The Nineteenth-Century English Novel

First Paper (five pages):

Write a paper juxtaposing one of the nineteenth-century novels we have read with one of the films or the hypertext produced in the 1990s.  The contemporary piece need not be a version of the nineteenth-century novel.  Thus you may read the movie of Great Expectations in relation to the novel Jane Eyre or the movie Emma against the novel Persuasion.

The object of this assignment is not to discuss whether a movie is "faithful" to its original.  Rather you should work to develop a thesis about  aspects of the two texts that illuminate one another in suggestive ways.  You might consider issues of gender, social class, attitudes toward money, violence, or generational differences.  Alternatively, you might consider formal questions--issues of style, development of scene, point of view, or narrative sequence.  Whatever aspects of the two texts you choose to discuss, be sure to illustrate your thesis by focusing closely on a particular scene or motif from each work.

As a reminder, I have listed the texts we have covered to this point in the semester below:

 
19th Cen.                    Contemporary
 
Persuasion                  Roger Michell's Persuasion (1995)
Frankenstein               Douglas McGrath's Emma (1996)
Jane Eyre                   Amy Heckerling's Clueless (1995)
                                  Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein (1994)