“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.
Lucy M. Freibert addresses the dedication and all of the epigraphs, although she speaks in detail only about the material from Genesis. She remarks that the epigraph from Swift prepares us for political satire. Nancy V. Workman analyzes the Sufi proverb and its meanings for the novel. She mentions the Swift epigraph in passing, notes that it is "readily understood" and relates Swift's exaggerated satire to Atwood's
What she wants to teach Elizabeth, and the reader along with her, is, in the strictest sense of the word, a philosophic understanding of the epistemological grounds that allow us to read at all. We have not typically thought of Austen as a novelist much disturbed by such philosophical questions, although a number of excellent studies have sought to dislocate this prejudice, l These, and the work of Martha Satz and Zelda Boyd, to whom I shall return in a moment,
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 following essay will be concerned with Jane Austen’s coming-of-age novel Northanger Abbey. The modeled social order and how Austen’s protagonist Catherine Morland finds her place in society will be described in detail by analyzing the generic traditions and the narrative strategies. In reference to this, lucky and rather unfortunate events, experiences and Catherine’s acquaintances will be studied in detail. For this purpose, the motif of reading will be the most important argument. In Northanger Abbey there are two kinds of reading: reading books or letters respectively and reading 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.
Her poetry intentionally brings up questions of Otherness and forces readers to reevaluate “their relation to her ‘Otherness,’” thus, both reader and author come into a dialogue over the text (47). Using the ideas of the Enlightenment, Wheatley sought to make her readers rethink “the prejudices of tradition” (57). By seeking Phillis Wheatley we find “a powerful perspective on how we can seek out each other in our own moment” (62). Henry Louis Gates, Jr. provides a clear explication of how Phillis Wheatley fit into the debates over race and racial equality in the eighteenth century. The phenomenon that Wheatley became in her day is indicative of the debates over human’s natural rights versus nature’s placement of them.
‘Texts are valuable when they create opportunities to respond in different ways’ Through the critical study of Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, it is clear that texts become valuable when they possess the ability to be interpreted in various ways. The novel encompasses the exploration of text in relation to its dystopian elements, a feminist view point and a post -modern analysis. Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale as a cautionary novel, designed to warn her audience about the dangers of theocracies, thus making the dystopian reading the most valuable. The ability of The Handmaid’s Tale to incorporate these themes and generate such different responses makes it valuable. One of the ways in which The Handmaid’s Tale creates opportunities to respond is through its discussion and exploration of a dystopian society.
It might be said that Northanger Abbey addresses the value of fiction as well as that of reading in a wider sense: explore. In this essay, I argue that through her characters, Jane Austen uses Northanger Abbey to express the importance she places on reading both fiction and non-fiction in real life. While Austen criticises history and fact for “the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which are no longer concern of anyone living” (Austen, 1818, p. 24) and praises the novel for being “a work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed” (Austen, 1818, p. 24), she repeatedly stresses that beneath its mockery of 18th Century Society and the Gothic, Northanger Abbey’s main message is about the dangers of confusing reality with fiction. In his essay ‘“A mere skeleton of history”: Reading Relics in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey’ Terry F. Robinson draws the comparison between Austen’s writing and that of William Godwin’s essays ‘Of History and Romance’ and ‘Essay of Sepulchres: or, A Proposal for Erecting some Memorial of the Illustrious Dead in All Ages, On the spot where their remains have been interred.’ These essays argue that history is the ‘skeleton’ and fiction the ‘muscles and the flesh’, and Robinson concludes his reading of Godwin with ‘“The writer of romance then is to be considered as the writer of real history” because romance “consists in a delineation of consistent, human character.”’ (Godwin, 1797, p. 372) In her book about reading, Austen and her narrator instruct their readers on the correct books to read through the trials and tribulations of their heroine-in-training, Catherine Morland. Before the events of the novel, Catherine “read all such works as heroines must […] Pope […] Gray […] Thompson […] Shakespeare’ (Austen, 1818, p. 7).
The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel that should be read by all Literature teaches us many things about life as it questions us about who we are, what we might become, what this world is, and how we might change it for the better. The Handmaid’s Tale is an excellent piece of literature to read because it questions readers of the world they live in. It opens our eyes to a new world in which we live in and shows us how ignorant we are. One should read The Handmaid’s Tale because the author, Margaret Atwood, uses the novel to teach her readers about this world we find ourselves in and how we could change it for the better by using Utopia and Dystopia, the negative aspects when we lean towards fundamentalism, as well as life lessons. Margaret Atwood uses Utopia and Dystopia to show and warn her readers of the world we live in, and what it can become.