Diminishing Returns
In all of the escapisms that the adaptations may allow us, there's also a fear "that these films... may substitute for the novels." Already, people see the movie adaptations and think they are seeing the "real" thing. And, maybe, that's not so bad. These adaptations do, after all, reflect as much about our society as they do about Jane Austen's. The filmmakers hope that we, in modern-day society, will connect with the characters, the plot, and the setting. So, they try to balance it all out, and help us to believe that we are in that other world, not so very different from our own.
In her essay, "Out of the Drawing Room, Onto the Lawn," Rachel Brownstein writes about the fear that Virginia Woolf had that "movies would rip off the plot of novels and vulgarize and diminish them..." Brownstein later says, "Woolf's fear was justified by the films ground out by television..."
In her essay, "Misrepresenting Jane Austen's Ladies," Rebecca Dickson writes, "It is awfully unfair to ask that directors get the facts straight, but the lessons of human history may still have meaning after all, so directors should try to be mostly accurate." Of course, not all of these adaptations get it right.
So, not all of the characters are true to Austen's imagination, and not all of the costumes, or background, or interactions, or even all of the plots are accurate... There is one thing, though, that these adaptations have accomplished. Austen mania has taken off like never before. As Brownstein points out, Austen is more of a celebrity now than she ever was when she was alive. "People" magazine even named her "one of the most intriguing people of 1995."
In our fascination with Austen's world, and these adaptations, the editors hope we may "learn as much about ourselves and our time as we do about Austen."
