Melodramatic, selfish, pouty Mary Musgrove is the only Persuasion (2022) character who says anything meaningful about Regency womanhood that is congruous with gender expectations today. Her lines in Carrie Cracknell’s adaptation are like Reductress captions, with just a little less of the same satirical punch. Although she is portrayed as childlike, a desirable Regency trait for women since it meant they were innocent and subordinate, she instead uses this quality against prescribed gender roles. The choice to cast Mary McKenna-Bruce intentionally aligns the character with an actress who, until recently, was a child star in the popular British children’s show Tracy Beaker Returns (2010-2012) and its spinoff The Dumping Ground…
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“You assume just because I hate something I don’t want to do it?”
Following Katherine Voyles’ insightful essay about why nobody can seem to agree on what the 2022 adaptation of Persuasion is supposed to do, this essay explores another question: why do we all keep watching Austen film adaptations, even when we don’t like them? The first filmed Austen adaptation was released in 1938, with a television movie of Pride and Prejudice, and it seems we haven’t stopped watching Austen since. There is a huge variety in what Austen adaptations look like, although each decade seems to hold onto a unique idea of Austen. Carrie Wittmer of Vulture offers a chronology of Austen adaptations, where she traces the themes explored in different…
