Everything Austen: Northanger Abbey (Part II)

Posted by: amillionbrilliantshadows on: 22 August 2009

• In: 101 books | Everything Austen | reading challenges
• 2 Comments

I posted my thoughts on Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey last week. Last weekend I watched the 2006 Masterpiece Theatre version. I have to say that the film version was a little better than I expected. I know Masterpiece Theatre almost always puts out great stuff, but I honestly didn’t think even they could Northanger Abbey as well as they did.

The film followed the book well. The actors and actresses did great jobs of portraying the characters just as they were in the book (especially Catherine and Isabella). Mrs. Allen wasn’t nearly as annoying to me in the film version as she was in the book. I loved the fact that a lot of book’s interactions between Catherine and John Thorpe were omitted in the movie. He was the main character that rubbed me the wrong way and I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed the film as much if he had had a bigger part in it. (I think I’m going to have to figure out what annoys me so much about Austen’s characters or I’m not going to enjoy the rest of my challenge reading and viewing as much as I should.

I did have a few problems with the movie. I felt like the events in the book were condenses a bit more than they should have been. I guess that’s what you get when you try to condense a 200 page novel into an 86 minute film, though. There were things I didn’t remember from the book (the Tilneys’ male friend showing up to say goodbye while they were walking in the woods with Catherine and a few others I can’t remember of the top of my head), but it could have been because I finished the book over a week before I was able to get the film from the library. I could have done without the scenes bringing Catherine’s daydreams of robbers and kidnappers to life. These scenes channeled The Female Quixote even more than the book did.