular high school student of 15, named Cher
Horowitz. Tai, who is a new student helped by Cher, was Harriet
Smith. Mr. Knightley happened to be Josh, Cher's college-age step
brother. Even Mr. Elton was actually named Elton. The film
demonstrates once again the fact that although times might have
changed, people have stayed the same. The gypsy scene in Emma
has been adopted perfectly to prove this point. The gypsies who
threaten Harriet Smith in Emma have changed into gang bullies at
the local mall who threaten Tai. Tai is rescued by Christian, just like
Harriet is rescued by Frank Churchill. Despite these modernisations,
the film appealed to Austen aficionados everywhere. A "Janeite"
Carolyn Nelson observed:

I finally rented Clueless this weekend and

saw it for the first time. Not the typical
movie experience, since I was scrutinising
every line for the parallel in Jane Austen,
but fun! I think my biggest laugh-out-loud
was when Cher was sitting in class realizing
she ought to find a guy for herself. The
sultry music rolls and Christian, sensual
mouth, pompadour, and jacket slung over
his shoulder, steps into the dassroom
bathed in a golden glow. I screamed, "It's
Frank!!!" - my son thought I was nuts.

Examining the works of Jane Austen, the popularity of her novels

can be based mainly on the universal themes she chose, her
familiarity with her subject, and her optimism. She has focused on
themes that never die, such as marriage, social pressure, and the
generation gap. The opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice can be
considered one of the most famous of all Bnglish comedies of
manners: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man
in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." In the
material world of the 1990s, on the threshold of a new century, the
general view on marriage has not changed much from the beginning
of the l9th century.

Social pressure, a very popular theme of Austen, still exerts a very

powerful influence over people's lives. The same thing holds true
for the generation gap. Although different generations have learnt
to live in peace to some extent, it is nonetheless true that however
much younger and older members of some families try to
understand one another, there are still many points on which they
can never agree.
Jane Austen has been criticized by some critics for her want of
imagination. However, she saw herself not as a so-called 'great
author' but rather someone who "knows only her mother tongue and
has read little in that ... The most unlearned and uninformed female
who ever dared to be an authoress". She knew her capacity and
she used it. When J.S. Clarke, a clergyman, suggested that she
should write a historical novel she said: "No, I must keep to my own
style and go my own way. And though I may never succeed in that, I
am convinced that I should totally fail in any other." She has
demonstrated that ordinary people can have interesting lives, and
this is welcomed even in the image-besotted society of the 1990s.

Apart from this realism, however, Jane Austen also to some extent
helps to fulfil readers' wishes and desires: "The unfolding narrative
[of Mansfield Park] is at one level a Cinderella story of bow her
worth is recognised by the hero who, in spite of obstacles, carries
her off at the end of the novel", as Dr. Ian Littlewood observes in his
introduction to the Penguin edition of the novel. This kind of notion
is also evident in popular films of recent years, such as Pretty
Woman.
Jane Austen does not punisb even the worst villains. At the end
everybody is happy and everybody has undergone a process of self-
development. As Laura Miller explains:

Finally, Austen's novels display the serene

conviction that decency, civility and
common sense will be rewarded. Not by the
hand of God, but simply because they lead
to warm and lasting relationships and lives
free of turmoil, dissatisfaction and debt.
What would she think of the contemporary
pressure to judge by appearances, seek our
own advantage at all times, indulge our
most childish caprices while conforming
slavishly to trends, and equate material
wealth with happiness? Probably that it was
too familiar and none too sensible. And
perhaps we're beginning to suspect she was
right."22

Considering all that has been said on Jane Austen and her works,
Hollywood made her a gift for her 220th birthday with the film
versions of her novels released in 1995. And the gift has been well
received by audiences. After all the action and disaster films, it was
time for a little rest and a little hope. So as Fanny says about nature
in Mansfield Park, we could say about these latest films: "Here's
harmony!... Here's repose... Here's what may tranquillise every
care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night
as this, I feel as if there could never be neither wickedness nor
sorrow in the world."