Why don't they ever get Mansfield Park right?

"Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch." -Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Download the e-book for free at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/141

Of all of Austen's novels, I must say my favourite is Mansfield Park, the one which Austen fans seemed to hate the most. Simply because it is very different from the rest of her better-known ones such as P&P and S&S. To me, it is a wonderfully complex novel that is totally unlike her fluffier novels and the closest she'll ever get to the style of Elizabeth Gaskell. So imagine my surprise when I recently discovered that BBC has made a TV adaptation of Mansfield Park in 2007 and someone put that up online. So I gleefully sat down to watch it all at once. Now I've watched the movie version starring Frances O'Connor, and I didn't really like it because the director kind of changed the essential parts of the plot, simplified and sensationalised many parts of the novel. So I was hoping that the TV version would do better justice to the novel. Well it did in some ways, although I'm not sure if Billie Piper was a better choice than Frances O'Connor as Fanny Price. And I'm still not satisfied with this latest adaptation of Mansfield Park, because while it's less dramatic as the previous version, it omitted many parts of the plot and the many important issues were not conveyed in the tv adaptation. I should think that almost all of Austen's novels have been adapted well-enough except for Mansfield Park. Maybe because it's the most complex and deals with many different themes such as education, perception, slavery and morality that makes it difficult to adapt into a screenplay. Or maybe it's simply because the great Andrew Davies has not tried to adapt Mansfield Park. His versions of P&P, S&S, Northanger Abbey and Emma gave justice to Austen's novels. So I really hope he does Mansfield Park soon.

If you don't understand why I get so caught up with movie adaptations of classics, well it just means you haven't read any yet. Mansfield Park is not something I would reccomend as light reading, but if you can get through it then I assure you it will give you plenty of food for thought.

PS: And you'll also discover why JK Rowling gave the name of Mrs Norris to the cat companion of Argus Filch in Harry Potter.