The Genius of Jane Austen: Her Love of Theatre and Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood. Paula Byrne
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William Collins
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2017
Copyright © Paula Byrne 2002, 2017
Cover design by Heike Schüssler
Paula Byrne asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780008225698
Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780008225674
Version: 2018-06-06
For Jonathan
Contents
Part One: The Novelist and the Theatre
Part Two: The Theatre and the Novels
11 Why She Is a Hit in Hollywood
Fifteen years ago, I published Jane Austen and the Theatre, a book whose central argument was that Austen’s comic genius was shaped by her love of theatre. Mansfield Park was the first Austen novel I read, and, like many readers, I was intrigued by the spectacle of the amateur theatricals at the heart of the plot. Stuck in the country and bored to death, the young people decide to stage a play. But, as with Hamlet’s ‘play-within-the-play’, the production is riddled with double meanings, intrigue and alarming consequences.
It seemed to me then, and does so now, that Austen’s play-within-a-novel operates as a wonderful vehicle for exploring illicit flirtations between the young people, especially in the absence of a reliable chaperone. The play Lovers’ Vows works as a meta-text for exploring important relationships between the characters. Edmund Bertram, the pious, shy clergyman, who is in love with a gorgeous, witty femme fatale, Mary Crawford, undertakes to play the part of a pious, shy clergyman who is seduced by a gorgeous, witty femme