It is a truth universally acknowledged that every classic novel must be in want of a sexed-up adaptation. Ever since Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy waded out of the lake in a wet shirt in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice adapted by Andrew Davies, we have expected the undercurrents of novels to be writ large on screen: the novel is dripping in sexual tension – who knew? No one objects when Jane Austen’s couples kiss on TV, although it never happens on the page. But we are reluctant to imagine more troubling historical realities, such as maternal mortality, or where the fortunes behind the big houses came from.
As part of the 250th celebrations of Austen’s birth, Davies shocked audiences at the Cliveden literary festival last week with revelations that he is working on versions of Emma and Mansfield Park that will include death, debauchery and slavery. Spoiler: Emma dies in childbirth.
The 89-year-old screenwriter is right to say that such darkness can be found in Austen’s novels – they are not all “light & bright & sparkling” as she wrote of Pride and Prejudice. The perception that external events like the Napoleonic wars are ignored is equally untrue. From Edward Said’s 1993 essay Jane Austen and Empire to a recent piece by the novelist Lauren Groff, critics have debated the role of slavery in Mansfield Park.
Elsewhere, another reboot favourite, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, has caused a stir with the release of the trailer for next year’s hyper-eroticised film directed by Emerald Fennell (whose earlier hit Saltburn might be regarded as a risque take on Brideshead Revisited). The trailer contains much straining of stays and plausibility, but it is the ethnicity of Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, described in the novel as “a dark-skinned gypsy”, that has provoked a backlash. There have been many onscreen Heathcliffs, including Laurence Olivier and Ralph Fiennes, but few have been actors of colour. James Howson and Solomon Glave – in Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation – are exceptions.
The film’s casting director, Kharmel Cochrane, defended accusations of “whitewashing”, by arguing that “It’s just a book … It’s all art”. For many this is heresy. Wuthering Heights, like Austen’s novels and other cherished titles, is never “just a book”: these stories are part of our cultural identity; Emma and Heathcliff are more than just characters. These are masterpieces, not franchises.
But this does not mean that they should not be touched. Without fictional reimaginings we would not have Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys’s 1966 prequel to Jane Eyre, now a postcolonial and feminist classic in its own right, or the 1995 film Clueless, which transports Emma to a Beverly Hills high school. Whether an adaptation sticks faithfully to or plays fast and loose with the original, our appetite for more is seemingly endless, with new screen versions of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility also being released next year.
Far from being acts of literary grave-robbing, adaptations can be a way of keeping novels alive. With reading now an endangered pursuit, any spin‑offs that lead people back to the books are to be welcomed. Purists need not fear: the reputations of Austen and Brontë will remain unsullied. We should rejoice in the fact that they have sparked social media storms. Their work continues to be part of our cultural conversation – not confined to classrooms and lecture halls. We are still asking: “Who is Heathcliff?” “Does Emma live happily ever after?”
