Jane Austen

Hugh Bonneville was probably well cast when he was younger (I can't remember having seen him in it)

He was in the 1999 version - the one with Harold Pinter as Sir Thomas - which is an interesting piece of casting.

Same here. Extremely annoying, could not act his way out of a very small paper bag.

Anything with James Corden in it is an immediate 'no thanks'.

I'm faceblind so I'm no good at remembering who's who with actors. I have looked up some of the names mentioned above.

Rushworth you need someone good looking enough to plausibly be vain about his cloak, but nothing striking. I guess a lot of actors you could tone down how good looking they were by altering hair cut, facial hair, make up etc. Tall would be good, since he's so scathing about Crawford's height. Definitely heavy set (this is canon). He needs to be able to adopt a permanently slightly vacant expression, like Tim Nice But Dim. James Corden is far too short (as well as being very annoying, and not being able to do a convincing RP accent). Hugh Bonneville was probably well cast when he was younger (I can't remember having seen him in it). I think Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) might be good, if he could bulk up again.

I'm trying to cast MP in my head as well now😁.

Some of that blogger's ideas are weird...however I agree that Hayley Atwell was well-cast as Mary Crawford in one of the adaptations. I also liked Hugh Bonneville as Rushworth.

The 1983 version is by far the best IMHO. Sylvestra Le Touzel was a believable Fanny, I thought. I also liked Angela Pleasance as a very zoned-out Lady B, and Bernard Hepton as Sir T. I did not warm up to Nicholas Farrell as Edmund.

I think my problem is that I don't know any young actors!

Gosh, she has some strange ideas!!! James Corden would be a dreadful Mr Rushworth — it doesn’t need broad comedy, but the kind of person who might have been a good Mr Collins, decent, but dopey, amiable but weak-willed, and in Rushworth’s case, leavened by being very rich. Tom Hollander might have been good when younger.

Eleanor Tomlinson is far too physically striking to be wallpaper Fanny — I’d struggle to believe in her being exhausted and wrung out after a bit of walking in the sun, or from missing out on her daily ride.

https://www.carrotsformichaelmas.com/2016/07/11/if-i-could-cast-austens-mansfield-park/

You may find this interesting, @NineteenOhEight

James Corden! Really?😀

Sylvestra Le Touzel is a neighbour of a friend of mine and is very cool. I’ve never seen this adaptation, alas.

Amused to see Jonny Lee Miller, possibly the world’s oddest casting as Edmund in the 1999 film version, plays one of Fanny’s younger brothers in the Sylvestra Le Touzel tv series, and Samantha Bond is Maria Bertram — I imagine she could have been excellent.

Mansfield Park (along with Charlotte Bronte’s Villette) is a novel I’m always casting an adaptation of in my head. Casting Fanny is tough — you need someone who can suggest a quiet sanity and strength under the mousy exterior, and who is capable of suggesting a lot by expression and body language, because I don’t think she has a single interesting line of dialogue. Most of my possibles are now far too old. A young Samantha Morton might have been good. Olivia Colman as Mrs Norris? A younger Matthew McFadyen, who was so miscast as Darcy, as Edmund?

it needs to be a series, not a film — it needs space for all the set pieces like the visit to Sotherton, the play, Fanny’s ghastly visit ‘home’ etc etc.

I can see why it’s not been done, though — prim, dull Fanny, prim and dull Edmund as lovers whose courtship JA doesn’t even bother to narrate, the lively, witty characters are the villainous Crawfords, hard to make a contemporary audience share Fanny, Edmund and Sir Thomas’s feeling that private theatricals are morally compromising, or that Mary Crawford is a wrong’un because she doesn’t think Edmund should be a priest. And you have to convey Fanny’s unspoken love for Edmund and heartbreak at his attraction to Mary with nothing but facial expressions, camera shots etc.

I’m old enough to have watched this when it aired. It was truly great.

I also rate the Garvie P&P.

I cannot abide the cancel culture taking place in the world.

I lost this book in a move but this thread’s reminded me to her another copy. It’s Austen’s childhood / teenage writings & I think everyone on this thread would really enjoy it.

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780543900845/Catharine-Writings-Austen-Jane-0543900843/plp

No, he’s asking whether her affections are already engaged elsewhere, which he thinks is unlikely because she’s so young and has hardly met anyone, and because of her blush (which he ascribes to her youth and modesty), then he checks whether she could possibly be in love with either of her cousins by talking about how Tom is unlikely to marry soon, but Edmund is likely to marry Mary imminently. When Fanny reacts calmly to him saying this, he writes off the idea of her being in love with one of her cousins.

Great recommendation of DailyMotion, most useful!

Fanny is embarrassed because she doesn’t want Edmund and the family to know she is in love with him.

He’s wondering if she’s in love with Edmund. Then says to himself it’s not possible because they’ve been raised as sister and brother.

Yes, I so agree with this. The miracle of a book is that it has captured the mind of someone long dead. When you read Daniel Defoe or Samuel Johnson, for example, you are inside the mind of an 18th-century man. That's the wonderful thing about literature. It's absurd to expect them to think like we do. If they did, they'd be less interesting.

Another thing I hate is the attempt to 'cancel' authors (cancel them!!!...god, it's like something out of Stalin's Russia). If you look hard enough, you can find a reason to cancel every novel and painting ever created. The critic Harold Bloom judged each work on its aesthetic merits. In other words, how beautiful original and profound it was. Lots of great artists were horrible people. Evelyn Waugh was vile, and so was Philip Larkin, Hemingway, Byron, Shelley and Milton. But their language is sublime. I doubt the people who built the Taj Mahal were nice – certainly not by our standards. Should we knock it down? It's just insane.

A minority are out to destroy the literary canon. And believe me they are serious. Literature lovers need to start fighting back.

Does anyone have any insights as to Sir Thomas's thoughts when Fanny says she can't marry Mr. Crawford ?
He starts asking something and then says, it can't be possible. Fanny is hugely embarrassed.
Is he hinting that Fanny is in love with Mary Crawford?
I think someone wrote a book on the subject.

I'm so old I remember an absolutely cracking version of Mansfield Park by the BBC in 1983. It starred Sylvestra Le Touzel as Fanny and Robert Burbage as Henry. They were the drippiest pair imaginable, but somehow really likeable. I'd love to watch it again.

Persuasion is my favourite book closely followed by Pride and Prejudice.

Daily Motion😀

I know her characters can be vicious.

I'm also a little surprised when people describe Austen as "gentle"....

I'd love to watch the Elizabeth Garvie version of P&P, has anybody seen one available recently?

I mean, supposing none of the Bennet girls married well before Mr Bennet’s death, they’d have been living in a few rooms above a shop in Meryton, on their mother’s tiny income,

I suppose Uncle Gardiner might have helped a bit, but he had his own children to bring up and get established.

Yes, and in JA’s world, it was the sole ‘career’ available to women of her class, the alternatives being being kept by male relatives after the death of your father (as JA and her sister and mother were for years, living in a perpetual round of lengthy ‘visits’ to family members, and which is what Charlotte Lucas is facing when she leaps at the chance to marry an idiot with decent prospects, only her younger brother is already moaning about having her left on his hands), genteel poverty in a couple of rented rooms like Mrs and Miss Bates in Emma, or Mrs Smith in Persuasion, or governessing like Jane Fairfax plans to in Emma (if sufficiently well-educated/accomplished).

She knew about women’s poverty, and economics is always at play in her romances.

I mean, supposing none of the Bennet girls married well before Mr Bennet’s death, they’d have been living in a few rooms above a shop in Meryton, on their mother’s tiny income, their marital prospects much reduced, and while Jane might have made a decent governess, or Lizzy, or, at a pinch, Mary for a family that wasn’t concerned with her teaching their daughters social ease and etiquette, just music and academic subjects — no one would have employed Kitty or Lydia.

Emma is fortunate to be so financially secure she can look on marriage only as something she would consider only were she to fall in love. Even Fanny Price is essentially threatened with a life of poverty as punishment for refusing Henry Crawford.

Marriage used to be an economic contract much as a legal or romantic one. It still can be in some developing countries.

@MsAmerica
"The downside for some people is that they are also all alike in their narrow focus on women, manners, and marriage."

Hmm. Not sure why a focus on women is considered a downside even if I agreed that it's true. Austen was very good at men, too. Look at Mr Collins, for example. Mr Bennett. Mr Bingley. And the gloriously awful John Thorpe. To pick just a few. And one of my favourite quotations "Elizabeth had not before believed him quite equal to such assurance; but she sat down, resolving within herself to draw no limits in future to the impudence of an impudent man.