“Studying a pair of texts provides insights into the values of different contexts.” To what extent is this true of the two texts you have studied? Amy Heckerling has managed to creatively transform her 1995 teen film ‘Clueless’ into one of Jane Austen’s classic novels, ‘Emma’ (1815) by sustaining the same significant and important values and elements despite living in different contexts. This is depicted through the contrasting of cinematic techniques and narrative structure. The progress of the importance of social hierarchies and the revolution of self-realization is produced to be invariable. ‘Emma’ exposes the impacts of social hierarchies in the way people interact and behave with each other.
When she speaks about Marianne, she says, "She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent." Austen weights the first half with pleasing commentary and gently undercuts it in the second. Compare this with her biting description of Mrs. Ferrars: "She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas." Austen begins innocently enough, but the conclusion of that sentence bitterly reveals to us the impression she wishes us to have. Reflection is necessary, for we must see the sentence as a whole.
Yet, although some critics define Jane Eyre as a Gothic piece of literature, it is true that it ruptured several aspects to create something quite new, including characterization points that will be discussed further. As far as Victorian times go, schooling, social classes, and gender were being brought up into discussion in England, and served as inspiration for Romantic authors. Actually, much of the second part of the story deals with Jane's education, which
The transformation of the Jane Austen’s novel Emma into the Amy Heckerling’s ‘teen-pic’ Clueless, involves changing the original text in to another medium set in a different context to allow a re-assessment of the values present in the text thus enabling the audience to gain a greater insight and appreciation of the ideals and concerns outlined by Austin in Emma. The themes presented by Austin in Emma are universal and timeless which enables Heckerling to adapt them to a context a modern audience can reflect and relate to, thus generating a greater understanding of the social commentary made by Austen on social class, marriage and education of the 19th century. Heckerling does not devalue Emma and the essence of what is said is not changed however Heckerling goes further than just a transformation and comments on modern issues such as sexuality, education and social equality relevant to her time. This allows the texts to resonate with each other with the known reflecting upon the new and the new reflecting on the known. Both Emma and Clueless deal with a society in which social structure and values are criteria for assessing people.
The novel contains elements of social criticism, with a strong sense of morality at its core, but is nonetheless a novel many consider ahead of its time given the individualistic character of Jane and the novel's exploration of classicism, sexuality, religion, and proto-feminism. In Jane Eyre the setting is used to trace the main characters' development and highlight milestones in their journey towards independence. By Brontë’s detailed way of describing the setting, she does not only manage to create different atmospheres but she also gives an insight into the characters’ feelings and moods. In Jane Eyre it is used clearly to measure Jane's growth and to break up the novel into volumes more clearly. The setting of the story is carefully divided into five distinct locations, each of which has its particular significance in Jane's history.
(Talk about Song of Solomon) The structure of the writing is in third person, so the reader may weave in and out of the character personas and also view the panorama of the story structure. In the story Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison often correlates the characters and places names with their personality, traits, behaviors and history. She also uses onomastics to demonstrate how the names of the characters result in both liberation and oppression. According to Encarta dictionary, onomastic is “relating to, connected with, or explaining names” and Webster dictionary describes reading as a process in order “to note the action or characteristics of in order to anticipate what will happen” The way she illustrated onomastic reading in the story “Song of Solomon” is through (the three characters: Macon “Milkman” Deads, Guitar Bates and…………..) because of: She also described places names with the (How were African Americans were treated in 1931?) from what was known as No Mercy hospital in the black community.
* Zain Mehdi Prof: Mary Nordick English - 110.07 Thursday, Jan 31 Jane Austen shows the role of manners as an extremely powerful idea in Pride and Prejudice by using manners to tell the readers about a persons’ character and attitude towards society. Austin also uses this theme to show how people in the novel believe that an individuals manners showcase their moral character, which is relentlessly being evaluated throughout the novel. Austen uses social class to create a distinct boundary between the Bingley family and the Bennet family. The importance of manners throughout the novel is repeatedly displayed to show how the characters judge each other simply by their actions and social status. An example of this is when Elizabeth decides to visit her sister Jane, who is sick and living at Netherfield Park.
At the beginning of the novel Jane Austen states that “the real evils indeed of Emma’s situation were the power of having rather too much her own way”, which is cleverly disguised as an ordinary introduction, but its importance can’t be recognised until a second read of the novel, where it can be seen how the word “evils” could apply to Emma. Jane Austen portrays Emma throughout as a person who thinks too highly of the value of good society through the words and phrases Emma uses, such as when Emma says that she would “improve” Harriet. Emma recognises Harriet as being “exactly the young friend she wanted,” and describing her as “amiable”, “pleasant” and “sweet”. But as Emma says that she would “improve” her, which would imply she has a fault, whereas the only
Although the authors use these narrative devices in completely different ways they are both effective. The authors reconnoitre characters and by giving their novels big kernels explore their possible reactions to these major changes. In The Accidental a character called Amber comes into the Smart family’s life and in turn impacts on each characters life and individually and forces them asses their previous actions. The structure that Smith uses causes each character to encounter an epiphany because we look at the characters in such close detail. In contrast Intimacy by Hanif Kureshi looks at in detail the stream of consciousness of the character Jay.
This knowledge allows the author to effectively create dramatic irony. When Dee finds the quilts in the trunk and rubs her hands over the fabric we as readers can connect with Dee in the sense that she is educated and her perceived value of the quilt is different than that of her mother and sister, yet we can still honor Mama’s emotions those of protecting Maggie from her sisters’ callousness. Mama is naïve to the world outside of the rural south; Dee on the other hand is in living it. Mama does not understand where Dee's perceived values are coming from so the educated insight into Dee's