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Northanger Abbey — PBS’s The Complete Jane Austen

Promo shot from PBS websiteI have to admit I’m a real fan of Jane Austen’s books. I’ve read all but Lady Susan and Persuasion (though I’ve started it twice). Wouldn’t you know it, I also missed seeing Persuasion last Sunday. But, this Sunday, I managed to get myself settled down in front of the TV to view Northanger Abbey. I’d never seen this version of the novel before. The version I own is the BBC (1986) one. They both do an admirable job of telling the story of Catherine Morland, a spirited young woman with a good heart and a very active imagination, as she vacations with family friends in Bath, meets some interesting and nefarious people, visits an Abbey, get scared and confused, falls in love, gets sent home in disgrace, and becomes a bit more cautious with her trust and heart.

Northanger Abbey was written as a bit of satire on all the Gothic romances of the day that were inflaming the minds of young women and taking them away from any serious study of books, their surroundings, or their circumstances. When I tried to read Jane Austen years ago as literature — well, I never really could get anywhere with it. But, once I realized that it’s like anthropology, a study of a new and different culture, it became, for me, more interesting and absorbing. Austen was an astute observer of her friends, neighbors, and family. She noticed as well as thought about what happened around her. Her books are filled with pithy statements and keen observations of the human condition. She was also a woman of her times as well and there is a sensitivity to the plight of women in her social strata. There’s little in Austen that speaks of the lower or lowest classes of society in her time even thought there might occasionally be a reference to an incident here or there. The politics of her works are the politics of class and society and little of the times in which she lived.

PBS should be applauded for introducing, I hope, a new audience to her works via these films. While no adaptation of a novel can compete with the written word for depth and texture — they can give the viewer a taste of the rich world that Austen opened up for those of us reading her words so many years after her death. Now that I’ve seen two version of Northanger Abbey, I’d be hard pressed to say which I prefer — they each have their pluses and minuses — their moments of pure Austen-ism and their clinkers. What I can say is that I throughly enjoyed the presentation and have added this DVD to my ‘must buy’ list.

I checked but don’t see that PBS is re-running the series anytime soon so, if you’ve missed Northanger Abbey this evening — rent it. Don’t despair though because next Sunday at 9PM is Mansfield Park (again a version I haven’t yet seen). I’ve marked my calendar and hope this next film meets my expectations for excellence in presenting the work of Jane Austen and not a similarly titled work that might have nodded in her direction as the previous movie version of this book, that I saw,  seemed to be. I have high hopes for next week since Northanger Abbey was so satisfying.

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